Convos is a recent Flex application that provides an easy way for people to manage groups and subscriptions. Like Google Groups, Convos allows users to create online groups with their own email address. Once logged in, users can easily see messages, to do items, calendar events, photos and more from each of the groups that they subscribe to.

I like the central spot for all group notifications - when you login you can easily see all the messages for all the groups that you belong to, same with the to do items, notes, photos etc... I also love the clear pricing scheme for users and groups - not to mention that the prices are more than reasonable. (I've blogged often about how I like using subscription based pricing rather than advertising supported sites.)

There are some things I don't like about it though. I don't like the getting started process once you've signed up - there's some improvements that could be made for new people getting used to the site. (For instance, the welcome email doesn't instruct you how to start your own group.) The UI for certain elements could be improved - for instance using a calendar to display events, or using a custom component (like Fisheye?) to display images and files.

Having said that, there are new updates being released every few weeks, so this is definitely a work in progress. For those of you looking for technical information, JP from the site emailed me and let me know that they're using Java on the backend, and running things on Amazon's EC 2 (they're also using S3 to store data.).

Convos is a good application today. If they can fix a few of the problems and improve the UI a bit, I think Convos could be great. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

Dave at PXL Designs has a blog post about a new Flex project they just launched called Peek-a-boo Paperie. The Flex application allows new parents, like me, to build custom baby announcements.

The application allows new parents to upload photos of their new baby boy or girl, and then customize the baby announcement with details of the newborn.

The invitations are then printed and sent to the new parents. Pricing is reasonable, ranging from $1.85 per card to $1.20 per card, depending on how many you order.

If you're a new parent or parent to be, check out the application and build your own baby announcement.

Ribbit, the Flex based Internet telephony company based in Silicon Valley, has been acquired by British Telecom for $105 M.

After the news earlier today that Babbel received significant funding, maybe there is money in Flex development after all? :)

Om Malik has more.

Babbel, a Flex application that allows users to easily learn new languages, received a significant investment from Kizoo and VC Fonds Berlin. In an email to me, they say say that users can look forward to improvements with the site and service - the company will use the money to add developers to the project.

Ryan Stewart has more information.

If you haven't checked out the site yet, you should. Its a great way to learn new languages quickly.

Desktop Keeley, the AIR application built for the Sun newspaper in the UK, "has beaten previous download figures for Sun apps after only three days" according to this article.

There's nothing like a lingerie model dancing on your desktop for driving downloads.

Flex has seen a lot of uptake by large enterprise companies since its release. Philips, Taleo, n2n, Oracle and many others are Flex customers. Today EMC, makers of Documentum, announced that they're launching a new client based on Flex.

From the press release: “We have been known as having the best platform but not the best client,” says Karin Ondricek, an EMC senior manager for product marketing. “Our client has been a weak spot. But with the new client, people are immediately going to be able to pick it up and know how to work it.” Sounds like I'm not the only one that's been frustrated by the UI for Documentum.

The article has a few screenshots of the Flex applications that have been built.

I've had quite a few Flex apps come to my attention lately that I haven't had time to blog about. Here's a list of them:

Nibea - Nibea is "a website tool for creative people". The editor is built with Adobe Flex.
Amazon's video on demand service is powered by Flex and Flash Media Server.
The BBC launched an AIR application for the upcoming Olympics. No one noticed because we were all too busy with Desktop Keeley.
HP launched a new application in beta called Logo Maker, built by the talented team at mediaRAIN.

TechCrunch is running a story about Tokbox, who today released an Adobe AIR desktop client that allows users on Windows, Mac and Linux to do video chatting, absolutely free.

The video quality on the application is really good, as is the audio quality (after a few quick minutes testing it at work - not sure what it would be like over the Internet tubes, but the local network tubes were good).

The desktop AIR application is identical to the web based application that they have online, which is really well done.

The only problem I had was when I installed the application, it did prompt me to import my contacts from other IM clients, which was nice. But it would be even better if all these IM companies shared my information with one and another. That's not a complaint about Tokbox per say, just IM in general, though its something that they're going to have to deal with.

Mercedes Benz launched a new Flex powered website for their USA page. I never visited the old site, but the new site looks great, and has a nice application to build your own Benz.

Most car manufacturers use Flash for their website. A quick look shows Toyota, Honda, Ford, Mazda, GM, and VW (thanks Michael Chaize!) are all using Flash on their sites.

The blogosphere is all abuzz over Google's launch of Lively, an in browser virtual world, similar to Second Life.

However, the bigger news for RIA developers, and especially Flex developers, is the technology that they used to build it. From this Flickr screenshot, it appears as though Google is using Flex to develop the UI for Lively. This assumption is also supported by the minimum system requirements, which list Flash [Player] 9 or higher. (Flex applications can only run in Flash Player 9 or higher because of the new VM requirements.)

Since Lively only runs on Windows machines (and not in VMWare) I can't personally test this out - can anyone verify the Flickr screenshot?