Kevin Benedict’s What’s New in HTML5 – Week of November 18, 2012

A lot of evolution has happened thus far in 2012 with HTML5.  The best use cases for HTML5 are being discovered, while the areas that are weak are now better understood.  I expect additional development and increasing use of HTML5 in 2013. 

I believe in HTML5.  IT organizations have as their number one priority, solving business needs, followed by managing TCO (total cost of ownership).  HTML5 fulfills both of these needs.  If a mobile worker needs order and inventory information while on the road, they don't need every bell and whistle possible in native code.  If HTML5 can efficiently enable many of these small mobile apps that provide real productivity to be developed and deployed quickly at low costs, then IT organizations should be embracing it.  If you have time later, find a use case for native, but don't delay productivity gains in order to justify developing in native.

Now for the news...

The Wikimedia Foundation is deploying an HTML5-based video player that will make it easier to add video clips to the millions of articles on the Wikipedia site.  Read Original Content

Researchers at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology report online tracking technology is evolving as tracking techniques like Flash cookies are being replaced by HTML5.  The use of Flash cookies dropped 15 percent from May to October 2012 and HTML5 local storage use increased by 12 percent.  Read Original Content

Google has launched a new experimental and interactive web app, JAM with Chrome, built with HTML5, CSS3 and the Go programming language. Read Original Content

Sencha has released version 2.1 of the Sencha Touch JavaScript library for mobile devices, designed to help developers create HTML5 apps for mobile platforms including iOS, Android and BlackBerry.  Read Original Content

The BlackBerry 10 browser has passed Ring 1 of the Ringmark benchmark standard for HTML5 app compatibility.  Read Original Content

Amit Gupta of JoomlaIntegration believes HTML5 apps for Smartphones “have a better user interface, utilities for events and other effective features”.  Mobile shopping from applications using HTML5 is formulated with the Database, Canvas and GeoLocation API’s.  Read Original Content

Developer David Walsh describes and demonstrates “Camera and Video Control with HTML5”.  Read Original Content

An executive at European news outlet FinancialTimes.com recently stated the decision to focus on HTML5 rather than native apps resulted in increased mobile usage and revenues for the company.  “The reports of the death of HTML5 are greatly exaggerated.”  Read Original Content

Microsoft’s new SDK for IE10 enables developers without advanced expertise in CSS and HTML5 to “create site features such as multiple columns, positioned floats and device adaptations” and features an HTML5 application cache that makes website files available offline.  Read Original Content

Maltese furniture house Fino has redesigned its website using HTML5 technologies and is now easily viewed on desktops and mobile devices.  Read Original Content

LinkedIn has replaced the HTML5-powered search function on its iPad app with native code, and the company reports it saw a 20 percent increase in searches as a result of the change.  Read Original Content

Mozilla has released Popcorn Maker 1.0, a free online video editor built entirely in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.  Read Original Content

LG Electronics announced it has added HTML5 support for its Pro:Centric IPTV platform for the hospitality industry.  Read Original Content

FTAdviser has launched a new mobile web app built using HTML5 technology “to provide an effective, interactive user interface without the need to download through an online store”.  Read Original Content

Jaspersoft has replaced the Flash-based visualization engine with HTML5 in the new release of its business intelligence suite.  Read Original Content

Tom’s Guide provides a list of “20 HTML5 Games to Pass the Time”.  Read Original Content

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

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Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Thoughts on Mobile Strategies and Social Collaboration

Boise, Idaho is beautiful, but no Silicon Valley

Chris Howard, Gartner Managing VP was recently quoted as saying, "Organizations need to absorb the ways that their employees and consumers want to work and build systems to support them."  He was referring to social enterprise solutions.  I agree with Chris.  People today want a means to collaborate on ideas and to help make decisions.  They want to participate and to make things happen.  Distance, however, is an issue.  That is why places like Silicon Valley seem to always attract a lot of innovation.  It is due to people being together there and able to meet up at a physical location, exchange ideas and organize. The problem is many of us that want to be a part of these discussions are not in these geographies.

I want to pause a moment and introduce to you the concept of time-space compression.  Time-space compression often occurs as a result of technologies that seem to accelerate speed and reduce distances.  Here are some examples:

• Communications (telegraph, telephone, fax machines, Internet, mobile)
• Transportation (wheeled carts, rail, cars, trains, jets, rockets)
• Business (online marketing, online sales, globalization, SFA, Mobile CRM, Mobile BI, Mobile Payments, Mobile Banking)

Social enterprise collaboration solutions like SAP's JAM, Jive, Yammer and Chatter also help with time-space compression.  They are able to accelerate the amount of information and idea exchanges, and reduce the effective distance (geographic obstacles) between participants.   This often increases the speed of decision making and innovation.

It is these kinds of soft ROIs that are so hard to document, but can lead to incredible productivity gains. A couple of months ago I interviewed SAP's CIO Oliver Bussman.  I asked Oliver about social collaboration solutions at SAP and where he could point to ROIs.  He told me about the merits of reading about events using collaboration technology as opposed to email threads.  He said reading a discussion on a collaboration platform enables you to see the whole discussion, while email threads only provide a limited view of the participant's opinions and exchanges.  Why?  You are not always included in every email thread (thank goodness!).  The point is, there are better technology platforms (social enterprise collaboration) that can provide more efficient ways of sharing information among groups of people.

Aberdeen Group in the report "Mobility in ERP 2011" says the following, "Getting the right information, to the right people, so they can make the right decisions is the driving force behind mobilizing the workforce."  I would add, that in addition to mobilizing the workforce, providing them with social enterprise collaboration platforms that also compress time and space is one of the next logical steps to increasing productivity.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

SAP and the Internet of Things (M2M)

I had an interesting discussion with SAP's new VP of the Internet of Things, Suhas Uliyar recently.    He was still in the process of deciding whether VP of the Internet of Things was the appropriate title, or if it should be VP of the Connected World or something more representative of how the technology was evolving.  He did not like the traditional M2M (machine to machine) reference as that reflected too much of the old model.  He wanted to reflect the future direction of this technology.

Suhas is an industry veteran and mobility expert.  We have spoken numerous times over the past decade as he was leading efforts at a number of MDM (mobile device management) and enterprise mobility companies.  He is very knowledgeable about the needs of large enterprises.

Now back to the topic of M2M.  The traditional use of M2M technology was a sensor would capture data in the field and feed it to an embedded wireless chip that would send it to a server.  As long as the data was communicating the right results, nothing happened.  If the data results meant there was a problem, then hopefully an alert would be created and a human would get involved.  However, over the years sensors have evolved to be much smarter, and so have the embedded wireless chips.  Today, not only can a wireless embedded chip send data results from a sensor, but it can also receive data from a server and operate machines.  This means rather than simple machine to machine communications, you have a bi-directional data feed that enables machines to operate other machines.  That is cool!  That can also be scary if you are imaginative and like scifi books and movies.

In the past M2M was used to monitor very basic sensor data - door open/door closed, temperature good/bad, pressure good/bad, etc.  However today, SAP is looking at this world of connected devices and pondering the role it will play in big data (SAP Hana), business analytics, CRM, EAM (enterprise asset management).

Analysts have predicted there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2025.  The world is quickly moving to this number.  Already there are examples from early adopters such as Vivint, the winner of Gartner's 1to1 Media CRM Excellence Award on how to wirelessly connect devices to machines and revolutionize an industry.  Vivint has a video available here that demonstrates how they use some of this technology, but you will have to sit through a ClickSoftware commercial to view it.  This is definitely an interesting emerging field.  Companies should start watching and exploring how this technology will impact their industries and markets.

Suhas said the Internet of Things today, is less about sensors and embedded wireless chips, and more about process orchestration.  How will all of these new sources of data introduce efficiencies into companies?  How will the data be analyzed and reported in ways that can change the competitive landscapes?  These are the areas of interest before Suhas today.  Welcome on board the SAP ship!

I publish a newsletter every week on Tuesdays called M2M News Weekly.  According to Suhas that name may be dated, but the news is news :-)

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict’s What’s New in HTML5 – Week of November 11, 2012

There are a lot of companies announcing support for HTML5 this week - especially media related.  However, even with this momentum there remains a great need.  Yesmail reported this week results of a survey that shows 41% of mobile device owners have purchased products as a result of mobile email promotions, but one-third of those emails linked to web pages that were not optimized for mobility.

Now for the news...

The Next Web has launched its new site named TNW: Reader Edition which “focuses on improving readability, mobility and browsability thanks to simplified UI, speed and the wonders of HTML5”.  Read Original Content

According to Chris Heilmann, the debate about the “readiness” of HTML5 is based on a lot of false assumptions and myths.  He addresses these HTML5 myths in the article “HTML5 Mythbusting” on the hacks.mozilla.org website.  Read Original Content

Developer Brian Taylor outlines and describes what he feels are the “Advantages of HTML5 and CSS3” in this article in Business 2 Community.  Read Original Content

CampusTours has launched an update to its Virtual Capitol experience built with HTML5.  Read Original Content

According to HTML5test.com, the Wii U Internet browser has the most comprehensive compatibility with HTML5 of any dedicated game console to date.  Read Original Content

Results of a new survey of app developers from Kendo UI reveal 51 percent of respondents indicate HTML5 is important to their job now, and 31 percent say it will be important to their job within the next 12 months.  Read Original Content

Journalism.co.uk has launched a beta web app built with HTML5. The HTML5 app is a work-in-progress, with functionality such as sharing via social media and bookmarking to be added soon.  Read Original Content

Weejot.com, which uses HTML5, JavaScript, CSS and JQueryMobile, wants to build enthusiasm for app development and programming, so will give Weejot accounts to all students using the service on any campus.  Read Original Content

jqMobi has released the developer preview of HTML5 framework jqMobi version 1.2, which adds support for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.  Read Original Content

Accusoft has announced the release of Prizm Content Connect v6 HTML5 zero-footprint content viewer, optimized to view documents in desktop and mobile web browsers that support HTML5.  Read Original Content

HTML5 based books allow publishers greater control over their content and allow authors to embed the book in their own site to sell copies.  Michael Kozlowski describes “How HTML5 Based Books Will Disrupt the Digital Publishing Sector” in this article in Good E-Reader.  Read Original Content

PurdueSports.com and CBS Sports College Network worked together to create a new HTML5 backup video player, enabling fans of college football and the Purdue University Boilermakers to get their football fix on their mobile devices.  Read Original Content

Social project management platform Wrike has released a native HTML5 web app and Android and iOS apps to keep up with the rising trend of individuals working remotely on their mobile phones.  Read Original Content

To help with CNN’s coverage of the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, B-Reel utilized HTML5 to create an interactive microsite, Campaign Explorer, which runs on CNN’s website and can also run as a Google Chrome application for desktop and tablet devices.  Read Original Content

India's largest online hotel network, Travelguru, has launched a new HTML5-based mobile website.  Read Original Content

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

How Many Cloud Systems is Your Mobile Device Using?

I have been on a 2 week speaking tour on mobile strategies in the Asia/Pacific region.  I start each session with the video below. Before I start playing it, I ask the audience to count how many cloud-based solutions they believe the mobile device is utilizing  How many can you count?

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict’s What’s New in HTML5 – Week of November 4, 2012

Google has rebuilt its Whatbrowser.org site with HTML5.  The site is now available on mobile devices.  Read Original Content

Playtech has launched its open framework Mobile Hub, built with HTML5 and compatible with Web browsers, native applications and across all HTML5 ready devices.  Read Original Content

Barneys New York has unveiled a new HTML5-based mobile site designed to make the shopping experience seamless for users.  Read Original Content

According to Infosecurity magazine, web scanners are not keeping up with newer technologies such as HTML5, and manual testing has been the only way to detect vulnerabilities.  Read Original Content

AppMobi has upgraded its HTML5 SDK, adding support for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, enabling developers to produce Java and HTML5 apps both from the same code.  Read Original Content

According to Gartner analysts, HTML5 will be a key mobile technology in the future, but “fragmentation and immaturity will remain challenges through 2015, so HTML5 is a very long way from being a panacea for cross platform development. Some of HTML5's challenges can be reduced by using JavaScript frameworks which can hide some platform and browser dependencies.”  Read Original Content

Software development and hosting company EyePartner has updated their Web design and is showcasing advancements in technology with a new HTML5 mobile module and channel manager.  Read Original Content

Almost 75 percent of end users in North America are using browsers that support HTML5, and the number of HTML5-compatible browsers grew from 57 percent to 75 percent between the second quarter of 2011 and the second quarter of 2012.  Read Original Content

Because HTML5 “works for cross-platform environments, is easier to manage compared to Flash, is a first-class citizen on the browser, and is attractive to developers”, online diagram and flowchart software Gliffy is abandoning Flash and moving to an all-HTML5 platform and will soon take HTML5 to the tablet market.  Read Original Content

Software development firm Chetu utilizes HTML5 to provide a smoother experience on mobile devices while cutting down per platform costs for each mobile platform.  The initial prototypes “show superior and near native experience for eLearning content using HTML5”.  Read Original Content

Mobile radio service Stitcher has launched an HTML5-based Web app, which enables playback on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.  Read Original Content

Only 75,000 mobile Web or HTML5-based apps exist today, a small portion of the 1.25 million native apps in the current mobile market.  Appcelerator’s white paper explores “Native vs. HTML5 Mobile App Development: Which Option is Best?”  Read Original Content

Winter sports online retailer Snow Republic has launched an HTML5 Web app to provide users with a native app-like experience with cross browser compatibility.  Read Original Content

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Video Series: SAP's Manik Saha

I had the honor of meeting with SAP's Head of Global IT Processes, Manik Saha.  I spent time with him in both Aukland, New Zealand and in Brisbane, Australia over the past few days.  In fact we will both be speaking in Sydney and in Melbourne this week before he returns to Singapore and I return to Boise, Idaho.  Manik  is speaking on the subject of SAP Runs SAP Mobility.  In this interview he shares his thoughts on development trends and methodologies for mobile solutions.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWGXaPK6A5o

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Military, Mobile Strategies and Mobile Apps

My son, a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, was reviewing the list of speakers at an upcoming Enterprise Mobility for Defense conference where I will be speaking and said, "You are the only non-General on the agenda.  Why would they ask you to speak?"  Our kids humble us don't they?  The bottom line though is the military desperately wants to use commercially available mobile apps and mobile technologies whenever they can.  They are very keen to learn all they can about mobility and how it can be used to the advantage of our military forces.

In advance of the conference, I participated in an interview with the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement.  Here is the interview transcript.

Welcome Kevin.

Thank you for having me, Chris.

Let’s talk mobility—highlight for us the main benefits of being mobile for the military.

There are a many, but they really have to do with situational awareness in the field. The ability for both commanders and their soldiers in the field to be able to know where they are located, where their opponents are located, where their supplies and assets are located and their numbers and availabilities, and what areas are safe or unsafe.  They need to know where there are imminent threats.  They need to be able to collect data and access data from any kind of sensors, whether they are drones in the sky or data collected through other sources, and then overlay that information on a map on a mobile device.  These capabilities enable them to have an awareness of what’s going on around them.

Historically in the military, 95% of the challenge a commander faced was finding the opponent, and then finding their own resources so they could develop a successful plan or mission.

Mobility and wireless sensors are what allow data to be collected in real time, fed back to intelligence analysts, and then on to the soldiers in the field.   Again, it is all about situational awareness made possible through a connected or network-centric environment.

What is your advice for the consultants working with defense on mobile enterprise solutions? What are the keys to remember?

Well, the key is always going to be security and understanding the connectivity issues that the real world presents to soldiers.  In many cases the landscape is not conducive to certain kinds of communication. So any time you have consultants working in the defense industry, they need to always be thinking of those two points, because no matter how clever or innovative a mobile app or solution works in an optimal environment, it must continue to work in bad environments as well.  That means a lot of testing in rough and deadly environments.

Explain for us how consultants can bridge the gap between commerical solutions aand defense with enterprise mobility.

The military today is ahead of the commercial sector on mobile strategy.  However, the commercial sector is ahead on mobile devices and mobile apps.  So consultants that have a foot in both the commercial sector and the defense side have an advantage.  They need to understand the latest mobile technologies available in the commercial space, and the communication, connectivity and security requirements of defense, the military strategies in use, and then offer an appropriate solution.

I’ve been reading recently that the U.S. Marines are actually testing the concept of having Android developers assigned to particular units in the field, so they can quickly develop mission specific apps in just a few hours.  That’s a concept that’s way ahead of what most companies are doing in the commercial sector.  What makes it possible is having a library of widgets and pre-developed apps that are small and simple but can be quickly aggregated together for a mission.  I think these strategies are really demonstrating the power of combining the military's strategies with commercial app store concepts.

Talk to us a little bit more about how mobility can truly be transformative.

There are concepts like activity based intelligence and patterns of life in the military that are being evolved right now. These concepts are really focused on the use of persistent surveillance and analytics that are looking for patterns.  Patterns of activities and behaviors in a particular region can tell analysts a lot about the risk involved in a region.  That information can make all the difference in how a mission is planned and executed. To be able to overlay patterns of activity and behavior from a particular region on a map and then view it on your mobile device is powerful.  These kinds of capabilities require good security and connectivity in the field.  You need the ability to query for information and to be able to see real time data on what’s over the hill and around the corner.  These kinds of technologies and strategies are saving American and allied forces' lives every day and completely changing how missions are executed.

Real time data helps our soldiers avoid walking into areas blind.  Real time visibility on a mobile device, connected to a network-centric environment, can help soldiers by providing information on neighborhoods, buildings, roads, cultural environments and event history in their area.   We can then add things like live video feeds and social sentiment analysis where data on attitudes and opinions of people living in the region can be analyzed to better understand an area. All of these capabilities combined can completely change the way a mission is planned and executed – that is transformative innovation that can save the lives of our soldiers.

Lastly, I want to ask if you’re witnessing any trends with regard to mobile apps and mobile adoption - it’s something you write about quite a bit on your blog www.mobileenterprisestrategies.com

I noticed the other day that the NSA has approved a unique variation of Android for use by soldiers.  They wrote a document that says how you can secure an Android device to the security levels required for military use.  This is likely just a hypothetical scenario now but an interesting development. 

I also read where a military commander was saying he uses an iPhone, he knows his soldiers use iPhones, and his goal is to make sure that those iPhones in the pockets of his soldiers are more useful.  There is a lot of information the military needs to share with their forces and their families, and these devices can be useful for that purpose.  In order to save money, rather than buying purpose built military grade devices and apps where there is likely a premium on the cost, the military wants to use commercially available technology whenever possible. 

It is my observation that the military is ahead of the commercial side on mobile strategy, but not on the latest mobile technologies and apps.  There is a lot these two sectors can learn from each other.

Thank you for your time today Kevin, we look forward to meeting you when you present at the Enterprise Mobility for Defense Summit.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC (Social, MOBILE, Analytics and Cloud), Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.