Touting the Rich Internet Experience

Applications are moving to the Internet, period. I cannot see a reason why a company would not want to move their application to an Internet hosting solution. The many reasons are compelling:

• Faster delivery to market
• Single code base
• Single support mechanism
• Reduced or eliminated pirating of software
• Mobility

Even as more companies make this move to the Internet with their applications, there are still too many that believe that an Internet app is just their existing application moved from the desktop to the browser.

This blog is a study on the concept of a "Rich Internet Application". This is sometimes referred loosely as Web 2.0, but I think the term is now overused. Companies such as Adobe are offering development platforms such as Flex that are leveraging a more interactive experience and companies such as Oracle, SAP and SalesForce.com are listening.

This blog will be a collection of those sites that I find that I think leverage the concept of Rich Internet Application. My industry is insurance technology and more specifically accounting as I am a software professional who just happens to also be an accountant. I am saddened by the lack of better user experiences as I think as users, we are all owed this. I hope to potentially turn this analysis and discussion into further talking points and understand more fully the "User Experience".