-EDIT – well APollo will have SQLLite (see davids comments below), which makes this post kinda pointless now, but at least you know

First off Google has released their plugin Google Gears which allows people to use the web browser offline. So now you can use gmail offline, google reader etc. The big vision for Google apps comes into sight, and surely Microsoft is begining to worry about things.

Anyway how does this relate to Apollo? Well in my opinion (as little weight as that holds) Google has done something that Adobe missed the mark on big time. A local database implementation. Think of all the things you want to with your rich Internet Application. Most (or at least a lot) revolve around some sort of database interaction. I would have thought this a feature that at least rated up there.

With SqlLite being file based, cross platform, and free (as in beer), I would have seen this as the perfect option. Google seems to have agreed. The Apollo team could have included it, but choose not to. Anyone from Adobe care to comment?

And granted Google gears has the browser caching system to hinge off for development, I guess I will have to wait to see what happens with Apollo coming out of Alpha before I can winge and moan too much.

My famous two cents. 

Totally out of the blue Microsoft has released a multi-touch display and operating system called Surface. My guess is its A vist/WPF mix that can register multiple points or cursors.

I have heard/read several rumors around the web that apple was going to annouce something similar at the apple developers conference next month- time will tell with that one.

It all seems to have stemmed from that original video that did the rounds a year or so ago, showing Jeff Han's research. [YOU TUBE Video HERE]  

Over on Ryan's post where I originally read this are some links to more information, but it leaves me wondering about the price. 50inch plasma/lcd that has touch screen? I would cringe everytime someone put any liquid near it. I would love a big coffee table that can sync my phone, make pretty displays to set the mood even sell me more stuff I dont need, but I would also love to see it intergrate some RFD technology that would allow objects to interact. Im not sure how Microsoft has the display registering that a camera has been placed on the display so maybe they already have that in there.

Just saw this VIA Wildwinter blog. I seems as if maclema.com has been busy making an AS3 MySql driver to use in both flex and Flash 9 projects. Its very early days, but a beginning is a good point to start from, especially if they plan to support SQLLite. Then it possibly could become a viable solution for many Apollo applications running on a desktop.

"In Sept. 06 I set out to show someone that is was possible to connect to a mySQL server from actionscript. It took about an hour to get actionscript connecting to mySQL….until about a month ago when I started back on it. And now, a mySQL actionscript 3 driver exists."

Well Done. Although this brings up all sorts of security questions I think its still a step in the right direction.

You can access source, documentation etc from HERE. This is definitely one to put in the book marks and keep an eye on. Imagine being able to you use "st.executeQuery("SELECT * FROM users;");" to get all the users in the database.

To tell you the truth I half expected some of the Abode boy's to bust this out. 

Very interesting video on the Adobe Media Player (codename:Philo) posted by Mike Chambers at
http://video.onflex.org/2007/05/03/deeje-cooley-adobe-media-player-philo/

The cool thing is they showed some of the unique features that the AMP has. Like the feed specific skinning that is capable and is published with your rss feed. Dave Winner will be spinning on this one as he is known to with anyone changing the rss standard.

Also of note is that you can embed alpha'd video or swfs over the top of the content. Think the watermarks on some channels. But this watermark can be an interactive swf that expands out over the video, like chat or a shop or something. And seeing its apollo based I wonder if I could expand a html control out over the video. Man think of the possibilities of that.

All I can say is I'm pretty excited about this product in particular! 

Very cool!. Terabyte interactive today launched a mini sim city game, made in flash and based around education of the public as to the energy needs of a city. http://electrocity.co.nz/

Are you a righthy and build nuclear power plants everywhere or a lefty and build hippy farms that produce cumquat jucie? I was looking everywhere to figure out how to build a pimp mansion and subsequently went bankrupt.

Very cool little app which makes the education fun. – Game Tip: if you need some more money crank up taxes for a couple of rounds because you only have 150  rounds to build your pimp palace lol.