As e-book publishers and Apple face an antitrust lawsuit over pricing, magazine publishers are now looking into an alternative solution to the digital pricing dilemma: being able to extricate themselves from Apple’s grip entirely. A startup called Netizine, makers of a new, tablet-ready social magazine platform for publishers is currently in talks with seven of the ten top global publishers… → Read More
Android may be the most popular mobile browser, having today overtaken Opera, but when it comes to HTML5 performance, it looks like iOS is king. This at least according to a new report from spaceport.io, which claims to be the “first-ever report on the technology’s performance on top smartphone and tablet platforms”.
And it’s about time. With Facebook and major carriers and OEMs backing it… → Read More
Gaming is changing fast these days, especially in the browser. Sure, social games are great and everything, but there’s always been a sense that, as browser-based technologies mature, the opportunities that present themselves will make casual social, Facebook-only gaming look crayon scrawl. Inherently, one of the best parts of gaming is that it’s inherently social, and gamers want deeper, more… → Read More
You can’t call StackMob a “backend service provider for mobile” anymore, because as of now, it’s a full end-to-end solution. The cloud-based platform for mobile developers is today launching hosted HTML5 services that tie to StackMob’s backend, making it the first platform offering integrated HTML5.
Developers can use the new service to host full HTML5 apps for desktop, tablet or mobile, or can… → Read More
Following its November debut, HTML5 publishing platform (and TechCrunch Disrupt finalist) Pressly, is preparing to launch its self-serve platform for bloggers. Planned to go live this spring, the platform will allow publishers of any kind – big or small – to transform their WordPress sites, Tumblr blogs, Twitter updates and other social feeds into tablet and touch-friendly sites that work… → Read More
Polar Mobile, a digital media platform provider that builds apps for some of the biggest media companies, today announced it has secured an additional $6 million in funding. The new round, led by growth equity firm Georgian Partners, joins more than $3 million invested in the company previously from private investors, bringing its total funding to $9 million.
The company is also announcing its… → Read More
Six months ago, Brass Monkey had built and released some well-developed software development kits (SDKs) for Android, iOS, and beyond that, simply put, enabled gamers to turn their mobile devices into remote controllers, with support for Flash, Unity3D, and desktop games and apps. The Brass Monkey team, CEO Chris Allen tells us, believed that bringing the functionality of a Wii controller to smart… → Read More
Following its November launch, OnSwipe competitor (and TechCrunch Disrupt finalist) Pressly is bringing another major media outlet’s content to the tablet interface. The company is today announcing the launch of a new publication called Electionism. The app was built for the Media Lab, an internal product innovation team inside The Economist Group, which includes The Economist, CQ Roll Call and… → Read More
The Financial Times has acquired London-based application development firm Assanka, which built a nifty HTML5 web app – and other applications – for the publisher.
(Hat tip to Benedict Evans)
FT staffers such as Katie Morley and Jonathan Wheatley started spreading the news on Twitter, garnering retweets from FT.com managing director Rob Grimshaw and PR rep Tom Glover, who confirmed the… → Read More
Once upon a time, Facebook game companies like Zynga fattened up their user counts thanks to viral distribution to non-gamers through the news feed. Facebook later curtailed this channel, forcing developers to concentrate on paid marketing and true word of mouth to grow. A new boom period could be coming, this time for mobile developers, as Facebook announced today that it is testing game stories… → Read More
From tech titans like Zynga, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple, to startups just launching, the battle lines of 2012 will be drawn across the landscape of HTML5. Below are 14 bold predictions for how HTML5 will evolve in 2012.
Welcome to a more interconnected web:
In 2012, HTML5 will be adding support for some really useful and cool APIs that allow one
website to connect to… → Read More
You know how the Internet works, right? Of course you do: you’re a TechCrunch reader, a power user. You know what that “HTTP” means in your address bar (if you’re not using Chrome.) You know that behind the scenes, the Domain Name System translates your requests for domain names like techcrunch.com to numeric addresses like 76.74.254.121, and secure connections are encrypted by SSL. You know that… → Read More
There will be one billion HTML5-capable phones sold in 2013, according to new research from Strategy Analytics. The number represents a (huge, huge) increase from the 336 million units sold in 2011. As expected, much of the growth will be driven by sales in North America, Europe and Asia, as well as support from vendors like Apple, Adobe, Google and Microsoft. → Read More
Jilion, the makers of the cloud-based HTML5 video player SublimeVideo, are today making the product more accessible through the introduction of a freemium offering. When the service launched earlier this spring, commercial plans were available, starting at the relatively affordable rate of under $10 per month. But when it comes to user adoption, nothing beats “free.” → Read More
Adobe’s mobile Flash efforts have recently gone the way of the western black rhino, and Principal Product Manager Mike Chambers isn’t too pleased with how the Adobe chose to broke the news. In fact, he feels so strongly about it that he’s offered up his own clarifications on the matter.
“Our goal was to be very clear about WHAT we were doing, but in doing so, we didn’t pay enough attention to… → Read More
Restaurant reservations service OpenTable is launching a completely redesigned mobile website today based on HTML5. The company says it was prompted to make the changes due to customer demand. Since 2008, the company has seated more than 15 million diners through both its mobile website and apps, representing over $600 million in revenue for its restaurant customers. These days, OpenTable mobile… → Read More
In what I think is an interesting experiment, CBS this morning debuted a “60 Minutes” application that you can find in and launch from the Chrome Web Store (which just got a major facelift).
Granted, “adding it to Chrome” doesn’t really do anything but take you to this page, which you can just open in Chrome just like you would any page, but the Web app does look pretty nice. → Read More
Amazon has announced an update to the Kindle file format integrating many HTML5 tags and CSS attributes. Many expected a concession by Amazon in the form of an EPUB-compatible upgrade, and this comes as a slight surprise — but it’s a natural evolution of the format, really, and of course everyone is already familiar with the toolset.
In a way this makes Kindle formatted books nothing more… → Read More
Motorola is today announcing the launch of RhoElements, a Web-based application framework made possible through its acquisition of the cross-platform mobile app development platform Rhomobile. Motorola acquired Rhomobile on July 29, 2011.
Motorola says it plans to announce additional cross-platform development tools, enterprise integration components and cloud-based services for its channel… → Read More
Earlier tonight, Alexia found and posted some screenshots of something that sure looked a lot like the mythical “Project Spartan“. Shortly thereafter, Facebook took down the page in question. And for good reason. That was Project Spartan, we’ve now confirmed.
Whoops.
Well, to be fair, I’ve heard numerous times that they don’t actually call it that internally. That may be a name that external… → Read More
HTML5, HTML5, HTML5 — it seems to be the only thing anyone wants to talk about these days. And that excitement could get kicked into overdrive next week when Facebook unveils Project Spartan, their platform for HTML5 apps. But why wait? A startup that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt has already built an entire HTML5-based OS: Carbyn.
The great thing about Carbyn is that there’s nothing to… → Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Pressly is an HTML5-based platform that turns online publications into tablet-friendly websites that work on the iPad, Android tablets or the BlackBerry PlayBook. The sites it produces are nearly indistinguishable from their native counterparts, like Flipboard and Zite for example, offering a similar experience for browsing through articles, images and videos. → Read More
Today, Strobe Inc. is launching a new platform that helps developers build HTML5-based Web applications for desktops, smartphones and tablets, and centrally manage them from a single interface.
The launch is a major leap forward in HTML5 app development. From one interface, teams can manage code (both test code and production code), configure the app’s deployment across platforms (Web, Android… → Read More
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. → Read More
Bizness Apps, the startup that gives small businesses the tools to quickly and easily build mobile apps, launched in October 2010 and has been growing like gangbusters, reaching over 1,000 applications, 10 languages, and over 20 countries in less than 9 months. It also recently partnered with WuFoo to give SMBS the ability to create and seamlessly add contact forms, online surveys, and invitations… → Read More
Yokto is a newly launched video platform which offers an embeddable player that intelligently switches between a Flash-based interface or HTML5, depending on the device being used to view the content. This idea on its own is not original, of course. Similar solutions from companies like Brightcove, Ooyala, Kaltura and SublimeVideo, for example, offer much of the same thing.
But where Yokto… → Read More
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about consumer cloud services. There’s Apple’s recently-announced iCloud, Amazon’s Cloud Drive, Google’s Music Beta (which is your music in the cloud) and, of course, Microsoft’s SkyDrive. All of these to one extent or another are moving away from simple online lockers, and we see that today with the release of the latest update to SkyDrive.
The navigation is less… → Read More
FunMobility, the makers of FunMail, a picture-messaging app that organically pairs your texts with appropriate (and fun) images, FunTones, a large collection of funny ringtones, and FunMe, a suite of tools for consumers to create, share, and post their own user-generated content, is clearly striving for a particular brand message. I think it has something to do with “fun”.
Today, FunMobility… → Read More
On today’s ever-evolving Web, it seems there’s a growing demand for web apps that incorporate realtime functionality. Of course, it’s by no means easy to build seamless realtime functionality, as it often requires site developers to learn a whole new framework, or worry over the configuration of existing infrastructure.
To address this problem, Pusher has built a hosted service that helps… → Read More
ppMobi likes HTML5-based mobile games, and it wants you to like them, too, which is why appMobi is focused on giving developers the tools required to make HTML5 and JavaScript mobile applications that run smoothly across platforms and browsers.
Of course, many loudly pronounced HTML5 the new heir to the throne, as it would finally bring the native app experience to every mobile device, and take… → Read More
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