“We have to build a consumer-grade experience,” Aaron Levie, Box’s co-founder and CEO, said at a Thursday meeting at its San Francisco office. The deal will be Box’s second acquisition; it acquired Increo in 2009, a company representative said.

Crocodoc already takes care of this type of document conversion for files on several sites, including the recruiting function on LinkedIn and document sharing on Yammer. Once a document is there, users can see the details of fancy typefaces and add comments on desktops and mobile devices, without Flash or plugins required. Other document functions, like editing, are not yet available.

“We want to bite off different pieces of that puzzle,” said Ryan Damico, Crocodoc’s co-founder and CEO. “In the end game, we want to cover all of them.”

Yammer document previewing via Crocodoc technology

Box will swap out its existing previewing mechanisms with the Crocodoc technology in the next few months. Also coming are new versions of previewing, such a carousel with pages passing by, a sliding option, a scrolling option and perhaps a page-flipping option, Damico said. Box will also enable developers to keep using the Crocodoc API to upload documents, spin them around into HTML5 and then do things with HTML5-enabled content to embed in their own websites.

“This is what Instagram is to Facebook,” Levie said. “Photos are important to them; documents are deeply important to us, and they’re deeply important to business use cases.”

While it’s been four years since the previous Box acquisition, Box does want to keep building out its product lineup. “We intend on being very acquisitive,” Levie told me. Box has raised $312 million to date, including contributions from Andreessen Horowitz, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and NEA. Crocodoc has raised more than $1 million, with investors at SV Angel and 500 Startups.

As Box makes itself into more of a platform than simply a venue for document storage and sharing — last month I wrote about its health care applications and compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — it also needs to make sure documents show up clearly. It does seem like a no-brainer, which is why it seems like this acquisition should have come earlier.

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The impacts of the purely JavaScript-based system are multiple: for end users, the ability to run native PC apps on any device with an internet connection and to purchase and protect content without digital-rights management (DRM); for content creators, cheaper, faster rendering and the ability to distribute anywhere viewers can type in a URL; and for open web or cloud-computing advocates, a push away from proprietary or legacy plug-ins and an embrace of HTML5. With the presence of William Morris Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel at the launch on Friday, the creators of the ORBX.js technology were also seeking to emphasize its piracy-fighting powers for the movie and TV industries: with video streams or apps watermarked in the cloud, DRM in the browser becomes unnecessary.

OTOY and Mozilla came together recently with the realization of a shared goal: trying to turn the web into the platform for all apps. Mozilla’s effort to implement H.264 in Firefox inspired OTOY to rewrite their own codec to run in JavaScript, said OTOY founder and CEO Jules Urbach at the launch event in San Francisco on Friday, and the partnership has now culminated in an optimized rendering experience that is approaching native app speeds in Firefox. Among the capabilities demonstrated at the launch were a virtualized Windows desktop running in Safari, lag-free gaming in a browser and streaming that can be adaptively encoded based on a user’s bandwidth.

“Web is the medium,” said Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski, who was very upbeat about the possibilities of the new tech for increasing work collaboration and creativity, and reducing delays through real-time rendering. Besides investing in OTOY, Autodesk’s interest is in providing 3D apps to their customers using cloud resources. The implications for agility — both for individuals and for enterprises — are freeing: a low-power home device can drive the centralized, high-power cloud machine, eliminating the need for a high-end workstation or provisioning of hardware assets to employees or contractors. Kowalski’s suggestion, in fact, was that such a move will allows users to downgrade their hardware, because it no longer has to match the needs of the software.

So what is needed for ORBX.js to work? Any HTML5 browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE10 or Opera) will do, but it needs to have WebGL technology to take advantage of the codec’s full decoding speed. Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich predicted that Apple will eventually come around to more fully accept WebGL. When asked if Apple, Google, or big streaming providers can do anything to stop the use of ORBX, Urbach said nothing short of getting rid of the browser would stop the tech from being used.

The central issues with streaming all of your computing are bandwidth and money. Video seemed to stream well on an iPhone over 4G, and with the adaptive streaming and superior compression of ORBX, Urbach projects a 25 percent bandwidth savings for, say, Netflix streaming. For that to happen, Netflix, Amazon and other providers have to adopt ORBX, something that the Mozilla-OTOY partnership is actively working on. They are hoping that their solution will be the one to put the format wars to rest, and allow consumers to collect the highest-definition content possible in a way that is format-agnostic. With respect to pricing, a ballpark figure suggested at the launch was $300 per year for OTOY’s cloud-rendering engine to take over one person’s computing needs. Pricing is still up in the air, but Urbach expects an AMI to launch later this year with the second generation of ORBX that will also include HDR encoding capabilities.

The videos below show streaming video and gaming through a browser using ORBX (via Mozilla).

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Imagine what Famo.us can do to an Amazon.com experience or even Walmart.com? Hermes could create a new, unique shopping experience, and Warby Parker can use data and design to create a personalized virtual store. Yup, I know I am getting ahead of myself … but hell, it is better than getting excited about yet-another calender app.

Now Famo.us is all set to show off its HTML5 development platform, which at least in demos, removes any advantages of the mobile-native operating environments. The native operating systems such as Android and iOS have enjoyed an edge because they provide a smooth and satisfying experience on their platforms. Famo.us wants to do that with its platform, which is entirely HTML5 based.

Newcomb will outline many of the details of the Famo.us platform at the HTML5 Developer conference in San Francisco today. As part of the announcement, the company will announce plans to make its platform free for individual developers and give them the option to create and host many Famo.us apps on its platform. Believers in Famo.us are going to be the same people who believe and want to build HTML5 apps.

The company in turn wants to make money by charging hardware makers — the companies that make phones and televisions, for example. In addition, Famo.us will also charge enterprises that want to use its platform for services.

Famo.us had impressed me with its technology, and co-founder and CEO Newcomb laid out a compelling vision for his platform. It resonated with me mostly because the company had come up with a way to tackle what I think is a going to be a growing issue in the future: building apps for a data-rich environment. That requires a new approach that looks beyond documents and instead thinks in terms of data streams and apps. It needs web standards, as it is becoming difficult to create, deploy and maintain apps for many of these emerging (hardware) platforms. Famo.us has come up with the right approach.

According to a Forbes.com report, the company has developed a new physics engine that when combined with Famo.us’ previously announced surface rendering technology will allow developers to create apps and interfaces for data-rich environments using javascript and HTML5. Just as gaming engines enable game developers to create multifaceted worlds, Famo.us is betting that with its platform, developers can create similar data-rich applications. “Famo.us will let data itself be visually and tactilely expressive,” writes Anthony Kosner.

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From SC5′s blogpost:

“We are doing this just out of curiosity to try out new things. Bitcoin as such fits our vision of the world quite well. It allows for open source development, competition and innovation in the field of payments and Internet commerce. Based on cryptography, it is secure and deterministic as we require for digital services. As a comparison, credit cards rely on few enough physical cards getting stolen or copied and the centralized organizations covering fraud for billions of dollars each year.

“For currency conversion we use the daily exchange rate of the payday. The euro amount to be converted into Bitcoins is deducted from the net salary on the employee’s paycheck. Bitcoins are sent to the address provided by the employee.”

I’m not an economist, so I’m going to steer clear of commenting on the wisdom of opting to receive part of your pay in Bitcoins (there are also many excellent explanations about how the currency is algorithmically generated and controlled). That said, Bitcoin has been doing very well recently – so well that many suspect we’re experiencing a Bitcoin bubble.

SC5′s decision to experiment with Bitcoin-based salary payments is not entirely surprising. Last month a young developer by the name of Martti Malmi joined the company — Malmi, also known as Sirius, was one of the earliest developers involved in the Bitcoin project.

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Facebook grew to a billion users with a strategy that relied mainly on the desktop web experience for many years. It went public before it even had a decently functioning iOS app. And for a long time it relied on HTML5, which didn’t turn into the winning mobile strategy the company had hoped.

But with investors nipping at its heels, Facebook announced fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday that finally produced solid numbers when it comes to mobile — a quarter of ad revenue, and, for the first time, proof that daily active users (DAUs) on mobile outnumber those on desktops.

Mobile is crucial to Facebook’s success on almost all levels, but none of it matters unless Facebook is able to capitalize on mobile advertising. As revenue related to gaming and gifts looks uncertain, ads take on a greater importance. Ads made up 84 percent of the company’s revenue this quarter. And if more people check Facebook on their phones than their desktop computers, mobile ads have to play an important part in its strategy. Facebook grew its mobile revenue from 14 percent of all ad revenue in Q3 2012 to 23 percent in Q4 2012, which is a good start; but if those numbers slow, the company could be in trouble.

The huge growth in mobile success in 2012 came not from innovative, brand-new strategies on smartphone platforms, but rather Facebook’s decision to update existing products and improve the user experience. In the Q4 2012 earnings call and at TechCrunch Disrupt in September, Zuckerberg said a faster app alone did wonders from the company’s traffic:

“Often, doing a good job is focusing on basic issues like performance and stability,” he said Wednesday.

But during 2013, Facebook and everyone else will need to think about what exactly makes an app shine on mobile, and then go build it themselves. Eventually, just being faster or bigger might not be enough to maintain growth.

Facebook needs to build the Instagrams, Snapchats, or Vines of tomorrow that actually engage mobile users in a new way. And clearly, Zuckerberg recognizes this:

“Now we’re there. We moved fast and ship new versions of our apps on regular monthly schedules,” he said. “Now the next thing we’re going to do is build really good mobile-first expierences.”

But when he says mobile-first, does he mean an actual mobile device? Nope, don’t hold your breath. There’s no Facebook phone on the horizon, Zuckerberg said.

“The big theme that we’re going to push on is mobile. People keep asking if we’re going to build a phone. And we’re not going to build a phone. Because it doesn’t make sense for us,” he said. “We have a billion people using our product and we have to make Facebook really good across all the devices they’re using.”

Instead, Facebook needs to be the company that solves the mobile ad dilemma, or at least, among the fast followers. The torch has been passed to a new generation of computing at Facebook, and it doesn’t involve the traditional PC.

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Today, we launched phase one of our new responsive site design, and the changes we’re introducing to paidContent and GigaOM will ensure that doesn’t happen to you here. At a time when readers are using so many different devices, one big challenge for digital publishers is retaining the quality and consistency of the reading experience not only across devices but also across different operating systems and browsers.

Now, whether you’re on a desktop or a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, our sites will automatically adjust, rendering the content in the way that best fits that particular environment. We know, for example, that it’s harder to hit a target on the page with your finger than with a mouse, and so if you’re reading us on a tablet, we’ve enlarged the target to make it easier to strike. Similarly, rather than try to cram our entire site onto a 4-inch smartphone display, we’ve removed some content from the mobile view so as to focus the presentation of the most essential information. In all cases, the site simply readjusts to fit the real estate on the screen that you’re on at the time.

Below, you can see how the presentation of an actual story changes as the screen shrinks.

Those aren’t the only improvements that we’ve made. Among the other things you’ll notice about paidContent and GigaOM:

• More curation: If you’re time-stretched, our new “Must Reads” section tells you what you absolutely shouldn’t miss.
• Easier sharing: We’ve made it easier to share not only whole stories and also pieces of content within stories.
• Better performance: Because the pages are lighter weight, they will load faster.
• Crisper display: We’ve added blur-resistant icons and new text-size controls, so there’s no more squinting to read text or straining to hit a small target when navigating the site.
• A cleaner look: We’ve ditched a lot of widgets that had simply built up over the years but no longer serve their original purpose.

For phase one of the redesign, we’ve intentionally simplified the look and feel of the site — it’s more akin to updating the plumbing in a house than redoing the facade. But without reliable plumbing, a house isn’t very habitable. These upgrades pave the way for subsequent phases of this redesign over the next few months that will include more changes in how we present our content.

Finally, I wanted to thank the fantastic team that has been slaving away on the redesign for last several months: our head of product management Raza Zaidi; engineers Casey Bisson, Matt Batchelder, Zach Tirrell and Jamie Poitra; designers Stephen Engert, Arlo Jamrog and Jonathan Koshi; and our product guys Adam Kazwell and Ian Kennedy. They’ve worked long hours — and tested countless iterations in QA — and we think the results are great.

We’d love to know what you think. If you have suggestions or comments (positive or negative), please leave them in the comment thread in this post.

Thanks again for being loyal readers.

Images courtesy of PlaceIt by Breezi.

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Today, we launched phase one of our new responsive site design, and the changes we’re introducing to GigaOM and paidContent will ensure that doesn’t happen to you here. At a time when readers are using so many different devices, one big challenge for digital publishers is retaining the quality and consistency of the reading experience not only across devices but also across different operating systems and browsers.

Now, whether you’re on a desktop or a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, our sites will automatically adjust, rendering the content in the way that best fits that particular environment. We know, for example, that it’s harder to hit a target on the page with your finger than with a mouse, and so if you’re reading us on a tablet, we’ve enlarged the target to make it easier to strike. Similarly, rather than try to cram our entire site onto a 4-inch smartphone display, we’ve removed some content from the mobile view so as to focus the presentation of the most essential information. In all cases, the site simply readjusts to fit the real estate on the screen that you’re on at the time.

Below, you can see how the presentation of an actual story changes as the screen shrinks.

Those aren’t the only improvements that we’ve made. Among the other things you’ll notice about GigaOM and paidContent:

• More curation: If you’re time-stretched, our new “Must Reads” section tells you what you absolutely shouldn’t miss.
• Easier sharing: We’ve made it easier to share not only whole stories and also pieces of content within stories.
• Better performance: Because the pages are lighter weight, they will load faster.
• Crisper display: We’ve added blur-resistant icons and new text-size controls, so there’s no more squinting to read text or straining to hit a small target when navigating the site.
• A cleaner look: We’ve ditched a lot of widgets that had simply built up over the years but no longer serve their original purpose.

For phase one of the redesign, we’ve intentionally simplified the look and feel of the site — it’s more akin to updating the plumbing in a house than redoing the facade. But without reliable plumbing, a house isn’t very habitable. These upgrades pave the way for subsequent phases of this redesign over the next few months that will include more changes in how we present our content.

Finally, I wanted to thank the fantastic team that has been slaving away on the redesign for last several months: our head of product management Raza Zaidi; engineers Casey Bisson, Matt Batchelder, Zach Tirrell and Jamie Poitra; designers Stephen Engert, Arlo Jamrog and Jonathan Koshi; and our product guys Adam Kazwell and Ian Kennedy. They’ve worked long hours — and tested countless iterations in QA — and we think the results are great.

We’d love to know what you think. If you have suggestions or comments (positive or negative), please leave them in the comment thread in this post.

Thanks again for being loyal readers.

Images courtesy of PlaceIt by Breezi.

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“Mark Zuckerberg was dead wrong, and it was shameful for him to throw HTML5 under the bus because Facebook had an outdated and poorly written hybrid app,” Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire wrote in an open letter to tech and media leaders that calls for an end to the “religious wars” on mobile platforms.

Allaire’s gripe is that companies like Facebook and Apple are abandoning support for hybrid apps which are built with much of the same code used to display a website in mobile browsers. With the hybrid approach, publishers can rely on universal HTML5 code to get their apps out quickly on multiple platforms and devices while also using some native code for features that count.

Facebook recently eschewed the hybrid approach, claiming it offers a sub-par user experience. Allaire suggests that this is a smokescreen, and that Facebook and Apple have undercut the viability of HTML5 in order to develop their own private eco-systems.

Some might accuse Allaire of sour grapes since a turn to proprietary platforms threatens Brightcove’s App Cloud service which relies heavily on HTML5. But that doesn’t make his point his less valid.

The larger issue here is about standardization. Recall that for much of the 19th century, there were no standards for everyday items like screws or lightbulb threading. Imagine if a carpenter needed a special, proprietary screwdriver for every job site? Allaire makes the same point for the app economy:

Since 1994, our industry has created millions of jobs in the web development industry.  Proprietary native platforms are limiting the available labor in the app economy, hurting our productivity. [...] Every institution on the planet wants to invest in reaching users through apps on consumer devices, but we have a deep deep labor shortage because of these religious wars.

Allaire concludes by calling for an “ecumenical” approach to end the current sectarian approach to development. His letter also points to a Brightcove blog post that sets out a longer version of his thoughts.

Update: In response to a reader request below, here is the full text of the letter:

Subject: Ending the Religious Wars over Mobile Platforms – an open industry letter

Date: November 15, 2012 3:47:48 AM PST

To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Hi-

All of us are blessed to be participants in this marvelous and dynamic internet tech and app economy.  But we’re also cursed with internal strife and religious wars over mobile platform technology that are hurting our economy.  Since 1994, our industry has created millions of jobs in the web development industry.  Proprietary native platforms are limiting the available labor in the app economy, hurting our productivity.

Mark Zuckerberg was dead wrong, and it was shameful for him to throw HTML5 under the bus because Facebook had an outdated and poorly written hybrid app.

Hybrid apps as a bi-partisan solution to the religious mobile platform wars are too important to our economy.  Every institution on the planet wants to invest in reaching users through apps on consumer devices, but we have a deep deep labor shortage because of these religious wars.

Steve Jobs, god bless his soul, was also wrong — well, perhaps, just deceptive — with his Thoughts on Flash and public flogging of Adobe.  Killing support for Flash on iOS was not a benevolent move to save consumers from slow and crash-prone software, nor a resounding vote for open, HTML5 based content apps.   No, it was merely a flanking maneuver to protect Apple’s proprietary native app development model.  While Apple has gone on to deeply enhance the iOS native APIs, they’ve barely moved the needle on support for HTML5 inside of native apps.

Again, hybrid apps are essential to getting the technical economy highly productive, and that’s essential to getting the global economy more productive.

Adobe smartly acquired PhoneGap — a hybrid app development platform — to answer this corporate and industry need, but since then the technology has gone stagnant, with little innovation.

The industry needs better hybrid app platforms, and that’s what we’re doing.

On my blog, I have a lot more to say about all of this, how we got here, and what the industry and Brightcove is doing about it.  Take a look, it’s a quick read.

http://blog.brightcove.com/en/2012/11/bipartisan-solutions-ending-religious-wars-over-mobile-platforms

The industry needs all of us to make this happen.

Thanks,
Jeremy Allaire
Founder and CEO, Brightcove

(Image by WilleeCole via Shutterstock)

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