ReadWriteWeb

Are you sick of seeing Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman and other boring, overused fonts (I'm looking at you, Comic Sans) all over the Web? For years, browser compatibility and font licensing issues have led to the proliferation of a handful of "Web-safe" fonts. Soon, however, all that could change with a proposed file format that seeks to broaden the web designer's font palette, making aesthetic Web typography easier, international and searchable.

Last week I had the chance to attend Qualcomm's Uplinq 2010 conference in San Diego where I was able to sit it on several interesting discussions about mobile technology and its future. One of the sessions I was particularly interested in was a chat about the tools being created to improve web development optimized for mobile devices. Qualcomm engineer Bijan Amirzada showed off some interesting new capabilities within mobile Web browsers, but one assertion he made has since been stuck in my mind: will Web-based apps eventually dethrone native applications on mobile devices?

Real-time alerts and notifications are a powerful feature being added to more applications every day; the addition of real-time notifications can make a big difference in user experience and peoples' work performance when using apps.

Unfortunately, there's not one standard way to easily code these notifications across platforms and there's very little support for web apps seeking to send notifications to users. It's been one of the advantages that desktop apps have had over the web. That could be about to change.

It only took 3 years to go from HTML2 to HTML4, but the HTML4.01 specifications were published 10 years ago and even though today's web looks very different, we are still waiting for HTML5. The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group started preliminary work on what is now known as HTML5 in 2004 and the W3C HTML Working Group was adopted this draft as the basis for the HTML5 specs in 2007. Some modern browsers already offer partial support for HTML5, but there are still quite a few issues that need to be resolved before we will see the finalized version of the HTML5 specifications. One area where there is still a lot of discussion is support for video in HTML5.

In part 2 of my one-on-one interview with Tim Berners-Lee, we explore a variety of topics relating to Linked Data and the Semantic Web. If you missed it, in Part 1 of the interview we covered the emergence of Linked Data and how it is being used now even by governments.

In Part 2 we discuss: how previously reticent search engines like Google and Yahoo have begun to participate in the Semantic Web in 2009, user interfaces for browsing and using data, what Tim Berners-Lee thinks of new computational engine Wolfram Alpha, how e-commerce vendors are moving into the Linked Data world, and finally how the Internet of Things intersects with the Semantic Web.

During my recent trip to Boston, I had the opportunity to visit MIT. At the end of a long day of meetings with various MIT tech masterminds, I made my way to the funny shaped building (see photo right-below) where the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and its director Tim Berners-Lee work. Berners-Lee is of course the man who invented the World Wide Web 20 years ago.

This was my first meeting with the Web's creator, whose work and philosophy was a direct inspiration for me when I launched ReadWriteWeb back in 2003.¹

Earlier this month, the World Wide Web Consortium announced the availability of the W3C mobileOK checker, a free service that performs various tests on a Web page to help you determine its level of mobile-friendliness.

According to W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee, mobileOK checker builds on the suite of quality assurance tools already offered by W3C and "does a nice job helping you improve your content one step at a time."

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.

Our 6th daily Comments Competition winner comes from a comment on our post 11 Things To Know About Semantic Web. It came from Alan Wilensky, who wrote that "all of the [Semantic Web] tech that has been so promised is great for diddling, but we haven'st seen productivity delivered." Congratulations Alan, you've won a $30 Amazon voucher, courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Amazon WishList Widget.