H.264 license holder MPEG LA says it’s ready to step up the fight against Google’s open-source WebM format. After threatening to form a patent pool to use against WebM, the group now says it has identified 12 companies with patents essential to the VP8 standard. Read more »
The tech industry’s movers and shakers have been saying for months now that the HTML5 mark-up language is very important. New research data released Friday indicates that HTML5 is not just going to be big, it’s going to be huge — and it’s coming fast. Read more »
High consumer expectations for the mobile web aren’t yet being met, with 71 percent expecting sites to load on smartphones as quickly as they load on desktop computers. Dual-core smartphones and 4G networks will help, but businesses have to find ways to optimize their sites. Read more »
H.264 remains the dominant force in online video, as the video codec now accounts for more than two-thirds of online video, according to a blog post by MeFeedia. Meanwhile, Google’s WebM format has yet to gain any significant traction after being released a year ago. Read more »
In 2007, online video was a straightforward affair: You put a video online; you made it short; and you hoped for the best. But today, due to a growing number of video codecs and connected devices, publishers need to produce an ever-increasing number of video files. Read more »
Google+ has some features that may seem familiar to owners of Apple’s iOS devices, like group messaging, video chat, and automatic photo sharing. But Google’s offerings just add to existing and upcoming iOS features; they don’t threaten to replace or compete with them. Read more »
Do we only want dumb screens: the ability to get whatever content and services you want over the web instead of locked to a device? Today, the answer is we want it both ways, but in the future, dumb terminals with one exception: the smartphone. Read more »
Google launched its much awaited and highly anticipated social networking platform today. Dubbed Google+, the service may take its cue from social networking giant Facebook, but in reality it is about the harsh reality of Google saving and enhancing its core franchise — Google Search. Read more »
Facebook has come under fire for implementing an anti-spam system that mistakenly shut off a number of legitimate third-party applications. For all the impressive growth Facebook has displayed, it looks like the company still has a ways to go when it comes to managing public perception. Read more »
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s rumors that Facebook would be launching an HTML5 App Store competitor and Facebook’s response that doesn’t exactly deny those allegations, the New York Times reports that an official Facebook iPad app is in the works and should be coming soon. Read more »
Many recent headlines have been devoted to Facebook’s focus on HTML5, and specifically on an internal HTML5-based project at the company dubbed “Project Spartan.” But Facebook’s investment in HTML5 is nothing new — and it’s certainly nothing that the company has been secretive about. Read more »
New benchmark tests confirm what we have long suspected: Flash video on mobile devices just doesn’t look as good as HTML5 video, especially when it comes to HD clips. Support for hardware acceleration could alleviate most of these issues, but not for every user. Read more »
Showyou is updating its iPad and iPhone apps to make the consumption of videos shared on social networks easier. In particular, Showyou gets “watch later” capability, as well as its own website and a bookmarklet for video sharing. Next up for Showyou: an Android app. Read more »
The Financial Times has struck out on its own against Apple, urging subscribers to switch away from iTunes in favor of a dedicated HTML5 app. It helps the venerable newspaper break free of Steve Jobs’s iron grip — but will others follow suit? Read more »
In a blog post, Google has announced that it will soon discontinue support for older browsers in Google Apps. Beginning Aug. 1, Google Apps will only officially support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, on a rolling basis. Read more »
Flowr, the enterprise-oriented social communication web application that I wrote about, and Simon demonstrated, a few months ago, has simplified its interface and added some new features, including a beta of an HTML5-based mobile version. Flowr has also changed its pricing structure. Read more »
The debate over whether the future of mobile data lies in native applications vs. Web-based offerings is often depicted as a Darwinian contest where only one will survive. But the truth is much more complex than some pundits would have you believe. Read more »
Hosted business collaboration suite PBworks has received a major update, aimed at improving the scalability and security of the app while also delivering a more intuitive interface. The new version takes advantage of newer web technologies like HTML5 to deliver a faster, more streamlined collaborative experience. Read more »
Brightcove is stepping beyond managing and distributing online video with a new product for easily creating iOS, Android and mobile web apps. The Brightcove App Cloud is designed to take the pain out of making content available through native apps on the most popular mobile platforms. Read more »
Mobile hardware is progressing at a blistering pace, but to deliver the type of user experiences enabled by awesome hardware software must keep pace. This goes beyond the need for innovations in OSes and applications, to the underlying software that ties everything together. Read more »
Twitter for Mac may have all the attention lately, but it pales in comparison with the new mobile web version of Twitter. The company recently released the new version that is is simply wonderful and a great showcase for the potential of HTML5 technologies. Read more »
Applications represent a gigantic leap forward in terms of mobile functionality. They have opened up new ways of accessing data, connecting to services, and interacting with people. Why, though, are mobile applications so dumb as to what is going on in the rest of your phone? Read more »
Research In Motion’s new Bold brings an updated operating system and several hardware improvements to help BlackBerry sales keep pace with competitors. But the handsets are still a stepping-stone because neither uses the new QNX platform yet. The PlayBook gains video chat and a Facebook app. Read more »
OnSwipe founder and CEO Jason Baptiste says apps are good for some things, but when it comes to publishing content, “they suck.” So the startup gives publishers the same features as an app, but using the web — and it wants to do that for advertisers too. Read more »
We decided to rebuild our dashboard framework in server-side Javascript, using node.js. This decision was driven by a realization: the LAMP stack is dead. In the two decades since its birth, there have been fundamental shifts in the web’s make-up of content, protocols, servers, and clients. Read more »
Connected devices are now the fastest growing portion of the BBC iPlayer’s viewership, as the public broadcaster continues to post record numbers. In fact, there’s been a 10-fold increase in viewership on connected TVs, Blu-ray players, hybrid set-top boxes and game consoles since last June. Read more »
Mozilla’s new Firefox Mobile 4 browser is available for Android and Maemo, boasting faster speeds, desktop synchronization and more, although support for Adobe Flash is missing. The mobile app could offset Mozilla’s falling desktop browser share, but chances are that most Android owners will stay stock. Read more »
Microsoft added welcome improvements to Bing for Mobile today: faster methods to access weather, transit information with real-time scheduling data, local movies and more. The features were built with HTML5 so they work on iOS and Android devices, but not yet on Windows Phone 7. Read more »
Firefox 4 is clocking huge download numbers ever since it was released yesterday, and that’s good news for Google’s open video format WebM: The new version of Firefox supports WebM HTML5 video playback, bringing the total market share of browsers with WebM support to 50 percent. Read more »
AdMob is releasing a software development kit for Windows Phone 7 developers and is updating its platform to full HTML5 for iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7. The changes mean developers will be able to include rich media AdMob advertising units easily across all three platforms. Read more »
Ooyala is adding new features to its video distribution platform, expanding its ability to serve live and secure on-demand video streams to iOS devices like the iPad. It is also extending its analytics to support reporting for Flash- and HTML5-delivered videos. Read more »
Online document service Crocodoc, which Thursday wrote about last year, is rolling out some new features that should make it easier to collaborate on and mark up highly-formatted documents, including PDFs, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents, and PNG and JPEG images. Read more »
Nobody really knew why Facebook hired former Second Life CTO Cory Ondrejka in a surprise deal last year. But now it has become apparent: He’s using his experiences building the virtual world to try to take web-based games to the next level. Read more »
Video publishers that want to distribute to viewers through apps built into connected TVs are feeling the effects of fragmentation, having to pick and choose between platforms. But the ability to build for a single, standards-based browser like Opera could make development a lot easier. Read more »
The controversial decision by the World Wide Web Consortium to create a new — and potentially confusing — brand identity for HTML5 doesn’t tell us much about the future of technology, but it does expose the weaknesses that motivate the web’s ruling body. Read more »
In 2010, the rapid growth of the application and mobile-driven internet pushed APIs into the spotlight. Fueled by new device platforms and cloud computing, 2010 saw a two-fold increase in new APIs per month over 2009, with more than 2,600 APIs counted in ProgrammableWeb’s API directory. Read more »
Netflix is all for HTML5 video, but it doesn’t want to simply reinvent the wheel and push forward with its own flavor of browser-based video delivery technologies. The company said today that it’s instead getting involved in standards bodies to resolve remaining obstacles across all platforms. Read more »
Is the Netflix interface on your PS3 looking a little funny these days? Then you might have been chosen to participate in an A/B test of new UIs for connected devices, made possible by innovative use of technologies like HTML5 as well as the Netflix API. Read more »
Mobile video accounts for a very small fraction of the overall U.S. mobile data market, despite on-the-go video and mobile TV receiving as much hype as any other area in the space. This report — the first in a two-part series on mobile video — examines what we can learn from the failures of mobile video to find a sizable audience so far, which challenges will continue to hinder the market in the coming years and the opportunities that will increasingly exist. The iPhone, Android devices and other multimedia-friendly handsets offer more screen real estate and higher resolution than previously possible, while the move toward 4G will help carriers deliver higher quality video more consistently. Even so, the challenges in this market are many, and mobile devices will likely always be inferior to set-top boxes, desktop computers and laptops when it comes to delivering a quality viewing experience. And because video consumes so much bandwidth on mobile networks, uptake will surely be impacted as carriers move away from all-you-can-eat data plans. The industry must, then, find other ways to monetize video in mobile, and without clogging already taxed cellular networks. Most importantly, it must develop viable business models for implementing video in ways that make sense for the consumer, the content owner and the network operator. Companies mentioned in this report include AT&T, Sprint, Apple, Google, Research in Motion, Qualcomm and Samsung. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Netflix has adopted HTML5 for its user experience in reaching connected devices, but has shied away from standards-based video playback, citing concerns about lack of content security. But a job posting suggests it might soon be building tools and pushing standards for HTML5 video playback. Read more »
