standards

The ninth beta version of Firefox, due imminently, is set to get support for a standard called IndexedDB that provides a database interface useful for offline data storage and other tasks needing information on a browser's computer.

"IndexedDB allows Web apps to store large amounts of data on your local system (with your explicit permission, of course) for fast offline retrieval at a later time. We're hoping that Web mail, TV listings, and online purchase history will one day be as convenient to access offline as they are online," Ben Turner, who develops IndexedDB for Mozilla'… Read more

There's a lot to like about how digital photography is evolving. But that doesn't mean every trend is positive. At a minimum, some technologies are taking longer to mature than some of us might wish.

Interchangeable Lens Compacts (ILCs) are a case in point. Significantly smaller than today's dSLRs, they're also referred to as micro-4/3 (after the mirrorless interchangeable lens standard used by many of these cameras) or the somewhat tongue in cheek EVIL which alludes to the Electronic Viewfinder that's an option for most models in this class.

ILCs are certainly an exciting concept. … Read more

Google just fired a broadside in the Web's codec wars.

With its alternative WebM video-encoding technology now entering the marketplace, Google announced plans today to remove built-in Chrome support for a widely used rival codec called H.264 favored by Apple and Microsoft. The move places Google instead firmly in the camp of browser makers Mozilla and Opera, who ardently desire basic Web technologies to be unencumbered by patent restrictions.

"Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed … Read more

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Dell announces the 7-inch Dell Streak, an Android-based tablet

Skype announces its acquisition of Qik

Lady Gaga announces her Grey Line of Polaroid products including a camera, a printer, and sunglasses with a built-in camera

Verizon shows off a home energy and security monitoring system

RealD announces standardized universal 3D glasses

Apple's Mac App Store launches with 1 million downloads in its first day

Waterloo Labs shows off eyeball controlled gaming

Dreambots is just what your sore muscles need: a motorized masseuse

The SD Association announced a new interface for flash memory cards today that triples data transfer speeds.

The faster SD card specification was expected since the group started previewing it in September. But more unusually for the consortium, the SD Association also announced an e-book specification at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"Our new e-Book application...opens broad consumer access to e-book content, and turns billions of existing SD mobile phones and devices into e-readers," Norm Frentz, chairman of the SD Association, said in a statement. "SD continues to evolve its capabilities to support voracious consumer demand for portable movies, television broadcasts, high-definition home videos, and now full-color books."

It's not yet clear who among e-book reader makers, publishers, or other companies are on board with the new specification, but two partners showing eBook support at CES are Toshiba and Sharp, the association said. Such partnerships will be important to its success, though, and there already are other e-book formats, such as ePub.

But eBook won't live in isolation. "The association plans to support popular external formats like ePublish, CPS, XMDF and ".book" formats in the near future," said SD Association communications director Kevin Schader. And to keep content publishers happy, it's free to use and supports copy protection. … Read more

Microsoft wants to give Web developers a way to get their feet wet with emerging HTML5 technologies.

Today the company is launching HTML5 Labs, a standalone site that will include demo code for two cutting-edge HTML5 technologies that aren't quite finished: Web Sockets and IndexedDB. Developers who want to try to build sites with either specification will be given code that Microsoft plans to keep updated as each one progresses on its way to becoming a stable part of the standard.

In a phone interview with CNET last week, Jean Paoli, general manager of Microsoft's Interoperability Strategy Team … Read more

In the flash-memory format wars, Secure Digital has vanquished xD Card and Memory Stick. SD, as it's known, is supported by everything from Apple laptops to Panasonic 3D videocameras.

But CompactFlash, a rival flash-card format that prevails in high-end SLRs from Canon, Nikon, and Sony, is holding out. More than that: its backers are developing a high-performance successor. Nikon, Sony, and memory card maker SanDisk have proposed that the CompactFlash Association standardize a sequel that can transfer data at a rate of 500MB per second and reach eventual capacities of 6TB.

"This next-generation format is expected to be … Read more

A recent frenzy of storage acquisitions--with 3PAR going to HP, Isilon to EMC, and now Compellent to Dell--brings storage full-circle. Your next enterprise storage purchase? Almost guaranteed to be from a leviathan.

One of the once-amazing changes in the computer business was the birth of independent storage vendors. For decades there've been a few odd after-market and third-party storage vendors. But they were mere pilot fish congregating around the truly big, important swimmers: systems vendors. When you bought storage, it generally came from the same company that made your computer. That was the natural order.

But in the 1990s, … Read more

Enthusiasm for a promising new standard called Web Sockets has quickly cooled in some quarters as a potential security problem led some browser makers to hastily postpone support.

The Web Sockets technology, which opens up a live communication link between a browser and a server, remains an important part of plans to make the Web a home for more dynamic, interactive sites. It could, for example, speed up Google Instant searching and multiplayer games. But Mozilla and Opera put their Web Socket plans on hold this week until the wrinkles are ironed out.

The reversal is only the latest difficulty, … Read more