Today has been an almost non-stop day of awesome on the Interwebs. So before I begin my bombardment of all things iPhone, I thought I’d give the rest of you some entertaining and/or informative links (some of which may still pertain to the iPhone).
With that out of the way, let’s get started, shall we?
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Google has been hard at work on the development of some awesome new technologies in preparation for the ratification of the final HTML 5 standard. In the interest of viewing 3D graphics directly inside of a web browser, a proposed open standard for doing so is currently being developed. Called O3D, it allows you to view gorgeous 3D graphics from inside your web browser, without ever having to fire up another application. While it currently requires you to install a plug-in, I believe the ultimate goal is to have it become a part of HTML 5 before ratification so that all HTML 5 compatible web browsers will be able to pull it off out of the box. Check out the demo site here.
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Speaking of HTML 5 and the reason that I discovered O3D, Google has also posted a demo page of what YouTube will look like once HTML 5 is complete and Flash will no longer be required to quickly & easily embed video. If your browser supports the HTML 5 draft (Safari 4, Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome), then check this out. While the site looks much the same, you’ll notice that right-clicking on the video no longer brings up the Flash Player contextual menu, indicating that that video is playing entirely through the browser’s built-in capabilities (no plug-in required). This will greatly reduce the memory footprint of your browser and should speed up your computer considerably when visiting sites that were formerly very Flash heavy and can move to HTML 5 methods, instead.
Also, if you were interested in seeing what O3D could do, but don’t feel like installing the plug-in, the YouTube demo I’m talking about is a walkthrough of the O3D demo page.
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This particular clip is more entertaining due to the fact that Steve Wozniak is in a low-budget, body shop commercial. Since he’s hilarious, I recommend taking a gander.
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Also, Rule 34 has no exceptions. Moving on.
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Now, I love me some giant robots. I always have, and I always will. I even liked that movie Robot Jox, and it was frakkin’ terrible. No, really. Just awful. But, it had giant robots. So I loved every minute of it. The exception to that rule is when giant robots are combined with Michael Bay. Cause then you get “Michael Bay Blows Up Egypt in Slow Motion” (commonly known as Transformers 2), which is utter crap and painful to watch. That being said, one of my favorite uses of giant robots is to put gamers in control of them so they can destroy anything and everything they see. MechAssault on the Xbox was one of my favorite games. Chromehounds was pretty cool, as well, though a lot less frenetic. However, all current-gen mech games have a grand-daddy. And that game is MechWarrior. Well good news to all of you that have played it, and to those of you that just plain love giant robots. MechWarrior is getting a reboot.
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And lastly, in this long line of crazy, ridiculous, nerdery: iPhone 3.0 has a feature that has been kept quiet until today. That feature is HTTP Live Streaming. Now some of you are going to say, “What?” Others will say, “Who cares?” Still more of you will say, “My iPhone already does streaming.” To all of you I say, “Shut up and let me finish!”
HTTP Live Streaming is a technology that should finally allow for a standards-based streaming method for video content (this goes back to HTML 5 and Google’s YouTube demo of said feature). Essentially, what it means is that video content can be downloaded in 10 second chunks and then played back, meanwhile grabbing the next chunk or two or three before the current chunk is finished being viewed. On top of that, instead of sending the video using technology that is consistently blocked by most firewalls, or requires a plug-in and therefore eats up system resources, HTTP Live Streaming will be sent to your computer using the same packets that web sites are downloaded to your browser with and will (hopefully) be a part of the HTML 5 standard when ratified. The best part is that if you switch from EDGE, to 3G, and then to Wi-Fi while watching a video, rather than having to re-buffer the clip because you changed network types, your iPhone will be able to automatically grab the chunk that befits the quality that will give you the best image without stuttering for your current connection. And since the sections are only 10 seconds a piece, you don’t have to wait long for the quality to improve if you suddenly find yourself in range of a Wi-Fi network while watching your favorite web series.
The best part? If this tech takes off, there’s a chance that a television network could use it to stream their channels directly to your Apple TV, allowing you to subscribe to only the channels (or shows) that you want without having to pay for an expensive cable TV or Dish subscription to get 10 channels you want and 100 you don’t.
To read more about this, go here.
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That’s all for now, folks. If I have time today, I hope to hit you up with some reviews and recommendations of the iPhone apps I’ve been spending the most time with as of late (or at least that I think are awesome and feel you should, too). See ya starside!
