Rob Cell Phones

Motorola Mobility Holdings Ltd.
Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Jha received compensation of
$47.2 million last year, when he negotiated to sell the handset
maker to Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG), more than triple his pay for 2010.

The majority of the gain came from Jha’s option awards,
which were worth $34.2 million, up from $7.05 million in 2010,
the company said today in a regulatory filing. His stock awards
more than tripled to $9.4 million.

Motorola Mobility was spun off from parent Motorola Inc. (MMI) (MMI),
which became Motorola Solutions Inc. (MSI) (MSI), in January 2011 under
pressure from investors led by billionaire Carl Icahn looking to
shake up the company’s performance. Jha helped return the
handset business to growth by first slashing the range of
Motorola phone varieties and then focusing on building
smartphones that use Google’s Android software.

Still, he wasn’t able to return Libertyville, Illinois-
based Motorola Mobility to profitability before agreeing to sell
the company to Google for $12.5 billion on Aug. 15. Shares of
the company declined 19 percent between its January 2011 stock
market debut and the day before the Google deal was announced,
before jumping 56 percent on the day of the deal.

Jha’s 2011 compensation is “significantly a result” of
the incentives established for him before the spinoff and when
he was hired in 2008, Motorola Mobility said in a statement
today. “His actual equity award was at the low end of the
possible range specified by the formula.”

Google is close to naming Dennis Woodside, who led its ad
sales in the Americas before leaving that job to oversee the
acquisition, to run Motorola Mobility, replacing Jha when the
deal closes, three people familiar with the matter said in
February.

While the deal has won approval from U.S. and European
Union regulators, Chinese regulators in March extended their
probe into the acquisition, the last hurdle before the
transaction can be completed.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Hugo Miller in Toronto at
hugomiller@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Peter Elstrom at
pelstrom@bloomberg.net

PARKERSBURG -Police arrested a Parkersburg man Friday morning for allegedly breaking into several vehicles in the 2100 block of Private Drive, near the intersection of Division Street and Camden Avenue.

Joseph Clayton Tanner, 27, of 515 Sixth St., was charged with destruction of property, petit larceny, and three counts of motor vehicle tampering, said Sgt. Greg Collins, spokesman for the Parkersburg Police Department.

Police were called to the 2100 block of Private Drive around 3:30 a.m. Friday to investigate reports of a vehicle tampering. Witnesses had observed a suspect exiting a Mercury Sable in the area, police said.

Officials found that four vehicles on the street had been entered, with substantial damage to the stereo system in a Kia Sedona, said Collins.

Tanner was found walking along the Fifth Street Bridge shortly after the break-ins, and he matched the suspect’s description, police said.

During an interview and search of the suspect, officers recovered a Motorola phone on his person. The phone had been reported stolen from one of the vehicles, said Collins.

Tanner was arraigned in Wood County Magistrate Court and transported to North Central Regional Jail on a $5,000 bond.

Is Motorola planning to launch yet another version of the Motorola DROID RAZR? After the plain vanilla and the MAXX, the RAZR HD has surfaced online.

It was in fact a picture taken by a smartphone purporting to be the RAZR HD that actually appeared online, on Picasa, courtesy of Vic Yu, an engineer and program manager at Motorola Mobility.

The picture shows a bog standard desk telephone with a six megapixel resolution in a 16:9 aspect ratio which translates into an eight megapixel 4:3 picture. It also has a f/2.4 aperture and a 1.14mm focal length according to the EXIF data.

The RAZR HD is likely to have a HD screen and as GSMArena notes, there is already a Motorola RAZR made exclusively for the Chinese market that comes with a 4.5-inch 1,280 by 720 pixel screen with a 13-megapixel camera.

We’ve noticed  that the price of the DROID RAZR has fallen to well below £400 and now costs less than the Samsung Galaxy S2, leaving the DROID RAZR MAXX as the only Motorola phone costing over £400.

Source : GSM Arena

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By Mike Morris

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An Athens man told police that he was attacked not once, but twice, early Saturday while walking home from downtown.

Athens-Clarke County police Sgt. Mark Anthony said Richard Sofge, 27, was walking down College Avenue near Hoyt Street with a friend about 3:45 a.m. Saturday when they became separated.

“Sofge went down Hoyt Street trying to locate his friend and was told by two males that he was inside Bethel Midtown Village,” Anthony said. “When Sofge entered the complex, the two males attacked him but he was able to get away by jumping a fence.”

Anthony said Sofge continued toward his home on College Avenue “when five males, one of them with a bat, attacked him.”

“Sofge was again able to escape and made it to his residence,” Anthony said.

He said Sofge sustained minor abrasions and bruises, and a Motorola phone was either taken or lost.

Late last month, a University of Georgia student was also attacked and robbed outside the Bethel Midtown Village complex, and in November, a man was jumped and robbed in the breezeway of an apartment at the complex, the Athens Banner-Herald reported.

Roberto Mancini‘s home after City’s dramatic draw at home to Sunderland must’ve been reminiscent of a 70′s Italian drama scene, with the 47-year-old venting out his frustration after a month that might potentially derail Man City’s title challenge. Pizza slices, Italian cigar butts (only the best for Signor Mancini) and empty Marche (Mancini’s home region) wine bottles must’ve lined the Citizens’ manager’s living room floor as Match of the Day played in the background of his plasma screen TV.

“Mamma Mia,” sighed the Italian as a multitude of missed calls and texts from Sheikh Mansour, Mario Balotelli and Carlos Tevez flashed up on his bright blue Motorola phone. 

Flash back a month ago, and Man City were on the back of a successful 2-0 win over Bolton. The win had put the club five points ahead of Man United, who were looking to be stumbling at the time. Mancini, brimming with confidence, had the comfort of a squad in top form and had gotten the club’s dissenter, grouchy but lethal Carlos Tevez, returning from his indefinite hiatus. The win at Eastlands had also equalled a record for 19 consecutive home wins, and Balotelli, in top form, had scored his 14th goal of the season. Yep, Man United had no chance with a team like this. 

Then, the tide changed. First came the Europa Cup, with a strong Man City knocked out unexpectedly by Portuguese minnows Lisbon on goal-difference. Although rivals United were also knocked out, the inability for Mancini’s million dollar men to win a competition against “mediocre” European opposition dealt a tough blow to the club’s Premier League challenge, and a disappointing defeat to newly-promoted Swansea had transpired between the Europa matches (though Brendan Rogers’ team do merit credit). 

Being the manager of a team full of clashing egos, as well as the humble wise Italian that he is, Mancini took the heat for the club’s failings in Lisbon. 

Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

“I am the manager,” he explained.

“It is not the players fault, it is my fault. I made mistakes – the players did everything on the pitch so I’m very proud.”

Proud. I don’t think the same could’ve been said of Sheikh Mansour, watching Mancini falter from his palace of infinite oil-paid gold in Abu Dhabi. The injury list began to pile up for the Blues, with captain and defensive powerhouse Kompany, his faulty but never-the-less solid partner Lescott, aging Barry as well as less-important Zabaleta all out injured. But not as if that mattered for City, who went on to beat Chelsea, with a cameo appearance by Carlos Tevez helping the Blues onto a rather a vital win. Things looked OK again for now. 

But as one problem with a striker looked to be solved, another ensued. Mario Balotelli continued to be a cause of tension in the City dressing room, with Mancini already on edge after Balotelli had broken club curfew before the club’s victory against Bolton. Visibly angry at the Italian, Mancini was more or less forced to play Balotelli, for the striker was the club’s most in-form striker.

Then suddenly, even more pressure loomed over Mancini’s head. Sparked by comments by Patrick Viera, a psychological battle with Manchester United had been ignited. Reluctant to get involved in a war of words with the infamous Sir Alex, Mancini refused to speak out against Viera’s claims of United being “weak” by recalling veteran Paul Scholes, evoking cries of weakness by many United and City supporters.

A disappointing draw against mid-table Stoke left Mancini even more frustrated, and as a result, the Italian drew in further controversy after he refused to shake Tony Pulis’ hand post-match, branding Stoke as “too physical,” exclaiming that he was “not happy” with the Potter’s display. Visibly unhappy, Mancini sulked, and assistant manager David Platt was sent to do the post-match interview instead.

“It’s not a case of Robbie being too angry to talk, but he’s not happy at the moment and needs time to calm down,” said Platt.

But always resilient and endeavoring, Mancini held his head up high as he entered into the last week of March, and in a fashion that had been a trademark of Man City’s month, almost everything went wrong. First came United, and following a lucky win against resilient Fulham, where referee Michael Oliver failed to reward the Cottagers an obvious penalty, the Red Devils retook the lead at the top of the Premiership. United were now title favorites.

Further controversy arose again at the hands of Viera as the Frenchman made further claims that United were getting “preferential treatment” by referees. Violence surely erupted throughout Manchester. Mancini, already annoyed by recent events, later exploded on the training ground with Balotelli after the Italian flew to Italy to congratulate the new Inter coach at his press conference.

Balotelli was forced to train away from the main City squad, but this decision was probably revoked as news that Aguero would be out injured for “a couple weeks” surfaced, leaving Balotelli as the club’s only in-form striker. Further adding to the Italian’s stress was the fact that Aguero’s injury was a result of a “mistake” by City’s medical staff.

“Stupid, stupid injury,” exclaimed a frustrated Mancini.

Oh dear, and then came Saturday. After just 90 minutes, all of City’s problems unravelled further. Under the already intense pressure of a title race, City struggled against an excited Sunderland squad. The team were uncharacteristically unimaginative and soon fell behind 3-1 down. Balotelli, whom Mancini admitted that he “couldn’t trust,” was the team’s only real spark, and as he led the frontline away from the spotlight of Aguero, Balotelli argued with his teammates, exposing a visibly fractured City side.

Scott Heavey/Getty Images

Naturally, but with the element of luck, Balotelli and Co. would go on to salvage a draw for an emotionally and physically exhausted City side, courtesy of a controversial penalty scored by yours truly and an absolute cracker of a goal from Kolarov. 

Exhausted, Mancini vented his anger on Balotelli despite the Italian scoring two of City’s three goals.

“I only had Carlos Tevez on the bench but I thought about subbing Mario after five minutes,” said Mancini. “He didn’t play well. In a game like this, your strikers need to do something different, not just play for the last two or three minutes.”

He later added how much the club missed Aguero in such a game, which won’t help his relationship with Mario one bit considering the Italian had scored two goals. 

City now lie at the risk of United going five points in front, meaning that even if City do defeat United in the inevitable Manchester derby, Sir Alex Ferguson’s men can still easily win the title, especially considering that they have the easier run in, playing only bottom-six opponents in their next four matches. 

Mancini looked exhausted even during the match, as he sat alone on the City bench watching his team put on a frustratingly dull performance. The 47-year-old has aged, understandably over the season; more so this month, however. Dreading that call from his rich, Emirati employers, Mancini put on a brave face in the post-match conference.

“I think after this maybe (City’s) confidence will go down, but only for this afternoon. United will probably draw on Monday, I don’t know why but they will, then we are only three points behind,” he said optimistically.

But there was no hiding the dread in Mancini’s mood as his tone changed one more suited to hopeless remorse, “It is hard but after Monday, we have another seven games.  We need United to make some mistakes in those last games. Maybe United will have difficult moments.”

Maybe, Roberto, just maybe. But as Mancini finally lay down in his soft, fluffy Italian-made bed and drifted off into relaxed sleep with the sound of Pavarotti in the background, one thing is assured: He won’t give up; not now. Mancini will need his rest; seven grueling games remain. 

When the iPhone 4s (an update to iPhone 4 not a new phone) came out there was a big buzz around Siri.  Many Android users did not know that they themselves had a Voice application that has long been used on Android to do many of the similar things.  The beauty about Siri is that it uses natural language versus Android’s Voice app which uses keywords like:
[Any word] – Search Google
“Send Text to” – Send a text
“Navigate to” – Get Directions
“Call” – Call a friend by name or a business not in your contact list
“Listen to” – Listen to music
“Map of” – View a map
“Go to” – Navigate to a website
“Send email to” – Send an email
“Note to self” – Create a note to yourself

If you don’t believe that you have the functionality click the microphone icon on your home page and try it using one of the above words.  First make sure you have the most current version of Voice Actions app by clicking here. You can find a detailed list and explanations here.

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In December I wrote about Majel which you can find here but here is a little excerpt: “Google’s goal is to make everything voice aware.  Think of it this way – in Star Trek they spoke more than typed or swyped/swiped.” What that means is finding local restaurants, museums, buying items, travel arrangements, train schedules, plus the usual phone functions will be enhanced.  Think a thinking robot.  That holds Google search as its backbone and leverages Gmail, Google Maps, Google+, Google +1 and YouTube.   Google Assistant will also open up its API to developers to incorporate it into websites and apps.  Think of the possibilities: playing movies from Netflix, playing songs on Pandora, getting a recipe on Epicurious, putting a word in WordswithFriends, updating Facebook with Status updates, Tweeting, watching TV shows or HBO, turning on Bluetooth or WiFi, reading your email to you, instead of ring notifications voice notifications (like “you have received an email from John” or “Lisa’s baby shower starts in an hour”) and finally launch apps.

The most interesting part is that Majel which was scheduled to be released in the first quarter is now scheduled for possibly the end of the year, probably with Android Jelly Bean (new software release).  Google would be trying to improve on Siri by:

·         Making results appear faster.  (Google’s Instant Search Technology is a great start)
·         Voice that sounds less robotic
·         Making Google Assistant open to developers so that it works with everything.
·         Personalization (probably man’s or woman’s voice or with specific accents due to pronunciation of certain words in English)

Siri’s known issues:
Some iPhone users are getting error messages when they are trying to use Siri.  In some cases the only method to resolve the problem is to wipe your phone and do a hard reset.  Although I don’t have an iPhone I do respect the product and my friends that have one.  I would try shutting Siri off and rebooting your phone.  In any case the error messages that some people are getting are:

1.      “What was that again?”
2.      “I am sorry, could you repeat that”
3.      “I am not able to understand the question”
4.      “I am sorry, I am not able to connect to the network”. – Siri has to connect to the Apple network.

Although this video is obviously biased check out the Speed of the current voice app on a Motorola phone versus Siri.  If you aren’t excited by now, go back to your flip phone, you might find the old Razor on ebay.  Web, Tablet, Phone, and TV Android isn’t stopping, it’s multiplying exponentially.  The future looks bright. Chime in and follow me on Twitter or subscribe here.

By Patrick Avenell

What makes an Apple fanboy? Although there are plenty of iDiehards out there, tapping out screenplays on their Mac, tweeting from their iPhone and using their iPad as a watch, it’s much harder to find someone willing to identify themselves by that dedicated, cultish term.

On the eve of the iPad Something’s launch tomorrow morning (Sydney time), Current.com.au is looking at the anatomy of a fanboy.

Although this reporter has previously mused that one is not a true fanboy (or fangirl – as Apple is sex-agnostic) until they have convinced someone else to purchase Apple TV, the fine line between passive user and active evangelist is much closer to the middle.

To help us in our exploration, we’ve come up with the following Venn diagram, with Apple’s three core product platforms in the circles. There’s no iPod or Apple TV for opposite reasons: the iPod is so completely dominant in the digital music space that only the most ardent anti-fanboy would persist with a rival product; and the Apple TV is so niche that surely people have only purchased it by mistake.

In the ellipses created by iPhone, iPad and Mac overlaps, you get the four types of Apple multi-product users. In this modern world, everyone needs a computer and a mobile phone, but not everyone needs a tablet, so those that stick with the necessities are best described as iPragmatists.

In the corporate world, it’s very rare to see big businesses using Macs. Those users that have to suspend their Apple love when they enter the workzone, are labelled iCorporate.

It seems hard to believe that anyone would use a Mac and an iPad, but some other brand as their mobile phone, but thankfully we have a subculture happy to buck any trend in order to be ironic. Don’t be fooled into thinking the iRonic Hipster uses a BlackBerry or an Android phone, however, these uber-groovers are still rocking a Nokia 5110.

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Now to fill this Venn diagram and give all aspiring fanboys heroes to look up to.

We’ll start at the top, where this reporter uses an iPhone, but is PC user (at home and work) and sees no need to own an iPad (at least for the next 12 hours).

For an exclusive iPad owner, we turn to the leader of the free world, President Barack Obama. There is no computer on the Resolute Desk on the Oval Office, and Obama has previously professed his love of BlackBerry, but he is clearly seen here tapping away on an iPad 2.

Despite some crowdsourcing and Googling attempts, it was impossible to find a celebrity, or even a reality TV show contestant, who uses a Mac but not any other Apple product. My mate Michael from university purchased a MacBook Air (and then installed Linux on it) to go with his Motorola phone and unheard-of-Chinese-brand Android tablet, so Michael will placehold until someone better comes along.

For mixing an iPhone and an iPad we have Hugh Jackman. Although this photo does not prove he is not a Mac user, one can safely assume that if he did own a Macbook he would be holding it in his left hand instead of that cup of juice. For those that think Hugh Jackman is not iCorporate enough, please remember that he produced Viva Laughlin.

According to the Canberra Times, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard keeps a Mac in her office (which just lends itself to Mac The Knife gags), while ‘Team JG’ likes to tweet regularly from an iPad. That makes the Aussie PM Australia’s premier iRonic Hipster, which makes sense considering she became PM despite not really winning an election (ironic) and she managed to push through major environmental reforms (hipster).

As far as iPragmatists go, at a Telechoice media event in Sydney last year, former premiership winning Sydney Swans star Tadhg Kennelly revealed to this reporter his love of Macs and iPhones (and also his love of Liverpool FC), but his polite indifference to the iPad.

Finally, for the centre ellipse, and there can be no greater fanboy than the overtravelled, underslept ultimate iWorkaholic Stephen Fry. The man known for his great work on Sherlock Holmes, his amusing work on QI and this cringe inducing article for The Guardian was a fanboy well before it became popular, and that’s something we can all pretend to be.

Join Patrick Avenell for live minute-by-minute coverage of the Apple media event to launch the iPad Something tomorrow morning (Thursday 8 March 2012) from 4:45AM (Sydney time).

To get in touch with your iHopes and iDreams, email Patrick or follow him on Twitter.

In December 2010 I decided to open source my investment strategy, in the form of a slide show and presentation called Ten Hypotheses for Tech Investing. When you open source ideas, you expose them to improvement. I presented the Ten Hypotheses to many smart people, including executives at Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NBC, and many others … and they shredded them. It was fantastic!!!

From that process emerged ideas like the Hypernet. While I characterize the Hypernet as a hypothesis, it already exists. We use it every day. In reality, the first four of the Ten Hypotheses are new interpretations of the present, rather than predictions about the future. This blog post will focus on those four hypotheses.

* * *

The world thinks about the online world in terms of a network layer (The Internet) and a software layer (The Web).

The online world is no longer so simple. Apple introduced the iPhone in January 2007, and with it a new model of online user experience: apps. Today, app-centric smartphones and tablets represent half of all connected devices. Half. On app-based devices, the Web is just one application among many, rather than the center of online activity. It is a huge change.

Since the online world now consists of two pieces of equal size, I believe the traditional vocabulary is obsolete. I have proposed that we refer to the new network layer — the sum of the wired Internet and the mobile data infrastructure for cellular and Wi-Fi — as the Hypernet. Its software counterpart is the Hyperweb, which today includes the traditional Web and app model, but which may evolve to include other technologies in the future.

Why do we need new vocabulary? Everything about the app market works differently from the Web. The failure to recognize this is one reason why Web leaders like Google have been unable to build profitable businesses around apps. When companies incorrectly define their market — as the railroads did in the face of competition from trucks and jets — they leave themselves vulnerable. Hence, the need for new vocabulary.

When Google started in 1998, it transformed Web monetization with index search. To make that happen, Google adhered to the cultural norms of the open source community by focusing on the long tail, making everything free, commoditizing content, and encouraging an “anything goes” atmosphere. This was no problem when the Web was small, but once it hit critical mass the “techie” Web experience began to lose its allure. One factor was the static nature of the Web itself. For more than a decade, the web has been stuck with HTML 4 as its platform and Flash as its media format. No wonder content was commoditized. There was no way to differentiate without spending more than customers would pay.

Any time a product stagnates, as Windows did after 1995 and the Web has done in recent years, it is vulnerable to competitors. In this case, the competitor was Apple and platform was iOS.

What Apple did with iOS was to create a user experience that was “one minus the Web.” Instead of open source, Apple used a proprietary operating system (iOS). Instead of long tail, Apple focused on branded products. In addition to free, Apple encouraged the development of paid applications. Instead of commoditizing content, Apple enabled limited differentiation among apps (but huge differentiation relative to Web). Instead of “anything goes,” Apple offered a secure environment. On top of that, Apple charged $400 to $800 for the hardware that delivers its user experience … using content and data that for the most part are already free on desktops.

What happened? Consumers adopted Apple’s model faster than any technology in history. When you include the dollars spent on hardware — how can you not do so? — it is possible that Apple’s ecosystem may be larger than the Web ecosystem. Whoa!

For the leading Web companies — Google, Microsoft and Facebook — the economic consequences of Apple’s success have been masked by other factors, but they have been enormous. We’ll start with Microsoft. Before the iPhone, 95% of connected devices ran Windows. I don’t know what Windows’ share is today, but it must be less than half that, as Microsoft’s share of app phones is roughly zero. For all intents and purposes, Microsoft lost half its addressable market to app-based devices. The same is true of Google. Before the iPhone, Google accounted for roughly three-fourths of index search, which accounted for about 90% of Web search. The other 10% of Web search was controlled by a rapidly growing group of specialized search engines: Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Realtor.com, Match.com, etc. In the app model, customers use apps to search, not Google. It is my understanding that for a given consumer, index search happens with the following frequency by platform: desktop web 100%, iPad 10%, iPhone 1%. Given that high value transactions are moving rapidly to mobile, it seems unlikely that index search will provide Google with the control point it has grown accustomed to. Margins must fall. Notwithstanding the huge unit volume of Android, Google has yet to produce any profits from smartphones. Even though Google’s Web business continues to grow, the company has lost half its addressable market. The third Web giant is Facebook. Like Microsoft and Google, Facebook has not been able to migrate its profit model to mobile. All three derive their online profits from a business that will continue to lose share in coming years and may even begin to shrink.

It’s not too late for Microsoft, Google and Facebook. All three can respond to this disruption as Apple did a decade ago. Microsoft may already have made the critical first move. The acquisition of Skype gives Microsoft the only product with a larger engaged online audience than Facebook. Skype is perfectly positioned for mobile, especially in the developing world, and Microsoft got it for a small fraction of its strategic value.

To a much greater degree than Microsoft, Google has experimented with new business models. Unfortunately, some of these experiments have come off the rails. I believe Google has irretrievably messed up Android’s architecture and business model, and made a terrible mistake in buying Motorola, but the company still has fantastic human capital and more cash than Croesus. But it has to recognize that it no longer controls the most important value streams in the online world. If Google wants to be a market leader in the future, it will have to reinvent itself. If it were to make a proprietary Motorola phone with Chrome OS, then Google would have a chance to leverage its strengths to compete with Apple.

Facebook was very slow to figure out mobile, but it has far fewer barriers than Microsoft and Google. The company has just introduced mobile ads. If Facebook were to introduce mobile use cases that are valuable (e.g., peer-to-peer wireless “friending”), it might find that the business model in mobile is better than in desktop.

The key point here is that Apple’s position of market dominance is unstable. Giant tech companies with giant cash positions have been left out of the Apple ecosystem … and they will eventually seek a way to get back into the game. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cisco, Intel, Oracle, and others have the scale, the cash, and the compelling incentive to develop an alternative to Apple’s app model. One or more of them may succeed.

But success for these companies will not be significant if it is measured by market share of Apple’s ecosystem. They need a new and really big ecosystem. I believe the new ecosystem will be based on HTML 5.

I spent six months trying to convince entrepreneurs and investors that HTML 5 will change the world before I realized that my message was not getting through. So I spent the past year developing and deploying HTML 5 functionality on behalf of my band, Moonalice. One of our HTML 5 tools enables live HD video over 3G cellular with no buffer. Another enables fans of Moonalice to listen to any of 400 shows. Both applications are live on http://www.moonalice.com, but they only work on iOS. Why? Android does not have a standard HTML 5 implementation. Most people at Google don’t know that.

I have been told that HTML 5 is “just another programming language.” For content creators, however, HTML 5 offers the possibility of production values previously unheard of in the online world.

I am convinced that the pendulum of technology swings between commoditization and high production values. Before 1984, there were no production values in tech content: green ASCII text against a black background was the standard. Then Apple introduced the Mac, with Adobe’s Postscript. Postscript enabled WYSIWYG, desktop publishing, Photoshop, PowerPoint, Acrobat, and increasingly high production values. From 1984 to 1998, content looked better every year. Then came Google and the commoditization of content. That lasted for ten years before Apple’s app model enabled limited differentiation. HTML 5 will remove the limits.

Online content has depended on Adobe Flash for video and animation for more than a decade, but the limits of Flash are significant, especially in mobile. It was never designed for today’s mobile use cases, much less the ones that are coming. Each instance of Flash on a webpage increases load times and instability. In mobile, the overhead is so great that that live video experience on 3G networks is exceptionally lame.

HTML 5 incorporates the functionality of Flash into the HTML standard. In mobile, the overhead is tiny in comparison to Flash. But that’s just the beginning. As the tool set gets fleshed out, HTML 5 will transform the creation and presentation of content. HTML 5 will be a creative canvas unlike any in the past history of technology. Unlike the HTML 4 world we live in today, where every page looks similar and all can be compared in an index, HTML 5 will enable huge variation in production values, from the sepia of Kansas to the 3-D Technicolor of Oz. Before Google, higher production values translated into higher economic value, and I believe that will be the case again, only more so. In fact, the process has already begun with iPhone applications. Major League Baseball has done a brilliant job of translating production values into revenue. What they and others will be able to do with HTML 5 must be left to the imagination for the moment, because HTML 5 is still a very young language.

Cross-posted from Roger and Mike’s Hypernet Blog