Ever since I hung up my development stuff for a variety of reasons - some personal and some professional, I’ve had a chance to sit back and look at the whole application landscape without the preconceived notions of the programming language that I had spent the better part of 10 to 15 years working in. During my period of reflection the one thing that had always been a part of my developer thinking was the need for true cross platform applications.

Now before the browser and computing in the clouds crew start jumping up and own proclaiming another convert let me put the kibosh on that dream before it even starts. I still believe very strongly in the power; and security, of the desktop slash laptop and have extreme doubts about the security of relying on having all our data; personal or otherwise, being stored in some third party storage facilities that is accessible via a security mess called a browser.

What I see as having great potential of cross platform; with data neutral transfers, are the two offerings being put forward by Adobe with their AIR platform and with Microsoft’s Silverlight platform. While both could be considered to be in their infancy I am beginning to get a gut feeling that both could very well change the desktop and the browser.

Because of that feeling WinExtra is going to be starting to keep a closer watch on both platforms. While I will be looking at them more from the overall impact and discussions around the platforms Bill the trusty WinExtra application breaker will be looking at doing reviews and commentaries on any actual applications that are being built on the platforms.

So if you have any information that you would like to share - anonymously or not about the platforms and people involved with them feel free to email me steven @ winextra . com and if you area developer with a new or existing product built on either of the platforms feel free to let Bill know at bill @ winextra . com

Conversation Tags: Adobe, AIR, Microsoft, Silverlight