I wasn’t sure where it was all heading, but I guess I ended up on the first episode of Duane’s World for Adobe TV. Very cool. If you think you have a topic that would be good for Duane’s show leave me a comment and I’ll put you in touch.

I should call out that Adobe has done a great job with the content and UI of Adobe TV but has failed to provide clean URLs that are actually updated in the address bar. Thus it’s kind of a pain to find and share URLs and impossible to navigate with back button. Too bad it would be so easy to make it a great example of public facing Flex RIA. Someone _high_ and Adobe really needs to start hammering this sort of thing home if Adobe is going to successfully make the leap to Saas and web services. I guess it’s not enough to have Kevin Lynch talking about it. I also can’t resize this video, so it’s best to go to Adobe TV to watch it.

[Disclaimer Duane's a good friend and on Nitobi's Advisory Board]

Research In Motion (RIM) (TSX: RIM; NASDAQ: RIMM), RBC (RY: TSX; RY: NYSE) and Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI; TSX: TRI; LSE: TRIL; NASDAQ: TRIN), today announced plans to launch the BlackBerry® Partners Fund, a US$150 million venture capital fund, to invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry® platform and other mobile platforms. The Fund is to be co-managed by JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners.

Agnostic to both stage and balance sheet, the BlackBerry Partners Fund will not restrict the development of mobile applications and services to any single mobile platform or any specific industry segment. The Fund will be designed to advance the industry by fostering development and driving the entrepreneurial spirit to create the most innovative mobile offerings for customers.

There’s not much more than that. The have official site with a link to the press release and an email address. I sent them a message about a cool project we’re working on here but haven’t heard anything yet.

[Update] Rick from JLA (VC involved in the fund) they will support biz plans focused on any mobile platform and they are getting a lot interest, 845 msgs to date! I’m stoked Rick’s blogging about this, it just went from a weird big co blank page plus press release shutting me out to a human on the inside with a blog talking to me.

Here’s an excerpt:

Developer: Nitobi Software Inc., Vancouver
Project: Nitobi Complete UI is a set of nine user interface components for rich Internet applications. They’re
designed to help RIA developers save time by plugging in whichever Nitobi modules they need rather than
recreating the functions themselves. They include, for example, a spreadsheet module called Grid, a Calendar
module, and ComboBox, for completing data-entry fields by searching a database as the user types.
How it works: All the Nitobi Complete UI components are written in HTML and JavaScript. Nitobi has offered the
components since 2004, but more recently has used Adobe AIR to give them the ability to work offline as well as
online. That means users can transfer data between their desktops and the Web more seamlessly, says Andre
Charland, Nitobi’s chief executive, and they can take data such as contact lists with them even when not connected
to the Internet.
Best practices: If you take the time to understand what AIR can do, says Charland, “it’s amazing to me how close
we can get to traditional desktop software.� The key is understanding and fully exploiting its capabilities.
For instance, he says, AIR can provide native access to Flash on the desktop, and it’s possible to call Adobe’s
ActionScript directly from JavaScript.
Because AIR is still in beta, he notes, it remains a “moving target� for developers. Nitobi tries to deal with that by
being very open with its customers about ways in which things could change.

Obviously things I said didn’t come through in the translations and AIR is 1.0 now it’s more stable. Other than that it’s a nice plug.

1. You will work on the redesign of a mission-critical financial services application to be rolled out to 6,000 financial consultants. The previous system was deployed as a desktop installed application using .NET services. You are tasked with redesigning it to work within a web browser. What is the right set of technologies to consider? What are the differences? How do I and should I replicate the behaviors of the desktop application in this new medium? What pitfalls should I be aware of when working on my design?
2. You are hired to design a hotel reservation system for the latest brand hotel to come from a major hospitality organization famous for top tier service. What advantages are there in using RIA behaviors and technologies to help enhance this new brand? What can go wrong to cause a backlash effect?

David Malouf is the instructor and is a very skilled interaction who’s well respected in the community and an active member of IXDA list. Hey David want to make a trip to Vancouver to put this course on here too? The weather is nice in summer:)

Dave Johnson will be giving a talk on JavaScript and DOM Design Patterns at Community One.

There is a hole in the current knowledge and practice of user interface development, even though most Ajax developers confront UI development on a daily basis. Although design patterns have been around for a while, little attention has been paid to the HTML Document Object Model (DOM). This presentation uses several concrete examples to explore the need for and application of DOM design patterns.

This presentation shows why DOM patterns are consequential, given the complex and often misunderstood interplay between the DOM, DOM events, and JavaScriptâ„¢ technology–particularly event ordering, bubbling and capture, and event triggers.

In this presentation, attendees will learn how to use the JavaScript programming language to write succinct, useful libraries that address key DOM design patterns such as composite controls. They will leave with an understanding of how DOM design patterns can help speed web development and result in more-robust solutions. They will also learn about various repeatable patterns that can be applied to DOM scripting, specifically how DOM events and JavaScript technology work together.

Mark your calendars for Monday, May 5th at 11am. CommunityOne is free and you also get the first day of JavaOne for free so you’ve got no excuses!

That same day we’re going to be hanging out and participating in the RedMonk unconference track. Our areas of focus are going to be the business of RIAs and some advanced topics in Ajax development.

The RedMonk Unconference: expect a rich mix of open source, dynamic languages, development in general, Java, social media high jinks, and all of the usual things you’d expect from the industry’s first open source analyst company. This year we plan a Rich Internet Panel (with JavaFX, Adobe, Nitobi, and other folks) and a discussion about the Mylyn Eclipse personal productivity IDE, with a special appearance by Atlassian’s Mike Cannon Brooks. This is the CommunityOne unconference by you, for you, so please come along and set the agenda.

Andre in London from Dion Almaer on Vimeo.

I also interviewed Dion about App Engine, which I’ll be posting shortly.