Web applications or web-based software systems generally require a web browser to render them executable.  As a web developer, you were previously restricted to creating applications which only run from within a web browser.

Not any more! New technology developed by Adobe® changes  all that, offering a platform that provides a new environment for creating powerful Web software that can run without a browser.

The Adobe® AIR™ runtime, introduced last year, lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that run outside the browser on multiple operating systems. Adobe AIR offers an exciting new way to engage customers with innovative, branded applications, without requiring changes to existing technology, people, or processes.

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How AIR Works

You are most likely already familiar with Adobe Flash- the browser plug-in responsible for powering much of the Internet’s multimedia content–from YouTube videos and Flickr slideshows to addictive Web-based video games. Flash applications are however limited by the fact that they require a host application, most often a web browser.

AIR covers for this limitation, creating “stand-alone” applications that run from your desktop just like any other application. AIR apps are developed in much the same way that Flash applications are, providing developers with a new environment for creating powerful Web software that can run without a browser.

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Business Benefits

With the Adobe® AIR™ runtime, you can deliver branded rich Internet applications outside the browser that give you a closer connection to your customer.

Adobe AIR uses the same proven, cost-effective technologies used to build web applications, so development and deployment is rapid and low risk. You can use your existing web development resources to create engaging, branded applications that run on all major desktop operating systems.

With Adobe AIR, you can:

• Establish a more persistent connection with existing customers
• Deliver fully branded experiences with desktop functionality
• Leverage existing personnel, processes, and infrastructure
• Develop and deliver RIAs efficiently using proven Adobe technology
• Increase the ROI of your web investments

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As an AJAX developer myself, you can only imagine my excitement.  AIR applications run across operating systems on the WebKit HTML engine and are easily delivered using a single installer file. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can “use their existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web”.

I just downloaded and installed the latest version of AIR, and SDK (Software Development Kit), and am already impressed with the capabilities so far.

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Problems affecting the development and use of Information Technology in West Africa have been a major topic of discussion and concern for eons, encompassing  discourse from various IT experts the world over, and even the average individual.

Over the years, in most parts of West Africa, the development of Information Technology has been hampered, largely due to inadequate or insufficient Telecommunication Infrastructure, and even where these infrastructure have existed, the service charges are beyond the reach of the average person.

Pascal Zachary, in his article titled Ghana’s Digital Dilemma- The lesson from West Africa: good computers and fast modems don’t matter if you can’t get a dial tone and the power keeps going out- which was first published in July 2002, writes;

“In the West African country of Ghana, one of the world’s poorest places, the busy signal is a reminder of the unfulfilled promise of the Information Age. Making a telephone call here requires persistence. Roughly half don’t go through because of system failures, but that’s only the start of Ghana’s telephone woes. The country has a mere 240,000 phone lines-for a population of 20 million spread across an area the size of Britain. Moreover, telephone bills are inaccurate, overcharges common, and the installation of a new line can cost a business more than $1,000, the rough equivalent of the annual office rent. Lines are frequently stolen, sometimes with the connivance of employees of Ghana Telecom, the national carrier. Phones go dead, and remain unrepaired, for months. Some businesses hire staff for the chief purpose of dialing numbers until calls go through.

The spread of mobile phones has only worsened telephone gridlock. There are more mobile phones in Ghana than wired ones-about 300,000, as of March-but the network is clogged because of a shortage of cell stations. Customers are bedeviled by what operators term “dropped calls.” Besides, calls are costly. The price of a one-minute wireless conversation, under the most common plan, is ten times higher than it would be in the United States. “The situation has come to a point of crisis,” says Kwesi Nduom, the country’s minister for economic planning. Ghana’s telecom mess limits the utility of the Internet, raises the costs of information services-and suggests that the country is mired in the Stone Age, technologically. But the situation here, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, defies such straightforward conclusions. There is another side to the country’s technological profile, a burgeoning homegrown technology culture that explodes assumptions about the inherent backwardness of Africa and the nature of the so-called digital divide.”

Mr. Zachary, who visited Ghana on several occasions between 2000 – 2002, first as a Foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, and later as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism,  goes on to talk about how Information Technology had changed the landscape in different ways, saying;

These problems however, are not peculiar to Ghana, but cut across the entire West African sub region, and a lot of effort has been made to tackle the issues highlighted, and nip the growing IT concerns, resulting in several meetings, workshops, and summits- most notably; the Africa ICT summits and the iPAD 2008. Unsurprisingly, these discussions are most often geared at tackling the same problem- Infrastructure. For instance, the most recent (7th) Africa ICT summit, held in Ghana, was on the theme: “Strategies for low cost broadband access in Africa.“ :

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Is IT Infrastructure Really West Africa’s Problem?

Perhaps not! To reiterate, the period between 2002 and 2008 has seen significant improvement in IT infrastructure in Ghana for instance, but not as much improvement in the attachment and use of these infrastructure.  Could the problem lie elsewhere? Just maybe! A school of thought has it that;

providing all the “tech” infrastructure without properly engaging the populace, would not only be- “a complete waste of resources, but also plain ludicrous”.

In most parts of the sub-region, the concept of being IT savvy appears to be completely misunderstood, as basic (sometimes Theoretical) knowledge of common Office applications such as Microsoft® Word, Excel, PowerPoint,  and (maybe) Publisher or Access would make one an “IT guru”. Extremely worrying also, is the Curricula of the educational system of most West African states as regards IT- where the course structure of Degree awarding, IT programs such  as Computer Science (Bsc.) for instance, is a far cry from what exists in most other parts of the world.

The concept of E-Learning also, which was widely promoted over the last couple of years, now seems to be mere Rhetoric, and at best a figure of speech- this coming at a time where the Full Sail University has just introduced an Online Masters Degree awarding program in “Internet Marketing”.

More so, a previous post “Top Paying IT Jobs For 2009″, quickly woke me to the fact that apart from AJAX developers and maybe Enterprise Architects, most of the other “hot” IT jobs for 2009 probably (I could be wrong) do not even exist in West Africa.

In a part of the world where innovation is not encouraged and (brilliant) ideas are “killed” before they even hatch- as almost everything is played to the gallery- it is difficult to envisage a period where the IT focus would have gone beyond just understanding and appreciating the concepts, to actually competing at a global level, but the belief remains that we would get there some day.

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After reviewing Global IT Trends For 2009, it became quite evident that despite the global economic down turn, the future of the IT industry still remains extremely bright. As a matter of fact, forecasts from industry leaders project that IT specialist would be pivotal to the success of businesses this Year.

According to the Baseline magazine;

… Many of the hottest roles and skills address issues specific to survival, such as productivity, efficiency and process improvement. Most relevant are those experts who can use technology to help drive profit ….. quoting David Foote- chief research officer for Foote Partners.

This, no doubt, is in line with the increasing interest in the adaptation and use of Social Media for market development, not to mention the increase in the deployment and use of Web 2.0 applications, Web/Video conferencing, and Telepresence systems.

Below is an excerpt from a chart in a report by ‘David White, JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project 2007’, representing trends in Web 2.0 usage;

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Though the current job market is brutal, it is quite evident that some IT specializations remain in high demand. According to Foote, Executives are interested in keeping their customers, getting new customers, making acquisitions and anything to keep the revenue channel going.

Here is a list of “hot” IT jobs for 2009 à la The Baseline Mag;

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Brace Yourself ……..

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• Business intelligence Experts
  BI experts can help organizations “In a lot of decisions having to do with how the customer base is changing, market differentiation, pricing and services.” Foote says

• Resiliency Services Professionals
  while many larger enterprises may be slimming down, some of their already mature business continuity practices, resiliency services are big in the mid-market. Many of these jobs will be through outsource services firms.

• Vendor Procurement Specialists
  “It’s pretty clear that in this next year, companies are going to be renegotiating contracts like crazy,” Foote says. A savvy vendor procurement specialist is critical to getting the upper hand in these negotiations.

• Outsourcing and Vendor Managers
  Slightly different than a procurement specialist, vendor and outsourcing managers are project management specialists who act as liaisons and enforce SLAs once the ink dries on the contract.

• Enterprise Architects
  Forrester Research voted this one as “Very Hot” last August in an internal survery of analysts. Since the economy tanked, the role’s importance has grown as IT is called to automate and streamline processes and infrastructure.

• ITIL Managers
  Governance and standardization are keys to getting automation efforts off the ground in an orderly fashion, and companies will be paying a premium for ITIL and business process experts in 2009.

• Virtualization Gurus
  HR gurus with the job site Dice.com are reporting that even though IT job listings went down 12 percent last year, virtualization postings went up 37 percent.

• Security Architects
  IT security is staffing up, and some of the highest demand is for architects who can understand the complexities of various IT ecosystems and emerging risks from technology like virtualization.

• AJAX Developers
  Businesses will continue to leverage Web 2.o technology to differentiate themselves, so it’s clear that AJAX and XML skills remain in high demand.

• Storage Directors
  Another hot role per Forrester, this one is critical as organizations hope to coordinate for better storage utilization rates, slimming down on hardware purchase costs in the process.

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The Mobile industry is not left out! According to a report titled “Mobile Internet 2010,”- there are more than 4 billion wireless subscribers globally and many of these will be using their handset as the main Internet terminal.

In order for that potential to be achieved however, the report said carriers need to boost their networks, and handsets makers need to do a better job of incorporating Web services into a phone’s user interface.

It goes without saying that Mobile application developers would also be in huge demand this year.We just have to wait and see how it all unfolds.

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There has been a lot of talk about “Cloud Computing” lately, leaving one to wonder what all the fuss is about. Microsoft and Google seem to be leading the race to the clouds- so to speak.

But what exactly is cloud computing anyway?

“The Cloud” is simply a metaphor for the Internet (based on how it is depicted in computer network diagrams) and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals. Cloud computing is Internet-based (“cloud”) development and use of computer technology (“computing”).

It is a style of computing in which IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”, allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet (“in the cloud”) without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.

Cloud computing incorporates the Software As A Service (Saa s) technology which allows users access software modules directly from a server. That is to say-as Wikipedia puts it- that the application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the internet.

By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer’s burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. Conversely, customers relinquish control over software versions or changing requirements; moreover, costs to use the service become a continuous expense, rather than a single expense at time of purchase.

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Another thing which has been in the news lately is Microsoft’s Software Plus Service (S + S) which is also built around the whole cloud concept. Google and Microsoft have a slightly different approach to cloud computing. According to Pam Baker;

“On the one hand, Google’s approach to cloud computing is to put all software and services in the cloud, which is then merely retrieved by a dumb client via browser (think Google Docs, Google Apps). Microsoft, on the other hand, has a hybrid approach to the all-or-nothing scenario in that it retains computing power and software on the device itself, with data rumbling around in the cloud. The Microsoft approach is to seamlessly balance the roles of both to fit any given job at hand. Hence, the Software Plus Service (S+S) name as opposed to Software as a Service (SaaS), where software resides in the cloud.”

Microsoft’s approach seems to make more sense because if “everything” were to reside in the cloud, one would be forced to work with a limited version of the software. Just as Lewis Shepherd, CTO of Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments puts it-

“The problem is that if everything is solely on the device it’s hard to share in real-time on the Web, but if everything is in the cloud, you are forced to work with lightweight versions of the software.”

For this reason no doubt, Microsoft plans to provide two seperate software versions- a high-powered loadable software coupled with lighter browser versions to provide maximum computing power whilst still maintaining flexibility.

So basically, while MS surface uses tremendous computing power, it is drawing data from the web. Sort of like a physical front-end and web back-end kind of thing. It is believed that this would provide richer options for the user.

Windows 7, a.k.a “Windows Cloud” should be unvieled in a couple of weeks.

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