Dear Lord, please don't let El Reg turn into CNet, where every third news item is a press release for some company, releasing a product no-one cares about, and dressing it up in the same tired "NEW TECHNOLOGY!" bull.

"...deliver rich online applications on the desktop outside the browser..." - so now an internet enabled desktop app is news?

Perhaps this is the kicker: "...which lets developers re-use skills in Flash, HTML, AJAX and Java..."

Why not just use the technologies mentioned, instead of buying a brand new product, which "lets" you use them?

"Driving RIA is the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), which lets developers re-use skills in Flash, HTML, AJAX and Java"

AIR lets you run Flex/Flash/HTML/AJAX applications offline, with a common API to access the local machine.

It doesn't do anything for Java.