Realizing that Flash is a better name than Flex for a platform, Adobe is now referring to everything it does related to Flash (including the Flash Player, Adobe AIR, Flex developer tools, and Flash media servers) as the Flash Platform. That’s what I’ve been calling it anyway, so I’m glad they finally caught up.

Beyond the marketing shift, Adobe will be making some more significant announcements at its MAX developer conference this week. Here’s a summary:

1. Release of Adobe AIR 1.5. The Adobe AIR client now has better performance and memory handling, but most importantly it supports Flash Player 10 and Webkit (which is what the mobile browsers in both the iPhone and Android are based on). Flash Player 10 means more 3-d graphics. This version of AIR will also include an encrypted database that should appeal to developers of enterprise apps.

DiggTop is an Adobe Air desktop app that scrapes and displays the images and videos from the Digg stories that you choose to track. After installing DiggTop you customize which categories you want to follow for News, Videos and Images. You can then view a slideshow of the images related to the stories you’re reading.

As for videos, DiggTop does a similar thing. You can change which topics you want to follow for video and they will appear in the app’s player which does a good job handling video.

At any time, you can launch a browser session and go to any particular story on Digg by double-clicking it. This comes in handy whenever you want access to the Digg service. However, the app can provide most of the day to day features of Digg such as reading and digging stories.

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I know there have been way too many useless Adobe Air apps unleashed to our desktops lately, but I think DiggTop is actually a rare useful one. If you want a quick glimpse at the hottest news items along with a visual slideshow of images and the ability to play videos instantly right next to the story then DiggTop is the app for you. It’s small and fast and gives Digg a new look and feel.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:7 Awesome Things Built on the Digg APIThe 10 Coolest Apollo Apps30+ Adobe AIR AppsDIGG TOOLBOX: 50+ Digg Tools and ResourcesMashable On Digg: Our 50 Most Popular Stories

At the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC, I sat down with Spark Networks President and COO Gregory Liberman. We discussed the 30+ dating sites that make up Spark Networks. Here are my notes from our conversation which centered mostly around Jdate.

Spark Networks has 30+ dating sites and most of them are targeted towards a group. Gregory notes that people who are looking for serious relationships are seeking targeted networks. The three largest dating sites in their network are Jdate, BlackSingles and ChristianMingle. They believe that they are different because of the targeting, most of their competition tries to be all things to all people.

Spark Networks runs over 800 singles events a year. Revenue comes from subscriptions and advertising. Jdate subscriptions begin at $39/month and for those browsing the site, advertising is displayed. Gregory noted that ads are displayed to subscribers as well but said "most" of these ads are house ads promoting events and other services. I wonder if any Web 2.0 startups could get away with charging a subscription fee and displaying any advertising at all.

Spark Networks is a public company and reported second quarter 2008 revenue of $15 million with a net income of $1.6 million.

As for success rates, 60 Jdate subscribers a week report back to Spark Networks that they found their soulmate on Jdate.

I asked about comparisons to PlentyOfFish and eHarmony. Gregory said that PlentyOfFish actually drives traffic to sites in his network because of the ad model they employ. As for eHarmony, Gregory believes not everyone wants to fill out a 350 question survey. Jdate allows members to search and utilizes a basic survey to help align members.

In terms of what’s new on their network of sites, Gregory shared two new premium features. The first is an option to highlight your profile in search results. This works similar to highlighting an auction on eBay or a job listing on Indeed. The other update is featured profile. This allows members to push their profile to people they want to meet on search results. Let’s assume you are looking for a 30 year old woman with 2 children but she is looking for a 20 year old man with no children. Using this new option, you could force your profile into her search results basically saying "hey look at me, I want you!". On Jdate, this feature is $10/month.

The online singles market continues to be a huge moneymaker for Spark Networks and the other sites in the market. As long as people want to find that special someone, there will always be someone willing to pay to find that person.

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The online office market continues to heat up. Everyone wants a piece of the Microsoft Office pie from Zoho to Google to SlideShare along with hundreds of other startups. SlideRocket is a Powerpoint replacement and is moving into public beta today.

SlideRocket launched in private beta in March and you can check out initial reviews on Techcrunch and ZDNet. SlideRocket offers free and paid versions of their presentation application. Phil Wainewright notes regarding an additional component to their business model:

One innovative extra that will help SlideRocket make money is its plan to offer a marketplace of data and asset services for paid use in presentations — for example, market sizing data and other material from analyst firms, or stock images from photo libraries. It’s the sort of money-making add-on that Microsoft ought to have done long ago with PowerPoint — it’s the classic ’software plus services’ play.

As startups continue to realize that there’s money in them hills - those hills being small to enterprise businesses, we will slowly see a shift to useful utilities instead of yet another social network.

Microsoft has a way of dominating one’s desktop, given its operating system that resides on a number of computers around the world. Tie that in with its desktop applications for email, creating word documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and you see where I’m going here. Google, on the other hand, contends with Microsoft on a different level, veering away from the desktop domination in most regards, arguably focusing on its own core competencies (in a given quarter).

So what if you wanted Gmail on your desktop, sans browser? Or how about your Google Calendar, documents, or Google Reader? From a management perspective I wouldn’t mind a fully integrated desktop application for handling my documents, etc. though this would be more useful to me if Google Apps were better able to integrate with each other for shareable purposes.

Nevertheless, a new service called GMDesk, according to a report from Cybernet, leverages Adobe AIR to provide these Google Apps as desktop versions, with easy shortcut keys for toggling between the desktop and browser-based versions. In all, GMDesk supports Gmail, Google Calendar, Reader, Documents, Maps and Picasa through its service. Helpful for those that want immediate desktop access to their Google apps without having to open up a browser window.

Meanwhile, Google itself seems to be more focused on its Web-based and mobile efforts than rolling out desktop version for those apps that it hasn’t already created a desktop version. With more growth potential on a global scale available with an increased mobile presence, especially with Google Android and a majority of wireless providers on board for partnership deals, it looks like the mobile front is an ongoing point of effort for new offerings to consumers.

YourScreen is a new service that is announcing its upcoming beta today, and it’s set out to enable you to turn a television into a start page of sorts. Designed for use within schools, companies, and at events, YourScreen is a custom option for displaying your content on televisions. So what type of content can you post on these televisions?

Built on Adobe AIR, YourScreen comes with some ready-made content, like weather and a stock ticker, with more plug-ins on the way. You can use these plug-ins in conjunction with your own content or simply stream the content you’d like to display. This could be a live video of a speaker or an interview, an image slide show of companies presenting at a particular event, or other pertinent information regarding your company that you’d like to convey to your employees. So far, YourScreen doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of differentiating features that you couldn’t already take advantage of with a closed-circuit television system.

But as YourScreen grows, its aim is to provide a Web-based platform for easily managing content that is displayed across this television system. So you will be able to use the YourScreen Web interface to determine what content is shown in which screen. There are also tools for helping you create content, so you won’t have to rely entirely on third-party services to create a slide show. For instance, YourScreen can turn your collection of still shots and videos into a stream that can be broadcast across multiple television screens.

In targeting schools, businesses and events, I think YourScreen would also do well to partner with, or add integrated support for a wide array of content imports and compatibility. Services like Mogulus and Kyte offer platforms for creating content that is likely to be ideal for broadcast on custom systems like YourScreen, and also offer a good amount of tools for making multimedia content on the fly. Catering to users that may start with next to nothing when streaming with YourScreen as well as those that have already begun creating content with other Web apps would be a broader strategy for appealing to multiple types of users when promoting the YourScreen service. If you’re interested in the upcoming beta, see here for more details.

Only two weeks have passed since we first reported on Adobe Inc’s undertaking to remove the FreshAIRapps domain and nameplate from the Web. In short, FreshAIRapps was a compendium or directory of applications built upon the Adobe AIR platform. Users could rate codeworks and read relevant news and so forth in one central location. It would be accurate to have called it a fairly popular upstart.

Yes, called is the key word to keep in mind now. According to the founder of FreshAIRapps, James Whittaker, who alerted Mashable to the fact earlier today, the website is no more. An attempt to visit the URL shows a mostly bare white page, stating that the site has moved to a new location. Seconds later, the visitor is automatically transferred there. “There” being RefreshingApps.com.

It sports a slightly different design, but its basic makeup is all very much intact. The one overt exception is a now-absent section originally seen at FreshAIRapps, labeled ‘Tutorials.’

There was a notable level of resentment and fury levied at Adobe for pushing forcefully for the removal of FreshAIRapps in name only. Some commenters found it peculiar that the company would enforce a trademark of “AIR.” I myself seconded such objections. Still, the site’s creator continued to converse with Adobe over the planned transfer to the RefreshingApps domain and has now officially announced the completion of the move.

Whittaker does note he and the RefreshingApps project “will be working closely with Adobe and their evangelists to further promote the Adobe AIR offering” as well as RefreshingApps.com. He also mentioned that word concerning “AIR stuff and RefreshingApps” will likely be delivered by Adobe sometime this week.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Adobe Lays Claim To AIR (In The Web Domain Space)Adobe Can’t Fix Security Flaw Until End of OctoberAdobe Building Office Apps to Go After Microsoft?Adobe Launches Updated Flash Player 9: MoviestarAdobe to Acquire Makers of Web-Based Word Processor BuzzwordBeware of PDF Files! Adobe Security Vulnerability Found.Adobe Illustrator Integrated with Del.icio.us

The apparent spam attacks on Google continue. Among the top results appearing briefly in among the top ten search terms highlighted on Google Trends (before being pulled down) are “sh*t pond” (which went to No. 3) and “how to poop at work” (which made it at least to No. 10). That is after […]Source:TechCrunch
TokBox, the impressive video chat startup that doesn’t require any kind of extra software, has launched a new AIR app that will bring the web service’s easy setup to the desktop. Thanks to Adobe’s AIR platform, the software will be cross-compatible and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users.
The client offers a very simple […]

Adobe AIR is a platform that can be utilized to create rich desktop applications. Twhirl and AlertThingy are two recent examples of applications built on AIR.

freshAIRApps is a community resource that offers a directory of AIR applications, news, resources along with developer tutorials. Corvida posted a review of the service on Readwriteweb and noted, "FreshAIRApps is poised to be the premier directory for all your Adobe AIR needs by providing a haven for users and developers to mingle together."

Apparently Adobe is now going after anyone who uses the word "air" in a domain name that has content related to the Adobe AIR platform. freshAIRApps creator James Whittaker noted today:

I have recently been informed that Adobe systems believe that this website and it’s domain name are in infringement of their trademarks. This is because I am using the word AIR in the domain name freshAIRapps.com. Adobe seem to think that they own the trademark of AIR and that I can’t use it and should hand the domain over to them and stop the website. After reading through the list of Adobe trademarks they only reference Adobe AIR and not AIR. I have been in communication with members of the Adobe evangelist team who truly believe that I am helping the community and promoting the use of the AIR runtime and subsequent applications built on the platform. I started this site because I have a genuine interest in AIR and other Adobe technologies.

James concludes by saying that, "Adobe has let me and the community down by trying to block sites that appear to challenge their marketplace, even though none of the apps featured on this site are hosted by me." If James properly redirects the domain, the change should be semi-transparent.

We will try to get some comments from Adobe AIR evangelist Ryan Stewart today. Going forward, freshAIRApps will now be known as RefreshingApps.

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