It's time for Adobe Buzzword to go on AIR

I have been hearing a lot about Adobe's AIR platform recently (for instance, they have now released it for Linux). In case you don't already know, AIR is a system that lets you run certain web-programs on your desktop, offline. Sometimes it takes the form of a Flex/flash app from the net ported down, or an rich application using APIs of a web-application (such as all the various Twitter apps, Pownce, Finetune, or the Google Analytics Suite).

Anyway, Buzzword is supposed to at some point have a version that is installable on the desktop, and I am looking forward to this very much. The features I understand that it will have are as follows:

1. Launch from desktop
2. Run without using a bulky web-browser
3. Offline use (edit while not connected to the Internet, and then synchronize when reconnected)
4. Better integration with desktop filesystem (I seem remember something about drag-and-drop support in and out of Buzzword; if this feature is not planned, it should be)

There are probably some other great benefits of AIR, but those are the ones that stood out for me. The reason that offline support is so important to me is that there are tons of computers that have really bad resolution. How does this relate? I'll tell you.

Let's say that I was at a location where there was one of these said awful computers; when Buzzword loads thereon, only about half of the toolbar is visible because the screen is set to 800x600 when it could easily handle 1024x768. Unfortunately, I can't get the permissions to switch the resolution, so I am stuck with it. The only real solution is to bring my laptop. The problem then is that they are terrified that plugging in outside laptops into their Ethernet will somehow spread viruses, trojans, worms, you name it, into their massive network and kill their systems. Now, there is no solution: I can't use their computers because they suck, and I can't use mine because I can't get Internet.

The only way to solve this problem is with offline support, and from what I hear, it is not too far away.

Another Awesome AIR App: Analytics Reporting Suite

This is probably much cooler and much more useful than Tweetr.. Basically, The Analytics Reporting Suite is a beautiful, desktop version of Google Analytics. I don't know how the heck they did it, but whoever did it did it damn well. Here are some screenshots:

The map is very usable and very beautiful. The whole program has lots of polish, and is considerably faster, in my opinion, than the real Google Analytics.

Analytics Reporting Suite can be installed here: http://www.aboutnico.be/index.php/downloads/

A really awesome AIR app called Tweetr

First, a screenshot:

Tweetr is an Adobe AIR app (3rd party, of course) that lets me view "tweets" from Twitter from my "friends", and post tweets myself. It makes a nice little noise when a new tweet is received. It also has file-sharing capabilities, and if you have an iSight camera or something like it, you can put a webcam photo directly onto the tweet.

Another need feature is the ability to view replies to you, and direct messages.

I love how smooth the AIR apps are; this, singlehandedly, brought me back to Twitter. We will see how long it lasts; I still maintain that Twitter is partly nonsense. The only time I think that Twitter is the coolest thing around is when there an event that I can't go to, but that I want to hear about. Then, various geeks can liveblog/livetwitter it, effectively giving me a play-by-play.

Tweetr can be installed here: http://www.tweet-r.com/