Adobe pretty much owns the digital photo processing market and they are out to conquer the market for applications to code for the web. Adobe started along this path when they acquired MacroMedia, but they are continually upping the ante. Adobe Integrated Runtime or AIR was designed to facilitate putting cool internet stuff on your desktop. The system makes it easier for developers to utilize HTML, CSS, Ajax, Flash, and PDF technology and more to essentially extend Web 2.0 to your desktop, without the end user having to learn a whole lot of new skills. Adobe’s concept is that they are helping to extend rich internet applications or RIA’s to the desktop. Why we need the RIA acronym instead of just calling the subject at hand “rich internet applications” is anybody’s guess. My theory is that something about the web causes humans to want to acronymize things.

In order to spur interest in their new development tool, Adobe held a much-touted competition. Edward Finkler or Funkatron, as he is known on the Blue Blood boards, won the recent Adobe AIR Developer Derby prize for Best HTML Community Application. He won for creating the Spaz desktop client for Twitter. On winning the award, Ed says, “I submitted Spaz as something of an afterthought, to be honest. I had received some good feedback on it from a couple people at Adobe, but I didn’t think it was all that, so to speak. Throughout the development process I avoided looking at what other developers were doing, especially other Twitter devs, because I was sure it would send me into a tailspin of despair at the bush league-ness of my own kung fu. After all, Spaz is the first “Rich Internet Application” I’ve written. I hadn’t even written an AJAX call in any code up until Spaz. So, receiving this award is a great surprise to me, and very encouraging.” He is humble, but he really is that good. I’m thinking Adobe is not exactly bush league in their ability to judge code development.

Among the many extremely cool prizes Ed got from Adobe for his display of brilliance, he was invited to the recent sold out Adobe Max 2007 show where Adobe and partners attempt to decide the future of software and the internet. When interviewed about Spaz for the Adobe Max 2007 site, Ed was rocking a shirt for Blue Blood’s SpookyCash, which is the B2B (check out my acronym usage!) program where people who run high traffic sites can get paid for sending members to Blue Blood and Blue Blood-related pay sites. Represent! Whoever was operating the camera was into the Blue Blood T-shirt too, because they came in for a long close-up. You can also see the goofy picture of myself I used for my Twitter icon because of course I am on both Spaz and Ed’s Twitter following and followers lists. You can keep up with Spaz developments at Funkatron.com where Blue Blood is linked under Allies with the description of “Non-retarded goth/punk subculture.” Thanks, Ed.

BlueBlood.com hottie Halcyon’s Cocky Bastard Vision from the Pink Broadcasting Company did two entertaining videos on the 2007 SXSW experience. Halcyon has been going to SXSW basically forever, has MC’ed more of the SXSW Web Awards than he hasn’t, and introduced me to the Interactive portion of the show when we did our “Turning Pink Into Green” panel back in 2005. We got to work and play together again at this year’s event and he is always a pleasure.

In the first interview video, Halcyon says his goal was to ask “a bunch of web visionaries what they loved most about the web.” My favorite answers were from web book author Derek Powazek who enthused about the internet’s ability to connect all different sorts of freaks and of course Forrest Black’s answer about how much he loves the creative exchange where he gets to directly connect with people when he makes media. Stay tuned after the credits for a little fellatio joke with yours truly. Halcyon’s pink microphone was just so darn alluring. He cut the part where I said something smart because (a) it was sorta similar to Forrest’s sentiments and (b) let’s face it, blowjobs are always more interesting than most other things.

After watching Halcyon’s slightly downbeat most recent video about his experience of the SXSW show this year, I feel kinda bad for not being a sketchy and lazy crack addict. In all seriousness, it is sort of odd for any internet professional to go into a high tech environment where a lot of people just take things like venture capital for granted. I would absolutely accept VC if I had a project which (a) would really benefit from it and (b) which I was really sure would benefit the angels investing in it. But one of the other things I love about the internet is the freedom it can offer the individual. I don’t really have to answer to much of anyone and that warms my punk heart. At any rate, both videos are funny and I am absolutely certain that Halcyon is going to do just fine.