Adobe Apollo, the cross-OS platform for deploying rich internet applications, has got a new name: Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). And we just got used to Apollo, bummer.

The change is not only in the name: the latest update allows developers to base their projects entirely on Ajax and HTML, which means that Flash is no longer a necessity, as was initially promised by Adobe. So far, there has been a handful of interesting Apollo applications, but with this latest beta I expect many more to come.

Besides Apollo, Adobe also released a new version of Flex - Flex 3 - the software development tool for creating HTML, Flash, or AIR applications.

Read our initial coverage of Adobe Apollo here.

[via]