Welcome!

Python Authors: RealWire News Distribution, Reuven Cohen

Related Topics: AJAX & REA

AJAX & REA: Article

Rich Internet Applications or Rich Interactive Experiences?

RIAs or RIEs – Call Them What You Will, They're Here

By Jeremy Geelan
Article Rating:
October 15, 2008 10:45 AM EDT
Reads:
 18,992

“Enough with the new words already.” That was how Sean Voisen recently ended a discussion about the burgeoning technology lexicon, which he thinks can only be explained as “a ploy to keep Merriam-Webster in business.”

Voisen, who designs and builds Rich Internet Applications, web applications, data visualizations and what he calls “other fun pieces of Internet-enabled software” for a living, is not a fan of ‘RIA’ as a term.

“Marketing gurus create new terminology like ‘RIA’ and ‘Web 2.0’ in order to force people to engage in new conversations without them dragging along their baggage of ingrained prejudices about what something is or is not,” Voisen contends. “They also do it – I am convinced – to make themselves seem smart,” he adds. Voisen’s view is echoed by Ethan Eismann, the Senior Experience Design Lead of Adobe Thermo with Adobe’s XD team. He disagrees with ‘RIA’ as a term for two reasons: “First, because like all things techy, it’s already obsolete and second because it’s limiting.”

But Eismann admits that while he hates ‘RIA’ he also loves it:

“I love it because it’s now such a part of the common vernacular of web culture that when it’s used everyone immediately understands that you are talking about ‘something better than primitive HTML websites.’”

Its limiting factor as a term, according to Eismann, has to do with the two words “Internet” and “application.” Personally he prefers to use the acronym ‘RIE’ – for ‘Rich Interactive Experience.’

Front-end engineering experts like Voisen and Eismann remind us that the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and the iPhone experience have shown that great user interface design makes a big difference, that the era of what Eismann calls primitive HTML websites is truly over, and that on the Web the new priority is innovation and optimizing the User eXperience (UX).

The tools and platforms that encourage and support superior UX are becoming the pre-eminent tools for business survival and success, and their numbers are growing all the time, as evidenced for example by the mushrooming success of the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo series, which in October takes place in San Jose, California. The 6th International AJAXWorld is attracting delegates from around the world, eager to benefit from 75+ technical sessions, demos, and discussion panels as well as keynote addresses by two major thought leaders of the New Web, the user-focused Web: Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch and Microsoft's Silverlight boss, Corporate VP of the .NET Development Platform, Scott Guthrie.

 AJAXWorld delegates once again will be attending from all over the world

User-centered design for the Web is just one of the countless topics explored at this particular AJAXWorld – which is now as much about Rich Internet Applications and Web Development Frameworks as about merely AJAX per se. No other RIA-focused conference slices and dices the Web development and application space as boldly or as comprehensively: for 3 action-packed days the focus at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose will be on 16 core topics: AIR & Flex, AJAX, ASP.NET, Business Case for RIAs, Cloud Computing, Comet, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), iPhone Development, JavaScript, Mashups, Mobile RIAs, Open APIs & Toolkits, SaaS, Security, Silverlight, Social Software, and User Interface & User eXperience Issues

After the resounding success of the first-ever iPhone technical sessions at AJAXWorld on the West coast in September ’07, a dedicated 2-day iPhone Developer Summit is in fact being held simultaneously with the 6th AJAXWorld in San Jose, CA – chaired by the editor-in-chief of iPhone Developer's Journal, Kevin Hoffman. Another indicator of the business and market-share power of superior user experience.

In the end – quite aside from whether you call them RIAs or RIEs – what matters is not words or terminology but business and the realities of enterprise computing. “RIAs are impacting the way that companies like eBay, Ford, Random House, Viacom, GE, Dow Jones, and NBC think about the Internet and desktop software, and are demonstrating how innovative thinking can completely change the way they do business,” says Anthony Franco, who joined the AJAXWorld speaker faculty earlier this year for the first time. As president of EffectiveUI, he enjoys unique opportunities to see close-up how Fortune 500 companies are beginning to harness RIAs and leverage them to improve the user experience and boost the bottom line.

Franco is typical of the caliber of speakers AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo attracts. In October the lineup includes:

  • The CTO of Adobe - Kevin Lynch (keynote)
  • Microsoft's Silverlight boss - Scott Guthrie (keynote)
  • The discoverer of JSON - Douglas Crockford
  • The creator of jQuery - John Resig
  • Senior Evangelist, Amazon - Jeff Barr
  • Principal Information Architect at Travelocity - Adam Polansky
  • Developer Advocate, Google - Chris Schalk
  • CTO for Emerging Internet Technologies, IBM - David Boloker
  • Group PM for the UI Framework and Services, Microsoft - Brad Abrams
  • Architect at eBay - Michael Galpin
  • Director, User Interface Engineering at Netflix - Bill Scott
  • VP of Engineering at TripIt.com - Andy Denmark
  • Lead JBoss Portal UI Engineer at JBoss/Red Hat - Wesley Hales
  • Operations Manager of the OpenAjaxAlliance - John Ferraiolo
  • Chief dragon-wrangler for Komodo - Shane Caraveo
  • UI Engineer & Architect at Orbitz Worldwide - Mike Meeker
  • Chairman & CEO of WaveMaker - Chris Keene
  • Chief Strategy Officer of Curl - Jnan Dash
  • CTO of Pathfinder Development - Dietrich Kappe
  • Founder & Chairman of Nexaweb - Coach Wei
  • Aptana's AJAX Architect - Greg Murray
  • Co-founder and CEO of Kaazing - Jonas Jacobi
  • Evangelist for Web Services and Web 2.0 Apps at Sun - Arun Gupta
  • Senior Engineer and Designer, Yahoo! - Nate Koechley
  • President and senior trainer at Object Training Group - James Harmon
  • Lead Developer of the Qcodo Framework for PHP - Michael Ho
  • Lead Software Architect for ILOG - Christophe Jolif
  • Front-end architect at Nethouse AB - Peter Svensson
  • VP of Business Development at CommuniGate Systems - Jon Doyle
  • Sr. Developer at Magnani Caruso Dutton - Mike Girouard
  • UI Architect at Edream Solutions - Sue Googe
  • System Operations Manager at EngineYard - Yehuda Katz
  • Co-Founder & COO of Bizwhazee - John Krahulec
  • Principal Engineer, VeriSign - Karthik Shyamsunder
  • Co-Founder & COO of Finicity - Nicholas Thomas
  • Principal Consultant, Experience Design at Molecular - Evan Gerber
  • Web Theorist, IBM - Andrew Donoho
  • President of IDC Consulting - John Fronckowiak
  • Tech Lead of the Spring Faces project - Jeremy Grelle
  • Senior Consultant at SpringSource - Rossen Stoyanchev
  • Editor-in-chief of iPhone Developer's Journal - Kevin Hoffman
  • Development Team Lead for the EGL Rich UI - Chris Laffra
  • Development Manager, UI Framework and Services, Microsoft - Matt Gibbs
  • Managing Partner of Catalyst Resources - Paul Giurata
  • Host of iPhoneWebDev.com - Christopher Allen
  • Co-founder of M/Gateway - Rob Tweed
  • Consultant, OneStopAppSecurity.com - Neil Smithline
  • Senior Research Analyst at Info-Tech - Howard Kiewe
  • Founder & CEO of OpenLink Software - Kingsley Idehen
  • Senior User Experience Designer at OneSpring - Laurie Gray
  • CTO of Ektron - William Cava
  • Senior Engineer at Sun - Jim Driscoll
  • CTO of Nexaweb - Jeremy Chone
  • CTO of Morph Labs - Guy Naor

Published October 15, 2008 – Reads 18,992
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Jeremy Geelan

Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the all-new International Cloud Computing Expo series, of the International Virtualization Expo series, of AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo series, and of the long-running SOAWorld Conference & Expo series. He's founder of Cloud Computing Journal, Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal and other leading SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.

Comments (2) View Comments

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.

Most Recent Comments
MiamiWebDesigner 08/22/08 06:20:06 AM EDT

Kudos to the Cloud Crowd for Re-Inventing the Wheel!

One thing 30 years in the IT industry has taught me is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Another is that the only memory we seem to access is short-term. A third is that techno-marketeers rely on that, so they can put labels like "revolutionary" and "innovative" on platforms, products and services that are mere re-inventions of the wheel ... and often poor copies at that.

A good example is all the latest buzz about "Cloud Computing" in general and "SaaS" (software as a service) in particular:

http://tinyurl.com/6let8x

Both terms are bogus. The only true cloud computing takes place in aircraft. What they're actually referring to by "the cloud" is a large-scale and often remotely and/or centrally managed hardware platform. We have had those since the dawn of automated IT. IBM calls them "mainframes":

http://tinyurl.com/5kdhcb

The only innovation offered by today's cloud crowd is actually more of a speculation, i.e. that server farms can deliver the same solid performance as Big Iron. And even that's not original. Anyone remember Datapoint's ARCnet, or DEC's VAXclusters? Whatever happened to those guys, anyway...?

And as for SaaS, selling the sizzle while keeping the steak is a marketing ploy most rightfully accredited to society's oldest profession. Its first application in IT was (and for many still is) known as the "service bureau". And I don't mean the contemporary service bureau (mis)conception labelled "Service 2.0" by a Wikipedia contributor whose historical perspective is apparently constrained to four years:

http://tinyurl.com/5fpb8e

Instead, I mean the computer service bureau industry that spawned ADAPSO (the Association of Data Processing Service Organizations) in 1960, and whose chronology comprises a notable part of the IEEE's "Annals of the History of Computing":

http://tinyurl.com/5lvjdl

So ... for any of you slide rule-toting, pocket-protected keypunch-card cowboys who may be just coming out of a fifty-year coma, let me give you a quick IT update:

1. "Mainframe" is now "Cloud" (with concomitant ethereal substance).

2. "Terminal" is now "Web Browser" (with much cooler games, and infinitely more distractions).

3. "Service Bureau" is now "Saas" (but app upgrades are just as painful, and custom mods equally elusive).

4. Most IT buzzwords boil down to techno-hyped BS (just as they always have).

Bruce Arnold, Web Design Miami Florida
http://www.PervasivePersuasion.com
Janak Thakkar 03/08/08 05:27:23 AM EST

Hi,
It was very nice to read your blog.
I want your email Id.
Please provide me.

Warm Regards,
Janak Thakkar