Yesterday, in a keynote address at ZendCon, Andi Gutmans announced a partnership between Zend and Adobe. Zend also sent out a press release about it.

Together with Zeev Suraski, Andi founded Zend to promote the development of PHP. (Both of them helped me with Core PHP Programming and I used to write a column for Zend.com). Zend offers tools and support for PHP developers. Adobe makes many tools for designers, including Flash and Flex. Flash is an ubiquitous platform for games and videos hosted on Web sites. Flex is a programming language for building Flash applications that appeals to programmers more than the designer-oriented Flash studio.

Andi said the purpose of the partnership was to smooth out the experience of developing with PHP and Flex together. Specifically, the two companies plan to integrate support for Action Message Format (AMF) into Zend Framework (a library of PHP code developed by Zend). They also plan to get Zend's Eclipse-based PHP IDE working with Flex Builder.

I am looking at this in the context of Google's recent release of Chrome, a new browser that looks to compete with Firefox and MSIE. There are three significant platforms for rich internet applications: Flash, Silverlight and Ajax. Sponsors of those platforms, respectively, are Adobe, Microsoft and Google. Microsoft also supports Ajax but is doing what it can to squash Flash as it did Java. Mozilla is a strong supporter of Ajax, although we could argue that since most of their revenue comes from a deal with Google, it's passthrough support.

Flash and Silverlight can do one thing that Ajax can't, multimedia such as video. Otherwise, Ajax has a great advantage because it requires no plugin. Of course, Flash and Silverlight are easy to install, and Microsoft made a big push for installs by paying NBC to host a bunch of video for the olympics in Silverlight. Both Flash and Sliverlight still suffer from poor availabily, especially in lower end system. Sometimes an Ajax site might seem a little slow, but running a complex Flash app on a slow computer is painful and sometimes unendurable. I know this first hand from sitting with my kids trying to play Sesame Street games on an old Windows box.

I suspect this partnership between Adobe and Zend is a hedge on Zend's part. Zend also appears to be closer to Microsoft lately, and Microsoft certainly has been moving to support PHP. PHP's best strength has always been easy integration with everything and it hold helps to make it work well with Flex. Adobe on the other hand seems to be realizing that while their horse was out in front for a while, they are now falling behind. Ultimately, I see Ajax winning this race. For the next five years, Google will continue to have the midas touch and they have clearly chosen Ajax. PHP already has good support for building Ajax apps and this partnership will be a bonus.

Microsoft pushed out an announcement that they were holding a C# developers meeting in Second Life.  The email pointed to an article on devsource.com.  At Clear Ink, we're finding that Second Life is a good place to hold meetings that would otherwise be on the phone. It made me wonder why Microsoft hasn't created their own competitor to Second Life. After all, it's practically in their brand that they take great ideas in the marketplace (Mac OS, Netscape Navigator, Google Earth) and make "better" versions (Windows XP, MSIE, Visual Earth). I've got to think they've got some bright people who could put together a clone. They definitely have MMORPGs (Asheron's Call).

So, they clearly recognize the utility of a virtual world. They clearly have the capital to fund a project. They clearly have the will, however misguided, to fight Google head to head. They must have some will to fight with IBM and Sun, both of whom have interesting virtual worlds work going on. It would nice to see Microsoft come out with a leading edge product after such a long time.

Maybe they need a visionary. I understand Cory Ondrejka doesn't have a job. He was the CTO at Linden Lab until recently. I'd wish him luck, but luck is something one makes. He's clearly made his own already. I will be really interested to know if the company in Redmond is paying attention.

Jason Calacanis, formerly of Weblogs, Inc and AOL, launched a new search engine a few hours ago called Mahalo. Although the site will tell you that it means thank you in Hawaiian. I already knew this because I've heard the Laurie Berkner song about a hundred times already. (It's my older son's favorite disc right now). I bet Steve Nelson knew it too, but he's frequently in a state of aloha.

Mahalo, the Web site, has a simple premise. Provide a page for each of the top 10,000 search terms. The information on the page is written an edited by a responsible person employed by the site. Robert Scoble suggested it was kind of like Yahoo! when Yahoo! was just a directory.

They are calling themselves a search engine, but I think it works more like Wikipedia, except you might have a bit more trust that the content is credible. I might go to Mahalo first if I were trying to look something up as if looking it up in an encyclopedia. I wouldn't use it to figure out how to use javascript to dynamically update the cascading styles on elements of an unordered list.

The top 10,000 search terms idea is interesting because it runs counter to the idea of a long tail. Google is very much oriented towards the long tail. It indexes lots of obscure stuff that only a few people care about. Jason's site only indexes the head and part of the neck. Or maybe it's just the forehead. I don't have a good idea of how many keyword phrases fit into the beast that is all things people search for on the Web.

I wonder where the top 10,000 search terms come from. It would be interesting if they paid attention to the terms people typed into their search box. It would be really interesting if people could do the equivalent of a google bomb by linking terms to pages that have yet to be written. For example, why isn't there a Leon Atkinson page?

Steve Ballmer and the rest of the Microsoft crew started making noise this past week about how 235 of their patents are being used by open source software with no compensation. I've been thinking about this as a last gasp. It's one of those moves companies do when the outcome has finally become clear to them, but they still need to try some crazy scheme to try to save the old world they used to live in. It's taking one last big gulp of air before going under for the last time.

Once it goes down, it will either drown in the sea of free software or it will learn to breath water. I'm hoping it becomes a fish, like IBM and Sun, because Microsoft has done some amazing work in the past (obviously). If it insists on being a land animal under the waves, we're going to watch a big hulk of a corpse slowly rot. Microsoft needs to decide to go the route of other great computer companies or if it wants to hang out with the zombies of the entertainment industry.

If you need background on the story, read the fortune article. Suing Linux distributors opens up a legal question that Microsoft does not want the courts to answer. So, Microsoft is faced with suing their very customers in order to enforce their software patents. This has not been going well for the RIAA and MPAA. It tends to discourage people from buying your products if you treat them like criminals. It tends to encourage them to work around you, cut you out of the conversation.

I have trust in Microsoft that while it's confused and in denial, it has a strong sense of self interest, enough to adapt and keep themselves alive. A resurgent Microsoft can exist if it takes a radical turn. I have an idea Microsoft should consider if it would like to become the biggest fish in this new ocean world.

Accept that patents stifle innovation. Consequently, do what you can to destroy them as a legal concept. People say that without patents, no one would invent. Who invented things before there were patents? Patents are a way for lucky people to aim the gun of the government at unsuspecting companies. Microsoft itself has had this gun aimed at it most famously with the Eolas case.