Last week, Adobe announced that it will stop developing the Flash Player for mobile devices. It may seem like a surprising news, but the most convincing reason to create Flash apps and sites is Flash's installed base. Because of the popularity of YouTube and other sites that require Flash, most computer users install the Flash Player (99% of the Internet-enabled computers, according to Adobe).
That's not the case when it comes to mobile devices: Flash Player can only be installed in Android 2.2+, Blackberry PlayBook and HP webOS. According to Adobe, "by the end of 2010, over 35 models of smartphones were certified for Flash Player, and over 20 million smartphones either shipped with or downloaded Flash Player." The estimated percentage for Flash-enabled mobile devices shipped in 2011 is 36%. Since Apple's iOS devices and Windows Phone devices won't include support for Flash, it's obvious that Flash can't become ubiquitous on mobile devices. In fact, right now, it's mostly limited to Android and that's exactly what Adobe doesn't want to achieve.
Adobe's biggest mistake was that it assumed that Flash could be a great option for building mobile web apps. The mobile Flash Player was useful to load pages that required Flash, but that's because users didn't have other options. The experience wasn't great, scrolling was jerky, Flash objects looked disconnected from the rest of the page, so it was a good idea to only load Flash content on-demand.
Developers that want to build mobile apps right now have two options: either build HTML5 apps that work in any modern browser or create native apps for iOS, Android and other platforms. Adobe has tools for both options and the goal for the future is to improve them. "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," says Adobe. "Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores." Both AIR apps and HTML5 apps are already successful and the main advantage is that they don't require a plugin.
While it's nice to be able to load sites that require Flash on your phone and tablet, Flash is not a technology for the future, it's mostly for the past. Steve Jobs was right to say that "open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too)" and to recommend Adobe to "focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind".
Google chose pragmatism and started to collaborate with Adobe, who developed Flash for Android, Google TV and a more secure Flash plugin bundled with Chrome. Android's open nature and Chrome's focus on security made this possible. The end result was that users had the option to install Flash on their mobile devices and their desktop browser was more secure, since Flash was sandboxed and automatically updated.
Both Apple and Google cared about users, but in different ways: Apple wanted to provide a better experience, while Google wanted to provide more options. Flash was the wrong option for mobile devices, but it was the only option to load some sites.
Senin, 14 November 2011
Sabtu, 12 November 2011
Thumbnails in Google Blog Search
Just like Google News, Google Blog Search started to show small thumbnails next to the search results. The images that illustrate blog posts are sometimes more helpful than the title or the snippet when you're trying to find a relevant result.
Back in 2008, Google launched a new homepage for Blog Search that included the most interesting stories in the blogosphere. Google clustered related posts and used thumbnails to illustrate them. The homepage no longer includes the top blog posts, but one of its features is now available for all blog posts: thumbnails.
{ Thanks, Herin. }
Back in 2008, Google launched a new homepage for Blog Search that included the most interesting stories in the blogosphere. Google clustered related posts and used thumbnails to illustrate them. The homepage no longer includes the top blog posts, but one of its features is now available for all blog posts: thumbnails.
{ Thanks, Herin. }
Jumat, 11 November 2011
Google Reader's New Share Button
When Google Reader released the new interface, I complained that sharing a post takes too many clicks: you first need to +1 the post, then click the share box and finally click "share". Now it's easier to share a post: just click the new "share" button and click "share" once again in the modal dialog.
Another advantage is that you can use the old keyboard shortcut for sharing items: Shift+S. Unfortunately, you can't use keyboard shortcuts in the modal dialog, so you still need to click "Share".
Decoupling the "+1" button from the "share" button is a good idea and Google should adjust the code of the +1 widget to make this possible. "Liking" and "sharing" are two different actions and should be treated separately, especially considering that +1's are always public, while sharing can be limited to a few people or circles.
{ Thanks, Zachary and Herin. }
Another advantage is that you can use the old keyboard shortcut for sharing items: Shift+S. Unfortunately, you can't use keyboard shortcuts in the modal dialog, so you still need to click "Share".
Decoupling the "+1" button from the "share" button is a good idea and Google should adjust the code of the +1 widget to make this possible. "Liking" and "sharing" are two different actions and should be treated separately, especially considering that +1's are always public, while sharing can be limited to a few people or circles.
{ Thanks, Zachary and Herin. }
Rabu, 09 November 2011
Google Starts Exporting Notebooks to Google Docs
Google Notebook is one of the many Google Labs services that will be shutdown. The team stopped developing the service three years ago and it's surprising that you can still use most of the features in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and other browsers.
A message now informs users that Google "will automatically export your Notebooks to Google Docs starting November 11, 2011". The FAQ explains that "once we start the transition, each notebook you have will automatically be exported to Google Docs. We will do this for every single notebook, and you won't have to do anything. This export will work the same as the existing 'Export to Docs' feature in Notebook. The format of the new documents will be as if you manually exported each of your notebooks to Docs."
Google hasn't released a new app for notes probably because the Google Docs word processing app is good enough to handle notes. There's even a cool Chrome extension developed by Google that lets you take notes and synchronizes them with Google Docs.
{ Thanks, Shahed and Taylor. }
A message now informs users that Google "will automatically export your Notebooks to Google Docs starting November 11, 2011". The FAQ explains that "once we start the transition, each notebook you have will automatically be exported to Google Docs. We will do this for every single notebook, and you won't have to do anything. This export will work the same as the existing 'Export to Docs' feature in Notebook. The format of the new documents will be as if you manually exported each of your notebooks to Docs."
Google hasn't released a new app for notes probably because the Google Docs word processing app is good enough to handle notes. There's even a cool Chrome extension developed by Google that lets you take notes and synchronizes them with Google Docs.
{ Thanks, Shahed and Taylor. }
A Farewell Message From the Code Search Team
It's rare to read such an honest apologetic message in an official Google site. Here's the farewell post from the Google Code Search team:
Hi Folks,
We're quite sorry about the impending shutdown as well, but it's a done deal, unfortunately. You may have noticed that things were quite passive on our side for the last while, and that's because we had to fight to justify any investment in the project. People are also definitely sad within the company, but it was decided at the highest levels.
There is something of a silver lining. googlecode.com will take over search for their projects, and also take over hosting the Chromium search page. (If ChromiumOS or Android are important to you, reach out to whatever contacts you have at Google *now* and let them know!) Not all the details have been nailed down, which is why we didn't put it in the official announcement.
Our apologies to you all, for letting you down, and thanks for all of the appreciation you've shown.
PS As alternatives http://koders.com/ http://opensearch.krugle.org/ http://grepcode.com/ and http://www.antepedia.com have been mentioned by various people. We're not endorsing or not-endorsing or anything, we're just mentioning them so you can try them out, and see if they meet your needs.
Google+ Badges
Now that you've created a Google+ page for your company, product or blog, how do you get people to follow the page? The answer is the Google+ badge, a customizable widget that helps you connect your site to a Google+ page. "The Google+ badge helps you grow your audience on Google+ and show more recommendations in Google search by letting people add you to their circles and +1 your page, all without leaving your site," explains Google.
Right now, the badge is only available if you sign up for the Google+ Platform Preview, but it will soon be publicly available. If you already have a Google +1 button on your site, you only need to add two lines of code.
1. connect your site with the Google+ page by adding this code to the <head> section of the HTML document:
(where PAGE_ID is the long number from the URL of your Google+ page).
This has the added benefit that the page may qualify for Direct Connect and people can visit the page by typing +PAGE_NAME in Google's search box. "In addition to helping us better index your Google+ page, this snippet will help you show more personal recommendations around the web by linking your +1's on sites, your Google+ page, search and display ads," mentions Google.
2. add this code where you want to place the badge:
You can also add static badges that only include an icon and a short text, although it's probably easier to manually add the icon and link to the Google+ page.
Use this page to generate the code, but make sure that you subscribe to the Platform Preview group to see the badge. Please note that only those who subscribe to the group can see the badges and try other new features that aren't publicly available.
Right now, the badge is only available if you sign up for the Google+ Platform Preview, but it will soon be publicly available. If you already have a Google +1 button on your site, you only need to add two lines of code.
1. connect your site with the Google+ page by adding this code to the <head> section of the HTML document:
<link href="https://plus.google.com/PAGE_ID/" rel="publisher" />
(where PAGE_ID is the long number from the URL of your Google+ page).
This has the added benefit that the page may qualify for Direct Connect and people can visit the page by typing +PAGE_NAME in Google's search box. "In addition to helping us better index your Google+ page, this snippet will help you show more personal recommendations around the web by linking your +1's on sites, your Google+ page, search and display ads," mentions Google.
2. add this code where you want to place the badge:
<g:plus href="https://plus.google.com/PAGE_ID/" size="badge"></g:plus>
You can also add static badges that only include an icon and a short text, although it's probably easier to manually add the icon and link to the Google+ page.
Use this page to generate the code, but make sure that you subscribe to the Platform Preview group to see the badge. Please note that only those who subscribe to the group can see the badges and try other new features that aren't publicly available.
Google +1 Buttons for Image Search Results
When you mouse over a Google image search result, you'll see a +1 button that lets you recommend the image to the people that follow in Google+.
At some point, Google removed the social features from the image search engine and now only relies on the +1 button to provide social recommendations. The nice thing is that Google annotates image results with the relevant people that +1'd the images.
The social layer is no longer a separate section, but it's less comprehensive: the previous version included "pictures that your friends and other contacts have published publicly to the web on photo-sharing sites like Picasa Web Albums and Flickr". The "results from your social circle" were probably less relevant since Google generated the social circles from your Gmail contacts, Google Talk buddies, the people you follow in Google Buzz and Twitter. It's likely that the social circles were just an approximation of the circles you can create in Google+ and Google will phase out this feature.
At some point, Google removed the social features from the image search engine and now only relies on the +1 button to provide social recommendations. The nice thing is that Google annotates image results with the relevant people that +1'd the images.
The social layer is no longer a separate section, but it's less comprehensive: the previous version included "pictures that your friends and other contacts have published publicly to the web on photo-sharing sites like Picasa Web Albums and Flickr". The "results from your social circle" were probably less relevant since Google generated the social circles from your Gmail contacts, Google Talk buddies, the people you follow in Google Buzz and Twitter. It's likely that the social circles were just an approximation of the circles you can create in Google+ and Google will phase out this feature.
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