Denis’ Blog

Microsoft and Symbian of course. Have you noticed the mindshare that Android and the iPhone took in, well, a few months? Pretty sure it will last. That’s a good news. I am still waiting for my Linux based, 3G, dual card and open sourced mobile phone. And I feel it is not that far away…

Yugma is an online conference tool enabling desktop sharing, video conferencing and chat among a group. The free version enables a group of 10 people to communicate, the “Premium” version up to 50. This service is one another brick in the “Office 2.0″ house. It is to Office 2.0 what Netmeeting is to Office 1.0 :-). Yet another acquisition in the radar screen for Google :-).

Yugma is usable, and will be probably the tool many professionals will use to organise meeting and collaborative sessions.

On top of the “new competitor to Microsoft in the Office 2.0 space”, there’s an interesting point: Yugma is applet based. Of course we could say it is “old fashionned”, and that not so many companies authorized Java applets. But for me this use of an applet in a so trendy & working app is a proof that thanks to the Web 2.0 wave, Java applets, Java Webstarted or Flash based applications will be more and more common. No, Web 2.0 will not be 100% Javascript based. Good news for development costs

I’ve being discussing some months ago with François from BEA. he told me he was a strong believer of flash related smart client solutions, especially Flex from Macromedia. His point was that flash is a market standard, that the resulting applications are pretty smart, and that you can build them fast.

Even if I am impressed by the kind of UI you can build with Flex or OpenLaszlo, I was convinced that many CIO will never invest in:

Another point was that you need to implemente these systems server side application server. Everyone is tired to complexify architecture with yet-another-package-on-the-server. Especially in the java world.

Lazlo has got that point, and just released OpenLaszlo 3.0. You can build some RIA applications with openlaszlo 3.0 without server app. That’s a very good point. It can accelerate the deployment of flash based application on the net, and then make Flex or OpenLaszlo the next thing.

François, you’re maybe right….