NetJaxer is the first initiative I've seen to take Web 2.0 to the next level. It allows you to integrate your favorite Web 2.0 pages, such as gmail, writely, TadaList, Digg, etc... directly into your desktop. They use their own browser, which is fully Ajax compatible (so they say :).

Netjaxer is an easy way to integrate your favorite web apps into Windows. Create a desktop or quick launch icon. Load any web page when Windows starts and run it as a tray icon.

For all those of you who attended the Real-World Ajax Seminar, I attached a zip file with 128 pictures... most likely you'll be able to find yourself.

Enjoy.

[04/02/06 - updated: added 11 pictures]

For those of you who are organized and have time to prototype your web application before building it, I have great news. Software Solutions has announced the release of Axure RP Pro 4, the latest version of its popular web application prototyping tool. Axure RP Pro 4 is the first modeling tool on the market to allow easy prototyping of AJAX or other Rich Internet Applications (RIA). RIAs can deliver a much more interactive and engaging user experience and are quickly becoming the standard for next generation web applications.

iChameleon Group has been using Axure for a while to diagram site flow, user interation, and form fields before we start developing. After we build a full prototype we get the client's approval, and only then it goes into production. This has been great, but every time we needed Ajax calls we would write notes in the page without being able to represent it visually... the new release makes it a little easier.

Check out a full article on the new release here, or go directly to the official site for demos and more info.

WHAT'S NEW?
Well, about the biggest thing ever: they've been Googled. That's right, Google Inc. has acquired Four Jumping Midgets Inc.… so you might have just spit your coffee all over your keyboard, or you're rolling your eyes thinking this is another one of my April Fool's jokes. Believe me, they're still having a hard time believing it themselves, but it's real — they are now Google!

I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE THIS
Neither can I. As you all know, it's our users who have spread the word and helped build our little idea into what it is today. Jumping Midgets was launched with what Joe refers to as the “Field of Dreams” business plan — build it and they will come. Thank goodness so many of you did! It is a rare and wonderful thing to have a dream, to watch a community develop to support that dream, and to see it eventually take on a life of its own. Users have played a big part in their success, and no one will ever forget that.

This is definitely not the end; this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for the next incredibly exciting chapter. From me personally and from all the midgets here …THANK YOU.

WHAT'S NEXT?
Google has been acquiring like a company a week. This month it was Writely, SketchUp, and Jumping Midgets… I'm working what will they do next? It is an amazing company, completely unpredictable.

If you are one of the 350 people who attended the Real World Ajax Seminar, one of the 15,000 who watched the simulcast, or you just happened to find the video-cast (which I'll link when sys-con publish it), you may find useful to download the slides I used.

Just a quick recap, I started my speech informing that I will not show any UI, I will not speak of frameworks, and I will not add any sales pitches; instead, I will go back to basics and talk about best practices and foundations for developing proper and successful Ajax applications. My high-level presentation applies for any Ajax project you might be working on and does not tie you into any framework or server side language.

An extract from the backbase's description of my presentation

He is providing a lot of best-practices, such as ‘provide the user with immediate feedback’, ‘design for errors’ and ‘keep state on the server’. He explains that this last point is one of the most important points for enterprise Ajax applications, because it introduces security risks: he then primarily refers to business logic. Rob then gives several security guidelines, where he emphasizes that Ajax pretty much works like regular HTML pages.

From left to right you can find Charles Fiesel from RoundArch, Jeremy Geelan from Sys-Con, Christophe Coenraets from Adobe, and The Rob from iChameleon Group.

If you have any doubts about assisting the next Ajax Seminar, DONT! It was a wonderful experience, and if the great speakers lineup wasn't enough, the amount of networking is worth it alone.

I hope to see you all in San Jose next month, or New York back in June.

I got to NY this afternoon and wondered around a little. I'm staying at the lovely Marriot Marquis Times Square, where the event will be hosted. I can't wait, the lineup of speakers for the seminar is great.

Just got my own copy of Dave Crane's Ajax in Action with a large booklet with everyone's slides. It looks like I sent sys-con an outdated copy of my slides, sigh ... anyways, I'll post more tomorrow.

I'm leaving for the Real World Ajax Seminar until Tuesday, and I don't expect to blog much. If any of you is in the NY area, try to stop by the seminar, as it looks like it's going to be a great event.

I will post my slides here after the presentation.

The seminar will be available at a later date in sys-con TV.

I just released a small modification, but largely requested by the community: cell Renderers....

As the matter of fact, Kenton Gray came back to the rescue, he modified utils.js and wddx.js, so if you're upgrading, you only need to load those two files. You can check the new use with the same Query Example I posted before, but this time it adds some custom cell functions. Now you can send queries back from CF and easily populate tables with any custom code.

This is the true spirit of open source. Thanks Kenton! if anyone else has any suggestions or contributions, do not hesitate to drop me an email.

Google is in the move to compete with Office, or may I say, Microsoft saw it coming when they announced Office Live. Google bought Writely, and now is releasing a full Ajax calendar application with their signature simplicity. Find some reviews and screen shots here. You just gotta love Google.