Adobe’s AIR (which stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime, so you could remove the “Adobe” before it and just call it “AIR”) has drawn and insane amount of attention ever since it was launched, and has currently over 40 million users and developers working with it.
So, what exactly is AIR? Well, it’s basically a mix between a browser and Adobe’s Flex and Flash technologies, which allows users to have a much more advanced and functional connection between server software and their desktop computer, laptop or other mobile device. For example, an AIR application could allow you to control several video sharing sites accounts at once, and upload, convert, edit and download videos to and from all of them simultaneously using a beautiful desktop control panel, AND you could do all that even without an API available on the sites (that’s where the browser part comes in).
There are already a lot of great AIR applications, and dozens of new ones are being released every single week. Below is a list of the most popular and useful ones. You probably heard about some of them (TweetDeck, for example), and you should definitely check them out to really understand what they can do.
DeskTube. This is one the best alternative interfaces for Youtube. It’s basically your own, personalized Youtube application. If you are tired of the usual Youtube interface and the sidebar ads, you can use DeskTube to search, view, comment on and upload videos and do anything else you can do on the Youtube.com website using your browser AND you have the ability to publish tweets and replies on Twitter and post comments and updates on Facebook directly from its dashboard.
EBay Desktop. As the name implies, this AIR app gives you control of your eBay account, right from your desktop, with a few unique features that are not available on the site but are quite useful. They include alerts, feeds, history, one click search and other nice things that can really help you, especially if you’re a power eBayer. The interface is also very slick, definitely better than the standard, boring eBay one.
Image Sizer. This one’s a very neat app that can easily resize, rotate, convert and rename multiple pictures at once (it’s also called a batch image converter). You can save all your photos and images individually, export them all to an archived ZIP folder (which is very useful when you want to send the pictures by email) or even post them on Twitter (using TwitPic) with the click of a button.
Desktop iPhone. This application uses the Ribbit online service to give you the ability to send and receive calls and SMS messages, check your voicemail, keep a contact list and other things you can do on a phone. Also, the user interface is just like the iPhone (that’s why it’s called Desktop iPhone).
DestroyTwitter. No, this AIR app will not destroy your Twitter account. But it could significantly reduce the time you spend on the Twitter.com website, as it is a nice desktop client, with a clean interface and offers every single feature of Twitter, while being small and fast and filtering ads and other unwanted information.
TweetDeck. Another great AIR Twitter client that has a few unique and innovative features (as opposed to the standard Twitter interface) that can help you go through the information faster and organize your stuff better. This is also the most popular desktop Twitter client (both among AIR and non-AIR apps).
AIR Icon Generator. This great little utility allows you to quickly generate Adobe CS-like icons (also called Web 2.0 icons) for you to use anywhere on a website or for an application. Just pick the colors, enter your desired icon text and click generate.
EarthBrowser. This AIR app is a mix between Google Earth and real-time satellite data. You have a 3-dimensional view of our planet, Earth, and see real-time weather conditions based on up-to-date information from real meteorological satellites. You can also see seismic data and access Internet-enabled web cameras to view the situation yourself in thousands of locations around the world.
Mockups for Desktop. This app by Balsamiq is a great tool that will allow you to quickly design and demonstrate any interface mockups for websites or desktop applications.
Photo Uploader for Facebook. Using this simple application, you can easily upload any pictures to a Facebook account by simply dragging and dropping them. You can also receive notifications, poke, chat, and view news feeds straight from this app’s interface.
There’s so much more that AIR can offer for you. There are tons of great apps that can make your work or life easier. All you need to do to be able to run them is install Adobe’s AIR package. It’s very easy to install and you never notice it after that, so get it and try out some of the cool applications listed above!
