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Forrester Research is recommending developers continue developing rich Internet applications and take long pause before embracing HTML 5. For Forrester, HTML 5 is still many years away from becoming a standard in the market and fully functional across multiple platforms. The analyst recommendation reflects on Google's mobile strategy, which CEO Eric Schmidt says is rooted in the company's support for HTML 5. This topic is of real interest now as Apple has dropped support for Adobe Flash. Google is forging ahead with support for HTML 5 but is also playing all sides as Flash remains the incumbent technology for online video. Sponsor So though its commitment is to HTML 5, the company still faces the reality that adoption for platforms such as .NET remain high. Analyst Jeffrey Hammond writes in his report : "These trends underline a key hurdle that HTML 5 technology must overcome to be a ready substitute for today's RIA platform options; users expect it to be as low cost as the other options, but to be of use it must also integrate with Java and .NET server technology. Even if HTML 5 turns out to be a great spec when it reaches Candidate Recommendation state in 2012, it's not clear that this alone will be enough to reverse current RIA adoption trends." In the meantime, Google is debating if it should develop native applications for different platforms. A Google Docs product manager said to us recently that the company has not decided if they should invest in native applications for different mobile platforms. Last week at Google Atmosphere, Schmidt was emphatic about Google's interest in HTML 5. Also at Google Atmosphere, Google Apps President David Girouard moderated a discussion that touched on the HTML 5 issue. In Vint Cerf's view, the "Internet of Things," will evolve to the point where more "things," will go on the smart grid. Speeds will increase at the edges of the network, making downloads to a web page almost simultaneous. What this seems to mean is that we will see the borders between apps and the Web dissolve. There may even be the evolution of new networks that are different than the Web itself. In view of what they say, there is no clear dismissal of different platforms. It's more how mobile apps and the Web blend together. Forrester is critical of the draft HTML 5 spec. Hammond states cites the deep developer use of existing rich Internet application platforms. From his report: "Will HTML 5 make rich Internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash/Flex and Microsoft Silverlight obsolete? For at least the next five years, the answer is a definite "no"; inconsistent implementations of the draft HTML 5 specification and immature tooling make building HTML 5 apps that work consistently across browsers and operating systems a real challenge. Furthermore, this "either/ or" scenario is driven only by vendor politics, not by developer realities. Ultimately, HTML 5 and RIA platforms will be complementary technologies, and enterprise development shops will need to invest in both approaches to deliver expressive applications that combine reach and richness." It is a little tiring when we hear the war of words over apps versus the Web. What will win? Probably neither. It will just depend on the demands of the market, the views of the developer and the powers they decide to follow. Discuss

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Google's Eric Schmidt Gushes About HTML 5

At the most recent Apple keynote , Steve Jobs announced Apple's upcoming advertising platform called iAd . Included as a part of the OS 4.0 update, the mobile operating system upgrade due out for iPhone this summer and iPad later this fall, the iAd system aims, in its very Apple-ly way, to make mobile advertisements "delightful," meaning ads worth clicking on, engaging with and viewing. What Jobs didn't mention, though, is how Apple plans to give iAd its head start: by kicking out the competing analytics and advertising platforms now thriving in nearly every iPhone app today. Or so it seems. Sponsor Developer Reports App Store Rejection Due to Analytics Inclusion Last week, technology news blog VentureBeat caught wind of a story where Apple had rejected an iPhone application because it, according to the email sent to the developer, "is not appropriate for applications to gather user analytics." Not appropriate, you may ask? Since when? Apparently since Apple released their updated iPhone Developer Agreement. Alongside the SDK 4 beta , made available shortly after the announcement in early April, the developer contract was updated, too. Specifically, the clause in question, section 3.3.9, reads, in part (more here ): Notwithstanding anything else in this Agreement, Device Data may not be provided or disclosed to a third party without Apple's prior written consent. Accordingly, the use of third party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited. To date, the changes detailed in this clause have been overshadowed by the one preceding it - in Section 3.3.1, Apple banned the use of cross-compiler tools for building iPhone applications, like the one Adobe was just about to ship , for example. But in the long run, it's Section 3.3.9 that may have more impact on the industry as a whole. "FEAR" You may have not heard too much about this change because no one actually knows what's going on thanks to Apple's par-for-the-course policy of refusing to clarify its meaning. Plus, the companies who may be the most heavily affected by an analytics ban - services like Flurry , MediaLets , Motally , Localytics , and SimpleGeo , to name a few - don't want to talk about it. On record that is. But after a dozen or so phone calls and emails, we're starting to see a picture forming and it can be summed up in one word: FEAR . "Nobody wants to be the canary in the coal mine," one source told us, referring to the radio silence we're getting from these companies when you would have otherwise expected to hear outcry, or perhaps even anti-competitive claims. Some companies, off-record, say they are afraid to complain . If they do, they could be the next to be banned. Another source reported that a number of their company's clients weren't submitting updates to the iTunes Application Store because they were worried that the updates, with the analytics included of course, would be rejected. Instead, the clients are leaving their older applications in place since it doesn't appear that Apple is going back through all the current apps and booting out those that already include analytics within them. "Maybe the older apps are grandfathered in?" they wondered aloud. The fact that no one knows, not even the big name, big box retailer that sits at the top of the latter's client list, is a testament to how Apple likes to do business. Here's the agreement, read it and sign it...and that's the extent of the communication. As to those who did manage to get someone from Apple to talk about it? The answer was simply: "read the agreement." But if Apple holds true to what's written there, it sounds like it could spell doom for mobile analytics and ad firms, especially the small-time players beloved by independent developers. iAd, Anti-Competitive? What no one will say - again, on record, that is - is that the changes have a whiff of anti-competitive behavior to them. The issue at hand: Apple is preparing to launch iAd, an advertising platform based on the newly-acquired Quattro Wireless, a second choice for Apple after the Admob deal fell through. "We tried to buy AdMob, but Google snatched them up because they didn't want us to have them," Steve Jobs said during the April keynote. "So we bought another smaller company, Quattro. But we're babes in the woods." Some say that the added language to section 3.3.9 is a direct shot at AdMob in the same way that the changes in 3.3.1 were a shot at Adobe. That is, instead of allowing Google to get its mobile advertisements onto the iPhone, Apple can keep them out via the new analytics/ad ban. Whether or not that's the case is certainly up for debate. But considering that the Google/AdMob deal is still being researched by U.S. antitrust enforcers, regulators aware of the issue. Word has it that Google even pointed it out to the FTC, just in case. Continue Reading: Next page, "A Second Opinion" A Second Opinion: Privacy Concerns Others, however, say these changes aren't really about analytics, ads and anti-competitive behavior as much as they are about privacy concerns. In speaking with Alan Chapell, chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association Privacy Committee and whose firm advises companies on privacy and data strategy, the changes to Apple's agreement have to do more with consumer privacy than anything else. With language that refers to "geo-location" and targeted advertising, a good bit of Section 3.3.9 is about how location-based applications should behave. With the rise of location-based services especially and location-based social tools like Loopt, Foursquare, Gowalla, and others, privacy is at the forefront of everyone's minds these days. ( Including ours ). There are no standards for location based data yet, Chapell explains. No rules about how such data should be used, retained, shared and so on. In addition, Apple is under heavy pressure from regulators to protect the privacy of its customers. And if the third-party analytics providers do something which comprises that privacy, it will be Apple that gets in trouble. "This debate is about privacy and innovation," Chapell notes, "and finding a balance between the two." Unfortunately, even if Apple chooses never to enforce the new rules, explains Chapell, the changes will have an indirect impact on innovation in this area. The next round of ad networks, analytics providers and other in-app data-sharing tools will be less likely to be funded. Not Just Funding at Risk... These changes won't just affect the funding of services like those noted above, though, they could affect how services are developed for the iPhone. Take for example, Xtify , a location-triggered geo-messaging system now available for Android ( previous coverage ).

Facebook's F8 developer conference starts today and, even if I had a plane ticket, I couldn't be there. The same went for Twitter's Chirp conference last week and the iPhone OS 4.0 release the week before that. It just wasn't in the stars and, more importantly, the budget - but that's what technology is for, right? On that point, we'd like to look at a few ways you can keep up with the news coming out of today's F8 conference and other events you might not be able to attend in person but want to watch, in real-time, nonetheless. And for your convenience, we've embedded streaming video of the F8 Keynote after the jump. Sponsor First, for more less secretive events like today's F8 conference, there's the fully authorized, sponsored live-streaming video . And often a search on sites like UStream and Justin.tv get a number of somewhat shaky but nonetheless informative smartphone videos of the events. Often, these sites are the place to go for streaming video of less open events, like most any of Apple's clamped-down product releases. Then there's the old faithful hashtag, the identifier that shows you tweets that are (supposedly) related to the same topic, though sometimes fall short on that point. And lets not forget any number of live blogs. But beyond all of these standard tools, we were reminded of an aggregator of all these different ways of remotely monitoring a real-time event that's been around for a bit more than a year now and is just as useful as ever - Almost.at . Almost.at is a sweet looking tool written in Cappuccino by David Cann for the express purpose of "Following People at Real-World Events in Real-Time". The service can be used on the web or in a standalone browser for Mac OSX 10.5+ and gathers all the content it can about a specific event from a number of services: Twitter , Flickr , YouTube , TwitPic , TinyURL and Bit.ly . Streaming in real-time, Almost.at shows a number of different events in the left-most column, pulls in related tweets in the next, pictures and videos after that, and then related articles and external links in the final column. Even better, the web app offers a minute by minute timeline at the bottom of the screen, showing when the conversation was most active and allowing you to browse everything by the timeline. So, while we'll certainly be keeping an eye on our own cultivated lists of who's who on Twitter, Almost.at will likely be the main browser tab we keep open alongside the live-streaming broadcast that we've embedded at the end of this post. But before you get to watching today's F8 conference, you may want to catch up on what we're expecting, so here are a few links to that end: Om Malik's F8 Preview explains "How Facebook Plans to Take Over The Web". Marshall Kirkpatrick anticipates that a Facebook Firehose May Be Released at Developer Conference F8 . Inside Facebook's Eric Eldon also gives a round-up of all the rumors leading up to the F8 conference that helps put everything in context. Marshall Kirkpatrick also expects that Facebook May Launch Recommendation Service For Other Websites . Discuss

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How to Keep Tabs on Facebook's F8 from Afar

Apple announced second-quarter revenue of $13.50 billion today for the quarter ended March 27, 2010. Net quarterly profit was $3.07 billion, or $3.33 per diluted share. Q2 2009 showed revenue of $9.08 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.62 billion, or $1.79 per diluted share. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter's revenue. 2.94 million Macs were sold, a 33% increase, along with 8.75 million iPhones and 10.89 million iPods. Sponsor "Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2010, we expect revenue in the range of about $13.0 billion to $13.4 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $2.28 to $2.39," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, in an official statement . Apple CEO Steve Jobs stated it was the company's "best non-holiday quarter ever, with revenues up 49 percent and profits up 90 percent." Apple has a reputation on Wall Street for estimating low on its upcoming revenue, which has an influence on analyst expectations. Apple currently anticipates a gross margin of 36 percent, a significant decline. Apple beat analyst expectations this quarter. Although attention on the iPad was enormous, and sales were good , insufficient time has passed to tell what effect that new product will have on earnings. It will need to sell a great many to be a contender against any of its other products. Bottom photo by Sonny Hung Discuss

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Apple Announces Second-Quarter Earnings

Google has purchased Agnilux, a chip startup run by Apple refugees. After P.A. Semi was bought by Apple in 2008 for $278 million, several of the prime movers of that company, including Amarjit Gill, Executive VP of Sales and Business Development, along with several Apple employees, jumped ship and started Agnilux. A former Tivo executive also joined the company. P.A. Semi produces the chips that run the iPhone and iPad. Speculation has surrounded the theoretical Apple intel that might come with the company, the entertainment media background of some of its executives and the extraordinary secrecy of Agnilux. Sponsor Despite investigation by the New York Times , very little information is available on the company. In February, NYT talked about the company's website. That website no longer exists. When it did it had little information. "Hop over to the Agnilux Web site and you're told very little about the company beyond the location of its offices and the derivation of the company's name. Agni is Sanskrit for fire and Lux is the Latin for light." An anonymous source told the Times he thought the company was producing a server. Prior to accepting the Google deal, Agnilux held conversations with Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments. It's uncertain whether they spoke with VCs or other investors. Discuss

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Google Snaps Up Agnilux, Whatever That Is