Following on from my recent steps into optimising video for the iPhone and iPad, I have to recommend Vimeo Plus as a far preferable option over YouTube in terms of painlessly making video available to mobile devices. The $60/year for Vimeo Plus, besides other benefits such as advanced embed options, brings with it automatic optimisation of video for display on the iPad, iPhone, Android and Palm Pre. Well worth it.
As we all know, Adobe and Apple aren’t best buddies, so Flash isn’t appearing on the iPhone/iPad any time soon. In fact, probably never. Therefore, with Flash being the king of video on the web, there’s only one option for showing video in the browser to iPhone and iPad users: HTML5 video. YouTube and some of the other big video services are rapidly moving to HTML5 video on the web anyway, despite it’s fairly limited browser support. The effort is worth it though as it makes the task of preparing and delivering video on the web much easier once Flash is out of the loop, and supporting the iPhone and iPad (and other mobile devices) should be standard practice, not an occasional extra. There’s an excellent tutorial at Dive Into HTML 5, though for the finer intricacies you’ll also want to head to the Apple Developer reference on HTML5 video. Oh, and to save you some head scratching, if you think you’ve done everything required but it still isn’t working on the iPhone, make sure you’re using BASELINE encoding. The iPhone is much more picky about this than the iPad.
Seeing as the website for Microsoft’s new social focussed mobile - the “Kin” - is very media rich, you might have assumed it would be delivered using Silverlight, Microsoft’s own rich media technology. It’s a bit surprising therefore to find that it’s a Flash site. Surely there must be an internal directive somewhere in Microsoft that states that any rich-media microsite delivered internally or externally should be built in Silverlight rather than Flash? To be honest, we’ve done nothing with Silverlight as yet and I don’t expect us to in the near future, not least because Flash is continuing to make strides into other platforms [despite the current gripe with Apple], but if even Microsoft aren’t pushing their own technology then how’s it going to make any dent in Flash’s dominance?
Two totally different new websites came to my attention today…
Javari.co.uk is Amazon’s attack on the shoe market. I understand it’s been running in the US for a while and has already made a massive dent in the traditional shoe retail business. Amazon have tried to remove the barriers to online shoe [and presumably clothing] purchase by offering free one-day delivery, free 365-day returns and a fantastic product preview experience including high-res ‘exploratitive’ zooming of multiple product photos. It’s not the same as trying on a shoe and walking round the shop but if the price is right then it’s got to be tempting.
Jimcarrey.com on the other hand is a totally different approach. As rich Flash portfolios go, this one is going to be hard to beat. You can see the creators were basically given a blank sheet of paper, probably a blank cheque and certainly told not to hold back on the bells and whistles. Every possible effect and embellishment has been used but, along with a slightly eclectic and twisted creative direction, it completely fits with what we know of Jim Carrey. Great execution all-round and a worthy use of 10-minutes spare time.
The Google I/O conference this week in San Francisco is a chance for the outside world to see some of the exciting stuff that Google has on the horizon. Google’s reach is so broad that there will be something to excite everyone, but two notable developments that caught our eye are Google Wave and Google’s increasing support for HTML5.
Google Wave is an attempt to unify communication and collaboration on the web, and has been created by the original team behind Google Maps, as described in this Mashable article.
HTML5 on the other hand is clearly not a Google product but something that’s been on the horizon for web developers for sometime. Personally I’d prioritise cross-browser support for CSS3 over implementation of HTML5 support, but it’s clear that HTML5 does offer greater flexibility and power to web developers. The current example demo’ed by Google is the use of HTML5 to render video directly in the browser using the new <pre><video></pre> tag as opposed to needing an intermediary plugin [usually Flash]. You’ll need an HTML 5 capable browser to get the full benefit of this demo page on Youtube, though viewing the source [in any browser] demonstrates the different approach of using HTML5 markup.
Spotify are apparently working on an application which would enable you to listen to their streaming music service via your mobile phone. The killer aspect is that a playlist prepared whilst you have an internet connection can then be cached on your phone for playback when you don’t. The demo is currently on Android, with an iPhone version promised soon.
Finally, a music service that feels like it’s actually geared towards online usage rather than merely trying to shoehorn an offline model into a web-shaped box. I’ve only been using Spotify a few days and I’m already convinced that it’s way better than Napster [my existing music subscription service]. Spotify has got quite a bit of ground to make up but news that it is to launch a new API this week shows what a serious challenger it will very quickly become.
BBC One and BBC Two are now available to watch live [as Three and Four have been for a while]. Not all programmes are broadcast [e.g. films, some sport, etc] but most are now available to watch as they’re broadcast live.
