At this point, it has been about eight months since Adobe released the 1.0 version of Adobe AIR. Since that time, there have been several early adopters of this product but the question still remains, “What is Adobe AIR?”

In a nutshell, Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is an extremely flexible cross platform environment for deploying RIA’s (Rich Internet Applications) to the desktop using existing proven internet technologies like Flash, Flex, HTML and JavaScript.

At MODE, We have recently started exploring interesting and useful ways for using AIR including touch screen kiosk installations. Development has also been started on a small application for our clients to interact with their projects on our client extranet. The application will allow our clients to post deliverables through communication with web services that we’ve built in to the extranet. There are also plans to implement the ability for clients to receive updates for their projects.

Among the largest and earliest adopters of AIR is a little company called NASDAQ. Their Market Data Product Development team has implemented AIR in conjunction with Amazon’s S3 web service to deliver a means of interacting with and analyzing the several gigs of market data that are generated daily. According to an article at InfoQ, the application took six months to build from concept to deployment with a team of ten developers. One of the core advantages of this application’s design is that there is no mid point between the application and the data. The application interacts directly with data from the S3 service and leaves any necessary number crunching up to the customer’s computer. This allows for quicker interactivity because there is no midpoint responsible for processing every individual customer’s request. Check out a more detailed explanation of the application and how it has helped NASDAQ and their customer base.

eBay, another early adopter of AIR, is now delivering an application to extend the functionality of their website. This includes features such as bid notifications, saved searches and the ability to setup new product notifications. One equally important feature that this application implements is the ability to completely control the user interface design of an application; using AIR’s ability to work with native system windows, or a completely custom window structure, an application can completely extend your brand to a user’s desktop.

These two applications are prime examples that describe the diverse capabilities of AIR. It is without a doubt that AIR is a viable means of developing and deploying desktop applications in a quick and more cost effective manner then traditional desktop development. With AIR applications built on existing technologies already used by creative houses around the world, it will be easy to find the resources to support the development of this new breed of application. All in all, Adobe AIR is definitely something that deserves attention.