Web Defence
Berners-Lee: The Web is critical to the digital revolution, prosperity, liberty. It needs defending; http://eicker.at/TheWeb
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Gerrit Eicker
20
Welcome to the Universe of HyperText: the first Web site and Web server, 20 years ago at CERN on a NeXT; http://eicker.at/20
Gerrit Eicker
HTML5 Browser Compliance
W3C has released HTML5 browser compliance results. Believe it or not: IE9 outperforms even Chrome; http://eicker.at/HTML5
Gerrit Eicker
Second Life in a Web Browser?
Linden Lab confirms Project Skylight, tests for a Second Life Web Viewer; http://eicker.at/Skylight (via @slhamlet)
Gerrit Eicker
Linden Lab
Korman: A tinfoil hat theory about Linden Lab, makers of Second Life. Part 1; http://eicker.at/LL Part 2; http://eicker.at/LL2
Gerrit Eicker
HTML5 Interoperability
Le Hegaret, W3C: It is too early to deploy HTML5 because we are running into interoperability issues; http://eicker.at/c
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Goes HTML5
Zuckerberg on Web and HTML5: I am not going to build software. I am not going to build for a phone; http://j.mp/92wQdE
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Gerrit Eicker
Zuckerberg: “When I was coding Facebook there was no question in my mind like what I was going to build for. It was, you’re clearly going to build for the web. I’m not going to build software and I’m not going to build for a phone. … And that clarity was so valuable whereas today it’s like, okay, we want to go build an app. Even a new product that we launch. – It’s kind of a disaster right now. I really hope that the direction that this stuff goes in is one where there’s more of a standard.”
RWW: “That standard is HTML5, which Facebook plans to push very hard. If HTML5 can deliever a wide range of functions with a good user experience, then Facebook can develop one HTML5 version for every new product it launches and ‘that would be awesome,’ Zuckerberg said. And HTML5 could combate the problem of unfair access raised by the great App Migration. – Already Facebook has launched a special mobile site for people in developing countries (and some developed ones). 0.facebook lets users access a speedy, data charge-free version of Facebook with a mobile browser from any basic phone even in parts of the world with poor infrastructure. – Until the devices that people use to access the internet are completely standardized, the Web will never die.“
Gerrit Eicker
Business: OpenSim vs. Second Life
Korolov: OpenSim business roadmap, the past, present and future; http://j.mp/balwKd (via @kohdspace)
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
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.”
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Washington DC Web Designer
Interesting, this is something I’ve overlooked as a web designer.
Gerrit Eicker
Hoppala! Augmentation
Create augmented reality experiences, publish work at Layar: Hoppala! Augmentation; http://j.mp/b4aOvR (via @rashford)
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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 18:34 on 20. November 2010 Permalink |
Berners-Lee: “The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles. – The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. … Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. … The primary design principle underlying the Web’s usefulness and growth is universality. … Decentralization is another important design feature. … Decentralization has made widespread innovation possible and will continue to do so in the future. … Social-networking sites present a different kind of problem. … Each site is a silo, walled off from the others. Yes, your site’s pages are on the Web, but your data are not. … Open Standards Drive Innovation – Allowing any site to link to any other site is necessary but not sufficient for a robust Web. The basic Web technologies that individuals and companies need to develop powerful services must be available for free, with no royalties. … Keeping the web universal and keeping its standards open help people invent new services. But a third principle – the separation of layers – partitions the design of the Web from that of the Internet. … Electronic Human Rights … A neutral communications medium is the basis of a fair, competitive market economy, of democracy, and of science. Debate has risen again in the past year about whether government legislation is needed to protect net neutrality. It is. Although the Internet and Web generally thrive on lack of regulation, some basic values have to be legally preserved. … Free speech should be protected, too. … As long as the web’s basic principles are upheld, its ongoing evolution is not in the hands of any one person or organization – neither mine nor anyone else’s. If we can preserve the principles, the Web promises some fantastic future capabilities. … For example, the latest version of HTML, called HTML5, is not just a markup language but a computing platform that will make Web apps even more powerful than they are now. … A great example of future promise, which leverages the strengths of all the principles, is linked data. … Linked data raise certain issues that we will have to confront. For example, new data-integration capabilities could pose privacy challenges that are hardly addressed by today’s privacy laws. … Now is an exciting time. Web developers, companies, governments and citizens should work together openly and cooperatively, as we have done thus far, to preserve the Web’s fundamental principles, as well as those of the Internet, ensuring that the technological protocols and social conventions we set up respect basic human values. The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.”
Ingram, GigaOM: “Not everyone agrees, however, that Google or Facebook are actually monopolies in any kind of legal sense, although they are definitely dominant players. And while Google is clearly a web giant, Yahoo and AOL were once web giants too, and they are shadows of their former selves now, displaced by completely new players. Even Facebook, which is now seen as one of the companies to be afraid of, is threatened in many ways by Twitter – a startup that barely even existed a few years ago and is now reportedly valued at close to $3 billion. … That said, it’s worth being reminded that large players often see it as being in their interests to restrict the freedom of their users, and that – as Berners-Lee warns in his Scientific American piece – this can chip away at the web’s core principles, which he says revolve around ‘a profound concept: that any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere.’ … More critical to free speech than any other medium? That’s a strong claim – but there’s certainly an argument to be made that the web fits that definition.“