Pandora is an incredible music discovery service that has been written up in Slashdot.

Tom Conrad of Pandora writes:

Our just-now-launched music discovery service, Pandora, is an OpenLaszlo application. It wouldn't be fair to finish up our launch without a tip of the hat to the amazing Laszlo team and open source community.

Eight months ago when we sat down to figure out how were were going to deliver a compelling zero-install discovery and listening experience across Windows, Mac, and Linux in record time we considered everything you can imagine: plain old HTML, AJAX, Flex, OpenLaszlo to name just a few. In the end, Laszlo was the clear winner on all fronts. Mature, reliable, and the perfect tool for the job. This outcome was only remarkable in that the decision was made by some of the most capable AJAX developers on the planet. I'll have more to say about Laszlo in another post, but for now I just want to publicly say thanks to the great team at Lazslo. Pandora wouldn't be Pandora without you

Previously Tom mentioned OpenLaszlo at Bar Camp:

I can also talk a good bit about how we chose between an AJAX front end and one built with OpenLaszlo. Our experience with OpenLaszlo has been incredible; it was the perfect choice for us.

From Matt Jadud, who wrote that nifty scheme tool to generate lzx:

No doubt I'll be playing with this technology more in the future, so I thought I'd introduce it now.

OpenLaszlo, released unto the world by Laszlo Systems, is an interesting combination of languages and ideas. It is an XML-based language for specifying the layout and behavior of rich internet applications. For example, I wrote a tabbed slideshow for photographs that you can find on my personal weblog, here. I think it would be difficult to write in JavaScript and CSS. Consider:

1. When you open a slide, audio begins playing.
2. When you switch slides, the current audio stops, and new audio is started.
3. I can layer objects (and remove them) over the photo content quickly and easily, when and where I want them.

I imagine this is all possible in JavaScript/DHTML, but... I don't know how. And, I don't feel I need to; the OpenLaszlo crew has provided a powerful platform for me to work from---a compiler, GUI toolkit, RPC mechanisms, and more. It seems to me that the whole JavaScript/CSS/AJAX thing is nothing more but a poor reinvention of the technology that OpenLaszlo provides. Granted, for full RPC-functionality, OpenLaszlo currently requires a servlet container, whereas AJAX-apps just need a browser with a JavaScript engine. However, you don't get much support from the compiler or run-time for debugging AJAX applications, whereas OpenLaszlo apps have a compiler and run-time debugger. That's worth installing a server to me. (It was a double-click operation on my Mac.)

(via John)

IT Conversations has an excellent interview with David Temkins, founder and CTO of Laszlo Systems. Listen to it here.

Before AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) had a name, there was Laszlo Systems, a software tools developer using AJAX-like methods along with with Macromedia's Flash player to deliver richer Web experiences. David Temkin tells us why he chose the Flash player as a platform. Laszlo went open source and chose IBM's Common Public License as it was flexible enough to fit their needs without curbing commercial use.

In the July 2005 print edition, and online here:

As a community, we need to continue to recognize good technologies and ideas from experienced developers and Open Source projects. We need to be willing to support remote scripting with Ajax, and we need to adapt to produce rich-client experiences, like those that Laszlo offers with the Open Source Flash-rendering system. By accepting and enhancing these technologies, we can continue to use J2EE and its APIs to make our lives easier.