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Java 
Adobe today launched the Flash Player 10 beta player. See some demo videos on some new features, notably 3D and the "weird text layout" support, which is great because the Flash text layouting really could use a tune-up. Adobe also launched the Open Screen Project, which basically means they want to drop licensing costs in order to expand the availability of Flash on end-user devices. Last week was the JavaOne 2008 conference. Once again the message of Sun was: we are going to do JavaFX (but we aren't done yet). Sun has the same strategy: establish a common user interface platform on a wide array of end-user "screens". Adobe already has stuff that ships, Sun already has established a wide platform base. And Microsoft tries to pitch in as well using Silverlight, which kinds of ships but the really cool stuff won't be there until 2.0.
I am very happy with the attention for this "next generation" client technology. HTML is good for documents and links, but not very good for a demanding highly interactive user interface. And the ugly, boring clunky frameworks are getting more and more impopular now people are getting used to color and moving icons.
On the other hand, the next gen client stuff brings new challenges. How is Google going to index this content? How is automated testing done? How do you prevent an application from becoming an overly blinking christmas tree, hogging my graphics card? How about tooling and docs? What about security? And licensing/price? In many ways, creating a modern user interface just got a lot harder. I think the real battle of the screens is not on which technology can do the blinking 3D mobile store, but the technology that makes it easy to create a real-world application in a professional, well supported manner. Each technology has their own strengths and weaknesses at the moment. It will be interesting to see the battle of the screens continue this year. And finally see JavaFX ship…