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On Tuesday, Adobe Systems relaunched its directory of AIR applications, calling it a "marketplace." There are, however, no premium applications that cost money--at least not yet.
Adobe Integrated Runtime is the company's desktop runtime for rich Internet applications. Beyond the namesake, users can finally search for applications by both name and developer. There are also four new RSS feeds that post the most recently added, most popular, staff-chosen, and recently updated applications.
On the back end of all of this, developers can now manage the various versions of their hosted applications and keep track of downloads and user reviews. Users can also view a company's profile and all its AIR applications in one place, which makes it a little simpler to download more applications from a developer you like.
This new system should be able to scale a little better than the old one as that number grows larger. There are still just under 400 applications in the directory, with the most popular one being an AIR front-end for Adobe's own Acrobat.com service.
The new marketplace is a little tighter and includes many under-the-hood upgrades for developers who want to post their AIR applications.
(Credit: CNET Networks)At CTIA 2008 in Las Vegas, Yahoo unveiled three new cell phone apps that have been cooking in Yahoo's kitchen. We got a taste of all of them. There's Yahoo oneSearch 2.0 (hands-on review), which has debuted on selective BlackBerrys with a new feature to search for any term you speak or type.
Then there's a dynamic bookmarking feature, Yahoo onePlace, which focuses on managing your interests. In addition to bookmarking search results, like a flight number, it will also import sites you've previously starred on GoogleReader and Digg, and will develop a predictive search that adapts to your search preferences. My favorite feature lets you sort links into collections, for instance, all links pertaining to an upcoming trip or birthday party.
Taking a detour from search-related items is oneConnect, which, similar to Digsby, puts your instant messenger, Twitter, and social network contacts into one place, but on your cell phone. The integration of SMS and e-mail capabilities from your smartphone makes it possible to seamlessly carry on conversations when a buddy's logged off IM.
Yahoo expects to release all three products as widgets for its all-in-one mobile content app, Yahoo Go 3 (reviewed) over the next few months, but each should also be available as a standalone app for users who prefer their Yahoo a la carte.
Spring is an exciting time for tech. A slew of products that have been hibernating in development cocoons are ready to emerge just in time for the flora to wake up, the the sun to turn on (at least here in the northern hemisphere,) and for techies to regain that bounce in their step. Here are eight downloads and Web applications we expect to see frolicking across computer screens this spring.
But why stop there? CNET editors have also slaved to bring you details galore on the season's top gadgets. Check out the latest in cameras, phones, laptops, and gaming gear here.
Although it's not intended for public consumption, a new build of Firefox 3 Alpha 5 (code name Gran Paradiso) is available for download from Mozilla. In this release, add-ons created for Firefox 2 may not work. For end users, Firefox 2 remains the latest public version. The final public release for Firefox 3 is not expected until the fall of 2007. See a slide show of Firefox 3 Alpha 5 here.
Intended for developers and beta testers, Firefox 3 Alpha 5 features a new rendering engine. The Gekko 1.9 rendering engine will introduce some changes. For example, Firefox 3 will no longer support Windows 95, 98, and Me, and for the Mac OS X, versions 10.2 and earlier will not longer be supported. There will also be numerous changes made to the Document Object Model (DOM) in Gekko 1.9, which will affect developers more than end users. Also, there will be changes in the way Firefox renders frames within its display and the way object tags are handled, as well as changes in event threading.
What's truly exciting about this alpha release is a feature called Places. As first seen in Firefox 2 Alpha 1, then temporarily tabled, Places returns in Firefox 3 Alpha 5--kind of. The functionality exists in this release for a new side panel that allows you to control your bookmarks, RSS subscriptions, and browser history in one convenient space. Places uses the open-source SQLite database, giving it greater extensibility and the ability to back up and restore bookmarks; however, this also means it's incompatible with earlier Firefox bookmarks.
Also new in this build are Web-based content handlers, greater search engine keyword support, a new password manager, something called Extension Manager (EM), the beginnings of an intentity network, better integration with Mac OS X look and feel, some offline applications support, and site specific preferences.
Also included is an early look at FUEL (Firefox User Extension Library), a JavaScript library designed to make it easier for extension developers by minimizing XPCOM formality and using more "modern" JavaScript ideas.
Also, there's help for cross-site scripting, when the browser makes a request for a page not found on the target server. This is a favorite technique for criminal hackers. Mozilla proposes that Firefox receive a response if the server explicitly allows other sites to access pages, otherwise the browser will throw away the response and throw an exception.
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