Adobe’s AIR platform has slowly began to take popularity, with its primary advantage being its interoperability between platforms. The software allows developers to easily market software to others regardless of whether they use a Mac, Windows, or Vista. Special Thanks for Fresh AIR Apps for the app directory, as well as the helpful descriptions when I couldn’t describe them.

Even though the AIR program is quite young, there are quite a few interesting programs out already, from the useful to the interesting.

Twhirl

Twhirl is one of several online desktop applications that allow you to send your twitter talks to twitter net. It shows what other people are saying, and allows you to respond in kind. While I personally prefer Twitterbar or Digsby to shoot my tweets, those who prefer a desktop-exclusive app would probably enjoy this.

Fresh AIR apps explains:

In a very small footprint the application shows you 10 items at a time for each main category. Through a very complete settings menu you can tailor which categories or keywords you want to see stories for within each main category. This selection then gets stored locally so you don’t loose it upon restart.

Doominow

When grad school started for me, me and GTD had a falling out, (though I do keep some of the tenets, only horribly warped for my own devising.) But one thing with GTD was the multitude of lists, actions, labels, @this and @that, etc one had to do, plus the fact that David Allen wasn’t big on Todos. Anyway, Doominow doesn’t care about all that. It’s a program that does todos, and that’s it. Perfect for the anti-GTDer, and possibly useful for the GTD-er, but I won’t bother figuring out a way.

Snakr

If you’re someone like me, you need a desktop-based reader for the multitudes of RSS feeds you monitor, and don’t have time for anything else. However, for those times when you gotta get your RSS Fix, old-style, Snakr provides a news ticker of your feeds for your personal enjoyment. Waiting for a specific feed is a bitch, but it’s entertaining, and good if you’re a casual RSS reader.

Ebay Desktop

For the E-auctioneer in all of us, Ebay Desktop allows you to do just about anything Ebay-wise. FreshAIR says it better then I can:

Everything you need to browse and bid is easily found within the interface. The live filtering of your search results using the clever related keywords panel and categories is intuitive and fast. The main view of auctions shows how long each auction item has left in real time, no more refreshing of the webpage. You can tailor this view to show a standard list with small images, skinny view or large picture view.

It’s still in beta, and lacks a selling option, but it’s still a good piece of work.

Klok

For the freelancer/student in all of us, Klok allows us to keep track of the time on specific projects, be it a 20-page rhetorical criticism on Apple’s use of David and Goliath (No lie, I really did write on this, and I want to work further on this.) or a web site to be designed, Klok can help you keep track of it all.

Other apps?

There aren’t that many apps out there yet, but this is a good start. Here’s a few AIR-based apps I’d like to see, in no particular order:

• Instant messenger
• A desktop RSS reader similar to Feedburner
• IRC chat client
• Blogging software for AIR
• PDF reader (C’mon, it’s Abobe!)
• A GTD app (Because they’ll complain)
• A research program (Because I’ll complain)
• TETRIS!
• An email client (Why not?)

Here’s hoping!