Business: OpenSim vs. Second Life
Korolov: OpenSim business roadmap, the past, present and future; http://j.mp/balwKd (via @kohdspace)
Tagged: Browsers RSS
Gerrit Eicker
Web Design Application
Santa Maria: We should have native tools to do our jobs, a real web design application; http://j.mp/cpGqbU (via @rivva)
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Gerrit Eicker
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Washington DC Web Designer
Interesting, this is something I’ve overlooked as a web designer.
Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Hoppala: “Hoppala! Augmentation provides an easy way for non-technical creatives to start experimenting with augmented reality and Layar. Create your own augmented reality experiences with just some mouse clicks and publish your work at Layar, the world‘s largest augmented reality platform. – Hoppala! Augmentation comes with a full screen map interface to place and edit augments all around the world. Upload your images and icons, audio, video and 3D multimedia content with just some mouse clicks and add it to your personalized inventory in the cloud. Hoppala! Augmentation even does the hosting for you. It simply runs in your browser, there’s no software installation required and no coding needed at all.”
Layar interview with Gardeya: “Why did you create augmentation on top of Layars API? Hoppala! Augmentation started as an internal test tool. The more layers we built, the more we needed to test certain use cases and scenarios. It turned out to be pretty unhandy to manually edit some source code everytime we wanted to check the effect of some parameter changes. So we created a graphical user interface. During that time we met a lot of people who told us they would so much like to step into AR and Layar but just don’t know how to do it technically. Our goal was to open AR content creation to non-technical people. – Why should non-technical people use your tools, next to the fact that it’s easy? With Hoppala! Augmentation non-technical people can concentrate on their strengths and just be creative. That’s why Hoppala! Augmentation provides all the multimedia features supported by Layar, e.g. audio, video and 3D. Finally there is no more technical hurdle in the way. Everybody can create an account and start experimenting immediately. And it’s free!”
RWW: “When content management systems (CMS) like WordPress and Blogger hit the Web several years ago, the Internet entered a new age where it became quick and easy for anyone with a computer to contribute content. This week, augmented reality (AR) took a significant step toward becoming more like the read/write Web with the launch of an online mobile AR CMS for creating content on the Layar platform. – ‘Augmentation’ – a Web-based tool for generating mobile AR content – was created by Layar Partner Network member Hoppala. With a Layar developer account, users of Augmentation can easily and instantaneously place their content in Layar with zero code and a few clicks on a map. Custom icons, images, audio, video and 3D content can all be added by way of a full screen map interface, and Hoppala will even host all of the data. … Hoppala’s Augmentation tool is a great next step for AR content creation, as it lets users focus on creating great content, not on the complex technical aspects of AR. That said, it signals the beginning of a new era for AR as content creation is as easy as hosting a blog. As augmented reality matures, the platforms through which we use it must mature as well.“
Gerrit Eicker
Apple vs. Microsoft
Graham: If Apple grows the iPod into a cell phone with web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble; http://j.mp/cjU4kD
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Gerrit Eicker
Thanks for the hint at @pfandtasse!
Oddhead: “Back in 2004, who could have imagined Apple’s astonishing rise to overtake Microsoft as the most valuable tech company in the world? – At least one person. – Paul Graham wins the award for the most prescient parenthetical statement inside a footnote ever.”
Graham‘s footnote (14) in Hackers and Painters, 2004: “If the Mac was so great, why did it lose? Cost, again. Microsoft concentrated on the software business and unleashed a swarm of cheap component suppliers on Apple hardware. It did not help, either, that suits took over during a critical period. (And it hasn’t lost yet. If Apple were to grow the iPod into a cell phone with a web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble.)”
Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
RWW: “The battle between HTML5 and Adobe Flash for dominance over video on the Web is likely to end poorly for one of the two, and lately it’s been looking worse and worse for Flash. Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to the Web stating why Flash would remain banned from iPhones and iPads and just yesterday, Apple got an ‘unexpected ally‘ in its anti-Flash crusade – the adult entertainment industry. – But today, just to keep from making things too cut and dry, Google-owned video site YouTube has come out with a list of its own reasons on why Flash is here to stay, for now, and HTML5 simply isn’t qualified to handle the job at hand.”
Harding: “We need to do more than just point the browser at a video file like the image tag does – there’s a lot more to it than just retrieving and displaying a video. The tag certainly addresses the basic requirements and is making good progress on meeting others, but the tag does not currently meet all the needs of a site like YouTube. – To that end, we’re excited about the new WebM project. Google is open sourcing and contributing the VP8 codec to the WebM effort. Google, Mozilla, and Opera have all committed to support WebM, and we have already started making YouTube videos available in the WebM format. Adobe has also committed to support VP8, the video codec for WebM, in an upcoming Flash Player release. … HD video begs to be watched in full screen, but that has not historically been possible with pure HTML. While most browsers have a fullscreen mode, they do not allow javascript to initiate it, nor do they allow a small part of the page (such as a video player) to fill the screen. Flash Player provides robust, secure controls for enabling hardware-accelerated fullscreen displays. … Video is not just a one-way medium. Every day, thousands of users record videos directly to YouTube from within their browser using webcams, which would not be possible without Flash technology. Camera access is also needed for features like video chat and live broadcasting.”
CT: “It may seem that Steve Jobs is on a lonely crusade against Adobe’s Flash format with the rest of the industry simply waiting who this battle will turn out. While Adobe is rallying support for Flash, Apple receives support from a rather unexpected ally, the adult film industry. The founder of Digital Playground, one of the porn heavyweights in the U.S., told ConceivablyTech that it will abandon Flash as soon as the desktop browsers fully support HTML 5. We also learned that 3D is just not there yet and that online movie streaming is unlikely to replace Blu-ray discs anytime soon.”
WebM: “The WebM project is dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone. – The WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Adobe, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors.”
Gerrit Eicker
Twitter Places
Twitter goes Places: geolocating tweets, integrating Foursquare and Gowalla, API functionality; http://j.mp/cfmoDX
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Gerrit Eicker
Twitter: “Foursquare and Gowalla integration: Many Foursquare and Gowalla users publish check-ins to Twitter. Location is a key component of these Tweets, so we worked closely with both companies to associate a Twitter Place with Tweets generated by these services. This means that if you click on a Twitter Place, such as ‘Ritual Roasters,’ you will see standard Tweets and check-ins from Foursquare and Gowalla.”
VB: “Twitter just launched Places, the location-sharing feature that the company announced at its Chirp conference in April. – Users could already share their location on Twitter – either their latitude and longitude coordinates or their neighborhoods. But with Places, you can share a specific location, like a coffee shop, a restaurant, or a bar. Then users can search to see all the tweets from that location. They can create new Places, too.”
NYT: “Twitter users who want to share their location click on a link that says ‘add your location’ when they write their post. They can choose from a database of places nearby or add their own.”
RWW: “Twitter has ‘data partnerships’ with TomTom and Localeze in order to make Twitter Locations work. Over the coming week, it is rolling Locations out to 65 countries. It is also working to add Twitter Places to Twitter for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.”
TC: “All of this means huge things for location on Twitter. And the fact that this place data ties in with both Foursquare and Gowalla is excellent. But there still eventually needs to be some sort of unified place database. Maybe Twitter Places will help produce that. At least until Facebook’s location solution comes out and is inevitably incompatible – I kid, I kid. Or do I?“
Gerrit Eicker
Safari 5
Apple releases Safari 5, adds better HTML5, CSS3 support, Safari Reader and Extensions; http://j.mp/9byGdU
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Gerrit Eicker
The Safari Reader is an enormous evolutionary step in web browser development: reading, printing, forwarding gets a major update. Back side for publishers: clickpath analysis becomes harder, actionable elements or online advertising must be positioned above the fold on longer pages and (text-)linked within the content.
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Gerrit Eicker
TC: “Speaking of Chrome and Firefox, while Safari 5 will bring a 30% performance increase over Safari 4, Apple is also saying that the new version is 3% faster than the latest stable build of Chrome (5.0) and twice as fast as Firefox 3.6. All of this is based on SunSpider JavaScript tests of Apple’s latest Nitro engine. – Safari is also adding a new feature called ‘Reader’ which will make it easier to read webpages by taking away all the excess design (and ads).”
RWW: “When Safari Reader detects an article, an icon appears in the address field. Click it and it will display the whole article on one clean page, presumably without links, sidebars or dancing banditos. Think print-ready page. There are options to enlarge, print or send via email.”
MW: “The new Safari Reader feature seems akin to Web-based services like Readability, giving you the option of viewing a Web page in a slimmed-down, scrollable view that eliminates many of the distracting elements. Safari 5 can detect both single and multipage articles and allows you to toggle the Reader mode to display the article, print it, or share it via e-mail.”
TNW: “The other notable inclusion is Safari Reader ‘making it easy to read single and multipage articles on the web by presenting them in a new, scrollable view without any additional content or clutter.’”
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Martin Seibert
I like the idea of Safari Reader. I am curious if it will be able to compete with my combination of Google Reader, NetNewsWire and InstaPaper …
The increase of speed is even more thrilling. I am eager to find out if it is really faster than Chrome.
Gerrit: What is your experience so far?
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Gerrit Eicker
I love it. Safari 5 is slightly faster but the best part of it is the Safari Reader: it makes reading long articles super easy even on badly layouted pages (includes those with multiple pages per article). This is a huge (r)evolution!
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Gerrit Eicker
The Safari Reader integrates bravely with my news reading habits: NWW (besides others) defines the “what”. Safari Reader becomes the new “read now” tool of choice. Instapaper stays for “read later”.
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Martin Seibert
In a disciplined world, there should never be a read now, should there?
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Gerrit Eicker
I’m pretty curious. ;)
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Martin Seibert
In that case, you should rather be disciplined, as long as you consider reading web news “working”. If its “leisure time”, no one cares if you use it efficiently.
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Gerrit Eicker
Of course I am: following defined news (reader/ing) time slots. ;)
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Gerrit Eicker
Jobs: Openess vs. Flash
Jobs on Flash: We strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open; http://j.mp/aJCfrS
Gerrit Eicker
State of Web Development 2010
Web Directions State of Web Development report 2010 covers technologies, techniques, philosophies; http://j.mp/ahPSyK
Gerrit Eicker
iPad ready: HTML5 vs. Flash
Apple not only ignores Flash on the iPad (iPhone, iPod Touch): it seems to start a war for HTML5 now; http://j.mp/b8Tfp6
Santa Maria: “The web and its related disciplines have grown organically. I think it’s safe to say the web is not the domain of just the geeks anymore – we all live here. And those of us who work here should have sophisticated, native tools to do our jobs. … So why not build a desktop app for web design around WebKit? I’m not talking about an in-browser AJAX toolkit for dragging elements around and changing fonts, but an actual desktop application built with WebKit as the core to its display. It could have accurate rendering and previews for the way page elements would look, but with some of the WYSIWYG tools desktop design apps have. We wouldn’t just approximate pixels in a flat comp, our CSS would be baked in to the layouts we draw and create on the page. And as Webkit grows, so to could this new app, always taking advantage of the latest and greatest functionality. Just like a browser, it could pull assets from remote servers; and just like a desktop app, it could make use of local processing power and OS level functionality. This would allow it to effectively combine some of the best of both worlds, with a foot firmly planted in the web. – The advantages would be monumental, allowing a strong creative and explorative process, while seeing how things could react on a live stage. It would fulfill many of the items on my wishlist because these are already part of core browser functionality. We would essentially be designing with live page elements; not a picture of a text field—but a text field you could click into and start typing, and then drag to a different area of the page entirely. – I know I’m generalizing; I’m a designer first and most certainly not a developer, but I’ve been occupying this space and using these tools long enough to have a hunch for what works and what doesn’t. An application like this could change the process of web design considerably. Most importantly, it wouldn’t be a proxy application that we use to simulate the way webpages look – it would already speak the language of the web. It would truly be designing in the browser.”