Mar 19 2010

HTML5 and the cloud revolution

Category: FOSS — Suvir @ 8:42 am

HTML5 is going to change the web as we know it.

So , what is HTML5? Whats different from the present version of HTML? Why should developers develop with it?

If you would like to watch and learn, check out . Its an hour long but it gets the message across. I especially like the part with a really complex animation done using pure Javascript thanks the canvas feature. There are obvious similarities with flash, but there are also some intrinsic differences. Both flash and HTML5 can serve dynamic content like animation ( and flash will still do animation much better than HTML5). But with flash, you are locked in to the adobe universe and its proprietary formats. But HTML5 is still HTML. The open source community is already exploiting its great features and coming up with great frameworks (like Sproutcore, 52framework). You dont even need any development environment like flash to develop in. A text editor is all you need really.

The real compelling thing about HTML5 is that, with HTML5, the web is not web as we know it. A web-app is almost same as a desktop app. You do not just go on a website, and wait after each click. Ideally, there should be as much functionality as possible within a single web page. Think of google docs, thing of google calendar, these behave quite differently from traditional websites.

This is where the cloud comes in. When webapps have functionality similar to the desktop, the desktop becomes obsolete for all its worth. You want to edit documents, do it on some cloud app like google docs. You want to chat, play, listen to music .. all these apps can be hosted in the cloud, they do not need to exist on your local machine.

Suddenly, your web browser is not just a “browser”, its an integral part of the OS itself. And thats when the rationale of Chrome OS started making sense to me. Google is being pretty foresighted about this and once again grabbing an entirely new market segment which it has helped create in a way.

Hmm..so it might not be long before all I need is a small and sleek gadget ( ipad style maybe) and not a bulky laptop with loads of ram, storage, power hungry processors etc. Because all you would really need is the cloud!

For complete list of differences between HTML5 and HTML4, check this out.

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Jul 21 2009

Google books

Category: Random — Suvir @ 12:01 pm

Wow..everyone seems to be doing some good..After Bill Gates, its google’s turn…adding to the already large number of books available for free reading at google books, its now entered into a partnership with barnes and noble. According to the deal, barnes and noble will commit another 1/2 a million books to google books. Good stuff!

http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/07/helping-more-people-discover-books.html

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Jul 15 2009

Twitter ads

Category: Random — Suvir @ 2:42 pm

Hey guys, noticed something interesting on twitter and felt like sharing it. Its a scam! Yes its a scam! Well not a scam in the truest sense of the word, but it does involve people exploiting what they are given for profit. Well here goes,

On twitter, a measure of your popularity is the number of followers that you have. And the way this can be exploited for cash is : If I somehow get 20000 followers, then every single message that I send reaches 20,000 people. Now this is the crux : If I use these messages to direct people to certain sites and get paid by those sites, I can make a decent profit!

Not bad huh? So, even if an average “virtual” users tweet convinces 2% of his followers to click that link , that’s 400 people with just one tweet. “I can give you 10,000 hits a day” sounds good to any webmaster (wish I could afford it).

But the thing is, how do such’virtual’ tweeters ever accumulate followers? Well, its all in a script. The script makes the ‘virtual’ user automatically follow those people who tweet on a topic SIMILAR to the links it sends out usually. And believe me, if you are new to twitter, you don’t mind someone with a decent pic and similar minded tweets following you. AND twitter etiquette says that you follow back whoever follows you! So, they get one more potential ‘bakra’.There you go, its targeted advertising that just works!

Well , why don’t I like these guys?? I don’t like them because they are using something meant for simple communication between friends to make profit BY misleading their followers. I mean if I own a company and I advertise my own products, that’s fine! But this is just directing people to random unknown sites. The script even sends a great thank you direct message “Hey thanks for following me! Keep me in the loop with DMs ok? tc xyz”.Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhh!!!!

Some tips on spotting the fake tweeters: They NEVER tweet from ‘web’. Its always ‘API’ or twitterfeed’ (anything that can be programmed with the freely available twitter API).And there will always be this regularity to their tweets.After exactly two or three hours, it sends out some links.Not two hours 15 mins, not 16 mins, exactly 2hours!

I just don’t like any sort of advertisement on the web when I don’t wanna buy anything! As if google ads on every single web-page(even GMail) was not enough!  Hello, does my email SAY that I wanna buy xyz product that you want me to buy it??Just leave us alone!

P.S. I know that previously you had to sign in to comment but I’ve fixed it [ASSUMING that even one of you ever thought of commenting, which would be such a nice thing :) ]

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Jul 08 2009

Google Chrome OS!

Category: Technical — Suvir @ 10:40 pm

Just read the feed..Yes that’s right..google is coming up with its own OS called the Chrome OS.

Its supposed to be out by 2010 and it will be initially released for net-books. This seems like one good potential challenge to Microsoft’s monopoly on the OS market. Google already dominates the internet with its search engine and plethora of other useful apps, and this is probably the logical next step.

I wonder what the OS would actually be like.

My expectations from chrome..sort of a wish list..

  1. Good looks : Having seen google all this while, i dont doubt that.
  2. Resources : Should be easy going on the machine ( duuh, it first releasing on netbooks)
  3. Great interface : Of course, its google! I think it will be a neat minimalist interface. Probably X.org for graphic server and some google’s own desktop environment.
  4. Kernel : Hmm..would probably be the linux kernel itself
  5. Open Source : The press release already says that it will “allow third party developers to design compatible add-ons”. And I think that should be good enough for a start. But I hope it really allows you to get under the hood like linux and do what you want.
  6. Integrable with other OS : It should have some sort of greater integrability with windows, for those who want to use both. Something like what Ubuntu does, where you can launch ubuntu after booting into windows.
  7. Instant startup

The statement “We hear a lot from our users, and their message is clear: computers need to get better, Chrome is “our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.”". Wow!

Let the long awaited revolution begin…

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