Rockin' Robin: Robin Goldfarb Wilensky's Weblog

If you are like most Web 2.0 companies, or companies who want to use the power of the Web to grow their online communities, then the things you care about are NOT the traditional things that most companies care about. You most likely want a low-cost, low-maintenance, open-source, quick-time-to-market solution. However, you view technology as a competitive advantage and will pay for value-add features that enhance that advantage. But you already know this, so why am I telling you? Because I want you to know, that we know this too.

Sun is committed to helping you grow your community, which is turn grows your business. And we are committed to providing services and tools to help you do it better, faster, cheaper. That's where Zembly comes in.

In this first installation of Web 2.0 and Beyond, I want to introduce you to Zembly. Zembly is a new kind of development environment for building Social applications. What's great about Zembly for you?

• It's free. It's built on open source. There's no cost to you. Did I mention it's free?
  
• It's completely browser based so you can develop anywhere you are.
  
• It's social so you can connect with other Zembly users and more importantly you can collaborate with other programmers to build your apps.
  
• It's easy. Zembly provides templates to get you started and you can clone existing widgets or applications for even faster development.
  
• It's flexible. There is an IDE-class editor built in. You can consume popular Web APIs with a single line of code or you can use your own server or API.
  
• It's hosted. Deploy and publish right from Zembly.
  

The applications you build run on popular platforms including Facebook, Meebo, OpenSocial, Google Gadgets, iPhone Web Applications (Safari) and any Web widgets.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started today! Oh, and if you love it, please blog about it! Thanks!