My friend David Temkin - co-founder and CTO of Laszlo Systems got interviewed by News.com last week.

Here’s the interview:

To listen to David Temkin, you’d think the future was here already.

As chief technology officer of San Francisco start-up Laszlo Systems, Temkin is selling the idea that the long-predicted era has arrived in which software applications will live on Web sites rather than desktops.

Now Temkin is betting that a recent open-source gamble will propel his company’s vision of Internet applications ahead of its formidable competition.

With the October release of Laszlo’s core technology to an open-source development group it created, the company is trying to take on an established company, Macromedia, which is, in turn, going after the fiercest software adversary of them all–Microsoft.

Microsoft’s XAML language is designed to build Windows applications tied closely to the Internet. While some companies are already building XAML applications that run with Microsoft’s .Net client, the proprietary XML dialect is meant for use with Microsoft’s ambitious Longhorn operating system. While Longhorn has suffered chronic delays and isn’t expected until the end of 2006, few doubt its impact will be significant once released.

More immediately, Macromedia is busy promoting its Flex server software, which runs Internet applications written in Macromedia’s MXML language. Macromedia recently announced a free version of Flex for noncommercial applications and updated the software with new features.

Temkin recently spoke to CNET News.com about the company’s view of the computing present and future, and why his sights are set on besting Macromedia.

If Web applications are here already, what do we need Laszlo for?

There is still a serious gap in what Web applications provide. Today’s Web applications are based on the page-by-page HTML model–which was never designed to support applications–and what the end user sees on the vast majority of Web sites is a series of flat pages, connected by links. This is an awkward way to drive an application.

In the commercial world, the size of a company doesn’t guarantee the stability of a platform.

Where Laszlo, Flex, and Longhorn fit in is in enhancing the power and productivity of these networked end-user applications by making them more application-like. These technologies can make existing Web applications more responsive and powerful. They can also enable applications that previously could not be realistically deployed as Web applications.

(for the rest of this EXCELLENT interview - please go to NEWS.com)

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