HTML 5 is the upcoming major revision of the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the main method of marking up content for sharing on the World Wide Web. HTML's development stopped at HTML 4.01 in 1999, and since then web content has evolved so much that current HTML specifications are inadequate for today's requirements.
HTML 5 aims to improve HTML's interoperability and address the growing demand for more diverse and complex web content. It also addresses HTML 4's lacking features for web applications. In this post, we'll look at 5 exciting new features in HTML 5.
National Public Radio (NPR) here in the US has some great audio content and the offering got even better today with the release of a new "mix your own" podcast option. Users enter a list of categories and keywords and the NPR site dynamically generates an RSS feed you can subscribe to in iTunes or elsewhere. It's just the latest innovation built on top of the new NPR API.
The user experience is great and we think it makes NPR podcast content immediately more compelling. You get an instant preview of what will be in your feed and it's really easy to use.
Every day, hundreds of articles appear in academic journals and very little of this information is available to the public. Now, RNA Biology has decided to ask every author who submits an article to a newly created section of the journal about families of RNA molecules to also submit a Wikipedia page that summarizes the work. As Nature reports, this is the first time an academic journal has forced its authors to disseminate information this way. The initiative is a collaboration between the journal and the RNA family database (Rfam) consortium led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
Editor's Note: This list was contributed by Steve O'Hear, editor of last100, a former RWW network blog.
There was lots of activity in the digital lifestyle space in 2008, with new devices, services, and platforms being launched and some of our favorites from last year getting significant updates. One notable trend throughout the year was the way these products and services began to converge; not in the sense that they were becoming all-in-one devices, although some of that was happening, but rather by hardware, services, and content playing together nicely, often through open standards and platforms, with the Internet acting as a conduit. On that note, here are our picks of the 10 best digital lifestyle products of 2008.
Use of the internet by the top 100 US newspapers changed radically in 2008, according to the annual report of the industry released today by analysts The Bivings Group. The group reports that 58% of the biggest newspapers now make use of internet based "user generated content," up from just 24% in 2007.
That finding is just one of a number of interesting statistics in this report that details a dramatic transformation underway right now in media.
Last week marked the 3rd anniversary of Yahoo's acquisition of the most popular social bookmarking site it the world, Delicious. Has Yahoo! made the most of it? One more indication that they have not came today with the release of the Top 10 search queries that people used on Delicious in 2008 There is a big disconnect between what people submit to the site and what people go there looking for.
Given the current economic climate, everybody is looking for some positive news, and according to the latest data from online metrics service Compete, the top online retailers in the U.S. are faring quite well during this holiday season. Compete looked at the statistics for total unique visitors to the top ten online retail sites and found that they are significantly ahead of last year's performance.
Commentary on this week's management changes at LinkedIn implied that a shake-up was needed to make LinkedIn more like Facebook. As somebody who has used LinkedIn extensively and spoken to many people who have also found it very useful, this is a plea to listen to users and not the Valley cognoscenti. Sure, when Facebook was "valued" at $15 billion, a bit of envy was understandable. But now that we're in the real world...
What's going on with the 3D web? At one point, it was being heralded as the next big thing. Is that still the case? Take for example, the virtual world Second Life. Once a booming place where every business had set up their online presence, the formerly happening hotspot is now gloomy and dead. As one-time Second Life reporter Eric Krangel said, hanging out in Second Life is "about as fun as watching paint dry."
In the Northern Hemisphere, with holidays on the way and snow flying, we're in the midst of the ski and snowboard season. But we're also in the midst of something else awfully chilly: less than favorable economic conditions. That means, if you're going to spend money for a lift ticket, you want to make sure you're getting your money's worth.
Now, your iPhone might help you do just that. Meet Ski Lodge, a beautiful little app that will assist you in making the right decisions about where to go shushing down the slopes this winter.
