Today on the Net: Netflix explains why it uses HTML5 for its connected device user interfaces, Roku is preparing to roll out a pay-per-view offering for small video publishers next year and FilmOn and Ivi are both hated by broadcasters but they’re not the same company. Read more »
The rumors of Silverlight’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Today, Microsoft released the latest version of its rich Internet application development platform, with improved power management and DRM support. While Silverlgiht 5 adds 40 new features, updated features pale in comparison to previous versions. Read more »
The mobile applications market has exploded in recent years, with Apple’s App Store surpassing 300,000 applications and the Android Market continuing to gain ground. Apple and Google’s crowdsourcing strategies and the market’s low barriers to entry have set the standard and convinced dozens of individuals — regardless of experience — to become mobile app developers. A survey of 331 respondents derived from our readership at TheAppleBlog and jkOnTheRun looks at trends among mobile application developers, including average income for a developer, the most popular app platforms, the rising popularity of tablet applications and the in-app advertising vs. paid and/or low-cost apps. Companies mentioned in this report include Apple, Google, Research in Motion and Nokia. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In May, CBS promised us that its entire fall lineup of web videos would be viewable in on the iPad, a promise that hasn’t been fulfilled. So what’s holding the broadcaster back from making the same CBS.com content on the web available on the iPad? Read more »
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said his company’s battle with Apple comes as a war is brewing to bring new applications to consumer electronics devices. That war is being fought to capture developer interest and ensure that the best applications are being built on different platforms. Read more »
TV apps will soon be “everywhere,” according to attendees of a recent GigaOM Bunker event examining the future of the TV market. But how that market will develop, and which TV platforms will win out, is yet to be ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
At today’s GigaOM Pro Bunker Session, attendees and panelists agreed that standards will be needed to push the TV app market forward, and their app development efforts might get a whole lot simpler if more CE manufacturers turn to HTML5 as the platform for connected devices. Read more »
Google Android is handily beating both Apple and Microsoft in the race to control the smartphone market. Yet, each company is responding to this threat in very different way, but with the same weapon: the open standards of HTML5. Read more »
We have further confirmation that Microsoft is giving up on its Silverlight rich Internet application platform. Bob Muglia, Microsoft’s president in charge of server and tools, told ZDNet the company is “shifting away” from Silverlight as a cross-platform development framework, and pushing HTML5 instead. Read more »
A majority of web video is now HTML5-ready, showing that web standards — and Apple — are winning the day when it comes to how video is delivered online. Video viewable in an HTML5 video player now accounts for 54 percent of all video online. Read more »
Vimeo is trying to capture users’ attention in their living rooms with a new user interface it calls “Couch Mode,” which offers a 10-foot viewing experience and easier navigation for users watching on Google TV-enabled TVs, Blu-ray players and other devices. Read more »
Adobe just released a new HTML5 video widget for Dreamweaver users and other web developers. The widget aims to make it easier to play video without using Flash, but it still reverts to the format for users that don’t have browsers with HTML5 video support installed. Read more »
For the most part, as soon as I lose connectivity, my mobile apps are mostly broken. Musing over to my most-used apps — Gmail, Facebook and Twitter — only gets me error messages and frustration. And even Angry Birds and Word Warp are handicapped when they’re offline. Read more »
Last week, I went to the Future of Web Apps conference in London. As a non-developer, what I found most exciting about the event was that it offered me some insight into how our web apps will change thanks to new technologies, like HTML5 and CSS3. Read more »
Blip.tv is joining the HTML5 party, and it’s doing it with a brand new player, due to launch in the next couple of days. The new player supports advertising, maintains Blip’s previous look and feel, and will be about five times faster than the Flash player. Read more »
However much CSS3 matters to Adobe and to the legions of web designers, it’s not an industry-transforming technology. For that, you have to look at the other parts of HTML5 standards that deal with data storage and persistence, specifically: HTML5 webSQL, local storage and cache manifests. Read more »
While Apple and Adobe bicker over whether HTML5 or Flash is the best platform for delivery of video, games and other interactive applications, Silverlight gets nary a mention — even from its own team. And Microsoft itself is moving to HTML5 for many of its products. Read more »
Online analytics and monetization firm TubeMogul is making its reporting features available to companies that deliver video through HTML5 video players. By doing so, video publishers can get the same analytics from the iPhone and iPad as they receive through Flash video players online. Read more »
Opera is trying to make it easier for content companies to get their video on connected TVs and other devices. With the launch of a new content development kit, publishers will be able to build standards-based web apps that will be accessible across multiple devices. Read more »
Akamai is set to announce new capabilities making it easier for companies to deliver video to the iPhone or iPad. With its new “in the network” video packaging, content providers will be able to serve up video to multiple Apple devices without changing their existing workflow. Read more »
Boxee is getting ready for HTML5 by swapping out its browser. The next version of Boxee will offer web access via a Webkit, as opposed to the current Gecko browser. This should make it easier to access web apps as well as additional video content. Read more »
After posting Kevin Tofel’s demo of the struggles he had with Flash-based video on his Nexus One mobile handset, we’ve received a ton of comments, including response videos from readers who showed their own experiences with Flash on Android mobile handsets. Here are just a few. Read more »
Flash has been touted as one of the advantages for Android mobile devices. But how does Flash video perform on handsets running Google’s mobile OS? To find out we asked Kevin Tofel to test Flash video on his Nexus One — and the results are not good. Read more »
The Arcade Fire’s new album release has been accompanied by relatively new uses of web video; today, thanks to some help from Google’s Chrome, the band’s track We Used to Wait gets an all-HTML5 “musical experience made specifically for the browser.” Read more »
The BBC recently warned that the HTML5 standardization process is at risk of being hijacked by companies pushing proprietary implementations of the web standard. Now it is responding by hiring a “senior technologist” to represent the broadcaster in discussions with the W3C and other standards bodies. Read more »
Experts from the tech, business and creative sides of the publishing industry gathered today for a broad discussion of disintermediation as part of our GigaOM Pro Bunker Series. Two key conflicts between attendees were apparent to me, one on the platform side and one on marketing. Read more »
Vimeo is expanding the availability of its online video site with a new universal player that will work on iPhone and iPad mobile devices, as well as a channel on Roku broadband set-top boxes. The site is also adding a “Watch Later” feature to its player. Read more »
Erik Huggers, director of Future Media & Technology at the BBC, cautions that HTML5 is not yet ready for primetime, and that certain companies — like Apple — could undermine the open nature of the standard by pushing an agenda through their own proprietary implementations. Read more »
YuMe is rolling out support for HTML5 video ads, allowing publishers to monetize videos they serve on the iPad and other devices that don’t support Flash. By installing a free plugin, they can now serve ads to any device or browser supporting HTML5 video playback. Read more »
PlayOn has rolled out a new HTML5-based web app that will allow users to watch movies and TV shows on the iPhone and iPod Touch. By integrating with its desktop software, users will be able to watch previously unavailable web video content like Netflix and Hulu. Read more »
Is there room in the world for an Apple-like mobile software store comprised of web apps? One person thinks so and just launched an iPhone app to gather up web-based applications, making it easier for both consumers and developers to find and sell Internet wares. Read more »
YouTube is experimenting with a new form of embeds that will play on an iPad right within a web page, making it unnecessary to launch the iPad YouTube app every time you want to watch a video. However, the new format isn’t ready for prime time. Read more »
Longtime Internet pioneer, AOL today matures its mobile platform with a two new applications for Android handsets and an HTML5 version of the AOL Mobile website for smartphones. It’s no surprise that AOL is looking to support smartphones, but picking Android over iPhone is. Read more »
According to a new report released today by DoNanza, — a search engine that aggregates project postings from online freelance jobs markets — demand for HTML5 skills is soaring, noting a whopping 474 percent increase in demand for HTML5 in Q2 this year. Read more »
Today on the Net: Universal Music Group’s appeal of the Veoh copyright infringement verdict could be a preview of Viacom’s appeal of the YouTube verdict, broadcasters are lobbying for government to stay out of retransmission discussions and KickApps added support for HTML5 in its App Studio. Read more »
Several significant events set the tone for the digital media ecosystem during in the second quarter. First among these was the release of the iPad, the impact of which went far beyond device uptake; among other things it does not support Adobe Flash, which has impacted the entire chain of web-based video production from content sites re-encoding video to new tools being developed for HTML5-based advertising.
Another principal event in the quarter was the announcement of Google TV, a software platform built on Android 2.1, Google Chrome and Flash 10.1 that will be incorporated into a variety of companion devices including TV sets, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes. The platform offers significant advancements in merging TV and the web experience (although TiVo says it has done just that for years). Sony and Logitech have both announced plans to launch Google TV products in fall 2010.
Also in the second quarter, both YouTube and Hulu refreshed their sites, reflecting the market’s growing maturity. But while YouTube spent the quarter on the defensive in its ongoing legal battle with Viacom over copyright infringement, Hulu was on the offensive, introducing new services and preparing a paid subscription service launch. A paid service would bring new revenue streams to the video site, and would put Hulu in more direction competion with Netflix, which is increasingly shifting toward its streaming video service, away from its former mainstay of DVDs by mail. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Charles Jolley, who until very recently worked as JavaScript Frameworks Manager at MobileMe, left to work full time on his open-source framework, SproutCore. His new company’s premise is that the future of HTML5 and native apps will be closely entwined as content goes mobile. Read more »
Google’s been busy recently adding HTML5-powered features to Gmail, but they’ve only been offered to users running the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome. Now those features are becoming more widely available, with the news that Google has extended support to Safari 5. Read more »
HTML5 isn’t yet fully ratified, but browser vendors are nonetheless starting to implement some of its features. This presents a huge opportunity for forward-thinking web app developers, which in turn will spell good news for ever-growing number people who uses web ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
As one of the first major video publishers to create an HTML5 video player and push its own open-source video codec, Google has been a big backer of HTML5. Despite this, YouTube remains committed to its use of Adobe Flash for delivery of its video. Read more »
