html

SAN FRANCISCO--Adobe Systems, retooling as fast as it can for a future of Web publishing and Web apps, sees the technology as mostly caught up to the Flash technology that Adobe previously preferred.

"I think it's close to 80 percent," Arno Gourdol, Adobe's senior director of Web platform and authoring, said in an interview during the Google I/O show here.

Gourdol, who leads Adobe work to embrace Web standards, has a lot on the line as the company tries to make a difficult transition away from the widely used but fading Flash. He's eager … Read more

To say that Facebook's iPhone app is slow could be considered generous. In truth, it makes the tortoise look like the hare.

It seems almost inconceivable (and yes, I do think that word means what I think it means) that a Web-focused, modern company could produce such a slow rendition of its product on the most popular mobile product on the planet.

But, not to fear, Facebook has heard the crowing (and has seen the one-star reviews) and plans to update its iPhone app, according to The New York Times.

The New York Times managed to get two unnamed engineers to reveal that the Facebook iOS app has been completely retooled and will feature the only thing that really matters in social-networking apps -- speed. … Read more

Evernote for Mac is just one part of an excellent, access-from-anywhere note-taking system. In addition to the Evernote desktop client, you can create and get to your notes from a variety of mobile devices (including apps for the iPhone and iPad) and any Web browser on any computer. A free Evernote account links all your notes together.

Evernote is a mature and popular application, with an impressively streamlined interface that shares similarities across its multiple platforms and gives you many different ways to create notes and collections of notes called notebooks. Your notes can be text, images, or Web clippings, … Read more

NEW ORLEANS--Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs believes that mobile users want more choice and are ready to be freed from the shackles of app ecosystems.

Speaking today at the CTIA show here, Kovacs said that just like consumers moved from the walled garden of AOL when the Internet first went commercial, they are now ready to move from the walls erected by Apple and others in the app market places. He said that new standards, such as HTML 5, will help set mobile subscribers free.

"In the early days of AOL we were within their walls," he said. "… Read more

Adobe Systems today began selling Creative Suite 6, its mammoth but expensive collection of software for designers, artists, photographers, videographers, publishers, and others in the "content creation" business.

The software is available in the $2,599 Master Collection, the smaller $1,899 Design and Web Premium or Production Premium collections, or the yet-smaller $1,299 Design Standard collection. About three quarters of Adobe's unit shipments today are in these collections, but individual packages are available, too, such as Photoshop CS6 for $699 in its standard version or Illustrator CS6 for $599.

With CS6, Adobe tried to mix … Read more

Getting (or sending) turn-by-turn driving directions is now as simple as clicking a link in a text message or e-mail with Telenav's new Scout navigation Web app and your phone's HTML5 browser. OK, so there are more steps than just that one, but it's still a remarkably simple process.

Simply visit Scout.me with any browser and search the city of your choice for something to do, somewhere to eat, or somewhere to sleep. Destinations are organized into the main categories of Things to do, Food and Drink, Events, and Places to stay, with multiple subcategories for … Read more

Opera has released the first beta of its next-generation browser, code-named Wahoo. Opera 12 beta 1 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, contains many improvements that modernize the browser. It also abandons several quirky features that die-hard fans are likely to miss.

Much of the browser simply brings it in line with its competition, but there is one stand-out new feature. Formerly known as Opera Reader, it takes a few lines of CSS code to allow you to lay out a Web page like a book. It also allows for page resizing without losing the formatting. Opera has decided to open … Read more

Uploading photos to the Internet is about the least exciting part of photo sharing that you could imagine, but Flickr believes a new tool for the task will improve the site dramatically.

The new upload tool, set to arrive this morning, replaces an interface that's remained largely unchanged for years: select multiple photos, watch transfer progress bars crawl across the screen, then add titles, tags, and captions.

The new tool, which runs in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari for now and will support Internet Explorer later, uses new standards such as HTML5's drag-and-drop so that you can copy image … Read more

Adobe Systems is about to begin a difficult -- but smart -- transition.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company will overhaul its core software business in May when it launches a subscription service called Creative Cloud, which bundles its new Creative Suite 6 products with a swath of other products and services. To make it a success, it'll have to convince customers that it's a better value than traditional software licensing.

Here's an indicator of how hard the change will be: A CNET survey in March showed a frosty reception, with 41 percent of respondents viewing Creative Cloud negatively, … Read more