One of the new capabilities that will be available in our upcoming beta release of Adobe AIR 2 will allow developers to build applications that can detect the mounting and unmounting of mass storage devices. What is a mass storage device? Examples of such devices include USB flash drives, hard drives and certain models of MP3 players and cameras such as the popular Flip HD video cameras. Using these new API's, developers will be possible to build new classes of applications that were not possible in AIR 1. For example, it is now possible for a developer to build an applications that automatically synchronizes data between a local hard drive (or in the cloud) and a mass storage device.

Christian Cantrell, a member of the Adobe AIR team, posted an excellent blog post with code samples where he provides example code how these new API's will work. In addition, he also recorded a demo of an AIR 2 application he made available as open source called FileTile.

Fox recently released an application called Virtual Echo powered by Adobe AIR that takes the character Echo out of the hit series Dollhouse and brings her to your computer.

From the official website, features of the application include:

DESKTOP ECHO: Turn any computer into your own personal Dollhouse with the Virtual Echo application. Watch as Echo activates as nine different personas, each one making an appearance on your desktop with a unique message. Leave it on and let her surprise you, or interact with her like never before.

AUGMENTED REALITY ECHO: Expand your Echo experience with augmented reality. Just print the Dollhouse card icon and hold it in front of your webcam. You will see a digital hologram of Echo on your screen. Use your arrow keys to navigate through her different personas.

We are thrilled that Fox decided to build a very engaging and high production value application on top of AIR. Even if you are not familiar with the show, you may be inspired by the creativity of this application. Congratulations to the teams that worked on this!

HP recently released a new Adobe AIR application called the US News Best 100 Colleges and Universities 2010 to promote its HP TouchSmart PC. The application is designed to help students and parents research information about colleges and universities tracked by US News.

As I was using this application for the first time, something that immediately struck me was that the user interface is designed with touch in mind. For example, controls such as buttons and sliders are displayed larger than what you would typically find in a typical desktop application. This improves the usability of the application since smaller controls require greater precision of touch by the user. The interface is both clean and engaging. Video interviews with current students complement the statistics by adding a human element to the research.

If you do not have a touch screen, you can still use this application with a mouse though the experience is definitely optimized for a touch screen.

Additional screenshots:

Napkee is a new application powered by Adobe AIR that lets you "export Balsamiq Mockups to HTML/CSS/JS and Adobe Flex 3 at a click of a button." Be sure to check out the tutorial video to see how it works. Congratulations to the Napkee team on its recent release.

Major League Baseball released an Adobe AIR application called MLB.com OnBase. The application provides information about your favorite baseball teams including news, recent comments on Twitter, scores, schedule information and more. You can also configure the application to display desktop notifications when news is posted about your favorite teams (be the first to know!). You can post directly to your Twitter account from the application as well. Congratulations to the team that at MLB that created MLB.com OnBase!