Aviary is a suite of rich internet applications geared for artists of all genres. From image editing to typography to music to 3D to video, we have a tool for everything. At Worth1000, we are creating a complex ecosystem for artists and providing the world with free, capable collaborative tools and an approach to collaboration and rights management that will turn the marketplace for online art on its head.

“All of our tools are based right in your browser or as downloadable AIR applications. Our tools all communicate and relate to each other. To illustrate an example: You can import a swatch from Toucan into Phoenix, while doing complex bitmap processing of a 3D object developed in Hummingbird. Finally, you can take your finished artwork and lay it out in Owl as the DVD artwork for a music CD you and your friends put together in Roc and Myna and offer it for sale in our marketplace, Hawk.”

From the screenshots on their blog, it would seem as if all these applications are built in Flex or AIR.

Woodpecker – their smart image resizing app – was demoed at Techcrunch40 the other week and incorporates Seam Carving, the process of smart image resizing first pioneered by the brilliant Dr. Ariel Shamir, and can be seen working at MAX if you email the guys at aviary( a )worth1000.com.

The full suite of applications which sit in the Aviary are:

Phoenix - Image editor
Toucan - Color swatches and palettes creator.
Peacock - Computer algorhythm-based pattern generator.
Raven - Vector editor
Hummingbird - 3D Modeller and skinner
Myna - Audio editor
Roc - Music generator
Starling - Video editor
Owl - Desktop publishing layout editor
Penguin - Word processing software geared towards creative writers.
Pigeon - Painting simulator
Tern - Terrain generator. This is a mini tool.
Horus - Font editor
Woodpecker - Smart image resizer (seam carving). This is a mini-tool.
Rookery - A free, unlimited distributed file system network that anyone can connect to and store data in. It also powers our search engine.
Hawk - Digital content marketplace
Eagle - A smart online application that can identify complex data about an image based on the pixel patterns (i.e. which specific camera an image originally came from).
Crane – Custom image product creator, that can integrate with other websites.

A complete list of tools that are being created can be found here.

Buzzword, the online word processor Adobe announced purchasing this morning would seem to fit into the ‘Penguin’ category…I’ll be watching this space avidly since they seem to have covered off pretty much every aspect of digital design.

This unofficial AIR version of Google Analytics delivers the functionality of browser-based Google Analytics but with greater
usability and a richer experience. If you haven’t heard of AIR (once named “Apollo”), it’s a platform developed by Adobe that enables web developers to deploy their web services outside of the browser so they function more like traditional applications.

This is the first AIR program that I have tested that really gets me excited about the platform. As a beta program, it’s not perfect (I ran into a few errors), but overall it has been executed very well. It’salso nice to see such a fully-functional program.

Check out Google Analytics AIR beta. If you don’t already have AIR, you need to download it to use any AIR-base applications (as with Flash).

Both Adobe and Google are involved in this project now. Adobe has included the application in its Showcase program, and
Google product managers and engineers are providing him with feedback and helping him make it more secure.

The beta 2 of Google Analytics AIR will focus on improved international support and the integration of AdWords.

via Techcrunch

The HTML renderer that’s been adopted by Adobe is very interesting. They’ve opted for WebKit, an open source browser engine with an open source Mobile solution as well, possibly enabling the same feature on both platforms?

Adobe are enbracing XHTML and AJAX as part of the solution, not a rival technology, as I’ve seen many developers on the AJAX world do. Adobe are acknowledging that there is a geniune purpose for XHTML & AJAX combined with the rich media features offered by the swf format.

In the presentation Adobe’s chielf Apollo engineer talks of combining the text render engine in both the WebKit renderer and the swf player,  known as Saffron and currently part of the Flash player 8 and above feature set, in order that the user is unaware of the makeup of the app.
Oh, and one other thing I found out after watching this presentation about Apollo, is that crossdomain policy files will not be required in order to access information on different servers.

The bottom line from my point of view is that Apollo offers a solution in which the Interface becomes the most important aspect. We’re actually getting to a point where we’re able to think more about why we’re creating this particular solution, instead of “wow, look what we’ve done – It nearly killed us achieving it, and it’s not a great expereince, but isn’t it impressive!”

I don’t beleive that Apollo is going to be the right way to go for everything. But I certainly feel there will be a type of interface and set of functionality for an Apollo app which may work very well in partnership with a mobile and web interface solution.

Update – this got sent to me just today – It’s a recording of the Apollo session at Max last week

What he concluded with however, was the still untapped potential in a number of other areas, primarily platform and desktop based. Other areas he mentioned were office efficiency, cloud storage, identity, developer tools, market destruction (such as 1-800-FREE411) and enterprise. He tied into his belief in these areas with mention of Adobe’s Apollo platform , and having seen it running in the flesh, I’m inclined to agree.

The opportunities that Apollo offers have not gone unnoticed on me and I’m incredibly excited about what the future holds in this area. I only picked up on this article this morning, but based on what Mike said, I’m very interested in formulating a list of necessary criteria in order to create a platform which ties in with the work that has already gone on – e.g. Flickr, mySpace, deli.cio.us, writerly etc. in order for people to be able to seamlessly go from one application to another, utilizing additional features such as universal log-in, and desktop communication which haven’t been possible from inside the browser.

In order to understand some of the problems a product like Apollo potentially alleviates, it’s important to think about what the current problem is. Online applications & Web 2.0 services haven’t been able to release themselves from the constraint of the browser for a number of reasons – the most important and obvious ones being privacy and security. Were you to have a solution which sits on your desktop like any other normal application, then you can begin to offer a solution to currently what we have which is a number of disperate services all assuming that theirs in going to win through. The honest fact of the matter is that whilst there are always going to be market leaders such as YouTube, there are going to be a multitude of other competitiors who just didn’t quite find themselves in the right place at the right time.

Why is it, for example, that mySpace is more popular than it’s other competitors such as Facebook? It’s certainly not for the beautiful design or crafted user experience. Whilst people concentrate on the why, I’m going to concentrate on improving the how. If you have a solution which offers user’s a better experience by enabling those solutions to be housed under one roof, you’re enable a much more seamless experience to the user. Developers can concentrate on what they’re good at, namely functionality, whilst designers can ensure it’s as effortless as possible to share information on your desktop with information online, thereby integrating what currently takes some time into something that’s as easy as dragging a file into a new window.

Apollo screenshots