E-mail is extremely easy to adopt and use, and lends itself very well to certain types of collaboration. When two people are attempting to collaborate asynchronously, e-mail is usually the best solution. It's certainly far less frustrating than phone tag. But once more people are involved, email's utility rapidly degenerates. While the rise of free, open-source solutions makes it tempting to build one's own collaboration tools, on-demand or Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are the better choice for the majority of users and uses.

Catalyst Resources released a 'green audit' of their software-as-a-service (SaaS) collaborative workspace project that allows distributed business teams of all sizes to work virtually and seamlessly online. The Rich Internet Application (RIA) enabled Catalyst Resources to reduce its carbon impact footprint by 21,000 lbs of CO2 per month, while simultaneously reducing expenses and increasing billable activities by nearly 20%.

Curl announced that the University of Hawaii at Manoa will be leveraging the Curl Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform this year for an independent study project entitled 'Anti-Keylogger for Secure Web Applications.' Curl was selected as the technology for the course because of its easy-to-learn programming language and strong security features for developing Web-based applications.

Curl made available the newest example of a Curl Nitro 'fit client' application. Designed by Manuel Lima, the founder of VisualComplexity.com, the CurlGraph features a visual representation of the social graph of individual Facebook members. Using the desktop-based application, users can visualize a circle of up to 128 friends from an established Facebook account, enabling them to see relationships and navigate quickly through that friend data to find the information they want. Through this demo application, Curl showcases its ability to support a visually engaging, interactive desktop application that is deployed like a Web application.

Farallon Geographics and its design partner Stamen Designs have been selected by the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) to develop a Rich Internet Application (RIA) for the next generation of its 'California Health Care Atlas'. The new Web-based atlas will integrate interactive mapping, reporting, and charting elements with a dynamic real-time interface to tell the healthcare story in California, allowing a broad spectrum of users the ability to investigate and learn about the human health and healthcare landscape in California.

If Gartner's assessment of AJAX's position on the Hype Cycle is correct, then the days when AJAX is the only game in town are over. Enter the age of what Anne Thomas Manes of the Burton Group calls 'Fit Clients' - a hybrid of Thick Clients (a.k.a. Fat Clients) and Thin Clients (HTML and RIA). Adobe AIR is definitely a Fit Client technology, but it's not the first and won't be the only player in this space.

Curl is executing on the next phase in its Eclipse strategy with the availability of the beta versions of the new Eclipse-based Curl Rich Internet Application (RIA) development tools. The first release of the Curl Development tools for Eclipse (CDE) and newest release of the Curl Runtime Environment (RTE), Version 6.0.4, provide enterprise developers with the tools to build and deploy their mission-critical, enterprise-class RIAs within the increasingly popular Eclipse environment.

Cynergy Systems announced it has been selected as a finalist for the 2008 Helios Apollo Awards. In conjunction with the Washington, D.C. metropolitan chapters for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and SmartCEO magazine, Helios HR, a provider of outsourced human resources and HR consulting, has chosen to honor Cynergy as a local company dedicated to promoting employee development.

Curl announced the general availability of the Curl Run Time Environment (RTE) for Macintosh. The Curl RTE is the engine of the Curl Rich Internet Application (RIA) Platform that executes Curl applications and renders code, content and graphics on client machines. As a result of this release, Macintosh users can now take advantage of the same enterprise-class features of the Curl RTE that are already offered to Windows and Linux users.

When talking about the 'web' what are we referring to? For most people it's what can be experienced through their web browser including HTML, audio and video streaming, Flash-based animation, or rich Internet Application (RIA) interfaces. The key to this perspective is the web browser, which is viewed as essential for experiencing any type of content available via a hyperlink on the web.

The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys like a piano, used by one hand. The problem was, Engelbart's five-finger keyboard and mouse combination was very difficult to learn.

If you design an application that runs on Windows but doesn't look exactly like Windows, so the old argument goes, the effect will be unsettling for users. But sticking to the native look and feel (L&F) should not be the end-goal of designers.

Desktop widgets have been around for a very long time. The first set of desktop widgets were introduced by Apple back in 1983 with their release of Apple Desktop Accessories. Obviously Apple was way ahead of the curve, but these early widgets were not Internet enabled - the popular Internet, as we know it, didn't exist - so their utility was pretty limited.

For the past ten years application developers have been stuck with only two desktop client choices. Traditionally, they can choose either a very thin Web-client technology implemented in HTML and CSS, or a very heavyweight thick client experience implemented using traditional client/server (C/S) technologies (e.g. Java Swing, MFC). It wasn't until the introduction of RIA technologies (e.g. AJAX, Adobe Flex, Curl, and Silverlight) and widget engines (e.g. Yahoo! Widgets and Google Gadgets) that we were given more options.