The Flash vs HTML 5 video discussion

With the launch of the Apple iPad and its lack of Adobe’s Flash support, a heated discussion has started online about what to use to display videos. Either use a Flash video player of the newly HTML 5 video tag.

Most of them agree that eventually plugins for browsers will disappear in favor of standard based implementations. But the lack of codec support and the disagreement of the major browsers is still an issue in favor of Flash even though there are HTML 5 video players available.

Nuclear fusion by the end of 2010?

If the information in this recent announcement on BBC website is correct, there can be a nuclear fusion ignition by the end of 2010.
This means one step closer to truely clean energy.

The end of Flash?

With the arrival of the iPad and the lack of Flash support also on this device, I’m wondering what the future will be for Adobe’s Flash.

Now that HTML 5 is better supported by newer browsers, proprietary technologies like Flash and Silverlight will become obsolete in favor of standards complient ones. Not to forget that firstmentioned products are both browser plugins, which a technology that causes most of the crashes and security breaches. (You can also thank Adobe Reader for this one).

Interesting times ahead.

On Facebook

In this recent post, a Facebook employee discloses some of the internal workings of Facebook.
What frightens, but doesn’t surprise me is the fact that they track everything! From logins, profiles you click on, everything you post, like, comment, upload… and even delete. It all goes into 1 big database. This follows the “get-as-much-information-as-you-can” philosophy for social networks nowadays.

Ow and if you’re wondering why Facebook tends to crash a lot, I’m suspecting the 1 server not located in the US (but in London) has something to do with it.

Waiting for the new Assassin’s Creed 3

… and it will include Multi-Player!

Privacy will become a luxury

When Facebook changed it’s privacy rules for its users in december 2009, it was a big fuss and in my opinion for good reason!
In this new article Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook’s CEO) said that privacy is no longer the social norm.
Apparently the younger the social network user, the less concerned they are about who can read what about them online.
I may be too paranoid here (or not when the UK government monitors everyone’s internet traffic on social networks), but I don’t think people consider the implications of certain sharing of information.

An example from the article:

A survey sponsored by British insurance firm Legal & General found that users of social networking sites were giving away vital information about themselves and their whereabouts that was being used by professional burglars to establish a list of targets.

Of course it’s for everyone to decide for themselves.

A generation gap every 3-4 years

A very interesting read from NYTimes on how the younger generations react on the technology around them.

IE 6 is finally recognized as too old

With launching Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft finally admitted that IE 6 is outdated (which is 8 years old by now).
But now they are actually actively urging to upgrade to a newer version.

There are basically 3 groups that are still running IE6:

  1. People who don’t have the technical knowledge to upgrade
  2. Systems that don’t use IE 6 and/or aren’t connected to the internet
  3. Corporate systems that have an enforced policy to use IE 6 (or heaven forbids older)

To get rid of IE 6 they can be approached in 3 ways respectively:

  1. Force an upgrade to a higher version, plain and simple
  2. Non-internet-connected systems can be left as they are, as long as it doesn’t cause other security problems. Connected systems that don’t use it, should be forced to upgrade.
  3. Corporate systems are a little more difficult because of compatibility issues or licenses, but I think corporations have had time enough to switch to a newer version, so here support for IE can be stopped completely both from Microsoft and implementers.

Finally, In my opinion Windows XP is fastly approaching this point as wel. Windows 7 with disabling a few “fancy” features runs perfectly well on those Windows XP boxes.

History of the IMG element

A great look at how the language of the web evolved.

Gmail Notifier 2

Finally I found an answer to my Gmail notifier problem. For security reasons I set my gmail account to only use secure connections. Everything will go over https, this also means checking your mail with the Google notifier.
However this excellent little program, doesn’t support SSL.
After almost a month, I stumbled upon Gmail Notifier 2. I really recommend it.

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