gap

Adobe buys PhoneGap, TypeKit for better Web tools

Using a tried and true method to make up for lost time, Adobe is acquiring two companies, Nitobi and TypeKit, to give it more strength in a fast-moving area where it's playing catch-up.

For years Adobe advocated its Flash Player technology for advanced Web design, but now it's wholeheartedly on board with the biggest alternative, Web standards including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Today, in conjunction with its Adobe Max developer and designer conference populated with the very people wrestling with that transition, the company announced the two acquisitions.

Overall, both acquisitions make sense strategically. Each gives Adobe a solid new starting point for aspects of new-age technology. Terms weren't disclosed, though, so it's not clear whether Adobe had to pay a premium for the companies. The TypeKit acquisition is complete, but the Nitobi buy is subject to closing conditions that should be met this month, Adobe said.

Nitobi makes PhoneGap, an open-source programming tool for creating Web apps that run on a variety of mobile phones. That aligns well with the cross-platform approach Adobe has favored with Flash: give programmers the ability to create what they want, and let the tools worry about the differences from one system to another. … Read more

Apple's EasyPay goes Gap, lands at Old Navy

Apple's iPod touch-based point-of-sale system, dubbed EasyPay, had been rumored to be available for third-party retailers looking for a mobile solution to their sales experience, which may soon land in some major stores.

9to5Mac reports that Gap, Inc. has begun piloting the EasyPay (rebranded ZipPay) system at its Old Navy stores.

"We're told there is one per store and they are kept in a safe when not in use."

The ZipPay systems run on a modified iPod Touch that is encased with a barcode scanner and a credit card swiping feature. Customers need only accept the … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1327: Have a little Gap-bone (podcast)

On today's show, all the ways Google is going to take over the world (even though some of them might be good), and Amazon is bringing back the short story, the essay, and the self-published manifesto. I'm working on mine as we speak. Plus, lawyers get rich, and why on earth would people get excited about a Gap logo, and even worse, why would Gap cave? --Molly

Gap logo: Out with the new, in with the old

When retailer The Gap introduced a new logo last week on its Web site, updating its blue box logo of more than 20 years, the Twitterati unleashed its inner Heidi Klum.

Online critics said the new logo looked "cheap" and "unsophisticated" and as if it was designed in Microsoft Word or someone was experimenting with Photoshop for the first time.

Well, Gap takes design criticism better than many a "Project Runway" contestant: After touting the updated version last week as "contemporary" and "current," the company is now saying "auf … Read more

The Twitterati very much mind the Gap

You never really know what will get social-media marketing chatter going. Film directors getting kicked off planes, for one, or that Old Spice Man sensation. This week, it was when retailer The Gap--which has lately been getting loads of positive digital press for its use of Groupon and Foursquare--unveiled a complete revamp of its iconic logo, and everybody freaked out. More specifically, they seemed to think it was the worst idea since New Coke.

"Gap" became a trending topic on Twitter, as design- and branding-savvy Twitterers (as well as those who just like to voice an opinion … Read more

Symbian deal paves way for Web-style apps

Symbian, the Nokia smartphone operating system that's been languishing outside the limelight hogged by Apple's iOS and Google's Android, announced a significant move on Monday to try to reclaim some of its lost relevance.

Specifically, the Symbian Foundation has embraced the idea of Web applications--those that bridge the differences among different computing devices by employing standards such as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language for Web page description), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets for formatting), and JavaScript for processing.

To accomplish this, Symbian will integrate Nitobi's open-source PhoneGap tool with the Symbian^3 version of the software. This means … Read more

Innovation gap? Blitz survey among professional innovators

Despite an over-abundance of media coverage about the importance of innovation in recent years, it seems the business media may not have gotten its point across. Instead of hailing innovation as The Next Big Thing, journalists and book authors now wonder if there's an Innovation Gap in U.S. business. The September 22nd issue of BusinessWeek, "Keeping America Competitive," is coupled with online articles like "Firing Up America's Idea Economy" and "Can America Invent Its Way Back?." Judy Estrin also examines flagging innovation culture in her new book, "Closing the Innovation Gap." … Read more

No "Innovation Gap"? WEF ranks U.S. top in Global Competitiveness Report

The United States tops the overall ranking in the World Economic Forum's "Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009". Switzerland is in second position followed by Denmark, Sweden, and Singapore. European economies continue to prevail in the top 10 with Finland, Germany and the Netherlands following suit. The United Kingdom, while remaining very competitive, has dropped by three places and out of the top 10, mainly attributable to a weakening of its financial markets.

The rankings were calculated from both publicly available data and the Executive Opinion Survey, a comprehensive annual survey conducted by the World Economic Forum together with … Read more

'Frontline' on 'Growing Up Online'

When PBS's Frontline reported on "Growing Up Online" this week, it called the gulf between kids who grew up with technology and their parents "the greatest generation gap since rock 'n' roll." That's a bitter pill to swallow for adults in their '30s and '40s who have been involved in computers for 20-plus years, but I have to say I agree with their assessment. Maybe we kicked it old school with Pong and the Atari 2600. Or we had a Commodore 64 or a Macintosh with a whopping 512K of memory. We may have even written code since we were teens ourselves, but that's nothing compared to growing up with ubiquitous access to cell phones, media, and social networking.

Producer Caitlin McNally describes this shift in thinking that exists even between her, as a twentysomething, and the teens she interviewed:

Despite the research we did, I don't think I was prepared when we started talking to kids for the extent to which the Internet and other electronic communication has permeated all aspects of being a teenager. Almost every kid expressed the utter importance of being connected with friends all the time and how unthinkable a life without that connection would be. I think a lot of kids were bemused by our list of questions about 'life online,' because they don't sit around thinking about the Internet in their lives. It's just there, always, another tool for them to use or place for them to go.