Hi Frank

Thanks for your comment – I agree that MS is always a player to watch out for. They do suffer (rightly or wrongly) from lack of “web2 coverage” – but I think it’s fair to say that social web applications built in .Net (for example) are few and far between. Whether this says more about the language or more about the politics remains to be seen.

What I do know, and I’m repeating myself here, is that the AIR applications I’ve seen have not only been beautiful to look at, they’ve also been data-rich and easy to install. And to answer Joe’s question – yes, I’ve started playing with AIR and as a traditional ASP’er (eek) and “understander of web technologies but not hardcore coder”, I’ve managed to build some stuff which is halfway decent. And this is important, I think – not just for me because I’m learning new stuff – but because there is likely to be more creativity and volume when technologies start to become this accessible.