Links:

David Berlind of InformationWeek just published a really nice podcast interview with Curl's Chief Architect, Bert Halstead. As usual Bert provides great responses to a lot of good questions. The thing I like about Bert is that I learn something new every time I talk to him. Humble and confident Bert Halstead represents the Curl with flying colors. Great job, Bert! Listen to the podcast - better yet get your friends to list to the podcast - and learn more about Curl and why its so important to the enterprise.

Last week we attended Web2.0 Expo in New York. The show was at the Jacob Javits center and shared the exhibition hall with Interop. The Javits show floor is huge with Web2.0 and Interop each sharing half. The difference between the 2 exhibitions was dramatic. The Web2.0 had the typical start-up small booths whereas the Interop side had sophisticated presentations and lots of consumer style gimmicks like a race car replica / video game and a beautiful custom made motorcycle. See the my pictures here.

It's clear that Web2.0 has gone main stream as large companies like HP and Microsoft had their mega 3 story booths staking a claim to the new wave.

It was busy and I barely had time to see any sessions or walk the floor as I gave more than 25 demos over the 2 days. It was interesting to note that visitors to the Curl booth were much more informed on RIA than our first experience at Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco, April 2007. Many said they had heard of Curl as the new cool RIA. It seems all our efforts to be seen in the RIA landscape are gaining momentum.

Bert Halstead, our chief architect did a great job of positioning Curl in the podcast with David Berlind of Tech Radar. You can hear listen here.
Thanks to Julie, Jnan, Doug, RMH, Norm and Bert for making our show a success. All in all it was a fun show and great to visit NY.

Curl version 7 will bring a host of new features to the enterprise including even stronger security and performance, a new look & feel that is fully skinnable, embedded SQLite database, and the ability to install and run Curl applications right off your desktop - similar to Adobe AIR. We released Curl version 7 beta 1 (code named Nitro) this spring at Web 2.0 Expo West and Yesterday we released beta 2 for Web 2.0 Expo East (which is this week).

Curl version 7, Beta 2 brings a number of improvements to the platform.

• All components are now fully skinnable - we didn't have 100% coverage in beta 1. To get an idea of just how powerful skinning is in Curl (and how easy it can be) download and play around with the Curl Style Designer- it allows you to graphically change the look and feel of applications written in Curl. There is also a skinning API that is even more powerful than the Style Designer.

• Performance has been improved! Curl already offers the fastest execution environment of any RIA platform (8 - 10 times faster than Flex 3) and now it’s even faster than it was before. Our engineers increased speed by about 15% over beta 1, which might not sound like much but makes a big difference when dealing with processing intensive applications.

• We've added an API to control embedded pages - for example you now have control over embedded flash movies. For those of you who don't know it, the Windows version of Curl includes an embedded browser so you can run web pages including Flash inside of a Curl application.

• You can now do Nitro development using the Curl CDE (Curl IDE for Eclipse) - the CDE has been available and in use for Curl 6 for a while, but now you can use it for Curl 7 beta 2 development as well.

Finally, in the Curl CDE Pro version includes encryption APIs for the SQLite database which will ship with Curl version 7.

We are really excited about Curl version 7 (i.e. Nitro) because it makes Curl that much more secure and performant than all the other RIA solutions. We are really setting the bar high in the RIA market and so far no one has come close to us. With Curl version 7 you'll be able to run Curl applications in your browser or off of your desktop across Windows, Mac, and Linux using exactly the same code. The Curl Runtime Environment (RTE) is faster than ever and includes the SQLite database. Curl applets (Curl applications that run in the browser window) and Curl applications (those applications you launch from your desktop and run in their own window) have access to a large and completely quarantined local area storage.
We are seriously kicking butt!

As we are enjoying the last few weeks of summer, I’d like to take time to share with you an update on Curl’s business and the enterprise RIA market in general.

Overall, 2008 has been an exciting year for us. We’ve made some great strides in further developing our product set as well as expanding our business. We productized two of our three
open source projects, executed on our Eclipse strategy, and released our Run Time Environment (RTE) for the Macintosh, as well as support for Ubuntu.

Also, we unveiled Curl Nitro, the next version of our RIA platform, which brought with it enhanced desktop capabilities to enterprises. We released a few really cool sample applications to showcase the data visualization and online/offline capabilities of that product, so I highly recommend you check them out.

At the beginning of 2008, we predicted that this would be the start of an explosion of enterprise RIA, and this has truly been the case so far. The market is heating up with vendors, while companies and consumers alike demand richer user interfaces, stronger security, and higher performance. The enterprise has really felt the push, and we are right there to support them with thefeatures they need. This increase in demand also is reflected in the growth of our developer community, as we experienced an increase here of 456 percent.

In particular, as I have been meeting with customers and prospects, here are the common themes I have heard from them:

- Curl's visualization functions plus high performance gives us a competitive edge in our business.

- "Curlization" is a process to replace spreadsheet-based client-serverapplications to RIAs with lower total cost of ownership.

- Curl is ahead of Adobe Flex in several areas like security, performance, and programmer productivity.

- Curl has a proven track record as a RIA platform for enterprises, while others are just starting.



Below I have included a snapshot of the news announcements we have issued during the last several months, a sampling of the great media coverage we’ve received, and links to some of our most interesting blog entries from the Curl Developer Center for you to reference. I hope you find this update helpful in your research, and I welcome any comments or questions you might have.


News
ANNOUNCEMENTS
· Curl Releases New Web-Based Training Courses, August 20, 2008
· Curl Announces General Availability of Curl Development Tools for Eclipse, August 5, 2008
· Curl Announces General Availability of Its Curl Data Kit - July 7, 2008
· Curl to Provide Rich Internet Application Technology to University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, June 26, 2008
· Curl Nitro Demo Application Visualizes Facebook Social Graphs, June 23, 2008
· Curl Showcases Curl Nitro Through New Sample Application, June 16, 2008
· Curl Announces Public Beta Availability of Eclipse-Based RIA Development Tools, June 9, 2008
· Curl Makes Rich Internet Application Run Time Environment for Macintosh Generally Available, June 3, 2008
· RIA Technology Benchmark Test Finds Curl Outperforms Adobe Flex 3, May 28, 2008
· Curl Embraces Desktop RIA With 'Nitro' Product Release, April 21, 2008
· Curl Announces Support for Ubuntu for Enterprise RIA Platform, April 15, 2008
· Curl Joins Eclipse Foundation and Announces Eclipse Strategy, April 7, 2008
· Curl Delivers First Open Source Product with Web Services Development Kit, March 4, 2008

CURl IN the news
· RIA company curls up with Eclipse, SD Times, August 6, 2008
· Curl completes embrace of Eclipse IDE, NetworkWorld, August 4, 2008
· How to sort out Ajax and RIA frameworks, SearchSOA.com, July 30, 2008
· The Architect's Role, Dr. Dobb’s Journal, July 1, 2008
· Overview of the Curl Enterprise RIA Platform, InfoQ.com, June 13, 2008
· Curl Adds Runtime Support for Mac Environments, PC World, June 3, 2008
· Curl 6 outperforms Flex 3 on CPU-intensive benchmark, InfoWorld, May 28, 2008
· Who Will Win the Next Battle for the Desktop?, AJAXWorld, April 27, 2008
· Curl's Nitro Takes Aim at Adobe AIR, InformationWeek, April 15, 2008
· RIA War Is Brewing, eWeek, April 11, 2008
· Product review: Curl 6.0 enriches the rich Internet toolkit, InfoWorld, April 7, 2008
· Curl: Rich Internet Apps get richer, Computerworld, March 13, 2008
· Curl ships commercial version of its open source web services dev kit for RIA Platform, ZDNet, March 4, 2008
· Curl linking rich Internet applications, SOA, InfoWorld, February 29, 2008

CURl BLOG POSTS
· Curl is now in the Top 4, August 12, 2008
· Backward Compatibility and Curl, August 1, 2008
· Quarantined by default, secure by design, July 28, 2008
· The Batmobile, Lamborghini, and my Suburban, July 23, 2008
· Enterprise RIA - real examples in use, June 13, 2008
· How big is your source code?, June 12, 2008
· Does RIA platform performance matter?, May 30, 2008
· For Curl, Security is Job #1, May 29, 2008
· Questions to ask your RIA Vendor, May 20, 2008
· Why Criminal Hackers Will Love Adobe AIR, April 16, 2008
· Seven nice things about the Curl Platform, March 25, 2008
· Why Is an Enterprise RIA Platform Different?, February 13, 2008

Events Tradeshows and Conferences
Curl will have representation and/or executive speaking sessions at the following tradeshows. Please let us know if you plan to attend any of these events and if you’re interested in scheduling a briefing:

· Rich Client Experience, Washington, DC, September 4-5, 2008
· Web 2.0 Conference & Expo 2008, New York City, Sept. 16-19, 2008
· AJAXWorld 2008 West,San Jose, CA, October 20-22, 2008
· SD Best hPractices,Boston, MA, October 27-30, 2008
· InfoQ QCon, San Francisco, CA, November 19 - 21, 2008

Rob Gonda has proposed a RIA panel discussion that will pit panelists from Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flex, Curl and other RIA platforms against each other to the death! Ok, maybe not to the death but it should be interesting all the same! The panel discussion, titled "Rich Internet Applications Death Match" is proposed for the SXSW Interactive Festival scheduled in March of 2009. We would really like to see this panel happen but its up to you to decide. I encourage everyone in our community to go to the Interactive Panel Picker at the SXSW conference web site and vote for this discussion. It will be a great opportunity to compare and contrast the different RIA platforms and for everyone to learn more about Curl!