RIA Company watch - Effective UI

I have been looking at latest RIA tools and services all these while. One thought came into my mind as to who are the people behind them and how are they defining their solutions/services.

The first of my series is Effective UI.

These are the people behind ebay's AIR desktop tool and few other Discover channel application. The reason why they require a special mention is that the number of downloads for ebay desktop tool has crossed 1 million downloads.

They also follow my doctrine of integrating Usability with RIA technology. Everything said for any application Usability comes first and then comes the technology used to deliver it.

Flex based virtual desktop

For those who assume FLEX is only for playing around with page data and UI elements. Here comes a pleasant surprise.

http://www.thereplicants.net/flex/test/Dashboard.html

Imagine a 4 sided desktop which can be personalized. Here one can drag and drop availabe tools on to teh desk top and also rotate between the desktops using the following key comobo

Shift+Esc+mouse click(right or left) to rotate the desktops. This gives a 3D cube effect.