In a post-PC era, HTML5 wins even on the PC

In a post late last night on Ars Technica, which focuses primarily on the impact on Windows developer, there’s a critical kernel:

Microsoft Vice President Julie Larson-Green, in charge of the Windows Experience, briefly describes a new immersive application—a weather application—and says, specifically, that the application uses “our new developer platform, which is …. based on HTML5 and JavaScript.” [emphasis added] 

The quote is at 3:45 in this video:

So, as we enter a post-PC era, beautifully illustrated by this post from Horace Dediu of Asymco, HTML5 dominates even on the PC:

Digital natives

Here is a fascinating graphic showing how age affects the likelihood that a household has wireless only coverage, and how that pattern has evolved over time. It shows three effects:

• younger households are much more likely not to have wireline service
• regardless of age, the proportion of households without wireline services is rising rapidly – it’s not just households without wireline getting older
• the rate at which the proportion of households without wireline is rising fastest amongst younger households 

Flashback

A post this morning on Engadget about the similarity between the most recent ad for the iPad, and one for the original Apple Newton gave me a profound sense of déjà vu.

It’s far from unusual to see Apple ripping off others when it comes to spots, and the same is true in reverse. But copying itself? Head on past the break to catch the similarities between Cupertino’s freshest iPad commercial and an eerily familiar Newton ad from yesteryear — something tells us the former will make a somewhat more indelible mark on the world than the latter, though.

Back in the mid-90′s, more than fifteen years ago, I was one of the pioneers of tablets with digital cellular connectivity: working in New Zealand for what is now Vodafone New Zealand we put together the Apple Newton with the Nokia DataCard and the Nokia 2110 to provide the first predecessor for today’s smart phones; this was even before the very first Nokia Communicator.

Anyway, take a look at the two videos:

Are smartphones the new stethoscopes

Serendipity: Today I was talking with one of my MIT thesis students about what will become the next 'stethoscope' for doctors. GE believes that it should be its compact ultrasound Vscan should be the next stethoscope, as Engadget reported recently:

the not-quite-flip phone tricorder Vscan, which all kidding aside is one of the smallest functional ultrasound machines we've seen. The goal is for doctors to have better access to specialist tools, reducing the number of referrals and improving diagnoses, etc. -- and we're sure selling an absolute ton of these is probably on the to-do list as well.

Tricorder ultrasound

Perhaps the smartphone, which is in the process of eating the consumer electronics industry is, however, also going to eat at least the low end of the medical devices industry:

Smartphones could be the most important diagnostic tool of this century as part of a revolution in digital wireless medical devices, according to Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist working at The Scripps Research Institute, speaking at the TedMed conference last year. In a video released earlier this week, Topol shows off patches communicating with his smartphone to continuously monitor his vital signs.

Virgin won't Flash

Standards battles are often critical to competitive success; one of the key contests currently underway is over web standards for rich(er) content:

• Adobe's Flash - very widely used (YouTube, anyone), but (famously) not supported by Apple on the iPhone, and perceived by many as a major source of security weakenesses
• HTML5 - being advocated by Google
• Silverlight - Microsoft's proprietary technology

In a recent assessment, we concluded that Flash was so widespread, and the standard-setting process so slow, that it would be a very very long time before HTML5 became the dominant standard.
An interesting recent development suggests, however, that a reassessment might be worthwhile - we're always alert for these 'triggers' or early indicators of how different demand and business ecosystem scenarios evolve:

Start-up airline Virgin America has decided HTML is "good enough" for animating online content on its brand-new website, which went live Monday, dumping Flash.
...
It illustrates the options customers have between picking the closed Flash - or Silverlight from Microsoft - and open technologies such as HTML to serve content to a new generation of mobile computing devices.
Virgin picked HTML to give users of iPhones and other mobiles the option in the future of checking in through their phone. The battle between Adobe and Apple has seen Flash deliberately excluded from the Jesus Phone. 

Simhambhatla: iPhone, and other mobile, users welcome

Later, it highlights the value of Flash when you control the hardware:

"Flash provides beautiful interactivity," Simhambhatla said. "We wanted to bring a smoother application experience and modularity and be able to build up an interactive experience for the kiosk user - Flash is all these.
"Flash is really, really good, but as long as you can keep the hardware controlled...If the hardware you are trying to put your product on isn't [controlled] then Flash is questionable."