Tag: html 5

  • Devices and desires: why the portable device wars are a red herring

    A little pre-history When I was a kid, I had an Atari 130XE. You’ve probably never heard of it. It was an 8-bit, all-in-one box that booted straight into BASIC; a flexible, well-built, sturdy computer. There was just one problem: it wasn’t a ZX Spectrum or a Commodore Amiga. At the time, Britain was undergoing […]

  • So why do we need apps anyway?

    Ebooks don’t cut it: everyone wants an app NB (May 20, 2010): A lot of my suggestions for web-based apps are part of the Google Chrome Web App Store. In fact, the .crx file used there is a zip file with very similar characteristics to epub. (I assume, as Chromium is open source, that .crx […]

  • Charging for software in the age of web apps

    Google was an advertising company. Back in 2005, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber described Google’s business as follows: Judged by their profits, Google is an advertising company. They don’t profit from search, they don’t profit from software. They profit by selling ads. This isn’t to belittle them — I think Google is a terrific company, and […]

  • Geolocation in HTML 5 and Javascript

    HTML 5 – as-yet unreleased, but shaping up well – contains a specification for finding the current location of the user. The API, if your browser supports it and you grant the web application access, returns your latitude, longitude, elevation, speed and some other details. (If your web-capable device doesn’t have GPS, these details will […]