Facebook buys out Friendfeed

Facebook, the largest networking site in the world is all set to buy Friendfeed, an up-and-coming social media startup, lets people share content online in real time across various social networks and blogs. The deal is worth $50 million with $15 million in cash and $35 million in Facebook stocks. Facebook had in 2008, tried to snap Twitter for $500 million.This is yet another major partnership deal after the recent Microsoft-Yahoo search deal.

What Facebook gains in this acquisition is the engineering talent at FriendFeed, rather than the actual product, which has won critical praise, but lagged in popularity compared to Twitter.FriendFeed was looked upon as close competitor of Twitter, microblogging service for the same task – sharing information online.FriendFeed’s 12-employee team will join Facebook family. The four founders of FriendFeed – Paul Buchheit, Bret Taylor, Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh, will take senior positions in Facebook’s Engineering and Product teams.FriendFeed’s four founders are former Google Inc employees who count well known products like Gmail and Google Maps among their accomplishments.

Commenting on the post-acquisition process, Marc Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, stated that in the present FriendFeed will work as it is as long as the founders lay out future plans for integration of both services. Facebook’s FriendFeed acquisition is buzzed as directly challenging Google and leap frogs Twitter

Commenting on the acquisition, Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang said that the having the founders of Friendfeed on the Facebook team would be beneficial for Facebook in the long run, because the 4 founders were very competenet in building scalable, social applications. Owang also commented that Facebook must make the content generated within Friendfeed more accessible to the public instead of only to closed networks of Facebook friends, so that Facebook can sell more ads.

This is in line with Facebook’s policy.Earlier this year, Facebook announced changes to its privacy controls to allow people to make their status messages and posts viewable to a broader Internet audience.

Where does that put Google and Twitter?

Twitter has been facing some problems like the recent worm and DDoS Attack, database upscaling issues. People cannot see their tweets older than two days or to a week if they don’t tweet frequently. So having that glittering five figure updates is pointless since you’ll never get to see your first update.

In May 2009, Google was eyeing to acquire Twitter since the search giant was interested to venture into real-time search. However, the indexing of old Twitter updates for real-time search results has been quite an issue lately. If Google buys Twitter then all the search excellence can be used for tweaking Twitter’s search code.

Facebook will now make use of ex-Google’s excellence in expanding Facebook platform to the next paradigm: Real-time search. Google and Twitter could quickly need to tie up for mutual partnership on Twitter’s search technology. Else, Facebook and Friendfeed could prove to be a more formidable threat than Microsoft and Yahoo Combine!

Ref: http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Facebook_Acquires_Friendfeed_To_Fight_Google/551-105429-643.html;
http://in.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idINTRE5794Q420090811?sp=true

Why HTML 5 is important for mobile development

Reproducing a Blog from Jason Grisby, VP Mobile and Web Strategist, Cloud Four on the emergence of HTML 5 as the future in Mobile Development, over running Microsoft (Which according to him has no mobile strategy) and Blackberry as the competing startegy.

Ref: http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/08/heres-looking-at-you-html50_03.html; http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/08/heres-looking-at-you-html5.html; http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/08/heres-looking-at-you-html50.html

With the effective cancellation of the W3C's XHTML2 project, HTML 5 emerges as the foundation for future Web development.

And, under the pressure of mobile Web development, it will very quickly become very important, says Jason Grigsby, Vice President, Mobile and Web Strategist, at Cloud Four, a Portland, Oregon Web and application development shop.

In a blogpost today, Grigsby writes "At the risk of being accused of wearing mobile-tinted glasses,HTML5 is going to big a deal and it will be relevant much sooner than people think."

That's because, Grigsby says, HTML 5 provides a range of key capabilities that mobile developers targeting the new breed of Web browser will enthusiastically embrace. The key HTML 5 features include: offline support, via the AppCache and Database APIs for storing stuff locally on the device; Canvas and Video to simplify adding graphics and video to a page while ignoring plugins; advanced forms, which can handle tasks like field validation on the mobile browser; and the GeoLocation API, which Grigsby points out is not actually part of HTML 5 but often crops on phones that are supporting HTML 5.

Not being a developer myself, I've been aware of the XHTML2 controversy but haven't followed it closely. Grigsby has a serveal links to sites which go deep into the merits of both standards.

But his more technically more fluent post, with the added insight of actually being a code writer, reflects the basic theme of of our recent coverage: that the most modern browsers, many based on the Webkit engine, coupled with HTML 5 support, offer a very simple to use platform for building very sophisticated mobile Web applications. The same basic technologies in fact are being embedded in both Palm's webOS and Google's just-announced Chrome OS for exactly those same reasons.

The two key players in the HTML 5 development are the W3C's HTML Working Group and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG). That latter was specifically formed to develop HTML and APIs for Web application development.

Grigsby says that's an important emphasis, one that seems at least for now somewhat orthogonal to the debate over the current HTML 5 shortcomings, principally it's lack of extensibility. While important, that's less of an issue for mobile application developers, if I read him correctly.

He also counters those who argue HTML 5 is irrelevant for the moment because it's not supported by Microsoft Internet Explorer, Grigsby argues it's that very fact that means mobile will drive HTML 5 adoption: "The iPhone, Google Android, Nokia, and the Palm Pre are all based on the open sourceWebkit browser engine. Those phones represent somewhere around 65% of smart phones sold."

It's not clear, he argues, that Microsoft even has a viable mobile strategy, since it's principal Windows Mobile implementer, HTC, has publicly indicated it expects the Android OS to be on half of all the mobile phones it ships in 2010. UPDATE: Jason tells me that the HTC move is rumored, not a fact.

The real obstacle to HTML 5, Grigsby says, somewhat surprising is RIM's BlackBerry OS, with its companion proprietary Web browser. But for both platforms, he notes, Opera's browser is available for download. "And Opera is one of the leading developers of HTML5."

Fixing Nokia

Reproduced from a Forbes article by Lionel Laurent:http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/27/nokia-mobile-motorola-intelligent-technology-nokia_print.html

No one at Nokia is sleeping easily these days.

While reporting a second-quarter sales drop of 25% and a profit dive of 66% earlier this month, the mobile phone giant admitted that it had to "develop new skill sets." And how.

Despite its weak quarter, the Finnish company is still at the top of the sales charts, moving 100 million units on a quarterly basis. Industry watchers are worried that it is starting to look a lot like Motorola in the mid-1990s--a mighty incumbent losing its edge to rival upstarts. There's concern that Nokia is a hardware whiz living in a world increasingly dominated by software; and despite its forays into online services and application stores, it needs a big refresh to catch up.

So, what should Nokia do?

Improving its user interface for handsets would be a good start. Nokia's Symbian operating system is still widely used, but the "S60" interface is showing its age. Gartner Research analyst Carolina Milanesi says that while Apple's rival iPhone interface is very smooth and "horizontal," requiring only one or two steps from the start menu to perform a function, S60 takes the user "deeper and deeper" into a Web of choices and processes. The problem is exacerbated by Nokia's attempts to shoehorn S60 into new touch-screen phones, whereas Apple's system used touch-screen technology from the beginning.

A better interface would also help Nokia close the gap between its online services, which offer everything from applications to music, and its technology-rich handsets. For instance, Nokia's high-end handset, N97, has a more powerful camera, better map navigation and wider multimedia capabilities than the latest iPhone. But N97's less sophisticated interface limits the user's ability or desire to connect with Nokia's services, giving Apple a clear advantage.
DnB Nor analyst Fredrik Thoresen says the gap makes it nearly impossible for users to access Nokia's online services. "It's a hassle. I've never done it," he says.

It's surprising that Nokia has fallen behind, given that it first announced its foray into online services back in 2007 with an app store it would call Ovi. Indeed, the company appeared ahead of the game in controlling the end-to-end chain from hardware to software. But integrating these services has proven difficult, partly due to resistance from network operators--fearful that Nokia is stealing their thunder--and also because Nokia's user base is so broad that even something as simple as a one-stop online shop threatens to become an unwieldy behemoth.

But if Nokia can keep hammering away at Ovi, which launched in May, giving it mass-market appeal with an improved and easy-to-use handset interface, all the company would need to add is a killer touch-screen design. Oppenheim analyst Nicolas von Stackelberg thinks Nokia should use capacitive touch technology, a la iPhone, which responds more accurately to the finger's electrical conductivity.

In terms of Nokia phones' display screens, MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen says the ideal size is 3.5-inches, which would make playing games and browsing the Internet a lot easier. He also believes Nokia should release more touch phones at $200 and below, like the music-oriented 5800 and upcoming 5530, to gobble up users in low-end emerging markets before Apple and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion get there.

"The game of migrating new features into cheapie phones is the one that turned Nokia into a behemoth in 1997 to 2007," says Kuittinen. "That is the game that must be the core of the comeback plan in 2010 and beyond."

And a comeback is exactly what Nokia should be planning. For the past two years, the company has rested on its laurels in the face of Apple's success. By admitting it has new skill sets to learn, perhaps Nokia is ready to fix its problems, catch up to Apple and maybe even surpass it in the software and design arenas.

Let's hope Nokia can silence, once and for all, its comparisons to Motorola.

Yahoo: The road forward?

A new era at Yahoo began the minute when Carol Bartz signed the agreement with Microsoft, giving the right to conduct searches on Yahoo’s huge network of Web sites to Microsoft in exchange for 88 percent of the revenue generated by Microsoft’s Bing. Having finally offloaded its search business to Microsoft; all Yahoo has to do is figure out what comes next.
Yahoo is first and foremost a media company and is in the business of attracting as many people to its properties in hopes of selling lucrative ad deals on those pages. While Google is has the best combined relevant search results and efficient advertising, the ads on pages model has not always worked on the internet.
The tie up with Microsoft Yahoo seems to signal that Yahoo doesn’t have the ability or the will to take on Google directly. Carol Bartz has been arguing that the company should focus on what it does best and leave the technology to others.”We’re not a search company,” Bartz had said earlier, discussing how Yahoo is a different company than Google or Microsoft. Now that she’s made that distinction official, what is Yahoo?

It’s where people find relevant and contextual information.”It’s news, it’s sports…home page, mail. It’s a fabulous place.” (The definition thus being very diffused). That’s a content company, turning the focus to how Yahoo should produce the kind of content and services that will keep existing users coming back for more and attract new ones to the site. One wonders if Yahoo just turned itself into a bigger version of AOL.
On the services side, some areas, like Yahoo Mail, Flickr, and Messenger, are clearly where Yahoo is unlikely to take its foot off the gas pedal. Same for Yahoo’s mobile strategy, a part of the Internet that is very much up for grabs, unlike the more mature PC-oriented Internet experience.
So Yahoo isn’t getting out of the technology business entirely. Yahoo will continue to need ways to keep its new home page hooked into the wider world of social networking, real-time communication, and things not even thought of yet, and that will require smart, savvy engineering.On the content side, Yahoo will have to figure out whether it needs to expand its current offerings, pare down some of the less frequently used products, or tap the outsourcing strategy in this area as well. There’s been quite a lot of turnover in recent years at Yahoo, but there are probably enough people left who remember that the last time Yahoo tried to play a prominent role in designing its own content, it didn’t end well.
Is Yahoo on a path to becoming the world’s biggest content aggregation site?There’s enough guaranteed revenue in the deal to keep things quiet for a while, but it’s going to take two years–at minimum–for it to substantially shape the company. What will Yahoo look like then?
Ref: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10299313-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Heres looking at you: HTML5.0

Continued from earlier posts
http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/08/heres-looking-at-you-html5.html
http://technologyandtelecom.blogspot.com/2009/08/heres-looking-at-you-html50.html
The Pressing Need for HTML5 is More Features

HTML5 needs to move past simply providing geo-location and offline storage and into more of the device characteristics. The Palm Pre’s WebOS had to forge forward in defining its own APIs for accessing things like the address book, camera, and accelerometer.
This problem is only going to continue to become more pressing. People are clamoring to develop mobile applications that take full advantage of the capabilities of devices.

Smart Phones Do Not Equal All Phones

It is important to note that while HTML5 will be very important for smart phones, it won’t reach feature phones for sometime. Therefore, content publishers should continue to work with device databases for content adaptation.
Again, web application developers can make different choices and tradeoffs than content publishers. If one is building an application that combines cameras with geo-location information, one has already narrowed which handsets you support.

Features will Drive HTML5 Adoption

One can take a learning from moving users from HTML working drafts to HTML 3.2.A large part of it is due to the fact that you could do things in HTML3.2 that you couldn’t do in previous versions.
That’s not to say that recent web standards like XHTML haven’t provided new features, but that none of the new features were game changers. Geo-Location is a feature that can create businesses. The same is true of access to other device characteristics.
For this reason, web developers who start looking at mobile development will not shy away from building using HTML5 even if it limits their audience.

The Mobile Perspective on HTML5

From a mobile perspective—and perhaps from the perspective of web applications generally—HTML5 cannot come quickly enough.
As Vic Gundotra, Google Engineering vice president and developer evangelist, recently pointed out, not many companies are rich enough to develop native applications for all mobile platforms.
The mobile web provides are the best hope for building a cross-device mobile ecosystem. HTML5 is a critical piece for the mobile web.

Here's looking at you: HTML5

Continued from earlier post: http://ronnie05.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/vvlj/

Lack of Extensibility

One of the new things HTML 5 sets out to do is to provide web developers with a standardized set of semantic page layout structures. However, the new elements may not be entirely forward-compatible, as they are constrained to today’s understanding of what makes up a page. An extensible mechanism, although less straightforward, would offer more room to grow as the web evolves.HTML5 does add new elements like header, nav, article, section, aside, and footer which expand the structural definition of a page, but does not provide the level of extensibility that people have been seeking.

Documents versus Applications:

From a future perspective, HTML5 is seen as a document publishing, however, in its present avatar it is painfully evident that it lacks the tools it needs to describe the documents sufficiently.

There is also a burning need to address the short-comings of HTML for web applications —especially when it comes to being able to build rich web applications for mobile devices.

While most of the smartphones in the world use the Webkit in some form or the other and HTML 5 will have to build upon this platform as a base, it is worth bringing to notice that Webkit Does Not Equal HTML5 Support… Yet

To be clear, just because a device uses webkit does not mean that it has the latest version of Webkit and can use HTML5. Recognizing the market share of Webkit is important solely as an indicator that a significant portion of smart phones will have access to HTML5 sometime in the near future.

There is great incentive for mobile operating system vendors to upgrade to the latest versions of Webkit. They see the success that the iPhone has had and the fact that one of the main contributors to that success was the browsing experience. They understand that not many companies can afford to develop native applications for all of the various platforms which makes the features of HTML5 attractive.

Because of this, expect browser improvements are a high priority for mobile operating systems.

Here's looking at you: HTML5.0

World Wide Web Consortium’s decision to not renew the XHTML 2 Working Group charter effectively means that XHTML 2 (as a web standard) is effectively dead. In its place as the future of web development stands HTML5.

Given the emergence of "mobile internet" as the next revolution in internet medium, HTML5 is going to big a deal and it will be relevant much sooner than people think. Adoption of HTML5 will be driven by the needs of mobile, not the needs of desktop developers.

When Can We Use HTML5?
HTML5 did not really matter until IE supported whatever new standard for mobiles or IE no longer has the majority of the market share.

Given the fact that IE doesnot have a mobile bias, the smartphone growth will drive HTML5 adoption. The iPhone, Google Android, Nokia, and the Palm Pre are all based on the open source Webkit browser engine. Those phones represent somewhere around 65% of smart phones sold.If you look past mobile phones to other mobile devices like the iPod Touch, Nokia’s internet devices, and the upcoming Google Chrome, you see that Webkit is even more broadly distributed.

The two major platforms not using Webkit are Windows Mobile and Blackberry. Some of the capabilities of HTML5 are available to Windows Mobile users via the Google Gears plugin.
Blackberry has its own specialized browser not built on any of the major browser engines. It only recently started handling html, css and javascript reasonably well, but still is insufficient and buggy compared to other browsers.

Fortunately, for both Windows Mobile and Blackberry, Opera’s browser is both available and popular. It is consistently one of the top if not the top download on mobile applications sites. And Opera is one of the leading developers of HTML5.

HTML5 for Mobile
HTML5 is a critical step for mobile web application development. Some of the key elements that it provides are:

1. Offline Support — The AppCache and Database make it possible for mobile developers to store thing locally on the device and now that interruptions in connectivity will not affect the ability for someone to get their work done.


2. Canvas and Video — These two features are designed to make it easy to add graphics and video to a page without worrying about plugins. When supported by the phone’s hardware, as is the case with the iPhone, they provide a powerful ways to get media into a page.


3. GeoLocation API — This is actually not part of HTML5, but is a separate specification. That said, it is often bundled together because the mobile phones that are including HTML5 are generally supporting the GeoLocation API.


4. Advanced Forms — Even simple things like the improvements in HTML5 for forms could make life easier for mobile applications. Fields that can be validated by the browser are improvements for mobile devices. The more that can be handled by the browser means less time downloading javascript code and less round trips to the server if validation can be found before the form is posted.


5. Most importantly, nearly all of the hybrid applications frameworks—Phone Gap, QuickConnect, RhoMobile, Titanium Mobile, and others—rely on HTML5 features to provide a rich application experience.