O’Reilly: Inside RIA

With the growing popularity of smart phones like the iPhone and Google’s Android, as well as new players on the market like Palm’s Pre, the idea of having an always-connected general computational device is finally being realized. Today’s smart phones are not only used for making calls, taking pictures, and listening to music; now people are using their phones to do business, build presentations, make quick edits to important files, and even surf the web. Yet contrary to what the commercials would have you believe, few smart phones provide a web experience equivalent even to a netbook.

Funny how the perception of mobile can change almost overnight. In a flurry of announcements from Adobe in the lead up to the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the worlds of RIA and mobile were placed on a collision course.