So the open discussion at Adobe Live was a lively affair.

Topics touched on include:

Data ownership, www.openrightsgroup.org, shared data, open API’s, the flickr/google maps effect - I agree with the panel that, whenever anyone is publishing data online it should have an API and be usable by anyone how wants to use it. Sadly in the UK we have some pretty outdated laws when it comes to sharing data, luckily the guardian have started a campaign to free our data

Data states - when we’ve finished using an application, who owns our data, where is it stored, can we take it with us to use off-line? If you saw the keynote at Adobe Live you will have seen the example of a next gen app, a airline booking service that ports to 3G mobile and traditional WAP. The data was accessed through the web, offline on a laptop and a mobile device, it looks like Adobe have this pretty much wrapped up, we just need a couple of years to start implimenting it.

Apollo & Sparkle - Can someone clear up my confusion with Sparkle? Is it proprietry to Windows Vista and if so, why would anyone bother if there’s a cross platform equivilent in Apollo? - Both look very interesting and potentially a giant leap from the browser to the desktop. If Apollo is everything I’m hoping it will be there’ll be a communication layer between the OS controls and the Flash apps, in a similar way to Flash-Lite.

Someone asked if AJAX with it’s 136 (it may well be more by now) frameworks including Adobe’s Spry was just a fad or if it really is a Flash killer. I’m of the belief that you use the appropiate tech for each brief you get, if AJAX is what’s going to solve the problem then use AJAX. Is it a Flash killer, no. Is it the best thing since sendAndLoad, no. Is it more or less accessible than Flash, who knows they’re probably as bad as each other

Naturally Flex 2.0 was mentioned and hailed as the next big thing, the potential of Flex is amazing, people are getting so excited about this and Adobe have played it just right with the public betas. They knew that Flex 1.5 got a bad rep, mostly dues to “pricing” issues, now they’ve got that sorted they can start building on the players penetration, player 8 is up to around 75% already.

Lastly, Accessibility got a mention as did JK Rowling, while it’s sited as an “accessible” Flash site, that’s only relative. Flash is still only accessible by 2 screen readers, apparently. As someone who does a lot of work for local authorities and big corperations I have to work with inder the shadow of Accessibility on a daily basis. The thing about the W3C guidelines is that they’re just that, guidelines there is room for personal interpretation and when discussing Accessibility it’s never black & white it is always shades of gray.