standards

Mozilla takes on YouTube video choice

A disagreement between Google and Mozilla is making a once-obscure debate into a real issue for those who watch Web video or host it on their own sites.

Last week, Google's YouTube announced early support for HTML5 video, which can be built directly into Web pages and viewed with browsers without relying on a plug-in such as Adobe Systems' Flash, Microsoft's Silverlight, or Apple's QuickTime. Another Web video site, Vimeo, followed suit.

Native video on a Web page sounds nice, and many Web companies support the effort broadly. But there's one big devil in its detail: … Read more

Tech companies to mine for sustainability data

A handful of IT companies plan to work with the Sustainability Consortium to come up with a better way to define "green" in electronics.

The Sustainability Consortium was originally formed when retail giant Wal-Mart launched an initiative in 2008 to create a sustainability rating for suppliers. The group now employs researchers from academia and nongovernmental organizations to create methods for measuring the environmental and social impact of products from a wide range.

On Thursday, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Toshiba, Intel, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart said they will work with the Sustainability Consortium on a system for rating electronics based on … Read more

Amazon adds greener electronics ranking

Most of us are familiar with the EnergyStar label for power-efficient goods. But what if you're shopping for something that's environmentally friendly in other ways?

Amazon has added a green category to its electronics page, using both EnergyStar and the broader EPEAT certification to rank products, the Green Electronics Council said on Wednesday.

There are now more than 800 electronics products listed on Amazon that meet the EPEAT certification, which ranks computing equipment on 51 environmental factors. Products get a bronze, silver, or gold label based on how many of the performance criteria they meet.

EPEAT-certified computing equipment … Read more

Samsung refreshes standard-definition F-series camcorders

If you need a flash-memory-based standard-def camcorder with a long lens and a small body, Samsung has you covered. The company announced refreshes of its F34 camcorder: the SMX-F40, SMX-F43, and SMX-F44.

Specs include: 1/6-inch 680K CCD 720x480 resolution (60i) 52x optical zoom H.264 file format Time-lapse recording Auto scene recognition and face detection 1,600x1,200-resolution photos

The only differences are in storage capacities. The F40 is SDHC card only, while the F43 and F44 have 8GB and 16GB of internal flash memory, respectively, and take SDHC cards.

No prices, but I would expect them to be … Read more

Microsoft Web-graphics move signals IE ambitions

In a new sign of Microsoft's ambitions to make Internet Explorer more competitive with rival browsers, the company said Tuesday it's joining a group overseeing a graphics format that offers some advantages for today's Web.

Specifically, Microsoft signed up for the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group, part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, Opera Software's Opera, and Google's Chrome all support the SVG format along with a different variety of graphics called Canvas 2D.

"We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next-generation … Read more

Application packaging for cloud computing: A proposal

A few weeks ago I completed a series of posts describing the ways that cloud computing will change the way we utilize virtual machines and operating systems. The very heart and soul of software systems design is being challenged by the decoupling of infrastructure architectures from the software architectures that run on them.

Over the last few weeks, I've been slowly trying to get a grip on what the state of the union is with respect to software "packaging" architectures in cloud computing environments. Specifically, I've been focusing on infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings, and … Read more

Hungary votes for open standards

Many governments, particularly those in developing nations, are increasingly legislating preferences for open-source software. A much smarter approach may be that recently adopted by Hungary, however, which has mandated the use of open standards.

Smarter, because for all the noise about open-source mandates in places like Latin America, I've been hearing from contacts in these markets that government IT workers have continued to use the software they prefer, not the software mandated by legislation.

And smarter, because it focuses on creating real competition in government IT, which arguably is a much better way to keep vendors honest and citizens … Read more

Browser makers hope WebGL will remake 3D

If you want to see the scale of browser makers' ambition to remake not just the Web but computing itself, look no farther than a new 3D technology called WebGL.

The WebGL vision is simple. You're running around in a video game universe, blasting radioactive aliens--but you got there by visiting a Web site, not by installing the game on your PC.

This sort of computationally demanding chore contrasts sharply to with today's Web, whose top-notch programmers strain to reproduce bare-bones versions of the rich capabilities open to applications running natively on a computer.

WebGL, while only a nascent attempt to catch up, is real. WebGL now is a draft standard for bringing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web. It got its start with Firefox backer Mozilla and the Khronos Group, which oversees the OpenGL graphics interface, but now the programmers behind browsers from Apple, Google, and Opera Software are also involved.

Perhaps more significant than formal standards work, though, is WebGL support in three precursors of today's browsers--Minefield for Mozilla's Firefox, WebKit for Apple's Safari, and Chromium for Google's Chrome. Opera has started implementing WebGL, too, said Tim Johansson, Opera's lead graphics developer.

With a little tinkering--check the instructions and caveats below--you can give it a whirl, too. Overall, I was favorably impressed with the technology.

Its performance certainly isn't enough for a competitive first-person shooter, but it's approaching utility for casual gaming. And because of how WebGL elements can be integrated with the rest of a Web site's code, it's got some advantages.

What is WebGL? WebGL is one of a handful of efforts under way to boost the processing power available to Web applications. It marries two existing technologies.

First is JavaScript, the programming language widely used to give Web pages intelligence and interactivity. Although JavaScript performance is improving relatively quickly these days in many browsers, programs written in the language are relatively pokey and limited compared with those that run natively on a computer. … Read more

With draft standard, 3D Web closer to reality

3D graphics became ordinary first in games, then in operating systems, and on Thursday, it took a significant step toward being built into Web browsers as well.

The Khronos Group, which oversees the OpenGL graphics interface, announced that its work with Mozilla to bring hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web has reached draft standard form. The standard, called WebGL, lets programmers who use the Web's JavaScript language take advantage of the fact that video cards can handle 3D graphics with aplomb.

The group now wants commentary from Web developers and others who might be involved with WebGL so it … Read more