Aviary

In a post last week I talked about the growth of cloud computing and web based applications in relation to online desktops. Today I’ve got some amazing flash powered online tools to show you.

Aviary is a suite of web based creative tools. Each of the tools has been named after some kind of bird, so you’ll have to get used to nearly 20 names like “Phoenix”, “Hawk” and “Raven”.

All of our tools are based right in your browser or as downloadable AIR applications. Our tools all communicate and relate to each other. To illustrate an example: You can import a swatch from Toucan into Phoenix, while doing complex bitmap processing of a 3D object developed in Hummingbird. Finally, you can take your finished artwork and lay it out in Owl as the DVD artwork for a music CD you and your friends put together in Roc and Myna and offer it for sale in our marketplace, Hawk.

Aviary is still very much under development and is strictly in invitation only beta. You can however sign up with the early “early bird invitations” form and specify what type of tools interest you, such as “image editing” or “desktop publishing”.

I actually have no idea how many of these tools are actually completed or at what stage the project is at. I have received an invite to two, “Phoenix” and “Peacock”, an image editor and pattern generator.

All I can say is that these applications are fantastic. They run from the web but act exactly like desktop software. It loaded fast and I experienced no lags or anything to indicate this wasn’t just a normal program running on my computer. Phoenix is fantastic program and almost matches Photoshop for functionality. In fact some of the example images produced are completely comparable to those produced by the commercial application.

When you receive your invitation you’ll get a user account which provides you with a dashboard and a place to save, store and showcase what you have created and a central place you can access all your applications from.