I was at the Future of Web Apps conference today, enjoying the sights and insights of today's web apps and their creators. I had a really great day, only wishing that I'd made it to the conference, the diggnation filming and the Carsonified party yesterday. The whole day gave me a lot to think about, so here is what I got up to and my first impressions of my first conference.

Adobe Vs. Microsoft

Two of the biggest companies, the biggest sponsors of the event and those with the biggest products saw widely different results today. I saw near enough the same presentation on Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) three times, along with a crowd of people each time. The only crowd around the Microsoft stand that I saw was when they were handing out freebies and prizes and I saw no demonstrations of Silverlight. The big winner for Microsoft seemed to be their row of XBox 360s playing Halo 3, but whoever had the bright idea of having the proper exhibition stand separate to the consoles needs shooting.

Future of Games Consoles

Which brings me to another point. Today I saw 4 XBox 360s, 3 Nintendo Wiis, 2 competitions to win an XBox 360 and 1 competition to win a Wii. I thought this was about web apps, not gaming!

Facebook Platform, Dapper, Dopplr, FireEagle

I spent most of the day watching the presentations on the Developer Stage, and all the above web apps had someone talking about them as well as web apps in general. I will go into more detail on each of the apps, but out of those 4, 3 impressed me and one didn't, but I want to sign up for all of them anyway.

The Rest Of The Exhibition

I caught some great open mic presentations around lunchtime, on accessibility and on tumblelogging. Also around the exhibition floor were some interesting social network ideas and some useful tools alongside others that failed to ignite my spark.

Nothing all day beat Simon Wardley's presentation on how the future of web apps will eventually benefit ducks though. Nothing.

So What Is The Future Of Web Apps

I think I have a pretty good idea of where the future is going, but, in the interests of suspense, I will tell you all about that when I have covered today in just a little more detail.