Desktop Keeley, the AIR application built for the Sun newspaper in the UK, "has beaten previous download figures for Sun apps after only three days" according to this article.

There's nothing like a lingerie model dancing on your desktop for driving downloads.

Flex has seen a lot of uptake by large enterprise companies since its release. Philips, Taleo, n2n, Oracle and many others are Flex customers. Today EMC, makers of Documentum, announced that they're launching a new client based on Flex.

From the press release: “We have been known as having the best platform but not the best client,” says Karin Ondricek, an EMC senior manager for product marketing. “Our client has been a weak spot. But with the new client, people are immediately going to be able to pick it up and know how to work it.” Sounds like I'm not the only one that's been frustrated by the UI for Documentum.

The article has a few screenshots of the Flex applications that have been built.

I've had quite a few Flex apps come to my attention lately that I haven't had time to blog about. Here's a list of them:

Nibea - Nibea is "a website tool for creative people". The editor is built with Adobe Flex.
Amazon's video on demand service is powered by Flex and Flash Media Server.
The BBC launched an AIR application for the upcoming Olympics. No one noticed because we were all too busy with Desktop Keeley.
HP launched a new application in beta called Logo Maker, built by the talented team at mediaRAIN.

TechCrunch is running a story about Tokbox, who today released an Adobe AIR desktop client that allows users on Windows, Mac and Linux to do video chatting, absolutely free.

The video quality on the application is really good, as is the audio quality (after a few quick minutes testing it at work - not sure what it would be like over the Internet tubes, but the local network tubes were good).

The desktop AIR application is identical to the web based application that they have online, which is really well done.

The only problem I had was when I installed the application, it did prompt me to import my contacts from other IM clients, which was nice. But it would be even better if all these IM companies shared my information with one and another. That's not a complaint about Tokbox per say, just IM in general, though its something that they're going to have to deal with.

Mercedes Benz launched a new Flex powered website for their USA page. I never visited the old site, but the new site looks great, and has a nice application to build your own Benz.

Most car manufacturers use Flash for their website. A quick look shows Toyota, Honda, Ford, Mazda, GM, and VW (thanks Michael Chaize!) are all using Flash on their sites.

The blogosphere is all abuzz over Google's launch of Lively, an in browser virtual world, similar to Second Life.

However, the bigger news for RIA developers, and especially Flex developers, is the technology that they used to build it. From this Flickr screenshot, it appears as though Google is using Flex to develop the UI for Lively. This assumption is also supported by the minimum system requirements, which list Flash [Player] 9 or higher. (Flex applications can only run in Flash Player 9 or higher because of the new VM requirements.)

Since Lively only runs on Windows machines (and not in VMWare) I can't personally test this out - can anyone verify the Flickr screenshot?

Poll Everywhere, which I covered in May, recently launched a number of new features, and fixed some of the issues I had with the service initially.

Poll Everywhere is a hosted service for mobile voting - users can vote using SMS, but now they can also vote directly on their iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile or other web enabled phone.

They've also removed monthly maximums on the number of votes, which is great. Their pricing plans are now much simpler - what size of audience do you expect to vote. (Poll Everywhere is also free for Title 1 public schools who have no made Adequate Yearly Progress, which is nice to see.)

If you haven't checked out Poll Everywhere, they have a free trial version available for up to 30 responses per poll. Here's a sample poll that I created for this article to give you an idea of what it looks like and how it works:

Activa Live Chat, a Flex based live chat solution for websites, recently launched a new desktop client based on Adobe AIR. The desktop version has the exact same UI as the web version, but with a number of added benefits - the most important one being taskbar (Windows) or dock (OS X) notifications of incoming messages.

I've tested out Activa Live Chat before, and its really easy to integrate into your website. They provide a JavaScript snippet that you put into your webpage, and that JavaScript launches the Activa Live Chat header window when the page loads. If you're looking to integrate Live Chat into your existing RIA, they have an SDK available.

Activa Live Chat is available as a hosted solution for websites looking to incorporate live chat into their site. A free 14 day trial is also available.

Flex is being used to build a lot of highly useful, enterprise class applications these days that really help businesses - this isn't one of them. Strip Poker men's club has built an online version of strip poker (note: some of the content on the site is NSFW) with Flex and Flash. According to the description, the application allows you to chat with other people in the lobby, and then enter a "private" room where you can play strip poker. Of course, with the ability of the Flash Player to access the user's webcam, this is true "strip poker".

Via Digg.

The official Euro 2008 website is using Flex extensively throughout the site. They're using Flex for the MatchDay application, which allows you to stay up to date with the latest happenings in each game, as well as the chat interface before the games are happening (see sample). The Players section of the website makes extensive use of Flex, including Flex charting and the advanced data grid. Finally, the widgets that they've created for people to add to their blogs and personal pages are also created with Flex.

(Via Flex Force)