SproutCore

Have you heard of SproutCore if you are a none developer that's okay why would you? If you are a developer and you've not heard, shame on you! The blogosphere is rife with people talking about it. Here are the main points of this framework below:

• RIA (Rich Internet Application) development framework
• Uses web standards (CSS, html, javascript) to produce applications rather than proprietary frameworks requiring separate installs in user computers.
• Provem tech, it has been used for over a year in apples .mac service for picture galleries and is being used across the board on the mobile me apple service that is due to be rolled out.
  
• Language agnostic - it can be used with any language supporting JSON but ties in with ruby out the box.

Since different internet devices support different frameworks if you want to design an application to work across the board you need to stick to the web standards. Using Sproutcore you can design a RIA which will be using web standards for across the board compatibility but also delivering a rich looking environment of proprietary technologies.

I suggest checking out the tutorial here and the sproutcore demo here and here

Other technologies to keep a watchful eye on are Objective-J, it is another JavaScript framework that mimics cocoa. The whole tech is under wraps at the moment with a 'Coming soon.' being displayed at the site but the thing that has everyone dribbling is that it was used to produce this fantastic looking presentation site called 280Slides