Information Week on the rich internet. Relevant quotes:

“‘We had a pretty strong sense that we were losing customers,’ says VP of IS Dennis Shockro (at Yankee Candle). The $380 million-a-year company also couldn’t tell how many customers bought products online or by telephone.” >> This is a rich internet problem? Sounds to me like you have a poorly designed server side software application, not a problem with the presentation layer.

More… “Forrester Research has coined the term “executable Internet” to describe these Web applications–largely based on Macromedia Inc.’s new line of Flash MX software–that harness computers’ local processing power. ‘HTML pages are extremely limited in functionality,’ says Harley Manning, a Forrester analyst. ‘The interactivity drops to almost none.'” >> Ironic that the web was originally christened as bringing interactivity to the consumer… we were supposed to be leaving the one way communication to the radio and television and living this new exciting ‘interactive’ revolution through the Web, but now that turns out to be false, at least according to Harley. I’ve been living a lie! The web isn’t interactive! We need Flash to have interactivity!

Most interesting though: “And sources say Microsoft is developing a new Windows user interface, code-named Avalon, based on vector graphics, and due in a future version of Windows code-named Longhorn.” If it’s cross platform, say goodbye to Flash. Course, is Avalon really all about vector graphics? This story makes it seem like it’s a different kind of UI, something entirely different than the ability to bring interactivity to the web browser… And this article portays it as “… a layer of plumbing that will extend the existing Win32 development platform at the heart of Windows by building in support for the Longhorn networking, storage, digital-rights-management and graphics enhancements that Microsoft plans to build into Longhorn.”