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Forrester Research is recommending developers continue developing rich Internet applications and take long pause before embracing HTML 5. For Forrester, HTML 5 is still many years away from becoming a standard in the market and fully functional across multiple platforms. The analyst recommendation reflects on Google's mobile strategy, which CEO Eric Schmidt says is rooted in the company's support for HTML 5. This topic is of real interest now as Apple has dropped support for Adobe Flash. Google is forging ahead with support for HTML 5 but is also playing all sides as Flash remains the incumbent technology for online video. Sponsor So though its commitment is to HTML 5, the company still faces the reality that adoption for platforms such as .NET remain high. Analyst Jeffrey Hammond writes in his report : "These trends underline a key hurdle that HTML 5 technology must overcome to be a ready substitute for today's RIA platform options; users expect it to be as low cost as the other options, but to be of use it must also integrate with Java and .NET server technology. Even if HTML 5 turns out to be a great spec when it reaches Candidate Recommendation state in 2012, it's not clear that this alone will be enough to reverse current RIA adoption trends." In the meantime, Google is debating if it should develop native applications for different platforms. A Google Docs product manager said to us recently that the company has not decided if they should invest in native applications for different mobile platforms. Last week at Google Atmosphere, Schmidt was emphatic about Google's interest in HTML 5. Also at Google Atmosphere, Google Apps President David Girouard moderated a discussion that touched on the HTML 5 issue. In Vint Cerf's view, the "Internet of Things," will evolve to the point where more "things," will go on the smart grid. Speeds will increase at the edges of the network, making downloads to a web page almost simultaneous. What this seems to mean is that we will see the borders between apps and the Web dissolve. There may even be the evolution of new networks that are different than the Web itself. In view of what they say, there is no clear dismissal of different platforms. It's more how mobile apps and the Web blend together. Forrester is critical of the draft HTML 5 spec. Hammond states cites the deep developer use of existing rich Internet application platforms. From his report: "Will HTML 5 make rich Internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash/Flex and Microsoft Silverlight obsolete? For at least the next five years, the answer is a definite "no"; inconsistent implementations of the draft HTML 5 specification and immature tooling make building HTML 5 apps that work consistently across browsers and operating systems a real challenge. Furthermore, this "either/ or" scenario is driven only by vendor politics, not by developer realities. Ultimately, HTML 5 and RIA platforms will be complementary technologies, and enterprise development shops will need to invest in both approaches to deliver expressive applications that combine reach and richness." It is a little tiring when we hear the war of words over apps versus the Web. What will win? Probably neither. It will just depend on the demands of the market, the views of the developer and the powers they decide to follow. Discuss
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Google's Eric Schmidt Gushes About HTML 5
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It's been a given for some time that businesses, including startups, should have a presence on and connection with Facebook . With over 400 million active users, chances are your potential investors and customers are already there. Fan pages have been a simple way to generate interest and engage customers, and Facebook Connect has quickly become a standard in signing up and signing in users. In his keynote at f8 yesterday Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg actually mentioned startups in his opening remarks, stating that they "are requiring that their users use Facebook Connect. We want to make it simple to create these personalized experiences." Sponsor Whether or not Facebook is a "requirement" for startups, there are some things new businesses should think about based on yesterday's announcements. "Facebook Connect On Steroids" Facebook announced a major overhaul to its API and introduced three new components yesterday: social plugins , the Open Graph protocol , and the Graph API . By using the tags specified in this protocol, any website can now become part of the Facebook ecosystem. If a Facebook user visits your site and Likes your page, you have the ability then to publish information into that user's stream. In addition, implementation of the code on your site will give you access to administrative tools and analytics just like any Facebook fan page owner. As we wrote yesterday , this will take analytics to the next level, providing an incredible amount of demographic data about users who like and link their profiles to your site. However, this information will reside with Facebook, not on your own website, making them a de facto owner of your visitors' social data. Applications & Virtual Currency: Where the Money Is? While many businesses will likely integrate their websites into the expanding Facebook ecosystem, there is likely still room for growth within the platform itself, namely with application development. There are over 550,000 applications on the site, a number that continues to grow - and to encourage return visitors. To coincide with the growth of the application market, particularly in the area of social gaming, Facebook also announced the expansion of its official virtual currency, Credits . Last year Paypal processed over $500 million in virtual goods last year, with social gaming company Zynga becoming Paypal's second largest merchant (following eBay). Clearly Facebook seeks to stake a claim in the virtual currency market. Facebook Credits are currently in beta with over 100 applications, and will roll out to the entire network soon, Zuckerberg said yesterday. Credits will allow users to purchase one currency for all transactions on Facebook, rather than have to enter their credit card information with each purchase. By facilitating online payments, Facebook hopes to increase the percentage of users willing to purchase virtual goods to between 8% and 20% David vs. Goliath? Despite repetition at f8 yesterday that these changes were meant designed "for developers," it remains to be seen how the announcements will play out for developers and for users alike, the latter of whom are notorious for protesting changes to the site. In particular, continued concerns about privacy might not be well received, particulary given Facebook's past history with opening user data. Privacy concerns might not be the only thing that gives some businesses pause about Facebook's direction. Facebook also announced yesterday " instant personalization " yesterday, giving three "preferred partners" - Yelp , Pandora , and CNN - instant and additional access to Facebook profile information when users visit their sites. For startups in these areas, namely restaurant recommendation, music sharing, and news delivery, the "preferred partner" program might make industry in-roads more difficult and could adversely impact user adoption. As the "preferred partner" program expands beyond the three selected for launch, it remains to be seen the effect of being sanctioned - or not - by Facebook. The buzz yesterday was that Facebook had just " seized control of the Internet ." Comments on how you think the f8 announcements might play out for startups welcome! Discuss
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David vs. Goliath? An F8 Overview for Startups
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Facebook announced yesterday that it is taking a number of dramatic steps that would all add up to serving 1 billion "like" clicks from visitors to sites around the web, within 24 hours. Many people are concerned about Facebook's growing dominance around the web . One group of high-profile New Yorkers has launched OpenLike , a "very alpha alternative to Facebook Like." Working on the project so far is much-watched blogging investor and startup guy Chris Dixon , Huffington Post co-founder and MIT Media Lab guy Jonah Peretti , Jonathan Glick of Dixon, Conway , Ehrenberg and other VC-blessed TLists , Tom Pinckney who with Dixon both sold SiteAdvisor and founded Hunch.com and MIT grad and Hunch engineer Peter Coles . Dixon said this afternoon that the project is "looking for an authoritative open source person to govern it." Sponsor So the establishment is in Palo Alto and the rock-star insurgents are from the East Coast? Let no one say the Internet is boring. The lightweight technology at OpenLike is right now just a way for site owners to provide buttons for sharing content on a wide variety of social networks. One line of javascript adds a series of sharing buttons to a site, which the site owner can edit. Given that there are any number of ways to do more or less this same thing, and that these are very smart people working on this, we're sure there's a lot more in the works. The project describes itself on its site as "an open protocol to allow sharing the things people like in a simple and standard method between web applications." We'll share more details if and when this project develops. Related: See also developer Jesse Stay's blog post How Do You Compete With This Beast: Here's How , about long-time open standards community member Phil Windley's new product Kynext . The battle over control or absence of control over the internet is far, far from over. There are lots of people getting ready to step up and challenge Facebook's powerful, seductive, expanding control. Discuss
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OpenLike: All-Star Team to Challenge Facebook's Expansion
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We've entered an era where the cost of sensors, processors and transmitters are so low that it's fast becoming cost effective to put them inside everything, even the clothes we wear. Even our own toothbrush may soon sense and communicate socially about where it is and how it's being used in space and time. Sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling has coined the term " spime ", to describe objects that can be "tracked through space and time throughout the lifetime of the object." David Orban, the creator of the iPhone app WideNoise , also offers WideSpime , which helps developers build mass data collection services for real-time data management in a way that maintains the autonomy of both the data and the object generating the data. Sponsor In our most recent Internet of Things post Objects Aren't Social , Orban comments that objects " ...are going to form their own independent social networks, which are going to be fundamentally incompatible with human communication." These new machine networks will be so redundant and reliable that we will be freed from most of our machine-operating duties. We will get to be human again. We will soon see cars that don't rear end each other because onboard sensors won't allow it. Or how about a vacuum cleaner that knows about a mess your cat made and cleans it up before you even notice your machine-network's admin message about it. Also, consider an Internet of Things home that tracks your habits so well it knows which rooms to heat and light because it knows what you'll be doing on that particular day. Orban's dream is that thousands of years of human subservience to machines will end because we will teach our machines how to not only take care of themselves, but how to take care of us as well. But what if someone wanted to manipulate these systems for an unethical advantage? Or even worse, what if these manipulations were built into these new machine networks at the earliest stages? On Sunday night, ReadWriteWeb reported on a presentation by Tim O'Rielly regarding the future Internet of Things. In his presentation he said, "You see increasingly the giants of the Internet are trading for their own account - they are building a platform in which all roads lead back to themselves. Now there is a contervailing force for openess, but we have to wary, we have to be aware of that; we have to work for openess in that web." That's why Orban stresses the importance of autonomous machine networks, which are built on open-sourced standards. Another open-source Internet of Things project we're excited about is Pachube ( pronounced patch-bay ). What WideSpime and Pachube share in common are real-time global maps, which present data generation in a fair and open way. Because these projects aspire to a high level of transparency and user adaptability, we may have a chance to achieve Orban's dream of all us machine operators getting a chance to be human again. Free To be Human Video Free To be Human PowerPoint David Orban - Free to be human View more presentations from Mobile Monday Amsterdam . Discuss
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Internet of Things Can Make Us Human Again
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The debate about private clouds continue as the traditional heavyweight enterprise software providers make their big and glossy pitches for their vision of a private cloud. So, it may come from Google, but still, it is refreshing to hear the intellectual tone that a scholar like Vint Cerf provides. Cerf is Google's chief technology evangelist but his reflections give a sound bearing on how private and public clouds do interact. Sponsor He spoke last week at the Google Atmosphere Conference. We came across one of the discussions he had with fellow Google innovators. He repeats what we hear him say a lot. It comes down to interoperability. Private clouds are tools. Google develops tools that are distributed on the Internet. The question is how do clouds interact? It's a contrast to what we see with Microsoft or Oracle in its quest to sell cloud computing environments into the enterprise. In the meantime Amazon continues its own quest to dispel private cloud computing as a myth, not a reality. In an interview with eWeek , Adam Selipsky, vice president of AWS outlined their views: "....Moreover, Selipsky said what people are calling private clouds come with the following drawbacks, where the customer will: · Still own the capex...and they're very expensive (big fixed investments) · Not pay for what you use · Not have true elasticity...when groups relinquish their servers, the company still owns the datacenter space and servers...and will also find that managing this supply chain will present a dilemma...will either have to significantly overprovision which is wasteful or become really expert at managing just-in-time supply-chain so there are no long waits for servers...managing a supply chain like this is really hard and takes a lot of effort and refining and keeping the status quo of long time to market is not so appealing either · Still own the headache of managing the undifferentiated heavy lifting" And so, the debate continues. Discuss
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Google's Vint Cerf on Private Clouds v. Public Clouds
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