Last week's news about Apple's use of SproutCore triggered a lot of discussion about the future of rich Internet applications, run-time environments, and JavaScript frameworks. While SproutCore has been referred to as "Cocoa for the web," its developer Charles Jolley says that the framework was "inspired by Cocoa," not really a port of Cocoa. But what if someone ported not just Cocoa, but also an Objective-C runtime the runs entirely in JavaScript via a browser? Well, the developers at 280 North did just that.

280 North formed earlier this year when three friends from USC got together to realize their dream of working together to develop software. Francisco Tolmasky and Ross Boucher graduated from USC in 2006 and 2007 respectively, and both spent some time working at Apple; Tolmasky on iPhone development and Boucher on back-end server technology for iTunes. When Tom Robinson graduated in January of this year, the three formed 280 North to develop their first application, called 280 Slides.

280 Slides is a very impressive presentation app that looks and works very similar to Apple's critically-acclaimed Keynote. Anyone familiar with Keynote or the ubiquitous PowerPoint can easily create a well-designed presentation with nothing but a web browser. Though Slides lacks some of the features of other web-based presentation apps, it tends to favor simplicity and elegance and is still highly serviceable for most needs. The app also runs smoothly and seamlessly. On Mac OS X, it's easy to forget that it's running in a browser and not directly on the desktop.

More can be found here.