TechCrunch and Ryan Stewart have both covered this in the past few days, but I thought I would as well. Pikeo is a photosharing site that launched recently, built with Adobe Flex 2.

I haven't used it myself, but users seem to be excited about it, especially since Flickr isn't multi-lingual. (You'd think with the community behind them that they could create a site that allowed users to translate their interface into a number of languages, like Google does). Pikeo is initially available in English, French and Spanish.

Development was done by France Telecom, and they've got a launch party at the Adobe office in San Francisco next Tuesday. You can try and score yourself an invitation to it, if you're interested.

Some are upset that the UI is using Flash, while others seem to be more positive about the move. "Overall, the interface feels like a rich client application more than a web application, albeit a sluggish client application. I like that. Flickr and Smugmug are getting more AJAX-y every day, but neither is close to where Pikeo is right now." I think that sums up the advantage for Flex in a nutshell: you can add on all the Ajax you want to your website, but if you're looking for a true rich Internet application, then a Flash interface, built with either Flex or Flash authoring, is your best bet. And we haven't even touched on Apollo yet!