In perhaps the first use of JavaFX for a large-scale international event, JavaFX has been named the official rich client technology for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC). During the XXI Olympic Winter Games Vancouver2010.com, the official Web site of the 2010 Olympics, is expected to be one of the world’s busiest Web destinations, attracting more than 1.5 billion hits.

Apache Pivot is a platform for building rich Internet applications (RIAs) in Java. It has now graduated to a Top-Level Project (TLP) and has announced the release of Apache Pivot 1.4. Pivot claims to combine the enhanced productivity and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the robustness of the industry-standard Java platform. Pivot provides a foundation upon which sophisticated and engaging applications can be easily built and deployed over the Web. Because Pivot applications are written in Java, they can take full advantage of the comprehensive feature set and extensive industry support of the Java platform.

An interesting look at Microsoft over the past decade. This article by Gavin Clarke for the Register looks at how the landscape has changed with the OS, browsers, software development languages, cloud computing & mobile software, the successes, the mistakes Microsoft made and the opportunities it still has.

Gomez has announced a major platform-wide upgrade, simultaneously releasing integrated enhancements to its Web load testing, Web performance management, and Web cross-browser testing solutions for optimizing Web and mobile applications.

Adobe Systems has announced the beta availability of Adobe Flash Builder 4 (formerly named Adobe Flex Builder), Adobe Flash Catalyst and the open source Flex 4 framework.

Ajax is perhaps the best known RIA technology today. While several implementations of Ajax have arrived, and many software projects involve the use of Ajax; there is still a lack of consistency in the approach and usage of Ajax. There is also a significant confusion regarding which Ajax toolkit should be used, and how?