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April 21, 2008

Label debates

Label debates: I don't usually link to Sys-Con, or to Scott Barnes, but this collection of paragraphs asserting that "'RIA' is slowly fading in terms of its definition" is a piece of almost offensively obtuse obscurantism. Rich Internet Applications combine serverside-processing (think Allaire) and clientside-processing (think Macromedia) for something richer than just text and images. Microsoft was slow to arrive on the scene, but they've understood a part of it recently... they even hired Scott with a literal "RIA" in his job title, for their as-yet-unshipped embrace/extend rerun. But now: "The team with the biggest horde will own the definition." As when Microsoft woke up a few years ago and tried to diffuse the idea as "Rich Interactive Applications", muddling things now with "Rich Client Platform" attempts to confuse their core customer base, preventing their growth outside of the Redmond stack. It won't affect the underlying dynamics in the long term, but will remain a time-wasting nuisance in the short term.

Posted by JohnDowdell at April 21, 2008 7:15 AM