I have applied for a press pass to attend Google IO. It is my intention to report on the state of HTML5 to this blog from the event. If you know anyone who can help get me a press pass that would be greatly appreciated.
:-]
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Microsoft announced their long awaited entrance into the mobile space this
morning. Like any other good geek I woke up at 6:30 am to watch it live on
Leo Laporte’s TWIT network.
All in all it looks like an interesting platform. I fully intend to get a Win
Phone 7 device as soon as they hit the market. But there is one glaring issue
that I feel will be the a major downfall of this platform—it’s lack of support
for HTML5/CSS3 (aka The Modern Web).
The problem as I see it
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From the perspective of a developer there has never been an opportunity the size of the mobile computing paradigm. This will be by far the largest and quickest adoption of any computing paradigm.
Also from the perspective of a developer there are too many platforms. Win Phone 7 only adds to that problem. It’s not exactly easy to learn the different languages, subleties, and conventions that come with each platform. The obvious solution is for the browser to be the single entry point into all platforms.
You can currently write an HTML5/CSS3 webapp and it will work reasonably well on both iOS and Android. Apple and Google are both actively involved in developing these new standards. They grok that the web is the rug that ties the room together.
And that to me is the problem. Microsoft chose to put a version of IE 7/8 on their new platform. They chose not to give developers the magic HTML5/CSS3 door to walk through. They really believe that you are planning on learning how to code natively for
their platform. And that I believe is the achillies heel of Win Phone 7.
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Why does Eric Schmidt do this to himself and Google?
Schmidt is one of the most interesting and inspiring characters in modern history. It seems odd to me that he let’s himself be put into such unflattering situations. Similar to a couple of months ago when he got in trouble for saying that kids should be allowed to change their names.
I realized he was joking because I heard him say that same line a couple years ago to a hearty chuckle from the crowd. But things have changed for Google in the last couple years. They have lost their gleam. People are distrustful and confused.
Yesterday on this week in Google Jeff Jarvis mentioned that he senses a coming backlash and bigotry toward geeks. A national flair of jocks making fun of the eggheads if you will. I too get a sense that people are beginning to get tech weary.
A couple examples that make me uneasy about our information singularity future
Bloggers in Saudi Arabia will soon need a license to blog.
Russia, China, and a host of other countries are attempting to pass a law that views the internet as an ‘information weapon.’
We are beginning to witness the divide between what Hugo DeGaris calls the Terrans and the Cosmists. This will unfold more dramatically as Moore’s law continues to speed things up.
It’s unfortunate that someone as charismatic as Eric Schmidt isn’t able to better articulate the wonderful potential of a public and positive information singularity. If anyone can see it surely it’s him from his lofty peak atop Google’s Mountains of data.
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Apple has released all of the 2010 World Wide Developers Conference for free and they are super rich with HTML5 love and tutorials.
Apple WWDC videos rich with HTML5
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From the post,
“Over the last few months, user engagement on Scribd
has surged, according to CEO Trip Adler, thanks to its transition to HTML5, the introduction of the iPad, and Scribd’s Facebook integration. Of these three factors, Adler says the conversion from Flash to HTML5 was by far the greatest driver for his document sharing company. According to Scribd’s numbers, time on the site has tripled in the last three months.”
Scribds adoption of HTML5 pays off in a major way
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20
Case-Study: Rewriting famous native iPad apps in HTML5
Comments off · Posted by admin in HTML5
http://whitherapps.com/bbc-news/
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I just got back from the Geo-Local Smackdown with @Dylan Clendenin and @Alex Levinson.
Riffing on my thoughts from yesterday regarding the industry as an ecosphere and software as organisms this is how I see the situation. Tonight my friends and I saw 6 little fish swimming in a big pond. Sure they can boast adoption rates of 100,000 a week and userbases of a million or two. But these are shrimp and tuna. The silent Great White swimming in the distance is Facebook.
Not Apple or Google–each with a mobile platform but Facebook with it’s nearly half a billion users. Neither Apple or Google have a network that size with so many interlocking parts. Facebook’s social graph is the ecosphere that each of these 6 little fish tonight are hoping to create.
Make no mistake about it—Facebook is going to turn on geo-location. Trust me. And they will do it in a big platform kind of way. They will in effect become the geo-location reef around which all life grows as well as the bad ass shark that guards it all and feeds on the thriving life. (credit to @Robert Scoble for the idea of a software reef)
It’s clear that 2010 is the year that the mobile web really takes hold. Mobile phones are everywhere. I have 6 staring me in the face as I write this and I am considering buying the new iPhone. Think of each of the phones you see in people’s hands as little fish that swim on the reef. Now think of all these new geo-location companies as bigger fish that are fighting for a chance to eat the data your phone produces. And then picture Facebook at the top of the foodchain.
I see an interesting parallel between Facebook’s situation and Apple. Both are creating thriving reeves. Both are also ruthless preditors that are essentially growing their own ecosystems where they can pick and choose what survives and what dies.
The question in both situations is what does a smart developer do? Do you invest time and money trying to become the 7th or 8th little fish? Or do you become an exotic plant that grows on the reef?
FWIW & for better or worse—after tonight I hold true to my prediction that geo-location will be completely ubiquitous within 5 years—Get ready.
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This evening I gave an hour and a half talk on HTML5 <video> to the Santa Cruz web developers club and I used this picture. It sums up the way I feel about what is happening right now.
Each time we have had a paradigm shift—from mainframes to mini computers, from mini’s to personal computers, from pc’s to laptops, and now from laptops to mobile devices we have seen a 10x increase in users. Those 10x users are the massive wave about to engulf the already tipsy and frail boat which is our industry and world.
There is another label I could give this picture. The lower wave could be iOS and the massive wave could be Android. iOS may be more polished and user friendly as well as up in our face like the little wave is currently upon the boat—but Android is a massive wave rising in the background about to crash down upon our boat and turn the whole thing upside down.
I always think of software like organisms and industries like ecosystems. There are big and little organisms. There are preditors and prey. There are parasitic relationships and symbiotic relationships. And around it all is experimentation and darwinian evolution. In natural ecosystems Nature will try everything imaginable. Once life finds a niche it will maximize adaptation to survive and thrive. That is what I am seeing with Android.
When I was at Google IO with @dylan.clendenin we saw over 60 Android “phones.” There was every style of phone you could imagine. Big phones with touch screens and front and back facing cameras. Small flip phones with no camera and no touch screen. Phones with physical keyboards. Phones with virtual keyboards.
@ Leo Laport reported that there were over 45 Android Tablets that launched 2 weeks ago. Tablets that ranged in size from 15 inches down to 7 inches. Tablets with USB ports and tablets with none. Tablets with front facing camera and back facing cameras and both. Tablets of every shape, style, and price point–all runing Android and all plugged into the Googleverse.
This is digital Nature at it’s finest. Because of Android’s wonderful price of FREE we are witnessing the Cambrian explosion of mobile. And this is only the beginning. Now our phones become intelligent. Who better to harvest all of this information and find meaning in it than the Great Google?
Contrast that with iOS. Yes I will admit that it is better today. By better I simply mean that if you were stuck in an elevator on acid with Android or iOS I think you would have a better trip with iOS.
But iOS is like an industrial mega-farm that grows only roundup ready brocolli. The brocolli is growing and living in an entirely artificial and curated reality. It will grow exactly to its potential maximum because it is being grown by professional farmers. There is no chance for nature to evolve in this environment. And outliers will quickly be culled. Steve Jobs and the boys aren’t going to risk you fucking up their Singularity.
But mono culture leaves no room for experimentation and in an explosion like we are about to experience where we go from the age of mobile computing with 2 to 3 computers per user to the age of ubiquitous computing with thousands of computers per user iOS will be too narrow to fully explore all the potential niches in the ecosphere.
Android is the common DNA that the vast majority of the computers of the future will share.
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These are slides from a recent talk I gave on HTML5 video at the Santa Cruz web developers club. Big thanks to Mark Pilgrim and Dive into HTML5 for most of the info for this talk.
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