The mobile web version of Nokia Maps now looks and behaves more like a standard native application on Google Android and Apple iOS devices, thanks to HTML5: The navigation service now provides offline downloading of maps. This ability can reduce mobile broadband data charges or allow map usage in areas that have limited or no wireless data service.

Enthusiast site Android Community noted the updates on Monday by way of the HandHeld Blog. In addition to the downloadable maps, the service — found at http://m.maps.nokia.com — also adds public transit directions to supplement the existing walking and driving navigation as well as points of interest (POI) and guides to the local area.

Nokia’s mapping service is arguably one of the best software products to come from the Finland-based handset maker, and this update makes it even better. Why else would Microsoft decide to integrate Nokia Maps in the Windows Phone platform going forward? I used the web version of Nokia Maps earlier on Monday, finding it to be so full-featured that it was almost difficult to believe it to be a web application.

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The offline mapping mode is welcome, especially when many smartphone owners pay for set amounts of wireless data. Google, too, recently introduced downloadable maps, partially for this reason. Nokia’s implementation is somewhat limiting, though, at least in my short tests. The initial geographic area I wanted to map was too large, so Nokia Maps wouldn’t save it. I had to keep zooming and cropping before saving.

The end result was a reasonable size — about 15 square blocks of Philadelphia — and I had to boost the storage limits allocated to the service to get the 19 MB area map downloaded. Nokia calls these “neighborhood maps,” so if you’re planning to visit several areas, each neighborhood will have to be downloaded separately. That differs from Google’s solution, where I was able to grab a map of 10 square miles. Once you have a local map from Nokia stored on the device, you don’t have access to the guides and POIs, but you can zoom in for greater detail, just like Google’s version.

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For nearly 30 years, Adobe Systems has made the lion’s share of its revenue by  selling multimedia and creativity software for desktop computers. But that focus on the desktop has grown increasingly out of touch in recent years, as the larger technology landscape has shifted toward heavier usage of mobile devices and software-as-a-service applications hosted in the cloud.

Well, it seems like Adobe finally got the memo about the world entering a post-PC era. In a series of announcements at its MAX 2011 conference Monday, Adobe revealed a new focus on cloud technology and a much stronger mobile strategy, showing that it is more serious than ever about addressing today’s dominant tech industry trends.

The announcements, in a nutshell:

A bunch of new mobile apps
Adobe unveiled “Touch Apps,” a family of six apps made for Android tablets and the iPad. With Touch Apps, people can do things that they had previously only been able to do on Adobe’s Creative Suite desktop software, such as full featured Photoshop image editing. Touch Apps will be available on Android tablets starting next month, and the company will announce iOS tablet availability in the beginning of 2012.

A “transformation” to the cloud
Adobe’s over-arching initiative is dubbed “Creative Cloud,” which will be the hub for viewing, sharing and syncing files created on Touch Apps and Creative Suite. Creative Cloud is generally aimed at letting people work together and collaborate, no matter what device they’re on. Adobe’s top brass is not mincing words about how important this is. “The move to the Creative Cloud is a major component in the transformation of Adobe,” CTO Kevin Lynch said in a press release. More details about pricing and availability will be announced in November.

Cozying up to HTML5
In recent years Adobe has perhaps been best known for Flash, a proprietary technology that powers animation and video on the web. But lately Flash has been a dirty word of sorts in tech circles, as independent developers and big companies alike are increasingly deciding to instead support HTML5, an open source Flash competitor. On Monday, Adobe was conspicuously mum on Flash and talked up its own HTML5 and open source efforts. Exhibit A: Adobe announced it has acquired Nitobi Software, a company that makes PhoneGap, an open source platform for building HTML5-based mobile apps.

The new moves are very smart, but Adobe should not spend too much time on self-congratulation just yet. Adobe’s new direction will almost certainly come with growing pains as it adapts to a radically different cloud-centric business model, and the fact that Adobe is a public company won’t make things easier. Stock market investors are a notoriously hard-to-please and impatient bunch, and getting used to the new rhythm of revenue generation (mobile apps bring in money in a very different way than desktop software does) will probably take some time. Everyone knows it’s nearly impossible for an old dog to learn new tricks — but you have to give Adobe credit for giving it a good try.

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Pandora has seen huge growth from mobile platforms, but its start in mobile was actually a little rocky, revealed the company’s CTO and EVP of Product Tom Conrad at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference on Monday. Conrad said that Pandora used to develop implementations for around 50 different feature phones a few years back, but none of these took off. Then the iPhone came along, and the folks at Pandora were so excited that they ended up jailbreaking an iPhone to get a head-start on developing for the platform.

Pandora ended up shipping their app through the official iTunes app store the day it launched three years ago and has since seen its user base explode from 13 million to over 100 million registered users. Conrad has also since made peace with Android, about which he had previously said that he needed the platform ”like I need a hole in my head,” referring to the confusing state of Android fragmentation. On Monday, Conrad didn’t want to go into the specifics of Android vs. iOS market share amongst Pandora users, but he called Android’s growth “nothing short of remarkable.”

Still, Pandora’s future may not be in apps on either platform, but in HTML5. The company launched a new HTML5-powered website last week, and Conrad said that using HTML5 helped to both dramatically increase the performance of the site as well as implement new social features. Being able to turn features like these around rapidly is one of the big advantages in developing for the web, Conrad said: “The good thing on the web is that you can experiment really, really quickly.” Changes could be pushed out over night, whereas the same could take a month or more with native apps.

That doesn’t mean that Pandora will move away from apps for mobile platforms, even though Conrad said he could envision combining HTML5 and native code into a hybrid kind of app. However, HTML5 will also play a huge role in another big future growth area for the company: Devices that bring Pandora to the TV screen. Conrad called HTML5 a “key enbaler for connected devices,” and aded that he foresees that this kinds of devices as well as solutions to bring Pandora to the car dashboard will have a major impact on Pandora’s audience:

Right now, Conrad explained, 70 percent of Pandora’s listening happens on mobile devices. “In the future, the majority of Pandora listening will happen in the car and on the connected device,” he said.

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Nitobi, creators of the HTML5-based mobile app framework PhoneGap, have today launched the PhoneGap Facebook Connect plugin. The addition of the plugin means that developers building apps using Web technologies like HTML and JavaScript can now simplify the log in process for their apps by allowing users to login with their Facebook credentials.

To enable third parties the ability to integrate the Facebook Connect technology, Facebook provides a JavaScript software development kit (SDK) to developers.

However, Nitobi says that using the Facebook SDK was a challenge because it requires the use of the OAuth 2.0 standard, an open standard for authorization. This sign on process doesn’t always translate gracefully for the PhoneGap developers’ apps, the company found. Typically, a login box pops up on the user’s screen because their Facebook username and password credentials aren’t likely stored on the device.

“We got working on a Facebook plugin because we’re user experience advocates,” Dave Johnson, CTO at Nitobi Inc. says. “The OAuth authentication workflow for a mobile app isn’t ideal so we created the PhoneGap Facebook Connect plugin as a way to streamline that process and improve the experience for the end user.”

The new plugin uses the same API (application programming interface) as Facebook’s own SDK, but instead of replicating the same workflow you would see on the Web using a desktop browser, it works with the native Facebook application installed on users’ own devices. The end result is a less cumbersome log in process for an app’s end users.

The plugin is now available for download from Gitub here.

Nitobi, which is now seeing over 40,000 PhoneGap downloads per month, says it expects this new plugin to be popular.






Crunchbase

PHONEGAP








Product:
PHONEGAP


Website:
http://www.phonegap.com

Company
Nitobi Software


PhoneGap is a developer package by Nitobi Software that enables developers to create mobile web applications.







Learn more










Crunchbase

NITOBI SOFTWARE








Company:
NITOBI SOFTWARE


Website:
http://www.nitobi.com



Nitobi Software creates rich web applications and developer toolkits in Ajax and Javascript.







Learn more

(Editor’s note: Jason Taylor is VP of Platform Strategy at Usablenet. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)

As smartphones continue their exponential growth and consumers get increasingly comfortable with using them to book travel, conduct research and make purchases, it’s essential for organizations to leverage next-generation mobile technologies into their overall marketing efforts.

A comprehensive mobile strategy that incorporates advanced HTML5 mobile Web capabilities, while simultaneously maximizing their reach with a native application strategy is essential for companies hoping to secure brand loyalty.

That’s a tall order, but it’s one that will help you win in the mobile field, which is increasingly becoming crucial to businesses.

Up first: Leveraging HTML5 to reach users. The advancements of HTML5 mobile development provides businesses with a reliable mobile Web platform that delivers faster speeds and more flexibility on next-generation broadband networks. By leveraging advanced features supported by HTML5, you can deliver an app-like experience without forcing people to hunt through an app store, then download the software. Further, HTML5 sites are search engine friendly, potentially increasing your exposure.

There are a few key HTML5-enabled features you’ll need to leverage to enhance the consumer browsing experience:

Dynamic scrolling banners provide brands with the ability to further target mobile users with the latest products, special offers and relevant promotions on the mobile homepage
Expanding navigation, collapsible menus and pop-up windows can improve site navigation and allow more content to be incorporated – maximizing the smartphone’s small screen design without sacrificing crucial page download time
High-resolution image galleries display multiple, high quality product images in a gallery format; and allows users to scroll, swipe and zoom in on a selected image
Advanced GPS functionality can customize the mobile site experience to where the user is located. A great example is Expedia, a company that delivers mobile search results and hotel room availability based on the user’s location
Predictive Search can cut down the time it takes for users to access search results on a branded mobile page – similar to the way Google delivers its search results
Mini-Carts on transactional mobile sites allows users to easily call up their shopping cart at any time to see what’s in their basket, without having to navigate away from the page that they’re on

Using HTML5 doesn’t mean you should ignore traditional apps, though. These can offer consumers a more personalized mobile experience. Because there is a customer discovery element, though, it’s best to view them as a tool to more deeply engage your most faithful customers.

By complementing your mobile Web strategy with native apps, you can encourage customers to become evangelists for your brand. Since mobile apps provide the ability to leverage smartphones’ unique capabilities, they are able to deliver unique interactive features. Examples include:

Leveraging the smartphone’s camera: The smartphone’s camera can be used in-app to deliver experiences not available in the mobile browser, like providing the ability to read QR and other bar codes. Integrating QR Codes into a mobile app strategy allows brands to implement innovative new marketing and advertising options and deliver unique, exclusive content to consumers.
Push notifications: This ensures you remain in direct contact with your most loyal customers through an open line of communication. In addition, push notifications provide another unique broadcast platform to disseminate targeted promotions and other branded news.
Deliver unique, brand-appropriate experiences: The mobile application format presents brands with the opportunity to deliver unique, engaging features to their most loyal customers that are not available in the mobile Web experience. For example, Pacific Sunwear’s iPhone app features an ‘Outfit Builder’ that allows users to piece together a complete outfit from apparel available in PacSun’s inventory.  

As mobile and marketing experts continue to debate the advantages of HTML5 mobile web versus the mobile app, it is time for brands to view these mobile tools not as competing entities, but rather as complimentary pieces to develop the most comprehensive and effective mobile strategy possible. By leveraging both, you’ll more effectively engage with your consumers.

About the author: Jason Taylor is the vice president of Platform Strategy atUsablenet, a global technology leader in multichannel customer engagement. The company works with 20% of Fortune 1000 clients including FedEx, Macy’s, JCPenney, Estée Lauder, Hilton, Delta, Victoria’s Secret and others. Follow@Usablenet on Twitter.

Filed under: Entrepreneur Corner

Cloud storage provider Box.net announced today that it is launching a web-based HTML5 version of its mobile application that will bring the company’s tools to any mobile device running an HTML5-powered mobile web browser.

HTML is largely seen as a powerful successor to Flash, a platform that powers most interactive web-enabled applications today. Box.net’s HTML5 app has the same functions that the rest of the native applications on smartphones and tablets have. But it has the advantage of working on any other mobile device that has an HTML5-powered browser without needing a native application. Most mobile devices today have a browser that can run HTML5 apps.

Box.net currently has 6 million users. Some 60,000 businesses employ its cloud-storage software, including 73 percent of Fortune 500 companies. That figure is up from around 66 percent in February.

“We’re not zealous about what the ultimate platform is, we just care about making sure our customers can access their content wherever,” Box.net chief executive Aaron Levie told VentureBeat. “At the same time, the long-term expectation and view we have is that a lot of these devices will become more standards based and let us focus way more on HTML5.”

This is one of the first times Box.net has devoted additional development resources to a new mobile platform. It led the company to add features to the mobile web application that weren’t even available on popular native applications like those on the iPhone and iPad. The company plans on devoting the most resources to the mobile platform that will get the widest deployment in enterprises, Levie said. In this case, he said he thinks it will be HTML5.

“You’ll typically see us leapfrogging our own apps as we can develop in one platform or another, so this time there is some enhanced functionality with the HTML5 mobile web app,” Levie said. ”It’s slightly a knock against ourselves. For example, we don’t have search in our native iPhone app, but we have search integrated into the HTML5 app,” Levie said.

Outside of working developing apps that fit customer demand, the company will also develop applications for mobile devices if it can strike a good go-to-market deal with the parent company. It worked closely with Research in Motion to build an application for the Playbook, Levie said.

“We basically have a strategy where, if we can go to market with partners in an integrated way, we’re trying to build rich experiences for those platforms,” Levie said. “With the BlackBerry, we were able to work pretty closely with Research in Motion to get it to market, we’re gonna be doing a bunch of stuff with the Playbook with their sales and marketing staff.”

Box.net also released new applications for Android and for Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Playbook. The new Android application is optimized for tablets running the latest version of Google’s Android mobile operating system called Honeycomb. The application scales down to Android smartphones as well.

Filed under: enterprise, mobile

The tech industry’s movers and shakers have been saying for months now that the HTML5 is very important. New data released Friday indicates that HTML5 is not just going to be big, it’s going to be huge — and it’s coming fast.

More than 2.1 billion mobile devices will have HTML5 browsers by 2016, up from just 109 million in 2010, according to a new report by ABI Research. Much of this growth will be thanks to Apple’s massive support for the HTML5 platform, according to the study. And Apple is also likely to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the technology’s wide scale adoption. Because Apple has so much control over its software and devices, it will be most poised to take full advantage of HTML features as they emerge in the coming years.

As is often the case in business, where there’s a winner, there’s usually a loser. HTML5 could largely replace Abobe’s proprietary Flash technology. And HTML5′s swift ascent could render Flash irrelevant in short order. “I think the disappearance of Flash is closer than people think,” ABI senior analyst Mark Beccue said in a press release accompanying the data.

HTML5′s projected growth is all the more impressive considering that the actual standard is not officially expected to be completed until 2020, according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body. But that won’t stop companies and independent engineers from developing and deploying HTML5 features, ABI said.

Indeed, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor has said his company is putting a “huge amount of our investment” in HTML5, and Google recently debuted its first homepage doodle composed entirely with the HTML5 mark-up language. It may seem like buzz about HTML5 is everywhere already, but if the latest research is correct, we’re only at the beginning.

Feature image courtesy of Flickr user EJ Callow.

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Morf.js - Custom easing functions for CSS3 transitions (bounce, spring etc) #CSS3 #html5

Jonathan Deutsch and Ryan Nielsen left Apple late last year to join Y Combinator’s accelerator program and help designers build animations in HTML5 as opposed to Flash. Friday, the two-man team is releasing Hype, the first product of their startup Tumult, on the Mac App Store.
Hype, which sells for $29.99, uses WebKit to render pages and has been crafted so that anyone comfortable with using Keynote or PowerPoint can start building animations in HTML5, no code required.
“It’s pretty clear that HTML5 is the future of the web,” says Deutsch. “It will, of course, run not only on desktop machines but also runs really well on any modern smartphone or tablet like the iPad. The problem is that there are no good designer apps for creating animated HTML5 like there are for Flash.”
Hype presents the user with a blank canvas with a timeline at the bottom. The user can then drag in images, video and text, arrange those elements and use keyframe-based animations to define where those pieces of content go.

“This is a very designer-friendly process,” Deutsch explains. “We we even made an intuitive recording interface, so you don’t have laboriously layout each individual keyframe. You can just hit record, move your objects and go. It’s really easy to make some powerful, beautiful animations.”
The animations, at least based on these samples, are impressive and present web designers with a viable Flash alternative for carrying their creative work over onto mobile devices. The tool is also intended to be developer-friendly and allows the user to edit raw HTML or Javascript.
As a bonus, Deutsch and Nielsen have built Dropbox integration into Hype, meaning users can publish their animations to Dropbox, as opposed to an FTP site, to solicit feedback from co-workers or clients.
Hype is targeting three primary markets: designers looking to add animations to their websites, Flash developers who need to deploy their content on the iPhone or iPad, and existing users of HTML5.
“There’s a huge wide opportunity with HTML5,” says Nielsen. “We can be the tool that everyone turns to to produce awesome and animated interactive content using the latest standards.”
Both Deutsch and Nielsen speak of a desire to push the HTML5 standard forward and will continue to iterate on the Hype product with more interactive and animation features. The pair is looking at how to weave WebGL, a technology for creating 3D content on the web, into the Hype experience.
Tumult has so far only taken Y Combinator and Start Fund financing. Deutsch and Nielsen hope to finance operations through Mac application sales.
More About: animations, design, HTML5, hype, mac apps, Tumult, y combinator
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