As we know, mobile device usage is continues to grow- fast. According to estimates from Juniper Research, global tablet shipments will reach 81 million by 2015, and in July IMS Research announced expected smartphone sales to exceed one billion by 2016. What does this really mean? The mobile landscape right now is at the edge of a perfect storm driven by the duel business / consumer mix.  The low cost combination of marketplace availability of smart devices, universal access to internet services everywhere, anytime and the standard feature sets– including social, media and geo-location– continues to support a growing influence in everyone’s daily lives. As a result, the appetite for more mobile features and analytics to pro-actively react to mobile behavior so mobile experiences become even more rewarding and personalized must be critical to an organizations mobile strategy.

Businesses are trying to solve the problem of keeping up with consumer demand while navigating the myriad of devices, on-going maintenance of apps, new enhancements, application certification and distribution.  Supporting a native app requires a specialized knowledge of the unique framework, device features and style guidelines; all need to be replicated per each native platform often with no re-usability. I liken this to a popular novel that must be translated into multiple languages and distributed to each country.  Same story but different dialect, grammar and languages are necessary to write each book.

HTML5 allows for standardized and faster development, along with multi-platform support, with more flexibility at a decreased cost. Since device feature sets such as geolocation, local storage, camera, video and audio are accessible via HTML5, the need for native development diminishes. This is a huge value proposition, not only in terms of cross-device scalability, but also in the post-deployment maintenance and support required for all successful apps.

Big brands are taking notice. Facebook statistics reported that the more than 350 million active users who access Facebook through their mobile devices are twice as active as non-mobile users. As a result Facebook announced the launch of the HTML5 Resource Center, giving developers tools to build, test and deploy Facebook applications using HTML5.

Everyday, news about the adoption and advancement of HTML5 within large software companies emerges. Recently appMobi open sourced a number of their HTML5 development technologies, and by now you’ve heard that Adobe announced it will discontinue development of Flash for mobile devices, putting its efforts instead towards HTML5; using HTML5, iPhone supports video without the need for Adobe Flash. Danny Winokur, VP and GM of Interactive Development at Adobe said recently: “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices…in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms…These changes will allow us to increase investment in HTML5…”

While this all sounds great, there are still hurdles, specifically in B2B market adoption. HTML5 requires a browser capable of supporting its framework.  Older browsers may support some but not all the capabilities leaving organizations in a form of purgatory in terms of their ability to fully develop, and implement HTML5 apps.  All of that said, most agree it is a forgone conclusion that HMTL5 will be fully embraced as a universal solution, with the reality pointing to 2012 as when the tipping point occurs.

Apple is one of the three vendors that endorse the web standards in web applications development using HTML5. Individuals of Apple, Mozzila Foundation, and Opera Software established the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) back in 2004 after seeing W3C interested in the continued development of XHTML is dropped.

Many of those individuals believe that web application should be created using open standards without relying on any third party software companies. Their primary focus is the development of HTML (HTML5 specifically) and API for web applications.

Apple event went further with creating a small campaign for HTML5 and web standards to hopefully gain support from many people based on their decision to ditch Adobe Flash (or Silverlight for that matter) on their iPhone applications.

A big surprise to many developers came in today when Apple announced to ‘relax’ all of its restrictions on iOS development tools.

Essentially the new developer guidelines allow the freedom for developers to choose whatever tools they prefer to develop apps for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and others that are using iOS that who knows might be introduced in the future. Adobe already resumed their development on Packager for iPhone in Flash Professional 5.

But I really wonder what would make Apple stop changing their mind from ‘restricting’ developers’ ability to use third party tools in their iOS development, again.

HTML 5 continues to break technical barriers by bringing desktop/client-side-based power and functionality to the browser. To showcase HTML 5, Google went beyond the “Hello World” sample with what they consider a true platform.  In the simplest terms, Google Wave is a next-generation email application. It’s the traditional email client functionality with an insanely intuitive and collaborative social media twist, plus an extendable API, and a bunch more.

Google has a knack for identifying and supporting the people who are ahead of their time with a cool and strategic technology.  Two rock stars in the Google world are the Rasmussen brothers, Lars and Jens. You may remember them from such applications as Google Maps. The story goes that a couple years back they were brainstorming about the next big thing, and as Lars eloquently put it, “We set out to answer the question: What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?”

For more than two years in a secret lab located in Sydney, Lars and Jens approached email behavior like an innocent child absorbing the outside world for the first time. With their imagination, curiosity, and a clean-slate perspective, they made incredible observations and conclusions, some of which embarrass you with their common sense. Ultimately, the Google Wave team reinvented email, messaging, and media in a collaborative message vehicle they call a “Wave.”

The Wave is a conversation that has attributes of messaging, social functionality, media, categorizing, interactivity, and sharing. So how does it work? First you create your own Wave (as in email or messaging) and send it to one or more of your contacts. That’s when the fun starts. The message becomes part wiki and part Facebook wall, where you can collaborate on all or part of the Wave. In a hypertext manner, the Wave departs from the traditional linear messaging thread to an evolving conversation element in a social cloud.

You have to play with it to really understand. Google Wave is one of those technologies that gives you an “ah ha” moment, when your current email experience becomes instantly and hopelessly obsolete. You’re going to want to jump on this ASAP and bring your world of contacts with you.

Google Wave Dashboard

As Tim O’Reilly states, “A key point here is that Google’s relentless focus on reducing the latency of online actions is bringing the online experience closer and closer to our real world experience of face-to-face communication.”

What is a Wave according to Google?:

• A Wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
• A Wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the Wave to see who said what and when.
• A Wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a Wave can have faster conversations, see edits, and interact with extensions in real time.  

Google Wave Sample

Technically Google Wave is more than an end product. As Lars states, “The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the Web application people will use to access and edit Waves. It’s an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich-text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a Wave).”

A Wave has very non-tradition ways to actually perform work and communicate. For instance, say recipients are now participating in the Wave. If people are active at the same time, a Wave behaves like an instant message, except that you see each character as it is typed. You have the ability to enter a Wave at any point in the document/conversation. There is even a playback feature that allows you to go back in time and see the Wave from any point in its history.

Google Wave is really a platform with the ability to extend functionality via a set of open APIs that enable developers to embed waves in other Web services and build extensions. Of course, true to Google’s philosophy, they intend to open-source the Google Wave code. This is always a win/win for Google and community of developers adopting their platforms.

Some API Extensions: 

• Polly: an embedded poll/survey. In the wave shown below, participants are asked whether they can make it to a party. Responses appear immediately in the wave.
• Bloggy: A blog client, lets you make a blog post as a Wave. When people comment, they join the conversation.
• Spelly: A spell-checker that uses the entire Web as its dictionary.
• Linky: A link-recognition engine that is clever enough to recognize the link you just entered (e.g. a YouTube video or a link to a photo) and give you the option to embed the target of the link into the Wave.
• Buggy: A bug-reporting tool that can also be a participant in a Wave.
• Interactive Games: Here’s a real-time interactive chess game in Google Wave:

Google Wave Extended API - Polly

Useful References:

• wave.google.com: Current home for Google Wave.
• code.google.com/apis/wave: API extensions, documentation and sample code.
• waveprotocol.org: home for the protocol specs (draft), whitepapers and a discussion forum about the open Google wave protocol
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_5: HTML 5 wikipedia resource

Adobe Flash Player 10 is a significant release. Flash 9 set the groundwork for supporting RIA based applications Flex and AIR with a focus toward developing application functionality. Flash 10 takes us back to the core of Adobe’s community – designers and the tools for building creative experiences. Flash 10 offers substantial improvements and features including:

* Advanced Text Engine – for supreme control and extension of typography and text fonts.
* 3D Effects – built in tools taking 2D designs to 3D using simple API’s including ActionScript based motion.
* Advanced Drawing API – Fast rendering and on-the-fly dynamic runtime based drawing.
* Dynamic Media Streaming – HD / high Resolution video and audio streams with automatic detection of bandwidth for performance optimization.
* Image and Audio enhancers – Use Pixel Bender for engaging effects and advanced sound API’s for audio mix behind the visual experience.

Unfortunately, there still is no support for mobile, specifically iPhone. Over the next 6 months look for Flex 4 and “Thermo” releases to build on Flash 10 for even more powerful Adobe based RIA’s.

Link References: Adobe Flash 10, Adobe Flex, Adobe CS4

Silverlight 2 contains significant new features and runtime enhancements over Silverlight 1 and Silverlight 2 BETA. Microsoft is promoting some recent worldwide usage results stating that one in four consumers have installed Silverlight. Considering Microsoft’s adoption has taken place in just a over a year this is impressive none the less. Part of the gain was certainly brought on by the popularity of the Olympics and the video section of NBCOlympics.com where over a 17 day period had more than 50 million unique visitors, 1.3 billion page views and 70 million video streams representing 600 million minutes of video broadcast. Impressive numbers!

Here are some high level features creating the buzz around this release:

* .NET Extended Language – Silverlight 2 supports a variety of programming languages, including Visual Basic, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby, making it easier for developers already familiar with one of these languages to repurpose their existing skill sets.
* Silverlight Control Pack – with dozens of additional controls for developers and designers to quickly build applications including the Grid, Slider, CheckBox, TreeView, DockPanel, WrapPanel, ViewBox, Expander, NumericUpDown, AutoComplete and more.
* Deep Zoom – This has been around but has been advanced. Impressive high resolution image functionality and easy adaption to applications
* Rich Media – High definition video, streaming optimization technologies including live and on-demand with search engine meta tagging
* Broad Data Binding – Built in support for most protocols including REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS and HTTP services, enabling users to create integrated applications with various database systems
* Cross-Platform & Cross Browser – support for Windows, MAC, Linux in FireFox, IE, and Google Chrome.

Link References: SilverLight 2 Download, SilverLight 2

Are the events on too late for you?  Take a look at these USA highlights again:

Shawn Johnson: Beam Gold (Silverlight Video)

Micheal Phelps: Butterfly Finish Gold (Flash/Flex high Res Images)

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During the presentation we threw out the old school PowerPoint method and introduced a Flex based RIA that gives the History, What is RIA, Uses and Considerations. Think of it as RIA 101.  Click here to view and play the presentation!

RIA Categories:

Rich Media: High resolution images, video and audio, deep zoom

Product Selection: Intuitive Category Selection, Product Detail & Shopping

Visual Search: Taking search beyond text. Various manners to search the web

Widget Builders: Specific functionality including and social tools & publishing

Forms & Data Visualizers: Data entry forms, maps, graphs, calculators

Rich Media

Kyte TV

National Hockey League (NHL) TV

HardRock Café Memoribilia

Product Selection

Verizon Wireless Ringtones

Borders Magic Shelf

Pizza Hut

Visual Search

SearchMe

Widget Builders

SproutBuilder

WIX

Form & Data Visualizers

Flex Google Map

EarthBrowser

Etrade Retirement Calculator

In order to maximize social network tools, it is important to remain balanced, never underestimating the power of personal interaction.  The “old school” way of networking is undoubtedly the key to making memorable connections and lasting impressions.  But in order to maintain a good balance, keeping a social media presence can be invaluable.  For instance, a connection that may have otherwise been unknown is easily brought to the surface.  Social media has become a catalyst for these connections, acting as a facilitator or hub for networking.  Working together, cyber space and face-to-face exposure assist in building a strong network of professionals.  You really can’t have one without the other.  Which leads me to my next question:  How can we harness the power of these professional connections?  Please share your ideas on this topic; I look forward to your hearing your opinions.