DreamFace DataWidgets have gotten a lot of press lately, but what are Woodgets? DreamFace Interactive CEO, Olivier Poupeney gets specific about woodgets while presenting key differentiators of DreamFace's Web 2.0 Open Source Framework in his interview with Jeremy Geelan for SYS-CON.TV at AjaxWorld 2008 East in New York.

Payless Car Rental has launched an iPhone and iPod Touch optimized website. Payless Car Rental is a car rental agency that built a customized version of its website for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The homepage of Payless' iPhone interface also features a 'Call to Book' button that, when pressed, will connect the customer to Payless' call center, where the customer can book over the phone, instead of through the interface.

Alpha Software is now shipping Alpha Five Platinum Edition, the ninth release of the company's flagship Web database development platform. It's a development tool that can visually build AJAX-powered applications, integrate SQL databases with drag+drop simplicity, and deliver enterprise-scale availability, without having to write pages of computer code. And while coding is optional, Alpha Five's integrated development environment (IDE) still gives developers full access to forms, interactive reports, browsers, Web components, APIs, XML, and more. It's packed with 200 reusable ActionScripts, 'Supercontrols,' HTML and CSS builders, the full Xbasic/Xdialog language, Portable SQL, and 'Genies' that generate editable code for any custom requirement.

We are entering an era of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and enhancing the user experience of consumers of the services becomes an important part in designing and implementing SOA. But if you decide to develop rich clients, you'll be facing the dilemma - which way to go - remain with tried and true Java or .NET or experiment with such newcomers as AJAX, Flex, Silverlight, or JavaFX. While the Internet brings a lot of noise where 'it's cool' is the most popular definition, this presentation is an overview of what's out there on the enterprise RIA market. We'll talk about the pros and cons of using various techniques and technologies for the development of the front end for complex SOA distributed systems.

'Should CFML developers switch to Java?' asks Andrew Powell in an article this week at SYS-CON.com. 'No,' he answers. ColdFusion is the fastest way to get data to AJAX, Flex, Silverlight, and even JavaFX, according to Powell, who adds: 'ColdFusion also provides complex services easier than Java, .NET, Ruby or whatever wishes they could.'

At Java One this week Sun has been selling its year -old-but-still-upcoming - and definitely late-to-the-party - Adobe AIR- and Microsoft Silverlight-competitive JavaFX Rich Client environment as a potential revenue-generator capable of putting ads on mobile applications and JavaFX Script, its newfangled high-performance GUI declarative scripting language, as the way to build consumer next-generation RIAs for desktops, mobiles, TV and other consumer devices.

'We're dedicated to building the largest open-source community dedicated to RIAs, breaking down the barriers between traditional preferred languages, programming models and solutions,' says the co-founder & CEO of Appcelerator, Jeff Haynie, in this Exclusive Q&A with Jeremy Geelan. To date Appcelerator has seen the strongest amount of interest from Java and PHP developers, Haynie notes, but he says the company has continued to see steady growth across Ruby, Python, Perl and .NET programmers as well.

'Ten years ago,' Coach Wei tells Jeremy Geelan in this exclusive interview with AJAXWorld Magazine, 'I was as a poor graduate student naive enough to start a company at the bottom of the 'dot-bomb' burst. I learned so much coping with the 'nuclear winter,' raising $18M in financing, working through all the challenges associated with the market, dealing with investors and everything else. I only wish that I had known all this before I got started.'

frevvo announced Live Forms software which enables users and developers to easily create rich AJAX forms with built-in business capabilities. Live Forms provides a complete Web-based design experience that can be embedded into any application and is ideal for Enterprise Social Software companies, BPM/SOA vendors, Web hosting providers and solution providers.

'When was the last time you heard about a cool web app that wasn't written in Rails or PHP?' asks Chris Keene, CEO of WaveMaker, in an article published today at SYS-CON.com. 'OK, people still build lots of cool stuff in Java,' Keene continues, 'but the love is gone and it's just a day job now.'

WaveMaker announced the release of Visual AJAX Studio version 3.2. The new version introduces a beta installer for Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) and full support for the Safari Browser, bringing WaveMaker's drag-and-drop Java development to the Mac.

Curl announced it has released the availability of an Ubuntu Installer for the Curl Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform. Curl is a Rich Internet Application platform that competes with Adobe AIR/Flex, Silverlight, and Ajax. Curl has been shipping with Linux support for RedHat 9, SusE 9, and Turbolinux 10 and 11. Ubuntu is the latest Linux platform Curl 6.0 supports. Curl 6.0 also supports Microsoft Windows (XP, and Vista) as well as a beta version for Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel).

Kaazing Corporation and Sun Microsystems announced an alliance to deliver the scalable and advanced real-time Web 2.0 platform. The integration between Kaazing's real-time Rich Internet Application (RIA) solution, Enterprise Comet, and Sun Microsystems' open source Java EE application server, Glassfish, enables customers to create and deploy scalable mission-critical real-time solutions such as trading systems, betting and gambling applications, and interactive sports and news broadcasts, to the Web.

Rich Green, executive vice president of Software at Sun, outlined in his keynote presentation at JavaOne in San Francisco a roadmap for the JavaFX family of products that includes a high performance declarative scripting language, JavaFX Script - created for Web scripters, designers and developers to quickly build and deliver the next generation of RIAs for desktop, mobile, TV and other consumer devices.

Software Research has announced the availability of major new specialized commands in its Patented eValid Website Test & Analysis Suite. eValid has introduced a set of AJAX Playback Synchronization on DOM Element commands that provide direct control of test script playback synchronization by interaction with the current DOM of an AJAX page. This new eValid capability allows testers to address AJAX applications -- which by nature are 'asynchronous' -- in a reliable way. Once the playback synchronization is determined, eValid test scripts play back reliably, independent of how long the internal AJAX operations require.

Xceed launched Xceed Upload for Silverlight, the commercial offering in support of Microsoft's promising new Silverlight technology. The product is available now for purchase or as a fully functional 45-day trial on Xceed's website. Xceed Upload for Silverlight lets developers add upload capabilities to any Silverlight 2 Beta 1 application. All upload operations are asynchronous; as a result, the Web page hosting the Silverlight application remains perfectly responsive and usable throughout the transfer.

Sun Microsystems announced it has entered into a multi-year agreement with On2 Technologies to add comprehensive video capabilities, using On2 Technologies TrueMotion video codecs, to Sun's JavaFX, a family of products for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) with immersive media and content across all the 'screens of your life'.

According to Sean Walsh, President and CEO of Skyway Software, 'Our Skyway Community is thriving and our members are very talented. We truly look forward to their RIAs submittals and Skyway Builder extensions and are excited that all of the contributions will benefit the entire Skyway Community.' With Skyway Builder CE, Java developers get an open source Eclipse-based plugin that offers a seamless blend of coding and modeling for delivering RIAs and Web Services in Spring. Unlike any other modeling tool, Skyway Builder CE provides comprehensive modeling capabilities at four distinct application layers:

Virtualization Journal now reaches more than 60,000 online readers with monthly digital editions and weekly newsletters. The premier issue of the magazine's print edition, which debuts on May 6, 2008, at JavaOne in San Francisco, as a media sponsor of this event, will be available on newsstands worldwide. Article submission inquiries can be directed by email to editorial(at)sys-con.com and the world's most targeted advertising opportunities can be explored by contacting ad vertising(at)sys-con.com, or by phone 201 802-3021.

Building on its November 2007 preview, Oracle previewed additional planned feature enhancements of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g. Based on feedback resulting from close cooperation with customers testing in real-world environments, the latest preview of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g includes planned features intended to provide Java developers with a unified design and development experience based on new open standards for Java, SOA, AJAX, Web 2.0 and Security and to help reduce the time, effort and cost of developing Rich Enterprise, Web and mobile applications.

Founded in 2006, SYS-CON Media's 'Virtualization Journal' is the world's first magazine devoted exclusively to what Gartner has earmarked as the single highest-impact IT trend through 2012: virtualization. And now it will be available on newsstands worldwide, as SYS-CON Media seeks to support the world-beating 'International Virtualization Conference & Expo' series produced by SYS-CON Events with top-quality print collateral, available at newsstands wherever fine-quality technical journals are sold.

From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in midtown Manhattan.

EnterpriseDB released a plug-in for Postgres Studio that creates an AJAX-enabled Java application based on a Postgres database table or schema. Postgres Studio is a graphical database administration console that is built on the widely admired pgAdmin foundation and only available as part of Postgres Plus. The plug-in generates Java source code, scripts, NetBeans, and Eclipse project files for screen-based applications that can create, read, update, and delete records in target Postgres databases. The plug-in extensively leverages the JBoss Seam Framework, creating a pre-configured Seam environment for Postgres Plus.

Infragistics announced the availability of Infragistics NetAdvantage for JSF 2008 Volume 1 enabling web developers to leverage the power of JavaServer Faces to create compelling User Interfaces (UI). This new release provides a comprehensive package of AJAX-enabled JSF UI components for building commercial Web 2.0 applications in J2EE environments. With the ability to create re-useable components, NetAdvantage for JSF 2008 Volume 1 helps Java enterprise developers create consistent experiences with less code in less time.

The Morph Application Platform for Java, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that virtualizes the application environment and leverages cloud computing resources such as the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is now in limited developer preview. Webtide, the team behind Jetty, has brought that Java web server to the Morph Application Platform. Through its developer advice and support, Webtide has played a key role in the implementation of Java into the Morph Application Platform to extend the functionality to include deploying and delivering Java applications.

Backbase added official support for Adobe AIR, a new runtime environment from Adobe Systems for deploying rich Internet applications (RIAs). This integration lets applications built on Backbase Enterprise AJAX run as applications on the desktop across various operating systems. Applications created with Backbase Enterprise AJAX and deployed on Adobe AIR can access desktop file systems, clipboards, drag and drop events, and system tray/notifications.

In the world of Rich Internet Applications, there is no shortage of technology choices to compose a user interface. But what tools will give us the best bang for our buck? Here is a look at some heavy hitters and newcomers in the RIA market, including: HTML & AJAX, Rails and Grails, Flex, Silverlight, Curl, GWT, OpenLaszlo, and Appcelerator.

IBM claims to have created new species of custom-built, industry-standard, Linux-based rack server for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing companies with massive data centers and tens of thousands of servers, like online gaming, social networks, search and Internet firms. A relatively limited marketplace of maybe a thousand companies with fat wallets capable of shelling out tens of millions for such system. IBM means to replace the white boxes they use now or build themselves like Google does.

Peer networks are really just logical graphs of computers, or, in many cases, logical graphs of connected applications. The physical topology of the peer network, means of communication, and weighting of the edges are all implementation-specific details that differ from P2P network to P2P network, but all of them can be reduced down at some point to a drawing containing nodes and edges.

Telerik announced the landmark release of its Q1 2008 RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and WinForms, and Telerik Reporting. The new release represents a final touch in Telerik's goal to offer a comprehensive and mature toolset of next-generation web and desktop components.

RIAs offer the potential to fundamentally change the user experience and in doing so, yield significant business benefits. The theme of this October's AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2008 West is 'Beyond AJAX to the RIA Era' and the Call for Papers, which is currently still open, specifically encourages submissions from exceptional speakers with high-quality use cases of the fast-emerging RIA alternatives.

ILOG announced that its latest graphics toolkits for the .NET platform are aimed at helping Microsoft developers create rich internet applications (RIA), specifically interactive and visually-rich diagrams and Gantt charts. ILOG Diagrammer for .NET 1.5 and ILOG Gantt for .NET 3.5, ILOG's graphics toolkits for creating diagrams and Gantt charts for the .NET platform, now support Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and ASP.NET AJAX for RIA development.

Nitobi enhanced its AJAX component suite with the release of Complete UI Q2 2008. This release strengthens the popular AJAX development tools with Safari 3 support, a new hierarchical grid component, a variety of new themes, and multi-component Dreamweaver extensions that make use-cases like master-detail grids even easier.

Zapatec introduced the Zapatec AJAX E-mail Client, the second in a series of self-contained modules designed for integration into Web 2.0 applications. Zapatec's AJAX E-mail Client enables developers to add needed web-based e-mail functionality to their applications, freeing them to focus on their core business.

In today's cooking class you'll add to your cookbook a delicious recipe. It's quick and won't cost you a dime. I'm sure you've been in one of these situations when you have unexpected guests arriving in 20 minutes and need to make a good impression. Let's create an application that will auto-generate a Flex-Tomcat-BlazeDS-DB2 application.

Apple's taken some heat lately for their decision to push Safari to anybody who runs their Apple Software Update utility. I didn't want Safari, but unless I opt out of it I'll get it. Now Sun and Google are doing the same thing with the Google Toolbar. It isn't enough that they allow you to opt-out.

The computer desktop today is what the television was to people in the 1980s. It's the single most important channel for consumer entertainment and information. The computer desktop - as was the case with newspapers before there was radio and radio before there was television - has become the high ground from which empires are built.

Catalyst Resources and Backbase announced an alliance to provide an end-to-end design and development solution for rich Customer Engagement and Enterprise AJAX applications. AJAX, already the technology of choice for rapid development and deployment of Rich Internet Applications, is being adopted at a rapid pace by small and medium size businesses as well as large enterprises. But companies face a number of hurtles as they try to make this RIA transition. While it is easy to add in a few flashy widgets to a webpage, it requires a different level of expertise to enhance user experience with measurable business value and develop code that is scalable, high performance, and easily maintained.

In the world of open source software Red Hat's crossed over from exciting leader to respectable elder statesman. The action is among the new batch of up-and-coming open source software companies who are not yet venture backed but are developing interesting technologies and services. Here are some of the companies that may well be the new open source superstars.

Curl announced the beta release of Curl Nitro, the code name for an extension of the Curl Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform which offers enhanced desktop capabilities required by today's enterprises. The Nitro extension simplifies the process of installing and managing Curl applications accessed via a browser as well as directly from the desktop. Curl Nitro is the only platform for both traditional RIA and Desktop RIA that provides enterprise-level security, high performance and support for large data sets.