Years later I am writing another post arguing that the AIR technology will bring a new wave of developers to the mobile platform and fuel the current state of application development on non-iPhone mobile platforms.

So, what’s changed years later? The points I mentioned in my previous article not true anymore? No, they are! The only change that leads me to argue the success of AIR technology is its support for Mobile platforms.

Adobe recently announced AIR developer platform for mobile platforms which means developers no longer have to worry about investing their valuable coding time into developing applications for different platforms, instead, they can develop the application on AIR which can be installed on all the popular phones including Android 2.1+, WebOS, BlackBerry, Symbian, etc..

This is good news for developers because releasing an application developed on AIR will open the doors to the biggest user base for their mobile application.

AIR not only serves as a cross-platform technology but it will also become a standard by bringing much needed uniformity to different mobile platforms.

I strongly believe any technology which does not result in revenue generation directly or indirectly for the involved parties, such technology will not be hugely accepted thus reducing the chances of seeing success.

This was precisely one of the reasons I sighted because of which AIR-on-desktop will not be as successful. With AIR for Mobile, that has changed! Thanks to Apple’s App Store!

Mobile users are now more open to spending a small amount to download and use an application on their mobile devices. This model has already proved itself as a huge opportunity for companies and individual developers.

Keeping these caviars in mind that AIR for mobile offers, I think it will be a huge success and we will see more and more developers drawn to AIR technology for developing their next mobile app.

Watch the following video to see Adobe AIR on Droid Phone.

Sometime back we did a post (actually more than one) on TNerd on Adobe Air applications. The posts were 10 Best Applications on Adobe Air and

As most of us use more than one product offered by Google and visit it very often, sometimes it’s not easy to juggle between windows or tabs and check information from different services. GMDesk (GMD) tries to make this task easy for us by offering an application which opens quite a few Google products in the same window and by just hitting a few keys.

GMDesk is based on Adobe’s AIR technology. Adobe AIR technology is mostly used to offer online information in a form of Desktop application.

GMDesk offers support for the following 6 Google products.

1. Gmail
2. Google Calendar
3. Google Docs
4. Google Maps
5. Google Reader
6. Picasa Web Albums

Now you do not need to open 6 different browser windows or tabs and clutter your workspace to access all these services, it lets you access all these services from a single window.

It also gives you the option of switching between services through Keyboard shortcuts such as Ctrl+1 for Google Mail, Ctrl+2 for Google Calendar and so on as shown in the figure above.

The application by default shows you the login screen for Gmail; however you can change it to any of the 6 applications supported by GMD. Also, for users who are using Google Apps for Domains they can use this application for their custom domain as well.

The concept is really nice but its still needs some improvement. Something what you will immediately notice is that the font size is painfully small on Gmail the option of setting up the font size is missing.

Another thing you will notice is that this program consumes a lot of RAM. They should do something about it.

In the next version of GMD we expect to see more flexibility in terms of settings and preferences and also a more memory efficient application.

As this application is based on Adobe’s AIR technology, users who do not have Adobe AIR installed on their computers already will have to install it before trying GMDesk.

To download Adobe AIR click here and to download and install GMDesk click here.

Some other applications that are also available like GMDesk are Fluid for Mac, Bubbles and Prism for Windows, Mac and Linux which work on the similar concept but with a little more features.

If you know of anymore do lets us know by leaving a comment.

Adobe AIR is a cross-platform runtime environment for building rich Internet applications using Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML, or Ajax, that can be deployed as a desktop application (so called Browserless).

So, as can be seen it’s platform to deploy desktop application or so called desktop widgets. There are a lot of Adobe Air applications/widgets which are available. You can find a good list of Adobe Air Apps showcased on the Refreshing Apps.

We have tried to compile a list of Top 5 AIR applications. These were picked on the criteria of usability and ease of use. Let’s have a look at the top 5 Adobe AIR Applications.

1. Analytics Reporting Suite

Google Analytics is one of the best and probably the most powerful website analytics gathering and reporting tool. It has a wonderful web interface to report how well your sites are performing. However, I have been always craving to have this wonderful service right on my desktop. Analytics Reporting Suite, based on Adobe AIR, has ended my search!

Following is a snapshot of the dashboard

The best part about the application is that it’s fast responsive and stable and hence has an advantage over the web interface version of Google analytics. Developed by Nicholas Lierman, Analytics Reporting Suite is still in beta. Another great features of this suite is I can export my reports in PDF, EXCEL and XML format. You can get the application here.

2. ReadAIR – Google Reader AIR

If I were to say, what keeps me busy for most of my time in a day, Google Reader would comprehensively emerge as a winner. Now imagine, if this reader would come as a desktop application. Adobe AIR now has a application called ReadAIR that brings your Google Reader right on your desktop. Pretty simple and neat interface makes this a must Adobe AIR application on your desktop.

This application is completely synchronized with Google Reader. I comes in two themes for now, i.e. Windows and Mac.

3. TWhirl

If you are not on Twitter, friendfeed, or other such social networking websites people will call you socially unaware. I knew someone, who would write down in a diary every five minutes, what he was up to. Twitter allows you to do exactly this. However, being a web based platform you would have to go to the site and leave a twit. Not anymore! With TWirl, you can write, view and reply to twits right from your desktop. Not just that it connects to multiple Twitter, identi.ca, Friendfeed and seesmic accounts.

Some of twhirl