• Nokia partners with Tencent and SINA. The partnership is aimed at using Tencent and SINA’s vast online community to bring location-based services (check-ins and recommendations) to Nokia’s Ovi maps. The partnership forms a strategic base for Nokia to create partnerships with established brands to extend services which has already taken off in the US. http://bit.ly/dHUyYD

• 2 More days until the internet runs out of Ipv4 addresses. With IPv4 addresses exhausted, the internet is finally set for the full integration of the IPv6 standard. http://ipv6.he.net/statistics/ (Countdown site)

• Orange and Barclaycard launch UK’s first commercial NFC service. UK consumers will be able to purchase NFC phones from Orange and use them to make payments from a MasterCard prepaid account stored on mobile phones. There are currently 42 500 points of sale equipped to handle contactless payments in the UK. http://bit.ly/gNZz30

• Googles worldwide hiring spree. Google is set to hire more than 6200 workers in 2011, which will boost its work force by a quarter (up from the 23% it grew in 2010). http://yhoo.it/hzgkqH

• Akamai releases quarterly internet report. Akamain, as a very large content distribution network, is in a unique position to obtain an overview of the state of the internet. Theirr report includes data on traffic attacks, network connection speeds, internet penetration, broadband adoption and mobile usage statistics. http://bit.ly/fBykc5

• Next generation mobile telephony without base stations. This university dissertation presents a program which allows mobiles phones to communicate via messaging without relying on base stations. http://bit.ly/fLUty5

• Amazon launches its email service. The email service utilises scalable technology used by Amazon sites worldwide. The service is differentiated by its ability to provide email metrics and performance data which can be used in email campaigns. http://bit.ly/hGHXmc

• Facebook introduces new Ad format. ‘Sponsored stories’ utilises users news feeds to promote the company endorsement or mention. User actions included in featured stories include: likes, check-ins, user actions in applications and page posts (critics point out the similarities to Facebook’s Beacon program, which failed dismally). http://on.mash.to/gzdYys

• Facebook releases HTML5 game benchmark. Facebook released a JavaScript library that measures HTML5 gaming performance. These measures will assist the developer community to improve performance and HTML5 standards in gaming (across different browsers, systems and devices). http://on.fb.me/gMTgc7

• Google buys Fflick. Fflick is a recommendation engine that uses social media to conduct sentiment analysis. Google might look to use the software to develop a contextual discovery which can be extended across domains and verticals. http://selnd.com/foG0kN

• Twitter test ad self-serve platform. The ad service creates two types of campaigns: promoted tweets and promoted accounts. The self-serve platform also integrates analytic tools that allow advertisers to determine return on investment (ROI). http://bit.ly/grU2Pb

• Ubuntu opts for LibreOffice over Open Office. Ubuntu will be the first Linux distributor to release a Linux platform with LibreOffice. Fedora and openSUSE are set to follow. This may be seen as a backlash against Oracle’s perceived attempts to control open source products after it’s acquisition of Open Office via the acquisition of Sun Microsystems in January 2010. http://zd.net/fQ6vwb

• OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 released. After 10 release candidates in 7 seven months, developer teams announced that a final version of OpenOffice 3.3.0 is now available. http://bit.ly/fyeyMF

• LinkedIn looks to raise $175 million in IPO. The funds will be used to further develop the professional network’s ability to monetise solutions. Linkedin’s IPO is the first of many anticipated IPOs, including Zynga, Chegg and Facebook. http://bit.ly/gekq0q

• Monster’s iMotion adds gesture gesture control to Ipods. The car adapter allows for motion control to change and pause tracks. Developments in motion control indicates a spin-off of consumer goods that has resulted from the success of the Kinect. http://engt.co/eKBJdj

• Facebook discontinues FBML. Facebook will continue to support existing FBML tabs and applications, but in future IFrames will be the sole mechanism for embedding applications in tabs. http://bit.ly/ddr2N2

• BusinessInsider.com : ’35 up and coming entrepreneurs you need to meet’. A list of 35 entrepreneurs from the New York technology scene – the list gives insight into the growth of the New York entrepreneurial environment, and may give a glimpse of up and coming companies for 2011. http://goo.gl/sRm5p

In another place, I read about the phases javascript’s been through since its creation:

• The “We need scripting for web pages” phase. (Netscape)
• The “We should standardize this” phase. (ECMAScript)
• The “Javascript is not a toy” phase. (Ajax)

And now we are in a new phase: Javascript is a programming language phase. And, even though it is currently the world’s most popular programming language, there are still a lot of confusion about its current state, lack of knowledge of its power and outdated information about it. This article tries to throw some light at it.

First, a little bit of history

Javascript was introduced in December 1995 by Netscape. It was developed by Brendan Eich and was called Mocha and LiveScript before. According to Brendan himself, the confusing name was given when Netscape and Sun did a license agreement and wanted to make javascript complementary scripting language to go with Java. Others believe that the name was given so it could ride along in Java marketing, since this was the hot programming language of that time.

In the beginning, the language targeted non-tech people, specially designers and amateurs and the main idea was to add some interation to web pages. That is why the language is so flexible: it was supposed to make programming easy for beginners.

ECMA and standardization

After it was launched, Microsoft, interested in getting some of Netscape’s users for itself , developed a compactible dialect to the language. It was called JScript, as Javascript is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, and was included in Internet Explorer 3. Because of the emerging different implementations, people realized the importance to standardize it.

This job was given to ECMA that wrote a document decribing how the language should work. The language described in this document, the ECMA-262 specification, is called ECMAScript. Other programming languages are based in ECMAScript, like ActionScript.

We are currently in edition 3 (Javascript 1.5 – published in 1999). The forth edition of ECMA-262 (Javascript 2.0) was supposed to be finished in October 2008. Along with the critics it received, the most important were:

• The language didn’t need that much change
• Javascript didn’t need to look like Java or any other language
• Javascript already does well what it proposes to do
• Javascript did not need a better extension mechanism

Because of differences between gigantics – in one side: Google, Mozilla and Adobe (that supported version 4); on the other: Microsoft (that was working in a softer version, 3.1), this edition was suspended and a new mid-term edition was created: ECMAScript Harmony. (more here and here).

Javascript versions and browsers

Javascript is currently in version 1.8.1. That doesn’t mean all browsers run the latest version or even the same one. The table bellow shows each browser and its respective javascript version.

Javascript Engines

Since last year, browsers have been fighting on which one has the best Javascript performance in the so-called Second Browser War. It all began with Google Chrome and its engine, V8. Then, Safari launched its SquirrelFish that evolved 3 months later to SquirrelFish Extreme. In june 2009, Mozilla released its Firefox 3.5 with an optimized SpiderMonkey engine, called now TraceMonkey, that boosted its speed to 40 times in some cases.

Lifehacker did some speed tests last june with the final versions of Safari (4.0), Chrome (2.0) and Internet Explorer (8) and almost-there betas of Firefox (3.5b99) and Opera (10b1). The results can be seen here.

Other Javascript uses and projects

It is worth remembering other uses of javascript, besides in a webpage. First of all, we can use it for:

• build an Adobe Air application
• develop Apple’s Dashboard Widgets
• create an extension for Firefox

We can also mention other interesting projects:

• Rhino is an implementation of Javascript 1.7 written in Java by Mozilla. Running on it, you have a lot of Javascript server-side projects
• Javascript on Rails: this is a 2007 project, developed by Steve Yegge, that ports Ruby on Rails to Javascript. Steve did this because he wanted something like RoR to work on projects in Google but this was not an allowed programming language in the enterprise. It also runs on top of Rhino.
• ScreamingMonkey: another Mozilla project, its goal is to allow Tamarin to run within non-Mozilla browsers, starting with Internet Explorer, allowing them to understand Javascript 2 even though not implemented

HTML 4.0 was published in December 18, 1997, as a W3C recommendation (version 4.01 was completed in September, 1999). At that time, Internet Explorer 4 had just been released, the Mozilla Foundation was not formed, we did not have AJAX or even XML. Of course we have had some improvements since then, XHTML 1.0 became the recommendation and CSS2 was implemented by most browser vendors, but HTML still does not supply most of the needs of modern web application. And because of that we have to rely on third-party technologies like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight.

This new revision aims to change that and it tries to make development easier. Work on it started in 2004 and according to the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), it will reach Candidate Recommendation only in 2012. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use it now: several browsers have already implemented lots of features, such as canvas and video. The last draft was released in the beginning of the year and the editors are: Ian Hickson of Google, Inc. and David Hyatt of Apple, Inc.

Some of the most impressive new features in HMTL 5 are:

Canvas

The <canvas> element lets you render arbitrary graphics on the web using scripting (usually javascript). It consists of a drawable region with height and width. Javascript code can then access this area through several drawing functions. It can be used for graphs, games, animations and others.

There is a nice tutorial in Dev.Opera and lots of demos in Canvas Demos. Bespin, a Mozilla Labs experiment on how to build an extensible Web code editor, makes really good use of this element (you have to register to use it).

Implemented in: Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Video and audio

HTML 5 has specific tags for video – <video> – and audio – <audio> – that makes as easy to embed these elements as it is to embed an image – without relying on third-party plugins anymore. Unfortunately, there is no specific common video codec, because Apple and Nokia opposed the recommendation to use the free  Theora and Vorbis codecs last July (you can read more about it here).

Youtube has a demo page using the video element. The Pirate Bay also launched a new service called Video Bay with the new tags.

Implemented in: Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Geolocation

This makes location available for every browser that is compatible with HTML 5. The source of the information includes GPS, cell-tower triangulation, IP address among others.

You can see an example here.

Implemented in: Chrome, Firefox, Safari (iPhone), Opera

AppCache and Database

This makes possible to applications to store data locally and then access it without having to connect to the internet. Google Gears implements this feature currently.

You can test this feature with this Stickies App that was presented in Google I/O.

Implemented in: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera (Mobile)

Web Workers

Web workers allows you to run scripts in parallel in your web page, without blocking the interface. A script loaded and executed in the background is considered a ‘worker’. This is especially exciting for javascript programmers who have had to split the execution of their code using timers.

You can compare the speed of an app with different number of workers in this example.

Implemented in: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera (Mobile)

A last piece of good news about HTML5 is that its recommendation has a detailed specification about how vendors should parse HTML documents. Before that, browsers usually tried to guess and copy the behaviour of others for markups. With this, compatibility reaches its highest level and everybody wins.

There are tons of resources about HTML5 in the web today. Some interesting links worth checking out are:

W3C Working Draft – W3C Working Draft from April 2009

WHATWG Working Draft – WHATWG Working Draft from August 2009

HTML 5 Gallery – A showcase of sites already using HTML5

HTML 5 Doctor – tips and resources to help you use HTML5 today

HTML4 Differences – HTML 5 differences from HTML 4

Choose your own HTML 5 Adventure – Other HTML 5 Examples from Google I/O

Ok, how many of you answered with the name of a programming language? How many shouted out PHP, Ruby, Python or something similar? This is not that kind of post – I am not trying to start a religious war amongst the supporters of our beloved languages (not in this post at least…)

What I mean is this – what is the real language of the web: is it English? French? German? Or the ever more important Chinese? This may seem to be a simple question, but let’s look at the implications of language on the web.

I’m writing this post after attending Campus Party ’09, and I ended up reflecting a lot on this issue after watching Tim Berners-Lee’s presentation on the semantic web. This presentation had semi-simultaneous translation, and I must say I was not pleased with it. I have been working with the internet for over 9 years now, and over the years I have noticed the way in which languages such as Portuguese, Chinese and others started to invade a previously almost-pure-English environment.

Someone very wise once told me that knowing English means that you have access to a great deal more more content, and you have that access before someone that does not know English have it – that is the difference English makes on your resume (no wonder he is now my boss). And that is actually our current reality, most of the content on the Internet is first generated in English, and then it makes its way to other languages through the various translations made by local bloggers and such. This is not always the case of course – I also post in Portuguese and must say I do the opposite by translating into English from Portuguese. Nevertheless I have seen blogposts in English attract far more attention. During my first year of blogging one of my posts written in Portuguese and then translated to English proved this point. While the original post got lots of attention and comments, the English post rapidly made it to the first page of Digg and made me suffer from the “Digg-effect”. My blog has never since reached close to that peek number of visits – so hypothesis proved, English does go a long way.

This of course is not just because of the number of English readers out there, but also because of the number of tools available to English content generators, tools such as Digg and so many others. The rule seems not to apply itself only to user generated content, but also to applications, since an application has a much larger chance of gaining traction if it is in English. Of course this opens up a new door, the “localized version” door. If applications do not localize themselves to certain countries, a natural evolution of the web and the vacuum left by this application might generate local sites, developed by local people with local cultures. Take a look at BlogBlogs, based on Technorati but for a Brazilian audience.

Globalization, or whatever you want to call it, is changing this picture, more and more references are popping up in different languages, new bloggers and new sites. This is turning the web into a truly multi-language environment, which means content is now being generated in various languages, and then making its way to English speakers, no longer exclusively the other way around.

This is positive, but it also weakens the unified language pattern and has a second side effect, very negative in my opinion, and which inspired this reflection. New internet enthusiasts and content creators are actually feeling as if though learning English is not important anymore. “Hey, I have that in Portuguese” or “I can just google-translate it” are phrases heard more and more often these days, and this is bad. People begin to get locked up in little box, an expanding box, true, but a box anyway. Poorly translated material and lack of “knowing better” precipitates this chain reaction. And this ultimately is reflected at technology events like the Campus Party event in Sao Paulo.

Tim’s session was a embarrassment in my opinion. In order to accommodate the segment of the crowd that did not speak English, the session was presented with a translator being present. If it was done with simultaneous translation this might not have been as bad, but it was a ping-pong style translation. This gave Tim some problems, having his line of though interrupted by the translator, who could not let him go ahead with too many phrases before she translated it, and finally, she was not a technical translator making quite a few translation mistakes, and losing some technical terms all-together, such as the very complex “HTTP”.

This is the point where globalization really annoys me. These high level events and sessions, directed at high level developers and internet professionals, should not need translation from English, since it is such a widespread and globally accepted language, especially in the world of technology. This would act like a filter and solve other problems of these sessions, raising the bar on quality of attendees, avoiding some of the questions that were asked, for example where Tim (the creator of the web) was asked how we could make the transition from the web to the web 2.0 and 3.0…the only thing not added to the question was “where can i download the patch?”

So my final suggestion to you is, spread out, make yourself available to more content, learn English and if you have a chance, learn at least one of the other big 5 languages other than your mother-tongue. The content is out there, go after it.

I believe that there will always be a relatively small, and relatively very privileged, community of web users in Africa who will be able to use the services which the web enables from devices such as laptops, PCs and iPhones. These are the people who will blog, post youtubes, tweets, flickrs and who “get” the web the way it is being used in North America, Western Europe, and the wealthier parts of the East.There is a much larger part of Africa that is unlikely to ever be able to meet the energy requirements for running desktop (or laptop) computers that are capable of providing full, broad-band consuming, graphically intense user experiences to the consumer. And what’s more – it is my contention that this part of Africa will never need, nor want this service.

Why ? Because of “cultural” differences ? Because of “too low” standards of education ? No – absolutely not. The reason is that Africa will find new, and different uses for the web – for the services that are enabled on the internet – because Africa has different needs. The devices that Africans use to access the web will not be the devices that immediately comes to our minds (us being technologists, geeks, hackers, bloggers, twitterati and the like). It will NOT be iPhones, Blackberries, Macbooks, Dells nor Sonys. I doubt that netbooks are going to feature in any significant way. Africa is going to be mobile.

Africa is going to use mobile devices, with very low energy requirements. Durable, portable devices. Devices that provide utility, not bling. Devices that are hand-cranked, and that can eat sunlight. Africa will use the internet to create a web of relationships. Africans will stay in contact, and foster community using the web their (our) way.

It is up to us – the technologists and evangelists – to facilitate what Africa needs. Let’s take a step back and see the web as an immensely versatile protocol and philosophy that can be adapted to a great many needs. The web is about linking – and we do not need Flash to do that. WAP will do.