Everyone is talking about Apollo, the platform from Adobe that puts rich web apps on the desktop. But the tech-talk means very little to the average user who simply wants to see some cool stuff. Luckily, there are developers out there working diligently on producing Apollo applications, some of which are already fully usable. To try them out, you first need to download and install the Apollo runtime, which can be downloaded from the official Apollo site.

As far as the actual applications go, most of them are either a heavy beta or a proof-of-concept, but some are already fully usable and quite fun. Without further ado, here are the ones we like, in no particular order:

1. Tweetr

For the Twitter addicts, the 1000th incarnation of Twitter, this time in Apollo. It works on Mac, WinXP or Vista; and it enables you to receive and send tweets, but it occasionally stops updating, which is not nice. The novelty is mostly in a a cool 3D animation and the ability to change the font size.

www.tweet-r.com

2. The Mini Digg

Just like with Twitter, you can never have too many Digg-related gizmos. The Mini Digg is actually very cool, because of its tracker feature, which lets you see the statistics for Digg stories you choose, including the number of diggs and comments over time. The application has its limitations; for example, you can't track popular items from a subcategory, but give it time, and it might become a great tool for all you Diggers out there.

merhl.com/?p=17

3. DiggTop

While we're on the subject of Digg, here's another Apollo based Digg tool - DiggTop. It works on Windows and OS X and it shows you a blended list of your favorite Digg topics or keyword feeds. It also scrapes images from the linked article and displays a cute little slideshow. It's done really well and has a lot of options; it may even be the best Apollo application we've seen so far.

www.gskinner.com/DiggTop/

4. YourMinis

YourMinis, one of the most popular widget platforms, was also one of the first to announce Apollo support. This means that you can now take any widget from YourMinis' huge widget base and have it sit on your desktop. The possibilities here are endless, and if you're a widget lover, this one is an absolute must. The installation is simple, once you have Apollo runtime installed, get the YourMinis air file at the link below. After that, simply browse the YourMinis widget gallery and when you find one you like, click "Copy to Desktop".

blog.yourminis.com/2007/03/desktop_widgets.html

5. Fresh Reader

This one comes straight from Adobe. It's a skinnable RSS reader built in AJAX and running on Apollo. A full featured RSS reader is not the simplest application to make, but this one fares quite well compared with similar web applications, although lack of options at this point will probably keep most users from becoming regulars.

labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:Applications:Samples

6. DryerFox

From the completely-ridiculous department comes DryerFox, which is (author's words) like Firefox, but inside a dryer. There's no sense in explaining it; suffice to say that it's absolutely useless, but we just had to mention it.

olddougnewtricks.blogspot.com/2007/04/dryerfox-its-like-firefox-but-inside.html

7. Admetus

Admetus is a simple tool for finding and downloading Flickr images in high resolution. It has a simiple interface which lets you download images with one click, and it automatically highlights the photos that you already have. The options are scarce (read: they don't exist), and you can't change the folder for saved images (it defaults to Desktop/Admetus/SEARCH_TAG/). However, despite the limitations, the actual application is quite useful.

www.uza.lt/applications/admetus/

8. FineTune Desktop

If you're a FineTune user, you might want to check this cool tool from the developers of FineTune themselves: FineTune Desktop. It's a desktop player which lets you access your playlists and favorite artists without having FineTune open in your browser. It's one of the more polished Apollo applications, so if you're into FineTune make sure to give it a try.

www.finetune.com/desktop/

9. Scout

Here's one for the web developers, done by Adobe Labs. Load any website in Scout, and it will let you quickly browse through the source code, the CSS, JavaScript objects, images, or cookies present on the site. It's basically a showcase of Apollo's ability to inspect a page as it's rendered on the client, but it's also quite useful.

labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:Applications:Samples

10. FlexTube

If for some reason you'd like to watch YouTube videos without actually having a web browser opened, you can do it with FlexTube. The application is in an early development stage (you have to login using test/test as username and password) and some of the options (like adding videos to favorites) don't work, but the rest of it is fully functional.

flexfanatic.wordpress.com