Web 2.0

Adobe Systems on Thursday released AIR 2, upgrading the features and aspirations for the software foundation.

AIR is a programming foundation that lets a Net application run on a variety of computing platforms--Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and, significantly, forthcoming Google Android mobile phones now as well. The software can run standalone programs written either with Adobe's Flash technology or, courtesy of a built-in WebKit browser engine, with HTML and JavaScript, too. AIR applications run on their own, though, not within a browser.

Adobe has had some significant successes with AIR. It is installed on "nearly 300 … Read more

Like the lead-up to any big, annual Apple event, the weeks and months ahead of this year's WWDC brought the usual wash of rumors about new hardware, software, and online services.

The biggest unknown was not so much on the hardware side--as we all knew there was a new iPhone on the way (even what it looked like and whose fault that was), but the software and online services portion remained a mystery. This is typically the chunk of the WWDC keynote where Steve Jobs and company go into detail about the latest operating system tweaks and new software offerings.

There were rumors on both sides of the spectrum ranging from paid services like MobileMe going free and iTunes getting a streaming component to a fancy new wireless trackpad. Read on to get the details.

1. OS X 10.7

Apple's preview of OS X 10.6, nicknamed Snow Leopard, happened at 2008's WWDC. 10.5 was unveiled during 2006's keynote, and 10.4 in 2004's. Following that logic, 2010's show would bring a preview, or at least an acknowledgment that Apple had 10.7 in the oven. Though given the focus on Apple's iOS, and the shiny new device that will run on it, it's not all that surprising we didn't hear a peep.

An OS update, especially for the desktop, would have likely filled an hour or two on its own. Yet, the downside of this omission is that the eventual preview of that update will likely be shelved until next year's show, since WWDC is Apple's only big developer event of the year.

2. A developer preview for the iPad's iOS 4

When introducing OS 4 at a preview event back in April, Jobs said we'd be seeing a public release of it for the iPad sometime this fall. Again, logic would dictate that developers would get their hands on a build of the iPad 4.0 SDK at Apple's big developer event, alongside the first beta of the firmware for testing on real devices.

So why the no-show? Apple has likely had its hands full getting the iPhone and iPod Touch version of OS 4 ready to go in time for the iPhone 4 launch in two weeks. And developers only got their hands on the gold master candidate version of that late Monday. Maybe the delay was to include some new OS features being baked into the next batch of iPods this fall.

3. A Steve Ballmer appearance

In a note to investors, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry claimed that Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer would be giving a seven-minute presentation of Visual Studio 2010 during the WWDC keynote. This was vehemently denied by Microsoft reps, then later retracted by Chowdhry, though many large news outlets (including us) picked up the story and ran with it.

There was some semblance of truth to the rumor of Microsoft having a presence at the keynote, in the form of Jobs announcing that Microsoft's Bing was now a search option in Safari, both on portable devices and on the desktop software.

4. iTunes streaming service

Like Apple's annual "buy a Mac, get a free iPod" promotion, which always manages to end just a few days before the company announces a new model, it seemed just a little too convenient music-streaming service Lala, which Apple bought back in December of last year, was being shut down just a week before WWDC.

Prior to Apple picking up the company, sources had told CNET that Apple was planning to purchase the company primarily for its music streaming technology and engineering talents. It seemed fair then (given the timing), that Apple would fill in the gap Lala.com's closure had left with something similar built right into iTunes, though that never came to fruition during Monday's keynote. Then again, given Apple's propensity for having its "music" events in September, we might just have to wait three months. … Read more

Google has begun answering concerns that VP8, the compression technology it hopes will invigorate and liberate Web video, isn't as good as a rival.

Nobody questions that VP8 is superior to Theora, the encoding-decoding "codec" that also has been available without royalties. But some have concluded that it's not as good as H.264, aka AVC, today's dominant but definitely not royalty-free codec.

VP8, combined with the Vorbis audio codec, form the guts of the open-source, royalty-free WebM project Google launched two weeks ago. Google attracted many allies for the project, but it's got … Read more

In mid-May, Google launched an ambitious effort called WebM to make it as easy and cheap to put video on the Web as it is to put photos there today.

At the heart of WebM is Google's new royalty-free, open-source technology called VP8 that combines modern streaming-video features with a price tag of zero. But almost immediately after Google allies made their jubilant statements, a more sober question arose: does Google's gift actually come with strings attached?

A video patent licensing group called MPEG LA is publicly questioning VP8's patent pedigree and raising the prospect that those … Read more

It was with delight that I read these words on Thursday: "The proposed IndexedDB standard, which provides a local database store for Web applications, will be supported by Firefox 4."

The statement appears on Mozilla's new Firefox 4 for developers site, boding well for those of us who use the Web a lot: the IndexedDB interface gives Web applications a way to work even without a network connection.

The proposed IndexedDB addition to the HTML standard is one of a collection of technologies opening new horizons for Web programmers and putting competitive pressure on Adobe Systems' Flash … Read more

Storage and online collaboration service Box.net on Friday is introducing a new version of its site that lets users with HTML5-enabled Web browsers drag and drop files into their browser to upload them to the company's servers.

The company has long had a Java-powered drag-and-drop tool for uploads, but it's been slow to load, required users to have a recent version of Java installed, and put the drop zone in a pop-up window. Under the new system, users can simply drag files to any Box.net folder they're in, and it will start uploading in the … Read more

Pop quiz: which company introduced a browser last September that Google now considers "antiquated"?

Answer: Google itself.

Version 3 of the Chrome browser is one of the browsers for which, starting June 1, Google is phasing out support on its Reader site. The site is used for reading Web pages whose updates are broadcast to subscribers through RSS or Atom feed technology.

"Reader is a cutting-edge Web application, and this will allow us to spend our time improving Reader instead of fixing issues with antiquated browsers," Mihai Parparita, a technical leader for Google Reader, said in … Read more

Google's Moderator service, which up until now has existed as a standalone product, is now available within YouTube and to all its users. Previously, YouTube had integrated it into the service for special events, and given access to a few select users.

The core of the service, which has users voting up or down on user-submitted ideas, began as a pet project of Google engineer Taliver Heath, who built it to help prioritize the barrage of questions asked during Google's company meetings and hosted lecture series. In its transition to YouTube it serves a similar purpose: bringing order … Read more

Plenty of people like to demonize Microsoft, but the company is capable of doing the right thing, too, even if that might not help its bottom line. A case in point: giving away the keys that had locked up customers' own Outlook records.

Microsoft has been gradually opening up the PST file format that stores personal data such as e-mails, contacts, and calendar entries. The latest move, on Monday, was the release of two open-source tools to see the contents of PST files; Microsoft also has shared PST documentation and put the PST data under the Open Specification Promise, under … Read more