Gears PubTools - helper JS for Google Gears

PubTools helps you write code to support Google Gears. If you have tried to play with this interesting all purpose helper app for the web, you'll learn that dealing with the core apis is somewhat tedius. Basically similar to how working with javascript in the browser before Dojo,YUI, and jQuery was a pain. Now Brad Neuberg has created an open source project to help you take your websites "offline" much easier.

Ajaxian has Free Adobe AIR for Javascripters Book

If you are doing any AIR development like I am, you should head on over to Ajaxian and pick up this free OReilly book. It has some handy information and a few snippets of sample "cookbook" code.

Silverlight Overview at TechCrunch

The jist of the news is that in addition to xaml coding which is akin to mxml for Flash, you can also use VB, .net, etc to create applications for the web using a subset of the .net functionality. Supposedly at 4mb it is small and fast in terms of rendering and performance. I love this tit for tat going on between Adobe and Microsoft, it pushes the envelope and in the end us web developers have more options to create cool stuff for the web. Now that two of the big players in this space have shown their hands, I can't wait to see what comes out of Google/Firefox world.

Foobar the Bazbarian in Apollo (and Laszlo)

I have revived an ancient javascript game I wrote back in 1997 called Foobar the Bazbarian. I managed to find an old copy of the game on some page archive and I rewrote it in Laszlo back in 2003. Today I found that old code and fixed the Laszlo syntax errors (the language has changed alot since I wrote it) and managed to get an Apollo version of the game working. So, here in 2007 you have a first. A game written in 1997 ported in 2003 to Laszlo running under Apollo. Just like back then, when this was one of the very first javascript games, Foobar gets to be one of the very first Apollo games. Check it out. It sucks! But it shows that you can link together lots of ancient technology to still create something kinda cool. If you die in the game you just have to quit and restart, sorry.