Flex, Flash & Fusion: October 2007

RIA Permeates Pop Culture

I was watching one of my favorite TV shows last night: The Office, and there was a scene that I thought was absolutely hilarious... The concept of RIA has permeated into pop culture.

The entire episode centered around the launching a web site as a new sales tool. The whole episode was great, but one of my favorite parts (which most people may not have noticed) was when Kelly (who is using the web site for the first time) says something along the lines of: "Its just so much fun to drag the paper into the shopping cart, it makes me want to buy more".

To see this in mainstream television was great. The premise of a Rich Internet Application (RIA) is not only to maintain state on the client, but, more importantly, it is to make tasks easier, and to give a better user experience. When applied to sales applications, it is supposed to help make the user want to buy more.

Showing her dragging & dropping items into her cart, and making that kind of statement goes to show that the concepts of RIA are not just for techies and user experience designers anymore. There is a new way of building applications, and it is here to stay... my TV said so. :)

Speaking at CAPFUG on Wedneday

I'll be speaking at the DC Captial Area Flex Users Group next Wednesay (October 10th). I'll be giving my talk from 360|Flex on programmatic visualizations. Come by and check it out. I'll be going first, at 6:30 PM. For more information and directions, check out the CAPFUG website.

Mashup of the month?

Apparently a mashup I did a while ago is getting some recent attention. I've never heard of MashupAwards.com, but they found my Zip Code Census Mashup. It was recently selected as the mashup of the month. I'm honored to be selected, but the funny thing is that I didn't submit it... So who did? If you have any ideas, please let me know. I've also released newer versions of the census mashup, but they must not have made the cut. ;)