Installing Adobe Air and some AIR applications on Ubuntu 8.10

Adobe Air Environment is one of the hottest new technology around, it allows one to easily create cross platform Internet rich applications combing the strength of Adobe Flex , Adobe Flash , Ajax and HTML to create applications and widget that are Internet ready . Adobe Air allows one to deploy browser less rich Internet applications on desktop that are not bounded by local storage limitations or limited file system access as is the case with Ajax application running inside a browser.

Now Adobe finally has released the stable version of the Air environment on Linux bringing it up to date with the version available on Mac OS X and Windows.

Here in this tutorial , I describe how you can easily install Adobe AIR environment on your Ubuntu 8.10 desktop and some interesting applications that you can run atop Adobe AIR.

Installing Adobe Air :

To install Adobe Air environment open Terminal window from (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal ) and issue the following command in the terminal window .

wget http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/lin/download/1.5/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

and

chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

and

./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

After issuing the above command you will get a installation dialog box like this follow the instructions to install Adobe Air .

Adobe Air Installer

After installation is over you will find a menu item (Applications -> Other ->Adobe Air Application Installer ) which allows one to easily install Adobe Air applications.

Installing interesting Adobe AIR applications

These are some of the Adobe AIR applications that I have found interesting , also I have tried including installation instruction and brief information about the application.

ReadAIR

ReadAIR is a desktop client of Google Reader ( News Feed Aggregator), it syncs with Google Reader and allows you to read the feeds you have subscribed to easily. ReadAir has an extremely simple UI and has same basic layout as Google Reader and is loosly themed like Mac OS X application. ReadAIR allows one to search through feeds , also it allows you to organize feeds using tags.Though , I was somewhat disappointed to find lack of Keyboard shortcuts.

ReadAIR running on my Ubuntu Desktop

You can download ReadAIR from here : http://code.google.com/p/readair/downloads/list or follow this link to download (.air) package : http://readair.googlecode.com/files/ReadAir.0.3.air

Now , you can install the downloaded the (.air) package using (Applications-> Other -> Adobe AIR Application Installer ) and once installation is over you can launch ReadAIR by clicking on the icon on the desktop.

ReadAir icon @ Desktop

RichFLV

RichFLV is a cute little video editor for flv files , some of the features RichFLV supports are :

• Read flv Metadata
• read/edit/modify/delete cuepoints
• cut flvs
• convert the sound of the flv to mp3
• convert flv to swf

However , RichFLV is still in early stage of development and is an alpha release.

You can find more info about RichFLV here : http://www.richapps.de/?p=48
Download and Install RichFLV from here : http://www.richapps.de/files/richflv/RichFLV.air

RichFLV playing video

RoadFinder

RoadFinder combines Yahoo! Maps and Google Maps into a single application , and allows one to easily look up address using its intiuative interface. RoadFinder allows you to search maps for physical directions anywhere in the world, Also besides having option for maps it also allows you to view satelite images.

Even after entering "New Delhi" RoadFinder kept showing US map.

Download and install RoadFinder from : http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/air/linux/samples/1/RoadFinder.air

WebKut

WebKut allows one to capture Web Pages or part of Web Page in an extremely simple way. You open the website you want to capture within the WebKut interface and capture WebPage using 3 capture options: the entire page, the current view, or only a selection. However ,the maximum dimension for an image that can be captured is 2880 pixels.

WebKut in action, in the screenshot a part of WebPage has been selected to cut.

You can get more information about WebKut here : http://toki-woki.net/p/WebKut/
Download and Install WebKut from here : http://toki-woki.net/p/WebKut/WebKut-v1.2.1.air

XDrive Desktop Lite
Xdrive is a data storage service from AOL and gives you 5GB of free online storage.XDrive Desktop Lite is a desktop client for the online service and allows you to manage files in your online Xdrive account.Xdrive Desktop Lite supports drag n drop and allows you to drag files from your computer into your online Xdrive account.

Download Xdrive Desktop Lite from here : http://public.xdrive.com/downloads/XdriveDesktopLite.air

You can get more information here : http://www.xdrive.com/desktop-lite/

Spaz

Spaz is an Open source Twitter client and features an extremely user friendly interface. Some of the important features of Spaz are :

• Built-in global search powered by Summize
• Short URL creation tool with support for multiple services (is.gd, bit.ly, snurl.com, and more)
• In-line short URL decoding
• Markdown syntax support
• Multiple themes and support for user-created themes
• User-defined CSS overrides
• Event sounds using the Tokyo Train Station soundset by Dominik Dimaano
• Directory listings of users you’re following, and your followers.

Download and Install Spaz using this link : http://funkatron.com/apps/spaz/AIR/SpazAIR.air

You can get more information about Spaz here : http://funkatron.com/spaz

Google Analytics Reporting Suite

Google Analytics is a statistics tool and provides you different stats about your site/blog. This application brings you the functionality of Google Analytics onto your desktop. The application has clean and simple Interface and allows viewing reports in tabbed manner. It allows exporting reports to numerous file formats like PDF , XML or Excel.

Download and Install application from this link.

Fresh

Fresh is a RSS Reader built using AJAX and Adobe AIR . The Fresh reader features offline RSS reading, multiple panels within a single window, tabbed browsing, and basic browser integration.


Download Fresh from this link : http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/air/linux/samples/1/Fresh.air

MiniTask

MiniTask is a easy to use task management tool and allows you to manage your todos list efficiently and properly. It supports drag 'n' drop reorder, alarm timers, printing of pretty task sheets, copying tasks from and to other applications etc.



You can get more information about MiniTask from this link: http://minitask.betriebsraum.de/

Download and Install MiniTask from this link : http://minitask.betriebsraum.de/air/MiniTask.air

Posty

Posty is a microblogging application that allows you to post simultaneously to a number of different microblogging sites like twitter, jaiku, tumblr, friendfeed and identi.ca with a single click. Some of the features of Posty include :

• browsing of personal, public and friends’ timeline
• posting of replies (Twitter, Pownce, Friendfeed, Identi.ca)
• browsing and posting of direct messages (Twitter and Identi.ca)
• support to favorites (Twitter and Identi.ca)
• search of past messages (Twitter and Friendfeed)
• automatic, as-you-type, spellchecking of messages
• built-in url shortening service
• configurable notification of recently posted messages (Twitter)
• automatic notification and installation of new versions
• visualization of multimedia items (Youtube and Vimeo videos, Tumblr audio, Flickr/Zoomr/Smugmug galleries)
• automatic management of internet connection (works behind proxies!).

You can get more information about Posty from the following site : http://spreadingfunkyness.com/posty/

Download and Install Posty from the following link :http://spreadingfunkyness.com/posty-download/download.php?get=posty1.6.air.zip (You would need to extract the zip file and then install the .air file )


Tutorial Written by : Ambuj Varshney (blogambuj@gmail.com)
For Linux on Desktop Blog , http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com
(C) 2008 , Ambuj Varshney