Adobe took an important step in merging desktop and Internet applications upon announcing the availability of AIR 1.0, a run-time module that provides a way of running "rich Internet applications" (RIAs) on the desktop.

Since the release of the beta version of AIR, several organizations already adopted the technology; among them, NASDAQ Stock Market Inc, AOL, EBay and many others. I agree with most developers, that AIR will reduce download time due to the fact that the desktop is constantly being updated while connected to the Internet.

A free download will allow users of Macs, PCs and, later this year, Linux machines to run any Air applications. Talking about interpretability, the word will get a whole new meaning on the web now. It’s about taking existing web applications and adding extra functionality whether you want to work offline or whether you want to access data on your disk.

Adobe had and is still facing a challenging task – to spread wider in the predominantly Java/.NET enterprise world.  But they already made some serious achievement in this direction. The birth of AIR is pretty much the death of Java on the desktop, well at least some of e thinking that way :).

Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system combining HTML, Ajax, Flash and Flex to bring rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop. And needless to say until now Adobe is leading the way forward; Microsoft’s Silverlight is fantastic but not yet ready to take on Adobe’s RIA Empire, and after AIR it wouldn’t be so easy nut to crack either.

But Adobe is not the only one dreaming of merging online and offline world. Adobe faces solid contest from a number of big and small companies with the same initiative. Many small developers like OpenLazlo and Xcerion are creating “Web-top” or “Web operating systems” intended to move applications and data off the PC desktop and into the Internet through the Web browser.

Mozilla, the Firefox maker, has created a system known as Prism. Sun Microsystems introduced JavaFX this year, which is also aimed at blurring the Web-desktop line. Google is testing a system called Gears, which is intended to allow some Web services to work on computers that are not connected to the Internet.

Adobe also released Flex 3, a free open source framework intended to build and maintain RIAs. Adobe Flex Builder 3 is a tool that supports RIAs deployment on Adobe AIR and comes with Adobe Creative Suite 3, improving RIAs performance.

Hey get ready for RIA war!