Mobile trends - 2011

It’s been almost 3 years since my Boss came to me and told" Looks like mobile technologies is going to be huge. There is going to be a mass development efforts starting to happen on mobile. Let’s start having a look at it". That's when I started to read up and do some hands on mobile technologies, starting with J2ME and Windows Mobile. iPhone and Android were not the rage that they are now (at least Android was not). That's about the time when I wrote this blog. Now when I revisit that old blog, I'm really surprised at the change that has happened in the Mobile world. Mobile phones have given way to smart phones and they are now giving way for Super phones and Tablets.

While smart phones were about being a good media gadget (a good camera, a nice display with good audio and video capability) with a speedy processor along with 3G capability and a good browser and some fun to have apps, Super phones are all about being the media gadget with outrageous capabilities with a brilliant camera and brilliant displays, super fast processors (multi-cores), with 4G capability, great browsers and some serious apps. Almost all of the future phones announced by different phone companies almost all of them has plans to incorporate NFC technology in them. While Symbian was the uncrowned king 3 years back, the crown has moved to Android (in terms of market share at least...And I'm pretty sure iPhone owners will just smirk at market share).

Today mobile phones have become an integral part of our daily lives, more so than before. Let’s have a look at the current status of all the platforms mentioned in the earlier post and see where they stand.


iPhone (iOS)



Apple revolutionized the mobile world with its release of iPhone. They again did wonders with the concept of App store which became a raging success. Even though the iPod market was getting saturated, they virtually created a new market for tablets by releasing iPad. They brought out the Retina Display. Whatever the competition do as latest is already done by Apple. iOS has become the standard that other platforms are vying to become. Every product now wants a presence in the App store. But all this success was not without its share of problems. Apple is seen as closed and authoritarian system where they decide what apps to get approved or not. Their standoff with Adobe by not allowing Flash in iOS was major news. They had the infamous antenna-gate incident which took a lot of sheen from the release of iPhone 4 along with the search of Gizmodo heads house created a lot of negative publicity. Also they recently lost their superiority in the US market to Android. But by creating a CDMA version of the iPhone 4 and there by having it run on Verizon network could be a major change. All the folks that were running to Android because of AT&T will now have a choice to get iPhone from Verizon. The next version of iPhone is rumored to be coming with NFC capability and lots of other feature that the mobile enthusiasts are looking forward to.

Android



From being a small initiative from Google (via Open Handset Alliance) to the market leader, it has been quite a journey for Android. The growth for Android is just explosive. They grew from a 0 to more than 30% in just 3 years. In fact there was recent Canalys report where it said that Android has overtaken Symbian as the smart phone market leader in the last quarter of 2010. In these 3 years Android went through 5 new versions, each version bettering the product and bringing in more market share.(They also managed to give some interesting names for each versions, each being named after some dessert). Android is coming out in full swing with their latest version Android 3.0 (HoneyComb) which is said to made to target tablets. Tablets is the next arena where Android will have to fight it out with iOS and with the amount of new tablet releases announced for Android, it is going to be another interesting battle. Unlike iOS, Android is an open sourced platform and each handset makers have made different offerings (in terms of UI) to differentiate themselves from the competitors. This has augured well for Android (But this has also raised the fragmentation concerns amongst the developers too). The Android market is growing strong, catching up to the iTunes app store. One of the major negative feedback about Android market was about its usability and Google has heard those concerns and rectified it and come out with a new web version of the Android market.

Symbian



How the mighty have fallen. From being a Company that had more than 50% share of the smart phone market to just 30% (and eroding further) this is a big fall. While iOS and Android are in the next bout to retain the supremacy in the tablet segment, Symbian is still trying to be relevant in the mobile platforms. Symbian had gone through the cycle of being bought by Nokia, who open sourced it and later on pulled it back after some of the key members of the foundation like Samsung and Sony Ericsson has left it. And going by the response to the latest Nokia mobiles built on Symbian^3, it looks like it's about to reach its end of life. While everyone lauded Nokia N8 hardware, it was a unanimous review that the software (especially the UI) let it down. Rumor is that Nokia is shelving their plans to bring the next version of Symbian (Symbian^4) and put all their efforts in MeeGo (created by merging Moblin and Maemo. There were some other rumors that they might build phones based on Android or Windows Phone 7 OS (especially now that Stephen Elop is the new CEO, who was the head of the Microsoft Business division). But Nokia has denied these rumors. It looks like Nokia is betting on MeeGo for their future.

Windows Phone 7



Microsoft understood that carrying along dead weight won't do much help and no amount of beautification on the existing mobile will sell the Windows Mobile. So they stopped with Windows Mobile 6.5 went back to labs and came out with a brand new platform OS in Windows Phone 7. They clearly had put some thought and effort into it and the new Tile UI was unanimously appreciated. Even though starting afresh meant building apps from the scratch, Microsoft has always provided one of the best development environments in the form of Visual studio. In the new platform the UI is build using Silverlight and you can use the all familiar C# as you language. Windows Phone 7 started off with rave reviews and a plethora of devices from partners like HTC, Samsung, LG and Dell. They also made a good start with the Microsoft marketplace with a good number of apps to support. But even after this nice move from Microsoft, they are still not able make any dent in the market share. Microsoft has also made a nice move in the form of porting Windows 8 (an OS especially being made to target tablets) to run on ARM processors. But Apple has already had a great head start in the tablet division with its iPad and Android is now coming in there with their Honeycomb and it could be another case where Microsoft is a bit too late. But knowing Microsoft, you should never count them out; it might be a matter of time.

Blackberry



RIM is another company that has kind of lost a lot of its appeal. The 'crackberry' addicts are now moving away towards the iPhones and Droids. The enterprise world where Blackberry had a stronghold with its mail infrastructure is now waving. With Blackberry too the problem was about not innovating in the OS and the App store. While iPhone and Android built a fantastic environment with plenty of apps Blackberry was slow to move. The touch screen mobiles in the form of Storm were major embarrassment. The media capabilities were bad and the browser was one of the worst. Recently they tried to rectify these issues with releasing Blackberry OS 6 with a brand new webkit browser and better media capabilities. They also showcased a new tablet (Playbook) which has got some decent attention. RIM is still a major player in the mobile market but they are in a position from where they could go further down if they stop being innovative.

WebOS



Palm was becoming irrelevant in the mobile market after the rise of the iPhones and Androids. The first thing they did was to get Jon Rubinstein from Apple. Rubinstein was one of the brains behind the development of iPod. Then they did something similar to what Microsoft did. Then went back to the labs and started from the scratch and came out with webOS. webOS was reviewed positively by technology enthusiast across the world. Their deck of cards concept of UI was an entirely different offering compared to the competitors. Palm Pre and Palm Pixi were the two flagship devices for WebOS. Unfortunately for Palm webOS really didn't really hit it off even after all those hoopla's. One of the main reasons was the unavailability of apps in the palm web store as compared to the iPhone or Android offerings. Also the limitation in the number of devices could have been an issue. It looked like Palm was about to shut shop when HP bought the company over. Recently there have been announcements from HP about several new tablets coming to market running on webOS. This could mean a fresh new lease for webOS. But the choice on apps is something that HP will have to work to really push webOS to the top league.

Here is a graph showing the current market share of each OS



There are a few other platforms out there in the market like Brew from Qualcomm and Bada OS from Samsung which are trying to get into the main stream. It will be fun to see what’s going to happen in the mobile market in the future and what will be the status of each of these platforms.

HTML 5 video tag codec issues

One of the most hyped features of HTML 5 is the video tag. A proper implementation of this would spell trouble for the third party browser plug-ins like Flash, Silverlight, Quicktime etc. But there’s a big war going on in the browser world regarding the implementation of this tag. The video codec that will be used for implementing the video tag is still under dispute. W3C has not yet concluded on what codec to use and each of the Browser builders are thinking of their own options

Mozilla and Opera wants to go with Ogg Theora, which is an open source, patent free video codec. But the issue lies with the fact that it is of not so great quality and will be unable to give out high performance videos.

H.264 is another codec build and patented by the ISO Moving Picture Experts Group (aka MPEG). This has a great quality associated with it and follows all the standards too. Another big positive for H.264 is the fact that all the You tube videos are in this codec.. Sounds great? Well the problem is the fact that you have to pay licensing fees to MPEG to use this codec. Microsoft has already approved this codec are going to use this in their IE 9 browser. Mean while Google Chrome uses ffmpeg library that supports both Ogg Theora and H.264

Apple Safari wants to go with their custom quick time implementation.

You see… it’s a mess. It will be sometime before we see anything meaningful out of HTML 5 video tag.

Beware of your data in social networking sites !!!!

I recently read two different articles which say about the Data collected by social networking sites used out in the open. Facebook and MySpace are the sites which started off this whole social networking paradigm and popularized it. MySpace might be on a decline when compared to Facebook but they still see close to I billion user status updates every month. Moreover MySpace under the new management are trying to revive their position by realigning their business model and trying to be a major music seller. And the story of Facebook is known to everybody. Recently there was an article which said Facebook traffic has surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week (Of course Facebook still has a long way to go if you include Google's non-search properties)

Here is the article

Coming back to our original topic, there is a huge value on the data collected by these sites which mainly includes the web usage profile of each user. One of these articles talks about FBI and Feds collecting Facebook, social media data for identifying relationships, chasing the bad guys and going undercover etc. The other one includes news on how MySpace has put up user data for sale. According to the article the 22 sets of data being made available are cheap. Prices range from $10 for raw dumps from the MySpace API to $300 for everything broken out by latitude and longitude.

Here are the two links

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/myspace_bulk_data.php

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=31996

Now what do you make out of these news. Do you think Privacy is a big concern in social networking? Will these moves avert people from getting into social networking? Should there be some sort of law that protects these data from being utilized by Governments and big corporations???

Google Apps MarketPlace

After the success of AppStore from Apple every other Mobile vendor has rushed to put out a AppStore of their own. No one has attained the sort of success and buzz generated by Apple. Android is the only other market place where some sort of activity is happening, but even that is nowhere near the size of Apple AppStore.

Now Google has made a new move. They have opened up a market place for Google Apps. This though is more of a headache for Microsoft. This is clearly targeted to increase the popularity of Google Apps and take away some market share from the Office. Especially since Microsoft is pushing out Office 2010 with cloud capabilities. Google will be hoping this move will allow them to create a developer ecosystem around Google Apps. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft came out with a similar one very soon.

This program enables integrations with such applications as Google Gmail, Documents, Sites and Calendar. All told, the effort begins with 50 vendors participating, including Atlassian, NetSuite, Skytap and Zoho. Users can link to an application via the UI in Google applications, offering benefits like single sign-on and sharing of data between Google Apps and third-party applications. Centralized administration also is featured. Participation in Google Apps Marketplace is open to customers of the Premier, Standard and Education editions of Google Apps. Applications are linked to the marketplace via REST Web services and APIs including OpenID and OAuth.

The real sweet part in this whole deal for Developers getting in is the fact that Google will pass on 80 percent of revenues from Google Apps Market sales to participating partners and keep the remaining 20 percent. Well what are you waiting for….There is money to be made!!!!!

Here is the link to Google Apps Marketplace

Google Ad Preferences

This was an interesting piece of information that I got from one my RSS feeds from Digg.

Google logs an astonishing amount of data, including the search logs from its flagship product. Europe's data protection supervisors have called for IP anonymization after six months and competing search engines like Bing do just that. Yahoo scrubs its data after 90 days. But Google does the "anonymization" only after 9 months. This has raised a lot of questions in the industry against Google and Google as always wants to defend their methods especially since they have the now famous motto of "don't be evil". The explanation provided by Google for keeping this sort of information for this long is that it gives better results(read as context and people sensitive ads). So basically they track the users browsing habits and creates profiles around people based on their browsing history in Google related products and applications. So it will not be advisable to do a search in Google (especially if you are logged into Google) that says "How to kill my Boss" .Next time you login you might be prompted with ads about rat poisons and hired guns :-)

Now to prove themselves as the "good guys" and to mark themselves as the most transparent, they have build a service called as Google Ad Preferences. If you open this service, Google will show you the profile that they have created about you based on your browsing history. You can go in and either opt out of Google Profiling or Remove a particular profile that you think you don't want to be in.

How to use Ad preferences? As always with Google it's very simple. Log into Google. Go to Google search and type "Google Ad preferences" (or you can try this link www.google.com/ads/preferences/). The page that results will show the profile that Google has created about you , with options to either opt out or removing a particular interest from the list or even add any interests. Have a look at this service and see what sort of profiling Google has done about you!!!

Is Google testing TV Search Service

There is a recent report on WSJ which says that Google is trying to introduce Search into the TV services too. The report is available only to the Subscribed users, but still the idea is a very powerful one. The rumor around is that Google is testing a TV search service on Android OS set-top boxes. The service, being tested in conjunction with Dish Network satellite TV service, would allow users to search Dish programming as well as video Web properties, such as YouTube. But we will have to wait and see what would be the input controls in this case. Will our TV Remotes act like a Keyboard to enter the search terms and options?

Linking Web content and traditional TV programming into a searchable database for viewing is a smart idea. Eventually, TV programming will be funneled through the Internet instead of cable and satellite systems. Viewers will need a way to not only find programming but discover new ones, as well. Also the more interesting part is the role of Android in all these. Android has already been ported to Netbooks and Archos tablet like devices. So making a Set Top box run in Android might not be an impossible idea. Still, it’s hard to imagine that set-top boxes will be around for much longer as Web technology moves directly to the TV screen itself and eliminates the need for add-on devices.

Another interesting point to note here is, how Google is trying to integrate its Cash Cow (Search) into just about anything!!!!

Here is the WSJ article

Google PubSubHubbub (PuSH)

Google is developing a system that will enable web publishers of any size to automatically submit new content to Google for indexing within seconds of that content being published. Search industry analyst Danny Sullivan told us today that this could be "the next chapter" for Google.

Google would some day use PuSH for indexing the web instead of the crawling of links that has been the way search engines have indexed the web for years.Google senior product manager Dylan Casey said yesterday at Sullivan's Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara, California that the company plans to soon publish a standard way for site owners to participate in a program much like that.


PuSH is a syndication system based on the ATOM format where a publisher tells the world about a Hub that it will notify every time new content is published. Subscribers then tell the Hub "when this Publisher posts new content, please deliver it to me right away." So instead of the Subscriber checking back with the Publisher all the time to see if there's new content, they just sit and wait to be told that there is by the Hub. The Publisher publishes something, then tells the Hub that it's available, then the Hub goes and delivers it to all the Subscribers. This can take as little as a few seconds.

If Google can implement an Indexing by PuSH program, it would ask every website to implement the technology and declare which Hub they push to at the top of each document, just like they declare where the RSS feeds they publish can be found. Then Google would subscribe to those PuSH feeds to discover new content when it's published.

PuSH wouldn't likely replace crawling, in fact a crawl would be needed to discover PuSH feeds to subscribe to, but the real-time format would be used to augment Google's existing index.


PuSH is much more computationally efficient for Google but Slatkin says that even more important is the impact of such a move for small publishers. Right now many small sites get visited by Google maybe once a week. With a PuSH system in place, they would be able to get their content to Google automatically right away.

A richer, faster, more efficient internet would be good for everyone, but the benefits in search wouldn't be limited to Google, either. The PubSubHubbub is an open protocol and the feeds would be as visible to Yahoo and Bing as they would be to Google.

Sikuli - “God’s eye”

Sikuli, which means “God’s eye” in the language of Mexico’s Huichol Indians, could aid in the construction of “scripts,” short programs that combine or extend the functionality of other programs. Using the system requires some familiarity with the common scripting language Python. But it requires no knowledge of the code underlying the programs whose functionality is being combined or extended. When the programmer wants to invoke the functionality of one of those programs, he/she simply draws a box around the associated GUI, clicks the mouse to capture a screen shot, and inserts the screen shot directly into a line of Python code.

Read more in here

Would developers be needed in the future at all :-)

Getting into Mobile App Development?? …Good luck to you

I recently ventured into Mobile App development and found out one thing-Mobile App development is a real messy affair, unless of course if you are targeting a single deployment environment. There are too much of Platforms with varying length of influences across geographies. That creates a business problem. Think of a Mobile App that has to be catered for a wide range of consumers across geographies. Think of Maintainability and Standardization. Have a read through this blog. I’ll explain a bit about all the Major players in the Mobile market and give a small thought on how to counter this problem. Please let me know whether it makes sense

Time for some Gyaan. The start of 21st century has a seen a flourish in the mobile industry. There are some stunning numbers awaiting us about the mobile connection. Around 80% of the world's population has access to mobile phone coverage, as of 2006. This is expected to cross 90% by 2010. The pace at which it is growing, I don’t think you need to wait till 2010 to see those numbers. Another important number to note down, mobile devices vastly outnumber personal computers, telephones, televisions, and all other media and communications platforms. Now these points do give us a picture of the state the Mobile Industry is in. Mobile has become an unavoidable part of our lives almost like an extension of an individual. This holds true both as in a domestic consumer and an enterprise consumer.

But unlike the PC industry, where you have a 800 pound gorilla controlling almost 90% of the whole market (Read as Microsoft), there is no clear supremacy by any particular platform in mobile. Let’s have a look at the biggies in the Mobile platform market.

1)Symbian

Definitely not an 800 pound gorilla, but if any platform comes close to being one, this is it. With over 60% of market share (Thanks to its close association with Nokia) Symbian leads the pack. It had a wonderful run with its vastly successful S 40 series and currently shining out with its more polished latest release S–60. S-60 has helped Symbian to get a stronghold in the smart phone market which is being threatened by the new entrants. S-60 also features in non Nokia phones like Motorola and Samsung which has helped it in gaining more market in U.S (Nokia is the prima donna choice in the European and Asian market, not the same in US). Symbian has a very good developer base which is not an easy feat to achieve, and exactly the reason why Symbian will hold its lead for a good amount of time in the future.
Nokia recently brought Symbian for over $400 mn and what did they do after spending all that cash…They Open source it !!!!! Yeah you heard it right…They are going to give it away for free and make it as Symbian foundation. Looks dumb on first thought but the mobile market experts beg to differ. With Google coming out with its Open platform Android and “Daddy of all Open sources” Linux gaining more market share, it looks like a very smart move from Nokia.

You can find all about the Tools and SDK’s for Symbian in here.
And for more detailed read try this:

2)Windows Mobile

The original 800 pound Gorilla from the PC market have been trying use its muscle power to get into the Mobile OS market. To a good extent they managed to do well by having close to 13% of the overall smartphone market. But coming from Microsoft , you expect them to be at the top and that is the intend too. Major players like Sony Ericsson, Motorola , HTC etc are coming up with their latest smart phones like XPeria, Moto,HTC Touch Diamond and Pro etc (all of which are touted as iPhone Killers) are all based on Windows Mobile Platform. That shows the belief of these vendors in the capability of Windows Mobile Platform. When it comes to the developer base, nobody comes even close to what Microsoft has. With the provision given to code in a stripped down .NET environment and amazing Tool support in the form of Visual Studio ,Microsoft is here to stay in Mobile App development. Easy of synchronization with the PC also helps. The current version available is Windows Mobile 6.0. Windows Mobile 7 Codenamed "Photon” is a major upgrade planned for release in 2nd half of 2009. Not much else is known about the release, though leaked information suggests a revamped UI, multi-touch and motion-related features.
For more detailed read have a look at this:

3)RIM (Research In Motion)

You might not have heard about the Canadian wireless company RIM , But you definitely would have heard about their offering, Blackberry. RIM provides the OS that runs in Blackberry. Blackberry is a very familiar name in the Enterprise Community because of its ease of use in emailing, a feature that was unrivaled till now, until the phenomenon called iPhone came by. RIM is gunning to have a good run in the consumer market for the smartphone with Blackberry. They have done well so far. The competition is fierce in this segment. RIM usually develops its own softwares for its devices and you don’t see too much of third party developer support for RIM. This is OK as long they are planning to do well with the Enterprise customers, but to stay alive in the consumer market you need to build a good developer base.
For a brief overview have a look at this :

3)Linux

Embedded Linux has been ported to a variety of processors not suited for use as the processor of desktop or server computers.It is an alternative to the—usually proprietary—bespoke assembler or C software largely used in embedded development. Advantages compared to other embedded operating systems include: the source code can be modified and redistributed; relatively small footprint (a typical installation may require less than two megabytes of memory); no royalty or licensing costs; mature and stable; and a large support base. Embedded Linux systems combine the Linux kernel with a small set of free software utilities.
Motorola had in the past rolled out a lot of Smartphones using Embedded Linux and recently Open Moko is released into the market which is seen a gamechanger. Google Android also uses a Linux kernel at its heart. As said earlier being the “Daddy of all Open sources”, there is no shortage in the developer base and community support.
Try this :

4)iPhone

Apple shook the work with the release of iPhone. A touch phone was unthought of and even ridiculed by almost all other Phone makers. iPhone made them eat their words and they are scrambling around and trying to bring into market what popularly called as iPhone Killers. iPhone with its amazing touchscreen functionality and an even better browsing experience with an improved safari browser has really created a storm. The next version of iPhone was released last month and it managed to create the same frenzy that it created when it debuted. But in the version 2.0 what really made us to notice was its Software(apart from its 3G and push mail support). Few months before the iPhone 2.0 release Apple open sourced the iPhone SDK and came out with the concept of App Store where in individual developers can create applications for iPhone and host them in App store with a revenue share business model.
Coming from Apple, the iPhone app development is possible only with a Mac machine. Even though that reduces the scope for the SDK the number of applications that was hosted in App store are really encouraging. With plans to release the phone in over 72 countries, this one is really worth a watch.

You can get your iPhone SDK from here :
Also read this :

5)Palm

Palm with its Palm OS was a rage some time back. In fact there was a time when Palm was synonymous with Smart Phone. But their failure to provide a better platform in the recent times has eroded their market share and their developer base. PalmSource was acquired by Chinese Co. and there were plans to create a new platform for Palm on Linux kernel. Nothing has come of it yet. The way things are going for Palm, one could only see a sinking ship.

More on Palm OS:

7)Android

There is not even a single Hand Phone that is currently available in the market that uses the Android platform, Yet the whole world is downloading it , studying it and creating applications in it. The sole reason being, it’s an Open Mobile platform being developed by Google. But again it’s not just Google, its from the Open HandSet Alliance which is a business alliance made of Google, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Samsung, LG, T-Mobile, Nvidia and Wind River Systems to develop open standards for mobile devices. Android platform is build over the Linux OS and comes with an SDK, Development and debugging tools and emulators. Google also conducted Android Developer Challenge, which is a competition for the most innovative application for Android. Google offered prizes totaling upto 10 million US dollars.

Get the Android SDK and source code from here :
Read this too:

There are some more platforms or App development suites in the market like BREW, FlashLite, but not worth getting covered (or you could call me lazy). One could say that the same holds true for a Mobile Web app development too, but in a different sense. You have an array of Mobile browsers which are tightly bound with one of the above Platforms. Like IE for windows Mobile, Jb5 for symbian, Safari for iPhone etc..and other independent browsers like Opera. Even firefox is coming out with a mobile version…Watch out opera. But lately almost all the browsers are capable enough to show the original web contents as such without the need of any special definitions.

Coming back to my original statement.Now that you have seen the wide range of Platforms that are available in the Mobile App development, you would also be knowing the head ache involved in it. A Mobile App that needs to be catered for a wide range of consumers across geographies will give you a maintainability Hell. And add to that the thought of having Standardization. In a PC world you know you have to create the App for a particular platform and even if it has to be ubiquitous, you need to support it for only 3 OS. This gives way to a business problem and also to a opportunity to create a solution and selling it. There is an idea on hold. Why can’t we have a Mobile Code Generator?? Think of creating a DSL which will translate into Platform specific code. There goes your maintainability problem , add to it the Standardization too. Ain’t that Brilliant (Or Crazy) ??? Either way…Do please give me you valuable feed backs

RIA Technology crown

The race for the crown for the RIA Technology reader has been on for a long time now.And so far there is no clear winner. But clearly there are distinct players that have emerged out of all that dust and smoke. AJAX and Flex. (I'm sure there will be a lot of people who argues the presence of Microsoft products in here..but I feel its a completely different war...which was correctly depicted in the picture http://mshiltonj.com/software_wars/current/current.png (But its kind of old..needs to be updated with more products and companies trying a dig at Microsoft :-) )

AJAX Vs FLEX

Well now this is tough..I have been reading a lot on these and geting my hands dirty with some of these too. AJAX as such is a huge Gang bang which is represented by a good number of independent Frameworks, JavaScript libraries and individual implementations. On the other hand you have Flex(I read it some where...The first child of Flash)from the heavy weight "Adobe" (who incidentally are the current owners of "Macromedia", who coined the term "Rich Internet application".). So lets do one thing..The old way..the best way..take it point by point

1)User Experience
Flex - Having Flash as its paternal hereditory helps. It has a lot more tool support, graphs and charts and being one of the pioneers in video streaming , takes the lead in there too.

AJAX - No doubt there are amazing applications(even at enterprise scale)that have been built using AJAX that will mesmerize you.(Take some of the Google apps as example)But nothing comes for free...there would be good amount of work by sheer talents and geniuses that has made it possible. And no AJAX frameworks/libraries helps you do this straightforward. Be ready to sweat it out to be there.

2) Developement (Ease of developement and Time taken ...which are actually propotional)
Flex - Flex has its own IDE...Flex builder (built over Eclipse) which has a design view with drag and drop features...But wait its not free..Be ready to shell out some dollars to get it.(There goes the point from Flex). And being run by Flash player you don't have to worry about Application looking like Empire State building in one browser and as Bombay Stock Exchange building in another.

AJAX - Some frameworks has IDE's (and yes most of them are paid one's and those which are not are not exactly that great). But again most AJAX programmers doesn't expect the help from an IDE...They tend to like it the hard way..the best way. But again writing same Javascripts and DHTML's that work in all browsers is more propable than Microsoft using Java for his next OS. There are some AJAX F/w's and JS libraries taht will help you overcome this...but you know its going to break somewhere.

3) Performance
Flex - If you don't consider the download of Flash player plugin for the browser(one time..and something that 92% of browsers in the world already seems to have installed...as per Adobe..)there still is a minimum download size of 128 kb for Flex apps. Adobe is going to intoduce caching a good portion of this on the clientside for the next version..which should straight away boost the initial download time. The apps are compressed and sent to the client and the painting is done by the Flash Player, which Adobe continuously optimizes for performance.

AJAX - No extra download in this case other than the actual application contents (I'm not too sure about this..there could be some F/w which has a initial dependency download). And the painting is something entirely dependent on the browser(On which you have no control on but something that seems to be getting better and better..Thanks to the sudden surge of Firefox, which literally made Microsoft come up with IE7). Also there are existing components like GZip which helps in compressing JS libraries.

4) Extensibility (Ease of Customization)
Flex - Well the Flex SDK has been open sourced (which was a success and something that prompted Adobe to come out with "Apollo" or should I call it "AIR" ??) which means you can customize whatever you want and come up with controls of your own. But again its not exactly a walk in the park.

AJAX - Well being HTML, XML and javascript, customization wouldn't be a problem(Again there could be some F/w's where something specific is written which means bye bye customization)

5) Security
Flex - Swf files are not exactly plain texts...so reading them at the client level is not an easy task. Also the Flash player seems to be having a lot of inbuilt security enhancement features.

AJAX - Being plain text it’s easier to read. Plug-in from Firefox like Firebug, although helps in debugging, also allows the complete manipulation of the HTML DOM. (I know a friend who has used firebug to rig a website by increasing the vote for an article..there by making it the best article)

6)Server Communication
Flex - Flex helps in communication via HTTP ,SOAP for webservices and Remoting using a concept called RemoteObjects which uses Flex Data Services. Connection through RemoteObjects tend to be fast and easily configurable, but then you will have to pay for Flex Data services

AJAX - Ajax uses the web browser’s underlying communication mechanism. Several F/w's support several protocolas and ways of communication, although it tends to vary in different F/w's. SOAP, JSON and even remoting is allowed(Eg; DWR, GWT).

We can go on adding more points like widget support, Industrial Standards, Developer Community etc. and taking the high's and low's of these two technologies. Arguments like dependency of Flash Player for Flex(which has a 92% adoption rate) gets nullified with the fact that AJAX applications will not work without javascript enabled in the browsers(which almost 96% of browsers have turned on...data courtsey w3schools). So each and every pros and cons even out somewhere. Infact majority of the articles that I have gone through (including the one's from Adobe) says that its always better to use both the technologies in tandem...you know something like get the best of both worlds. And they seem to coexist very peacefully. There are tools like Flex Ajax Bridge and Ajax Data Services which helps you in this. But in the end you need a leader..A market leader where you can Say RIA means this Technology. But for the foreseeable future nobody will be ready to put their money on any particular technology. But hey whats fun without some risk...So who's your money on?

Look Who is here …Semantic Web !!!

Yipee ki yay!!!! Now that’s a line (or should I say bellowing) that Bruce Willis says in the Movie Series Die Hard… What does that got to do with Semantic web…Nothing...It’s just that the whole lot of web developers must be saying something like this…Either out of sheer frustration or pure delight…

Why frustrated…Well you have barely made a horrendous shift from your traditional web developing methodologies to something called as RIA technologies and Frameworks and you are somehow getting used to all those terminologies associated with it ( Web 2.0 , AJAX, XUL, XAML, Silverlight, JS libraries…etc..God knows what else) and all of a sudden you are hearing about something called as Semantic Web, Web 3.0….Oh yes it is bound to be frustrating.

Now why delighted…Hey if you are somebody who is not kainotophobic (Don’t do a word search now…Its Fear of Change) you must be smacking your lips in anticipation...With a whole new door of opportunity opening up for you. Also the fact that Semantic web has got nothing to do with your Web 2.0, RIA or any of the existing presentation logics might be a good news. Right? Did that help J

If you are already familiar with Semantic Web and its associated terms (For E.g.: RDF, RDFS, SPARQL, OWL …It’s not the bird Owl by the way…Its Web Ontology Language… but why OWL not WOL…Hey don’t ask me…I didn’t create it) then read on…you are not going to learn anything new here J (Hey I’m kidding..Who knows I might have something up my sleeves). For those who have not yet heard about Semantic Web.

What is Semantic Web?

The Semantic Web is a mesh of information linked up in such a way as to be easily processable by machines, on a global scale. You can think of it as being an efficient way of representing data on the World Wide Web, or as a globally linked database.

By the Way this is a vision from our very own Tim Berners Lee to see Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange. Well given the fact that he is the father of World Wide Web itself means that…there is something about Semantic web (Yeah I know…I borrowed that from the movie title, There is something about Mary). Have a look at this …This is what Mr. Tim originally expressed his vision of Semantic web as

“ I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘Intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize. ”

Ooohh…the last part is kind of scary right…machines talking to machines…Reminds you of some movies where machines take over the human control J

Instead of me blabbering about Semantic web...I think it will be better if you go through these links…They will tell you better

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web

http://infomesh.net/2001/swintro/

http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

If you are somebody in hurry and wants to get a short description about Semantic web then go through this

http://dret.net/netdret/docs/wilde-einiras2005-semweb/

And a much simpler explanation at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Semantic_web:why

Need more details?

There is not much of a commercial level development happening in this area. Most of the development is secluded to the ones at University labs and R&D centers. Tool support for the development is on the rise (in fact you will find the sites flooded with tools for semantic development), but none of them can be said to be mature. Many of the biggies like Adobe, HP are trying to get a hold on this market with their products. Go through some of these links to find out more about the tools for semantic web development

http://esw.w3.org/topic/SemanticWebTools

http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=291

http://www.hpl.hp.com/semweb/tools.htm

http://www.daml.org/2003/05/swmu-tools-tutorial/Overview.html

Here is a link which contains some details about how RDF is created and used.

http://www.w3.org/TR/photo-rdf/

Unfortunately, the Semantic Web is dissimilar in many ways from the World Wide Web, including that you can't just point people to a Web site for them to realize how it's working, and what it is. However, there have been a number of small scale Semantic Web applications written up. Of course, these are rather demonstration-oriented Semantic Web projects, but it does illustrate the feasibility of applications being easily built using Semantic Web toolkits. I have registered myself for many of these application and many of them has responded saying that, they are in Beta and not ready for commercial usage…yet.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_semantic_apps_to_watch.php

If you want to know how semantic web is useful, potential advantages for Internet commerce, ROI etc. read this one

http://www.ida.liu.se/~yuxzh/doc/iceis-030120.pdf

Many people feel that semantic web done in a systematic manner will result in AI, something that has been in talks for a long time but never visualized or successfully attempted at. Let’s wait and see whether this stands up to its potential.