IT: News and State of the Art

Strong reception for Google Wave

2009-06-07T12:19:00.003+05:30

Industry experts have given a broadly positive reaction to Google Wave.

Still in development, Google Wave is a browser-based tool that mixes e-mail, with Instant Messaging and real-time online collaboration elements.Harry McCracken, of Technologizer.com, wrote: "It's one of the most ambitious services that Google or anyone else has cooked up".

Google Wave is currently only open to developers interested in building applications for the tool. Google Wave co-creator Lars Rasmussen wrote on the official Google blog: "A wave is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

"In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly.

"It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave." The technology has been described as e-mail for the 21st Century, a rival to Twitter and to Microsoft's collaboration software, Sharepoint.

Jordan Golson, writer for GigaOm.com, said Google had a poor track record of making a business out of any of its products, other than search. "Maybe it will work. Maybe Wave will take over the world. But, with the notable exceptions of Gmail and search ads, Google has a poor track record with product launches.

It is really, really good at vanity exercises, though." MG Sieglar, a reporter for Techcrunch, said the tool "drips with ambition".He wrote: "Wave offers a very sleek and easy way to navigate and participate in communication on the web that makes both e-mail and instant messaging look stale."

The announcement of Wave, together with the development of tools like Twitter and Friend Feed, point to the genesis of the real-time web, in which communication, search, collaboration, and the bridge between offline and online blurs into a contemporaneous mix.

Ben Parr, from Mashable.com, who tested a preview of Google Wave, said: "Our initial impression of Google Wave is a very positive one. "It's already got certain aspects, like navigation, absolutely right. With some great third-party apps and greater customization, Google Wave could actually match its hype."

Source : BBC

ORACLE BUYS SUN

2009-04-26T09:50:00.008+05:30

Oracle agreed to buy Sun Microsystems for about $7.4 billion in cash, swooping in after the server maker's talks to be acquired by IBM failed.

Oracle will pay $9.50 a share, 42 percent more than Sun's closing price Friday. Oracle plans to make Sun a profitable part of its business and said the purchase will add $1.5 billion to operating earnings, excluding some items, in the first year.

The takeover moves Oracle, the world's second-largest software maker, into the market for server and storage computers, pitting the company against IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison also gains Sun's Java programming language and Solaris operating system, which work with its top-selling database program.

"They're really going to zero in on just the most strategic part of Sun's hardware business," said Heather Bellini, an analyst at UBS AG in New York, with a "buy" rating for Oracle's shares. "They'll end up making the company much better-run."

Excluding Sun's cash and debt, the deal is valued at $5.6 billion, Oracle said in a statement. Sun had about $2.6 billion in cash and marketable securities, and about $700 million in long-term debt at the end of 2008. Oracle has about $11.3 billion in cash and marketable securities.

Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., rose $2.46, or 37 percent, to close at $9.15. Oracle, based in Redwood City, Calif., dropped 24 cents, to $18.82.

Sun's Java technology lets developers write programs that work across operating systems and on a variety of devices. The software has been installed on 800 million desktop computers and also powers 2.1 billion mobile devices.

Sun's Solaris competes with Linux and Microsoft's Windows software. While Sun offers versions of Solaris and its MySQL database program free to developers, the company makes money by selling service, support and software updates. Sun boosted software sales by 21 percent in the quarter through Dec. 28 and said in January that it projects revenue from those products to reach more than $600 million a year.

Oracle had sales of $22.6 billion in the latest fiscal year.

Oracle President Safra Catz said the company plans to operate Sun at "substantially higher margins." She declined to provide specifics.

Source: The Washington Post

Protect Your PC from Conficker

2009-04-05T19:12:00.009+05:30

To protect your Windows machines from Conficker, follow the Microsoft site
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/dd452420.aspx

IBM Reportedly will Buy Sun for $7 Billion

2009-04-05T08:25:00.005+05:30

I.B.M. appears on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, a longtime rival in the computer server and software markets, for nearly $7 billion.

The two companies have been negotiating for weeks, ironing out terms of an agreement that would turn I.B.M. into the dominant supplier of high-profit Unix servers and related technology.

I.B.M. is offering $9.50 a share, down from a bid of $10 a share, said people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly. The new agreement would restrict I.B.M.’s ability to walk away from the deal, these people said.

Even at $9.50 a share, the deal would value Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., at close to $7 billion. It is close to a 100 percent premium based on Sun’s value before rumors of an acquisition spread last month.

Representatives of I.B.M. and Sun declined to comment. People familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement could be announced Friday, although it is more likely to be made public next week. I.B.M.’s board has already approved the deal, they said.

I.B.M., based in Armonk, N.Y., has spent weeks poring over Sun’s patents and licensing agreements. Some 100 lawyers have been working in a hotel in Silicon Valley on intellectual property matters.

Although in a slump of nearly a decade, Sun is one of the largest sellers of server computers and is known for systems based on its Sparc chips. It has a vast software portfolio, including the Solaris operating system , the open-source MySQL database and the Java programming language.

“Sun has obviously been a lost child for many years, but they have some great assets,” said Rebecca Runkle, director of technology research at Research Edge, an equities analysis business. She said that Sun and I.B.M.’s cultures would mesh in their commitment to large research and development projects.

Sun’s software assets would fit into I.B.M.’s long-term strategy of chasing higher-profit software and services sales. It could also give I.B.M. more strength in competing against Oracle, which has sold its database software on top of Sun systems for years.

I.B.M.’s acquisition of Sun would disrupt that long partnership with Oracle. I.B.M. could also undercut Oracle by more actively promoting the free MySQL software, which has become the most popular database software with Internet companies.

Hardware inherited from Sun could present antitrust concerns. I.B.M. faces an antitrust complaint from T3 Technologies over its dominance in the mainframe market. By buying Sun, I.B.M. would gain close to total control over robotic tape storage devices used to file data on mainframes.

Sun has a sales and technology partnership with Fujitsu for the sale of Unix servers. If I.B.M. buys Sun, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard will be the combined company’s only major competitors in the Unix market, a possible concern for regulators here and in Europe. Sun faces a patent infringement lawsuit from the storage maker NetApp and has countersued. NetApp has a sales pact with I.B.M.

Silicon Valley executives, including Paul S. Otellini, chief of Intel, have said that Sun has spent months seeking a suitor.

Shares of I.B.M. rose more than 3 percent on Thursday, to $100.82, and Sun’s shares rose more than 2 percent, to $8.21.

Source : The New York Times

IDEs will Change Soon

2009-03-27T21:55:00.014+05:30

IDEs (integrated development environments) have stayed basically the same over the years and now it is time for them to evolve to accommodate concepts like cloud computing, dignitaries from Microsoft and IBM said during a Silicon Valley technical conference on Thursday.

Speaking at the EclipseCon 2009 event in Santa Clara, Calif., Microsoft's Tim Wagner, development manager for Visual Studio, and IBM's Kevin McGuire, senior software developer for user interfaces and Eclipse, reflected on where IDEs have been and where they are going. Microsoft Visual Studio, first released in June 1998, and the rival Eclipse open source IDE, which debuted in November 2001, are the most prominent IDEs in use these days.

"It's amazing how much stuff we have today [that] was in Eclipse 1.0," such as code completion, McGuire said. Concurring about the lack of change, Wagner added, "You kind of go back eight, nine years, and it looks pretty much the same. All has changed around us, so much of this has stayed the same."

The two officials cited industry changes, such as the jump in CPU power, systems running multiple CPUs, use of multiple monitors, and cloud computing. IDEs must adapt to industry changes, the officials argued.

An IDE in the browser makes sense, they said. This is particularly the case with software being made by teams. For instance, developers use the Bugzilla bug tracker, which is online, and source code is stored on server in a repository.

Microsoft, with its planned Visual Studio 2010 IDE, will add support for use of multiple monitors, Wagner acknowledged. The speakers showed a slide in which a monitor on the left maintained a debugging session while files were on the right monitor.

In the cloud computing space, McGuire cited the Mozilla Bespin project, providing an online code editor, and the G.ho.st virtual computer, offering a desktop editor in the cloud, as advancements. Developers can expect cloud IDE capabilities from Eclipse. "I think that's a natural evolution, and I think that the Bespin technology is leading the way," McGuire said.

Microsoft has sights set on a version of Visual Studio in the cloud at some point. "It's still very much a prototype effort," Wagner said.

At one point during the presentation, a slide appeared noting that in 2001, Windows XP was the Microsoft OS to have at the moment. Then the slide humorously adds, "OK, that's still true," reflecting on difficulties Microsoft has had in gaining market acceptance of the successor Windows Vista OS.

"Let's not go there," Wagner remarked after the slide appeared.

Source: InfoWorld

Social sites eclipse e-mail use

2009-03-11T18:41:00.006+05:30

Social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace are now more popular than personal e-mail, finds a report.

The Nielsen survey of users' habits found that 67% of all those going online were spending time at social network and blogging sites.

Interest in the category is growing four times faster than the other top four sectors, said the report.

In the UK one in every six minutes of the average web user is spent at a social site, it found.

"Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience," said John Burbank, chief executive of Nielsen Online in a statement.

"Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large," he said.

HOW MANY USE THE TOP SITES?

1) Search - 85.9%

2) Portals/communities - 85.2%

3) PC software - 73.4%

4) Member Communities - 66.8%

5) E-mail - 65.1%

Nielsen measures interest in categories by the percentage of the web audience that regularly visit such sites. The latest statistics suggest that 65.1% of web users use web e-mail but 66.8% are turning up at social network sites.

This means, said Nielsen, that about one in every 11 minutes a web user is online is spent at one of the sites Nielsen counts in its "Member Communities" category which includes both blogs and social network sites.

Of these sites, Facebook has highest average time per user, found Nielsen.

The researchers also found that social networking sites are managing to reach a very broad swathe of web users. The fastest growing segment of users turning up and using social sites over the last year was among 35-49 year olds.

In particular, the report noted, almost a quarter of Facebook's users were known to be over 50 years old.

More and more people want to get at their favourite social network site and update via mobile, found Nielsen. In the UK the numbers of Britons looking at a social site via their phone was up 249%.

Source : BBC News

Microsoft to cut up to 5,000 jobs

2009-01-23T19:03:00.001+05:30

Microsoft has said it will cut up to 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months, including 1,400 immediately.

The firm also reported a net profit of $4.17bn (£3bn) for the three months to 31 December, down 11% on last year and less than analysts' expectations.

Microsoft added it was "no longer able" to give a profit and revenue outlook for the fiscal year amid current volatile market conditions.

Shares in Microsoft fell 7.9%, dragging Wall Street lower.

Cost cuts

"While we're not immune to the effects of the economy, I am confident in the strength of our product portfolio and soundness of our approach," said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Richard Williams, an analyst at Cross Research, said: "Microsoft has never had a layoff like this in my knowledge, and it's sending a signal that the times are definitely changing."

Microsoft said the announced job cuts would take place in research and development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, human resources and information technology.

It added it would also be making other cost-cutting measures, including a reduction in spending on travel.

"These initiatives will reduce the company's annual operating expense run rate by approximately $1.5bn and reduce fiscal year 2009 capital expenditures by $700m," Microsoft said.

Source : BBC

Silverlight to Stream Obama's Inauguration

2009-01-18T10:15:00.013+05:30

Microsoft's Silverlight technology has been chosen to stream U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony live on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site, Microsoft said Friday.

Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden are due to be sworn in and deliver inauguration speeches next Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Both events will be streamed live on the PIC site using Silverlight, a cross-browser technology for delivering live and on-demand video over the Web.

The PIC will also stream video of an event with Obama and Biden in Baltimore on Saturday as part of their "Whistle Stop Tour," which will take them from Philadelphia to Washington for the inaugural ceremony and celebrations.

Obama was elected on Nov. 4 as the first African-American U.S. president, giving Tuesday's inauguration particular historical significance.

IStreamPlanet, an online content-delivery company in Las Vegas, Nevada, is working with Microsoft to stream the event, Microsoft said.

The inaugural event is the latest high-profile use of Silverlight, which was first released in April 2007 as a rival to Adobe Flash. The technology comprises a tool for developing and designing Internet applications and a media player for delivering content.

It wasn't until the release of Silverlight 2 in October, however, that the technology became a viable alternative to Flash for building rich Internet applications (RIAs), developers said.

"Silverlight 1.0 was a glorified media player," said Ben Dewey, a senior software developer for IT consulting firm twentysix New York, who has worked with Silverlight. "The release of Silverlight 2 is when it really took off."

While Silverlight 2 was in beta in August, the 2008 Democratic National Convention Committee used it to stream proceedings from the convention, including Obama's acceptance speech to more than 80,000 people at an outdoor stadium in Denver.

Microsoft also teamed up with U.S. television network NBC that month to deliver thousands of hours of both live and on-demand coverage from the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Silverlight has had its bumps in the road, however. The first high-profile user, Major League Baseball Advanced Media's MLB.com site, dropped the technology in November and signed a two-year deal to use Adobe Flash for streaming live baseball games.

Source : PCWorld

Satyam Demands Apology From World Bank

2008-12-28T18:39:00.003+05:30

Indian outsourcer Satyam Computer Services has demanded an apology from the World Bank for statements made after it barred Satyam from the bank's direct contracts for a period of eight years.

Describing statements by World Bank representatives to the media as inappropriate, Satyam demanded on Thursday that the bank withdraw the statements, issue an apology for the harm done to the company due to the bank's actions, and provide Satyam with a full explanation of the circumstances related to the statements.

"Satyam was declared ineligible for contracts for providing improper benefits to Bank staff and for failing to maintain documentation to support fees charged for its subcontractors," the World Bank said in a statement on Tuesday.

The statement from Satyam on Thursday does not question the company being barred from contracts, or ask for the revocation of the bar, but instead objects to statements made by bank representatives. It does not also address the charges under which the World Bank said it was making Satyam ineligible for future contracts.

A spokeswoman for Satyam declined to discuss the matter further.

Satyam usually does not comment publicly on matters involving customer relationships, the company said. However, the inaccuracy and inappropriateness of the World Bank's public statements regarding Satyam has forced it to issue a brief statement in order to set the record straight, it added.

The company, which is India's fourth largest outsourcer, has already come under criticism from investors and analysts, for its moves on Tuesday last week to diversify into the construction business. It rolled back the decision less than a day later after investors knocked down the price of the company's shares by about 55 percent in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Satyam's share price was also down on Wednesday on Indian stock markets by about 15 percent after the World Bank statement.

While the World Bank's decision is a blow to Satyam it will not affect the credibility of other Indian outsourcers, as each outsourcing company is evaluated on its own merits, said an outsourcing analyst who requested anonymity.

From : PCWorld

Symbian to Open Source Track

2008-12-08T16:28:00.009+05:30

The Symbian Foundation is on track to take over Symbian as an open-source operating system in 2010 and will put out its first distribution of software for developers in the first half of next year, its executive director said Thursday.

The foundation is the successor to the Symbian consortium that has administered the OS since 1998. It is being formed after Nokia agreed to buy the remaining part of Symbian, a deal that closed on Tuesday. The world's largest handset maker, which has been perceived as dominating Symbian since its creation, is releasing the platform as competition for developers grows among Google's Android, Apple's iPhone and other systems.

Nokia, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, AT&T and other companies agreed in June to form the foundation. Six new members, including AOL, Fujitsu's Cell Telecom division, and Intrinsyc, were announced Thursday at the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco. That brings total membership to 64, the group said.

The distribution of code coming in the first half of 2009 won't be entirely open source. It will be released to members of the foundation, under a new partner organization that eventually will supplant Symbian's current partner program, said Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation. It will include elements of Symbian and of Nokia's Symbian-based S60 platform. The group is already working on code for that distribution.

The open-source OS coming in 2010, will unite Symbian with S60 as well as two other platforms built on it: UIQ and NTT DoCoMo's MOAP (Mobile Oriented Applications Platform).

The foundation is now defining roles within its organization and starting to work on recruiting for those jobs, Williams said. By the end of April, there will be staffers answering calls and e-mail for developer support and other needs, he said.

Extratcted from : Yahoo Tech!

Parallel Lives...

2008-12-03T16:31:00.003+05:30

The idea of having a virtual you following the real you around may seem rather strange - for those of us used to having our feet firmly on the ground.

But the creation of a virtual Berlin lets people be in two places at the same time - as 20km of the city has been faithfully replicated into an online world.

By the end of 2008, 50,000 buildings in the German capital are expected to have been copied into the virtual world.

"While Second Life and others worlds offer some stylised versions of cities - Twinity uses the 3D mapping data currently used for things like satnav and Google Earth," said Jochen Hummel, the chief executive of Metaversum - owner of Twinity.

"One by one each building is then made to look as it would in the real world," he said.

Twinity hopes to offer a space for "virtual tourism"

Twinity's Berlin, which it calls a "metaverse" has been created by taking pictures of the city and using them to build 3D facades.

Volunteer developers may soon be encouraged to add their own or adapt existing ones, like users updating and adding entries in Wikipedia.

Emphasis on realism

While many online worlds are put to frivolous uses, Metaversum sees Twinity as a step beyond gaming.

"It's a space for virtual tourism," said Mr von Hardenberg. "The realism of this platform could help you plan a trip here, or just help you get your bearings before you arrive."

So far the closest many come to wandering around the globe is through 3D-mapping applications such as Google Earth that provide a snapshot of places.

Twinity emphasises realism, but the mantra for the virtual world is "be nice".

Mr Hardenberg hopes the platform will gain an audience beyond the core male gamers and attract more women.

"It's a social environment for meeting people, visiting galleries, or online shopping. Users are encouraged to create avatars that look just like them so they'll be recognised and to use their real names," he said.

Twinity has one advantage over reality when it comes to transport because there are no cars and visitors simply teleport to key locations.

Extracted from the full article at : BBC News

Linux : Powering the Fastest Supercomputers

2008-11-29T14:20:00.005+05:30

There are fast computers, and then there are Linux fast computers. Every six months, the Top 500 organization announces "its ranked list of general purpose systems that are in common use for high end applications." In other words, supercomputers. And, as has been the case for years now, the fastest of the fast are Linux computers.

As Jay Lyman, an analyst at The 451 Group points out, Linux is only growing stronger in supercomputing. "When considered as the primary OS or part of a mixed-OS supersystem, Linux is now present in 469 of the supercomputer sites, 93.8% of the Top500 list. This represents about 10 more sites than in November 2007, when Linux had presence in 91.8% of the systems. In fact, Linux is the only operating system that managed gains in the November 2008 list. A year ago, Linux was the OS for 84.6% of the top supercomputers. In November 2008, the open source OS was used in 87.8% of the systems. Compare this to Unix, which dropped from 6% to 4.6%, mixed-OS use which dropped from 7.2% to 6.2% and other operating systems, including BSD, Mac OS X and Windows, which were all down this year from the November 2007 list."

Microsoft is proud that a system running Windows HPC Server 2008 took 10th place... behind nine supercomputers running Linux. Even then, this was really more of a stunt than a demonstration that the HPC Server system is ready to compete with the big boys.

Read full article at : PCWorld

Fedora 10 Released !

2008-11-26T20:02:00.006+05:30

The Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Project on Tuesday released Fedora 10, the latest version of the free Linux-based operating system, with a wide range of improvements in areas such as virtualization management, networking, boot time and security.

The release also bundles in OpenOffice 3.0, the most recent edition of the open-source productivity suite.

The new virtualization features include the ability to manage virtual hosts and storage remotely, which should appeal to network administrators with fragmented teams. "These features combine to make administration of remote hosts much easier, even in cases where direct physical access is limited or non-existent," the Fedora Team said in a recent blog post on Red Hat's Web site.

Users can now also share their Internet connection with others, and Fedora 10 can also start up faster, thanks to a new graphical boot system dubbed Plymouth.

Security improvements include the addition of SecTool, an auditing and detection kit.

Red Hat has also enhanced PackageKit, a software installation and updating system that debuted in Fedora 9.

"In Fedora 10, PackageKit now detects when the user opens an audio or video media file, and offers to search for codecs used to play that file," the Fedora Team said in a blog post. "With the user's authorization, it searches all the software repositories configured on the Fedora 10 system, installs what is needed, and the media begins to play." Down the road, this capability will be extended to areas like fonts and applications.

In addition, Fedora 10 has a revamped audio system that uses less power; support for "a vast array" of Webcams; improved printing capabilities; and "support for more hardware than any other operating system."

From : Yahoo! Tech News

Brain-like Computers

2008-11-24T16:23:00.006+05:30

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains.

Part of a field called "cognitive computing", the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists.

As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defence agency Darpa.

The resulting technology could be used for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition.

"The mind has an amazing ability to integrate ambiguous information across the senses, and it can effortlessly create the categories of time, space, object, and interrelationship from the sensory data," says Dharmendra Modha, the IBM scientist who is heading the collaboration.

"There are no computers that can even remotely approach the remarkable feats the mind performs," he said.

"The key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour of the brain."

From : BBC News

Microsoft to Offer Free Anti-Virus Solutions

2008-11-21T16:00:00.009+05:30

In a surprise move, Microsoft has announced it will offer a free anti-virus and security solution from the second half of next year.

It will stop selling OneCare, its all-in-one security and PC management service, from the end of June 2009.

The new software, code-named Morro, will be a no-frills program suited to smaller and less powerful computers.

The software will be free to download and will support Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

From : BBC News

Ubuntu on Mobiles

2008-11-17T16:51:00.005+05:30

Mobile phone chip designer ARM has announced an
alliance with the makers of the Ubuntu open source software.

The deal will produce a version of the operating system for small net-browsing computers known as netbooks.

It marks a departure for ARM, which before now has been best known for designing the chips inside smartphones and feature phones.

The new operating system for ARM-powered machines looks set to be available in April 2009.

Extracted from: BBC News

Exclusive on TroopTube

2008-11-12T18:59:00.002+05:30

TroopTube is the new online video site designed to help military families connect and keep in touch while miles apart. The site is designed for easy use, so you can quickly upload videos and share the simple joys of each day with each other, either privately or with the whole world.

Visit TroopTube at : http://www.trooptube.tv/

Obama and Social Networks

2008-11-11T14:59:00.003+05:30

Like a lot of Web innovators, the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely new. Instead, by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans. ...

Source : The New York Times

Do you know Reflection?

2008-11-08T16:24:00.000+05:30

Find a good article at developer.com with Java examples. Enjoy reflection!

Hiring in IT industry slows down 40-50 percent

2008-11-08T10:23:00.000+05:30

Indian IT Industry is witnessing a fall down in the rate of recruitment, a key indicator of the industry's growth. It is estimated that hiring on an overall basis is down by 40 to 50 percent compared to last year. Hiring across companies, especially the small and mid-sized, has entered into a lull with momentum certainly being downcast, reported The Economic Times.

Recruitment has taken a nasty blow during the last three months. Given the high dependence of the Indian IT industry on the U.S. economy, companies are increasingly taking a cautious route towards hiring. ........

Source : http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/40256

Adobe Flex - Create engaging, cross-platform rich Internet applications

2008-11-08T09:05:00.000+05:30

Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems.

Source : http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/