Blur the line between web and desktop
Web applications are typically limited because they don't have access to files on your machine. But consumers don't care about where information lives, what they're built with or why things might look different in one browser or another -- they just want things to work. With AIR, an app always looks the same no matter what platform it runs on -- and it can blend data from web and desktop within a single, seamless experience.
Nickelodeon has incorporated this idea into a puzzle game for non tech-savvy kids. Players go to the Nickelodeon website and find puzzle pieces by browsing, answering questions and other interactions. When they find one, they drag it to an AIR puzzle in progress on their desktop, where it snaps intuitively into place.
It's not hard to think of a grown-up version. Imagine an automaker that wants to enable drivers to create, compile and share their own driving playlists; after all, people love to socialize their playlists. Using AIR, you would be able to create an app that figures out what songs a user has on his desktop, then syncs it with his profile on the brand's website -- creating a much deeper brand interaction and relationship.
In both these cases, functionality is running on both the desktop and the browser -- and the consumer doesn't need to know or care.
Expand your brand footprint
Until recently, every brand experience online had to make one compromise: appearing within the same medium as everyone else's, mediated by that Explorer, Firefox or Safari window. With this new breed of apps, you don't have to live in that world anymore; your brand can constitute the entire environment.
eBay, one of first companies to work with Adobe while AIR was in beta, has created a desktop app that lets you do everything you do on the eBay site but in a more immersive brand experience, down to buttons, menus and icons with a distinctive eBay feel. It brings you a lot closer to the brand, eliminating that common web entry point.
Anthropologie is another brand that has rethought the online shopping experience. In the past, online shopping has borne little resemblance to walking into a store and trying things on -- it's all checkboxes and "shopping carts" rather than intuition and serendipity. Anthropologie used AIR to build an app that launches a full-screen, animated, deeply enriched experience: products move all around you in a beautifully designed layout and can be moved by you as well. It's much closer to replicating the ideal retail experience and makes a much more powerful brand impression.
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