adobe released AIR today:

Adobe faces stiff competition from a number of big and small companies with the same idea. Many small developers like OpenLazlo and Xcerion are creating “Web-top” or “Web operating systems” intended to move applications and data off the PC desktop and into the Internet through the Web browser.

Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox Web browser, has created a system known as Prism. Sun Microsystems introduced JavaFX this year, which is also aimed at blurring the Web-desktop line. Google is testing a system called Gears, which is intended to allow some Web services to work on computers that are not connected to the Internet.

Finally, there is Microsoft. It is pushing its competitor to Flash, called Silverlight. Three years ago, Microsoft hired one of Mr. Lynch’s crucial software developers at Macromedia, Brad Becker, to help create it. Mr. Becker was a leading designer of the Flash programming language.

The blurring of Web and desktop applications and PC and phone applications is further encouraged by the cellphone industry’s race to catch up with Apple’s iPhone. The industry is focusing on smartphones, or what Sanjay K. Jha, the chief operating officer of Qualcomm, calls “pocketable computing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/technology/25adobe.html?pagewanted=print