There are some really cool things going on for bringing web applications to the desktop, and Adobe AIR, formally Apollo, is one of them. Yesterday Beta 2 of Adobe AIR was released, which was announced at Adobe Max. You can download it from here. I also advise checking out the developer center to see sample apps and articles. One article in particular explains some of the new major features that are included in the beta.
Also going on today was the keynote which brought up many cool new features about the next version of Flash Player (Astro). Some of new features included 3D, a new scripting language (Hydra) for adding effects to bitmaps, and a new text layout engine. You can check out a video of part of the keynote from today here. Not real recent but a notable is also the addition of H.264 to the upcoming flash player.
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