Did you know that Google engineers get to spend 20% of their time working on their ‘pet-projects‘? Pretty cool. One of such ‘pet-project’ done by Google engineers was creation of Quake II using HTML5 only. The game runs in browser and no plug-in is needed. The blog also shows a yotube video of the post, and claims that it can run at upto 60 fps. On the first glance, the news sounds really exciting and one would think that html5 is ready to take on Flash. Granted this game doesn’t use some of the advanced features available in Flash 10, but still makes on wander if they should reconsider using Flash… Not so fast…. wait till you get to ‘build instructions‘. ......continue reading

Flash Lite 4 is now available from Calsoft. Flash Lite 4 is intended to run on devices that don’t sport a powerful CPU necessary to run Flash Player 10. (Flash 10 requires the CPU of the order of a minimum of 600 MHz ARM11 class. Of course some people will argue that MIPS 4K series is better than ARM11, but that is left to the judges for the time being ......continue reading

Flash Lite 3 (and now 4) can be customized to support h.264 video but the license for h.264 needs to be purchased separately by OEMs. We often get questions on how much additional costs this is going to incur so I researched and here’s what I found.  H.264 has a different licensing structure for devices and internet users. For non PC type devices, h.264 licenses is free upto 100K units and it costs $0.2 per unit upto 5 million units and $0.1 per unit after 5 million units. They cap the royalty at $5M for 2009-2010. (This information is picked from here). ......continue reading

DMWMedia is reporting that Slingmedia is putting together an application that lets iPhone users stream their home TV channels to the device over a Wi-Fi connection. The application reportedly only supports WiFi only and not 3G. Apparently Apple and network partner AT&T disabled the application to stream video over a 3G connection fearing that it’ll take over the bandwidth. The same application is available for Blackberry and Motorola Q and is not blocked with 3G usage.
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Digital Media Design Line- a publication of EE Times is reporting that Android is moving fast into consumer market. A new consortium called ‘Open Embedded Sofware Forum’ (OESF) has been formulated in Asia to push the Android into the set top boxes. The consortium currently has 23 members and expects the membership to grow to 100 in 2009. ......continue reading

Nokia 810, the internet tablet has an alpha version of mobile Mozilla browser according the a report in Information Week. The company supposedly is also working on a browser for Windows Mobile. A beta version is expected later this year, and first release in 2009.  The browser, code named Fennec, is available for downloading only to developers as it is an alpha release. ......continue reading

Microsoft has announced that Internet Explorer mobile 6 will be available soon. So Microsoft is defitely gettign ready to compete with Opera. Opera launched a new version of Opera that has improved support for YouTube and allows for sharing of bookmarks between cellphones and PCs. From the post: ......continue reading

Sun has recenlty announced a new technology called JavaFX. JavaFX will have a scripting language similar to Actionscript, and will operate in a similar manner to Javascript. JavaFX will also have a timline engine similar to the one offered by Flash. JavaFX applications will run within or outside of the browser. The application can run with or without the internet connections. ......continue reading

Microsoft thinks that iPhone has an advantage because it offers a better interface for music experience on iphone. Duh…….. isn’t that obvious? I use TMobile Dash- a windows mobile phone, and everytime I have to open a file and add something new to playlist, I go through so much of nonsensical steps!! I have not purchased iPod or any other mp3 player, simply because I wanted to have one device capable of doing everything. Well, WM powered Dash almost makes the cut, but the interface is definitely crummy for music experience. Hopefully next WM version will provide a better experience. ......continue reading

Austria Microsystems has introduced a media player IC that handles lossless compression. The story goes on to saying that people apparently are not impressed with the audio quality of mp3s compared to CDs. ......continue reading

                   Adobe Flash player 10 beta is now available.  Among the feature enhanacement it boasts more 3D effects, more filters, 3D apis, better text layout. Did I say that it is optimized for CPU? And it is supposed to play video much smoothly than Flash 9. (Everybody must have seen how Flash 9 randomly drops frames in full screen mode). ......continue reading

Apple has purchased PA Semi.  The news story goes on to say that Apple will not consider Atom in their iPhone.  PA Semi makes low power PowerPC based chips. ......continue reading

Intel announced that AIR and Real Player will be available on Intel platform. A step in right direction if they want to compete with ARM. ......continue reading

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