Our Flex 3/AIR 1.0 launch meeting went really well, thank you all for coming. Now its time to meet again, this time I thought it would be cool to get some insight in Flex’s competition Silverlight. Even though we are a Flex User Group, I believe it’s important for everyone working in the RIA space to understand all the technology options available and make informed decisions when selecting the RIA technology for our next project.

Vivek started a very interesting discussion on his blog where he’s questioning Adobe’s decision to not have a MAX in India this year.

Last year, many of us RIA enthusiasts in India were kinda disappointed with the lack of RIA related events in India, so very close to the end of last year I with some other members from BangaloreFX helped organize the very first RIA focused event in the country initRIA and it was a big success. Things are very different this year, from the very beginning of the year I started to feel that RIAs were getting a lot of traction in the local circles and we have a lot of fun in store for India this year.

I’ve been meaning to buy my copy of Flex Builder 3 since the release, but as it turns out Adobe does not have an online store for India, so you have buy adobe software via resellers .. there are 10 resellers listed in Bangalore, I have called all of them in the last few days .. some of them did not even now that Flex Builder 3 has been released and the others told me that if I place my order today I will get Flex Builder in 3 to 4 weeks, You’ve got to be kidding me !!

Flex India is a community for Adobe Flex developers across India where we discuss everything related to Rich Internet Application development using the flash platform. As far as I know, the group was started somewhere in mid July of 2006 by Manish Jethani, it stayed quite dormant during its early months, about a year ago it had 43 members and the number of discussions was starting to increase, today as we speak the group has 1003 members and 1079 messages were posted last month.

Exactly a year ago today, I released a flex app I built over the weekend and called it flexbox .. many people loved it and since then it has received 115000 visitors from 4629 cities around the world and it still continues to receive hundreds of visitors everyday. I’m very glad to know that you guys liked it so much. When FlexBox started off I had hoped that I would spend more time with it, improve the application and keep adding more components .. but all that never happened ..

Adobe has just announced on Flex.org that Flex 3 and AIR 1.0 are now available .. today is a big day in the history of RIAs Now that the cat is out of the bag, this will be the focus of Bangalore Flex User Group’s special meeting today! Adobe is sponsoring this meeting with schwag and a raffle copy of Adobe Flex Professional.

Its official, Ted Patrick has announced that Flex 3 and AIR 1.0 are just days away, man I’m excited !! Now that the releases are so close, if you want to know more about the exiting new features coming in Flex 3 and discuss all the goodness of AIR you cannot miss tomorrow’s Bangalore Flex User Group Meeting … 80 people have already registered. Just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about .. What is Flex?

Thursday, the 31st of January was my last day at SAP, after a lot of thinking I finally decided to step out of the corporate work environment that I’ve been in since I started my career and give consulting a chance. But wait, before you start typing an email to send me your next RIA project, I have already committed the next several months to an RIA for a stealth mode web startup based in Atlanta, Georgia.

initRIA went very well, now its time for our next meeting and this one you just can’t miss … Join the Bangalore Flex User Group for this “can’t miss” meeting! Adobe’s RIA technologies enable you to rapidly build and deploy the most engaging applications across browsers and on the desktop. The Bangalore Flex User Group is hosting a special live event to share exciting new information on Adobe’s platform tools and technologies for building RIAs.