Today I came across a very interesting project that aims to bridge applications written in Java with Adobe AIR. The Merapi project was started by a team of people who all use AIR and Java on a daily basis. They found that while AIR does some things really well, it had severe limitations when it comes to accessing hardware devices like the Wii remote or mobile phones.
In order to provide the best user experiences, we often find ourselves in a postion to try and push the limits on available technologies. When coming up with ideas about cool applications that could be build on the Adobe AIR™ platform, some of the most innovative concepts for “Rich, Connected” desktop applications were even outside the capabilities that AIR™ was able to provide. – http://www.merapiproject.net
Go and heave a read of the site which gives more background detail on the project and team.
The code is not currently freely available although the alpha is scheduled to be released on May 24th.
Just as a taster here is a brief video from Web Maniacs showing a very simple demo. See Adam Flater’s blog post for more info.
