Week 13 - Reflections

Week 13 - Reflections

The journey for the class of Technology and World change has come to an end but technology and change will go on. The course has laid the foundation for us to comprehend these disruptive changes in the world. Through the course, we learnt what determines a disruptive change, the drivers for disruptive change, change management followed by in detail for a few scopes such as ICT, biotechnology and energy. Finally, it ended off with the framework to understand and forecast disruptive changes.

The journey was certainly an enjoyable and informative one, especially given the small size of the class, the class felt more closely knitted. I enjoyed the large amount of time dedicated for discussion where students are given the opportunity to speak and discuss, allowing more in-depth discussion and understanding of the topic. One of the few key takeaways is the many models demonstrated, such as the cloud, summit and valley model, the roadmap model, etc. They prove to be useful to understand not just technology and world change but basically everything in the world. Although the lessons did not go in depth into such models which are beyond the scope of the course, it opened the door to understanding such models and its applications. I believe they will be helpful in future when I get the opportunity to apply them.

The course also discussed the knowledge based economy. We all know Singapore is moving toward knowledge based economy but what I learnt from this course is the problems we are facing moving towards knowledge based economy. The problems include radical structural change to treat each employee as an asset rather than an expense. The companies have to move away from structure from manufacturing phase to develop a new structure which encourages knowledge tapping. It is a challenge because knowledge is intangible, thus hard to quantify or “store”. Through this, I had a greater knowledge of the need for Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) through the extra readings provided by professor. As we enter the workforce in a couple of years, I believe such information will come in handy as not only we need to contribute to the knowledge growth of the company, we might have the opportunity to help shape the new structure for knowledge based economy.

Lastly, Professor Gurinder went in-depth into each topic of emerging fields which includes ICT, Biotechnology, renewable energy and other emerging technologies. It brought us fresh insights that we will probably never read up on if not for the course. Additionally, the Facebook group created also allowed plenty of interesting videos and articles to be shared among all student studying TWC. It was certainly an enriching experience.

Overall, I will rate the course 9/10. The course was interesting and gave me fresh insight of the subject. However, it could have been better if some of the sessions were spent on applying all these information rather than just discussing on the surface. The class could possibly spend a few sessions on scenario planning where we can investigate in depth how such technologies would and changes affect us. Given a scenario, we can discuss on how changes will affect the scenarios and the decisions we might undertake and in the process, we will have more perspective from different people and possibly even cover some mistakes that corporates have done and learn from them. Such exercises will bring about more in-depth discussion as it is more focused and interesting rather than discussing what is the pros and cons of certain technology which usually end up scratching only the surface of the topic. 

Here marks the end of the course Technology and World Change. It is a course that I will recommend because it certainly is very helpful and forces us to observe very important happenings that we take for granted. This will be the last entry that is graded by Professor Gurinder but perhaps when I am free and chance upon interesting thoughts, I might post it here still. Stay posted.

Week 12 - Group presentation

Week 12 – Group presentation 1

“Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.” - Martin H Fischer

Today’s session was 3 group presentations. Through this post, I will share some experience of creating a website without prior experience and some views I have.

The session started with the quote by Martin Fischer, a quote that resonates strongly with my experience of doing the website. True enough, the creating a good website is no simple feat. The project started off with identifying the topic area, doing the necessary research, compiling and analysis the research and finally, the start of the website. The initial stage of the project faces the typical challenges of writing a report which was easier to overcome. However, after compilation of the research, we faced great difficulty presenting in the website. The large chunk of information now has to be dissected into bite size yet without compromising the quality of the information. That was truly a challenge. As the quote goes, within simplification lies wisdom.

Eventually we managed to dissect the information and presented it in the best possible manner we could. Through this project, I managed to experience structuring a presentation from scratch and attempting to present in the best possible format. It has to be both visually pleasing and informative. It helped me understand truly the difficulties of product innovation. It is not just coming up with the best technology or best design but the ability to integrate the best technology into the best design for a good user experience. I am now able to better appreciate the hard work involved to create good products such as iPhone, etc.

 Through this project, I had also learnt some knowledge on social media. In particular, I have much better idea of how social media has an impact on human behaviors. One of the most interesting findings was while humans love social media and use it extensively; it is not able to replace face to face meetings. This de bunks the usual myth of social media will eventually cause us to lose the physical interaction.

The reason why social media was so successful was because it is convenient, easy to access and time-saving. We can be constantly on Facebook, Twitter, etc. to stay connected with friends but the quality of this interaction is not satisfactory for most people.

This is why social media will only a supplement to how we conduct our lives. In fact, social media will bring us closer than never before rather than cause us to lose the physical interaction because we don't lose sight of people around us anymore. No matter how busy or distant, it is still possible to spend few minutes to catch up which impossible to previously.

At the same time, face to face interaction cannot be replaced for we still need to feel a physical presence to connect at a deeper level. President Obama understood this theory well. Despite having billions of citizens, his social media involvement did not stop at mere conversation or tweets online. He took it further to invite ordinary citizens for a dinner with him to empathize with them. It still takes a physical presence to show that you care.

This project has given me the opportunity to understand the difficulties of simplification and new insights to social media, things I will not have appreciated or realized if not for this project. However, the journey was certainly a tough one. No pain, no gain.

Week 11 - Technology assessment and forecasting

Session 11 objective was to understand and learn some frameworks used to forecast and understand disruptive changes. Some of the common models used were brainstorming, forecasting from past statistics and scenario planning.

While session 11 gets more technical and less exciting, it was one of the most meaningful lessons taught. In the readings, the best takeaway I had was the framework using roadmaps. As contrast to brainstorming and other models, usage of roadmaps is new. It is often used in Western country but not so much adopted in the East. In fact, there is much value to it. It is designed to help us layout the road plan with the big picture in mind. It then places the respective milestones based on the time where it is expected to complete. Thereafter, as our guest professor explained, we can compare the timeline between the various roadmaps of social, technological or economical.

Using these roadmaps, we can predict whether the timeline coincide with each other. The value I understand from this is for example, when the market demands voice activated technology, are the technology able to keep up with it? If not, the technology needs more boosting. Vice versa, if we expect our Omni touch to be ready in market in 2 years, is the market ready to embrace this new technology? Have similar technology or transitional technology been implemented? These are all important processes to ensure the smooth implementation of products. 

Although we are not in the corporates yet, we are still able to adapt this roadmap framework for our use. For example, it can be used to map out the course process in the entire semester so we are aware of the respective milestones to complete. Otherwise, different roadmaps can be drawn for each member, thus ensuring the smooth coordination of the project rather to avoid wasting time on hold ups. I look forward to possibly using this framework in future and sharpening it for personal use.

Another interesting concept I learnt was the concept of genetic diversity. The book written by CK Prahalad mentioned briefly the importance of genetic diversity. He recommended for companies to innovate, there is need to cross-breed CEOs. Rather than hiring CEOs from competitors, there is value in hiring a CEO from a totally different industry. By doing so, you are bringing new concepts and ideas to the corporation. This concept of cross-breeding was made famous by CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs. He was well-known for his multi-field talent, ranging from arts to technology. Because of his talent, he was able to create the high technology yet sleek and intuitive iProducts.

However, the course did not mention much about this concept of cross-breeding. It would have been a good experience to understand the framework to utilize this cross-breeding. Even CK Prahalad admits that this is a difficult process and might not yield any results. Thus, this topic deserves much more discussion for us to achieve more.

This lesson concludes course Technology and World Change. It has been a good experience to understand the changes, drivers of changes and most importantly, to understand and estimate the impacts of these changes. However, it would have been wonderful if Professor was able to run through a case study of how he will predict or forecast a disruptive change in the future. Although students have been presenting and Professor Gurinder has been adding in the forecast since Lesson 1, it would have been very interesting and enriching to see a Professor yet a business consultant handle such questions. We will have a great deal to learn from the way a professional will first analyze the issue, break it down and step-by-step analysis to the issue. The freshness of the angle and the techniques used will definitely be out of the league for almost any students, giving us a fresh and high-level perspective of issues. Also, such an analysis will probably make the lesson more interesting and engaging. 

Lastly, because I hope for such an eye-opening experience, I will rate this course a 9/10. It would have been complete with this new perspective. It was partly our fault however because we failed to finish reading all the reading materials. In particular, even after the course, I hope to make an effort to complete reading the course materials, especially week 11 reading materials because they contain a lot of valuable information and tools that will help us in future.

Week 10 - Emerging technology

Week 10 - Emerging technology

Global warming, depleting fossil fuels, increasing air, land, water pollution, rising sea levels, increasing intensity of natural disasters are the trends of the 21^st century. The future seems bleak. Some even predict the world will end in 2012. Nevertheless, we can be possibly living in the best era of mankind now. We still have enough resources to last through another few decades, sea levels are still not rising fast enough to consume our land and we are recovering from natural disasters faster than ever. Best of all, our technology are still advancing at a rapid pace, if not accelerating faster than ever. Boundless of possibilities are open to us, from robotics to biotechnology and sustainable living.

Living today is undoubtedly exciting with the possibility of new technology. The latest iPhone Siri is unquestionably a breakthrough in voice recognition technology. It brings a virtual personal assistant from cloud imagination to the hands to every single individual. Siri is so sophisticated it almost has its own personality and is able to communicate with the owner in almost a life-like manner. It is not surprising in the next few years; we could have a PA organizing our lives at only few hundred dollars.

With this advancement of the world move towards knowledge-based economy, human resources are becoming increasingly valuable. This can be very advantageous for Singapore who prides itself for its highly-skilled workforce. Unfortunately, despite massive investments into cutting-edge industries, it has yet to develop a dominant power in in global market. It is not that Singapore has never developed any life-changing products when in fact, Singapore has produced many. The thumb drives we rely on so heavily today, the first MP3 and the infra-red sensor used worldwide to detect fever during the SARS crisis are examples of ingenious works of Singaporeans. All these products could have potentially created a Singapore-based superpower corporation, comparable to Apple, Microsoft or Google. Regrettably, they did not manage to become more than just a brilliant product.

A knowledge-based economy will require more than good education and skilled labor. A knowledge-based economy will require visionary leaders and convergence of various expertise, may it be Arts, Technology, Science or even Religion. Steve Jobs could only create his Macintosh because of his background in calligraphy as he managed to merge these two fields of expertise. And it is truly a challenge to hold more than a field of expertise, let alone being able to cross-breed them.

Although Singapore has yet to produce any revolutionary leaders, it is well-poised to do so. Located in the heart of South-East Asia, loaded with huge capital and a stable climate, the necessary factors for blooming creativity is there. It is very much up to us now to capitalize on the opportunities we have now for Singapore to shine for the next century. In particular, we have huge opportunities in solar power, biotechnology and information technology. Solar power because we are in the equator, consistently receiving sunlight throughout the year. Perhaps one day, we can become energy exporter to the rest of the world instead of an importer by converting solar energy into fuels for exporting. We have already invested billions in biotechnology and hopefully in a few years to come, we can see good returns from these investments. Lastly, information technology in particular as we develop optic fire throughout Singapore, the entire country can potentially become the next silicon valley of the world. These ideals might actually ensure the survival of Singapore for the next century.

Individual Paper- HTML5 impacts on business

Technology and world change

HTML5 impacts on consumer and business arena

        For Professor Gurinder Shahi

Done by: Wilson Ong WeiZheng

Section: G-20

Executive summary

IT has been the highlight of the 21^st century with its incredible pace of advancement. It has revolutionized our lives and changed the way we perceive the world. Consumers are expecting more dynamic, interactive forms of media which only the web is capable of providing. HTML5 will be one of the highlights for the next few years as it allows richer web applications that are capable of delivering more interaction between the medium and the user. HTML5’s development streamlines process and in the progress of doing so, it complements and competes with some existing technology, possibly changing the current leaders of the industry. HTML5 too promises a faster, richer and more interactive experience for consumers and possibly creating new business opportunities for others as well. That is if HTML5 succeeds in transforming from an experimental product into the benchmark of the web.

Introduction

To understand the impacts of HTML, first we must understand the functions of Internet, HTML and browsers because they are interdependent. Internet is the connection that connects every computer together, HTML is the language the browser understands other and browser is what that retrieve, present and traverse information resources on the internet.

 HTML was created by Tim-Berners-Lee in 1989, originally created for the military systems to talk to each other. It then spun-off to become be used by mass, allowing users to create their own pages and host on any server. Its birth however, was by no means unnoticed. HTML’s first revolutionary bloodshed came when it killed off the time-sharing business model of CompuServe, GEnie and Prodigy in 1993 when it became widely used (Wilcox, 2010). Since then, many browser wars have been fought between the biggest IT companies. With the latest HTML5, some claim that it threatens to obsolete the US$13.6b Adobe System Incorporated. Will HTML5 be able to kill off the IT giant Adobe?

History of HTML

HTML was first created to facilitate transfer of files between systems and was submitted to International Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 1993. It was then developed at American NCSA which was funded by Congressman Al Gore. Thereafter, Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and took over IETF (Wilcox, 2010). Up till today, W3C still functions as to ensure compatibility and agreement among industry members in adoption of new standards to reduce inconsistency between web pages. As of 8^th Oct 2011, W3C has 313 members (Consortium, 2011).

HTML started off with simple text and moved on to fancy fonts. Since then, it had come a long way from having flashing text to fancy backgrounds to midi files and now, it is fully capable of showing videos, music, documents and almost everything our OS is capable of.  Of course, it had its fair share of problems, such as the failed XHTML which was released by W3C. Eventually, this was replaced by the hotly debated HTML5.

Key Opportunities of HTML in the past

Due to the existence of HTML, it provided the opportunity for Netscape, the second browser company to be formed. In 1990s, Netscape was highly-sought after, its IPO fetched $28 per share and HTML created its first multi-billion dollars company after the first day of trading, valuing Netscape at $2.9b. Netscape revenue was doubling every quarter in 1995 (Sheff, 2000).

However, Netscape spectacular success also attracted the IT giant Microsoft’s attention. Netscape had become a threat to Microsoft operating system dominance as a move from Windows can yield similar browsing experience on other operating systems. As the result, Windows countered with its Internet Explorer (IE) and sparked off the browser war. On hindsight, Netscape never stood a chance against Microsoft. Microsoft held over 90% of the operating system, its IE team alone was bigger than the entire Netscape and Netscape’s revenue never even exceeded Microsoft’s cash. Even though Netscape was the pioneer of the industry with over 80% of market share in 1996, IE4 turned the tide quickly and became the market leader. The reason why IE4 was so successful could be because it was bundled with Windows operating system, providing a disincentive for users to download Netscape with IE pre-installed. IE5 too was bundled with Windows 98, the most common OS used in history (Gromov, N.D).

Fig1

Browser Market Share Percentage
Year	Internet Explorer	Netscape Navigator
1995	2.9	80.1
1996	20	73
1997	39.4	57.6
1998	39	54
1999	67.5	30.7
2000	82.2	17.7

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/news/browser-wars-high-price-huge-rewards/128738

As we can see, the two huge jumps came in 1998 and 1999 where IE4 and 5 was launched respectively. It proves that a market maker can alter the market greatly by forcing consumers to use their products instead. This history is important as it provides an insight of understanding the industry for us to extrapolate current events later on in this report.

As the browser war went on, both companies attempted to differentiate itself, they started to add in unique functions, causing an even greater disparity among web-pages. In the end, W3C had to interfere to deplore Netscape’s presentation markup <Blink> and introduced the CSS commonly used today. Netscape no longer have huge advantage over Microsoft

By 2000, Netscape lost the browser war. It started producing buggy versions as income dwindle and Microsoft too stopped releasing new versions after IE6 in 2001 for 5 straight years, after it won the browser war. When the dominant market leaders stopped innovating, their browsers technology stayed stagnant for years.

IE became a falling star

When Microsoft stopped improving its browser, developments came to a halt with buggy, unfinished functions. Frustrated, developers started looking for alternatives. This created a new opportunity for another company, Adobe’s Flash. To fix the excessive unfinished, buggy features by both browsers, Adobe Flash took charge to innovate and generate new features on browsers, allowing the videos, games and animations used today on browsers, causing developers to flock to Adobe as preferred choice. To do so, Flash focused on rich web applications and yet ensured compatibility throughout every browser available. This resulted in huge success for Adobe, so much so that it is worth US$12.5b (NASDAQ, 2011) as of October 2011. à want chart?

Concurrently, when Microsoft stopped innovating, other browsers took the opportunity to jump into the industry. Mozilla Firefox came about to replace Netscape and cleared up many of the existing bugs. Since then, Firefox became the key driver of browser technology apart from W3C.

Fig2

Year	Internet Explorer	Firefox	Chrome	Safari
2003	84.6	4.0
2004	84.7	5.5
2005	74.5	16.6
2006	66.0	25.0
2007	58.6	31.0		1.7
2008	54.7	36.4		1.9
2009	44.8	45.5	3.9	3.0
2010	36.2	46.3	10.9	3.7
2011	26.6	42.8	23.8	4.0

Source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

As the table shows, there was a huge jump in Firefox users in 2005. It might be due to first major update, Firefox 1.5. In 2006, it created Firebug, an add-on which helped developers find their errors and tweak their websites extremely quickly (Firebug, N.D). Firebug won the developers over and became the key factor that gave a boost in market share from 16.6% to 25.0%. By Jan 2009, Firefox had overtaken IE as the highest market share. 

Lesson to be learnt

This is evidence that in the IT industry, whichever platform that controls the tide of developers controls the game. Similarly, Facebook and Apple’s App store created an excellent platform for developers to develop and showcase their products, thus gaining huge popularity and edging over competitors.

Much more recently, Google also launched its browser Chrome and its popularity is rising quickly. This can potential mark the start of another fierce browser war. Indeed, IE8 and IE9 were launched with only 2 years gap after losing its market share to Chrome and Firefox.

The rise and fall of various companies are significant and changed the business arena many times in just a short span of 20 years. Not many industries have market leaders becoming multi-billion in a few years and yet become totally obsolete just as quickly. In fact, the real browser race may be very well just beginning with the new HTML5 still in developmental phase. It promises produce extraordinary results that might yet again shape the way human functions.

HTML5, a revolutionary change?

Key impacts of HTML on consumers

HTML is the language which computers talk to each other, thus HTML does not impact consumers directly as how Windows or Apple had. However, HTML is the key driver that enables browsers we use frequently today. Without HTML, there will be no browsers. Without browsers, there will be no Google, no Facebook, no Blogger and no websites. As of 2010, an average American will spend 32 hours on the Internet (comScore Data Gem, 2011) and 22% are spent on social media/blogs (Caverly, 2010). It shows how much browsers have been integrated into our lives. Internet and browsers are one of the most disruptive changes in the 21^th century, completely changing the ways humans operate. Information is found through Google and people now communicate through emails and social media, no longer through paper and pen and possibly even minimal face-to-face communication in future. All these are possible because of the advancement in HTML and internet technology.

Features of HTML5

HTML5 promises to revolutionize our internet experience. With HTML5, Flash or Silverlight is no longer needed to view videos. With HTML5 Video (H.264), it is fully capable of streaming video by itself and even develops games.  It has a canvas functions that allows users to draw on browsers, drag-and drop on browsers, offline storage database, etc. In summary, it is a more immersive experience and users can interact with the browser rather than merely receiving from the browsers. The richness of HTML5 allows much two way interaction, in other words, maximizing the potential of cloud computing. What traditionally that is used on operating systems can be now ported over to the browser. Although technology has not been achieved but in another few years’, it might be possible for browsers to take over the function of our operating systems.

Going deeper, HTML5 being a computer language is of course most beneficial to developers. Firstly, it is much more streamlined, removing unnecessary features and a smarter system, thus saving programmers the need to write long, hard to remember codes. Secondly, it is capable of cutting an image up to insert wordings, something that used to be troublesome. Thirdly, an interesting new feature that makes contents editable, something the old HTML is unable do. Fourthly, it uses local storage, thus making sites faster to load. Fifth, it is has its own video and audio format, no longer dependent on third-party plugins and better, it can preload video to save users waiting time (Way, 2011). HTML5 is still in development phase and we will see more interesting tools created for developers.

In the face of consumers, an easier and standardized coding will mean much easier life for developers. Right now, due to the difference between IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, developers waste a huge amount of time ensuring their works appears the same throughout all commonly used browsers. With HTML5, its easier and standardized coding will mean less time wasted, more time spent on producing rich, quality browser applications. HTML5 today no longer just creates static websites. It strives to be equivalent, if not better than the native applications you use daily on your computer or mobile phones.

Who is the driver for HTML?

For HTML to advance there must be a force behind it but because HTML is an open-source, there is no one person directly involved to develop HTML. The non-profit organization W3C headed by Berners-Lee, founder of HTML is the key driver to the advancement of HTML. Major developers are usually members of W3C and all the members contribute to the development of HTML, with browsers being the key contributor to the progress of HTML. Understandably, W3C being a non-profit organization has its fair share of problems and inefficiencies. The most major failure published byW3C was XHTML in 2000. It was with good intention to streamline HTML to make it more extensible and more compatible with other devices, such as mobile. However, it was not very well-received by browsers as they did not suit the browsers and it did not have backwards compatibility. Rather, browsers prefer to focus on rich-web applications which XHTML did not support (Kesteren, 2004). This clearly shows the importance of backwards compatibility and technology that are not backwards compatible might face heavy resistance.

Because of W3C differing view of focus from browsers, the dominant Mozilla Firefox, Apple and Opera formed a new organization called Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) and HTML5 was developed by these 3 companies. HTML5 goals are to bypass unnecessary add-ons such as Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX and at the same time, backwards compatible. Once again, Microsoft was not part of this organization. Finally, W3C drops XHTML in favor of HTML5 and first draft of HTML5 was published in 2008. It is clear that from 2004, Firefox has become the key driver of HTML, together with the support of Apple and Opera and now more recently, Google’s Chrome. Even more recently, Microsoft announced that its IE9 will support HTML5, a move to boost its browser once again. 

Opportunities HTML5 provides

Mobile opportunities

Recently since iPhone, there has been a fever over mobile applications. Developers and companies have flocked to develop mobile applications as they believe there is a gold mine there. Apple’s App store allows instant access to hundreds of thousands of apps, many for free. Androids apps too have been increasing steadily. Much money has been made where freelance developers sell their mobile apps for low price. Apple then charges developers 30% of the sales made by the developer.

Now, mobile browser offers to change it all. With the new HTML5, its interactive and beautifully rendered interface is just as comparable to mobile apps. It only needs a browser to access it, without the trouble of going to the app store and download. Best of all, it bypasses Apple’s or Android’s commission for using their app store platform and sell directly to users. Amazon is one of the pioneers where it launched its HTML5-based “cloud reader” to avoid paying Apple’s fees yet able to use its services on Apple products. The Financial Times too, took the same step to avoid Apple’s fees by launching its HTML5 app instead (Lardinois, 2011).

The advantage of using HTML5 applications does not just saves money for third-party applications. HTML5 uses browsers which mean practically any phone with browser can use the HTML5 app. This means Android apps can be used on iPhone and vice versa. There is no need for developers to code two separate times just for the sake of both mobile systems and this equates to doubling the amount of application for users. Isn’t that great?

Perhaps not so great for mobile companies. Although mobile app is a relatively new feature when smartphones became popular recently, it has become the money spinner for mobile phone manufacturers. Since launch until 2010, Apple’s app store has brought in $428m of revenue. Although it only contributed to 1% of Apple’s profit, the main aim of app store was to boost hardware sales (Paczkowski, 2010). So with HTML5 homogenizing apps from different operating systems, it means iPhone cannot count on its app store as a selling point anymore. 

HTML5 reduces cost

With HTML5 video and audio functionalities, it is fully customizable with local storage. It means faster loading and yet lowers cost to produce for developers. It makes start-up even cheaper for small-firms and likely to encourage innovations (Campbell, 2011). The ability to embed video into mobile browsers can possibly create new advertising opportunities as videos or animations loads faster, drains less battery and users are much connected through mobile than computers. It also allows small advertising companies to prosper with such opportunities. It might even come to a point where advertisements become so innovative and interesting that they become a source of entertainment rather than nuisance.

Job opportunities for designers

Art is no longer just abstract, Picasso art for the rich. With rise of internet, digital art has become a lucrative industry for art lovers. Steve Jobs took his calligraphy class in university which he felt contributed greatly to the invention of the sleek and aesthetic Macintosh. Increasingly, consumers are expecting high-definition, gorgeous graphics on their videos, games, advertisements and virtually anything they see. Without visually appealing design, consumers will not even bother to take a second look and HTML5 have the functionality to provide just the right medium for designers to shine. More websites and HTML5 apps will demand better graphics and better designs to attract users, providing more opportunities for designers.

However, digital art is not totally a clone of traditional art. It still requires creativity and skill to produce a good piece of art but in additional, a good web designer must be equipped with HTML too and HTML can quite challenging to those less inclined towards logic thinking. 21^st century digital artist will be tougher job than the past but certainly with a brighter future ahead. 

Offline web app

It is ironic to have an offline web app but HTML5 made it into reality. One of the features of HTML5 was local storage, which means information is saved in the system. Thus, users can function even without internet access and update it when connected. This application can be vast, from news applications to games to medical tracking. It blurs the line between offline and online, allowing people to function just as efficiently and eliminates the need for downloading software. However, most browsers do not support this function well as it is a complicated process to engineer. It might quite some time before this technology can be fully utilize reliably.

Defragmentation

Many different operating systems, mobile systems, competing system exists. It becomes a huge trouble for developers to customize to each system. More often than not, most developers do not have the resources to do so. HTML5 provides an opportunity where every operating system with a browser can have the same user experience, solving the engineering difficulty. With less fragmentation, we expect to see greater efficiency and possibly a huge jump in web-based applications.

Defragmentation will also bring about cost-efficiency. According to Susan J Campbell, the cost of creating and distributing application to the mass has never been lower. It is possible non-profit organization in particular has the most to benefit from this cost reduction. Not only these organizations can reach a large audience to garner support, a greater proportion of the donations will be spent on helping the needy rather than on advertising and campaign. 

Challenges of HTML5

Will HTML5 take over Flash?

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen is not afraid of HTML5, “How do you get a consistent display of HTML5 across browsers. It might be a decade before HTML5 sees standardization”. But he has every reason to be afraid of HTML5. iPhone, a worldwide phenomenal, was not compatible with Flash. Apply decided to ban Flash from iPhone with several reasons. Flash was rejected because it was fully proprietary, a closed system and HTML5 is a completely open system. Not to forget, it can possibly be because Apple is one of the key founders of HTML5 and a very strong driver of HTML5. Like Microsoft in 1990s, Apple has deep pockets and big teams of talented software engineers. For Apple to ban Flash products, Adobe is losing an extremely huge portion of the market. This draws us to a similar experience in the past, where IE was able to oust Netscape because it bundled IE with its Windows and forced its users to use IE. Apple’s ban is even more outright, stopping Apple users from using Flash completely.

However, Flash itself has already developed into an IT giant. 75% of the web’s videos are in Flash formats; effectively Apple cuts its users away from a huge amount of materials on the internet (Jobs, 2010). This had become a double edge and indeed, it has driven some users from Apple to Google’s Android as the capability to play Flash is very important to users. The tug-of-war is HTML5 newer video capability H.264 and Apple is counting on it that developers will adopt this newer format rather than Flash, eventually causing Flash to be obsolete.

The result of this tug-of-war will not be out so soon. Flash is still a very dominant player with years of head start and HTML5 still does not have the full capability of Flash. While HTML5 is open source, Flash has dedicated team of engineers who are constantly innovating. But the tide might be changing. The world most famous video channel, YouTube, owned by Google is developing HTML5 video player which does not need Flash. As the matter of fact, Flash is facing an extremely overwhelming force, with Google, Apple, Firefox and most recently Microsoft joining the support of HTML5. The history of Netscape has shown that when faced with an overwhelming force, the chances of the smaller company prevailing are small. This time, Flash is faced with 3 IT mammoths; all three are top 25 most valuable companies in the world (DeCarlo, 2011). 

Not necessary HTML5 will prevail

However, the circumstances today and in 1990s are no longer the same. Back in 1990s, Microsoft had almost complete monopoly and was extremely powerful. Today, it is no longer the case and is only the 6^th most valuable company in the world (DeCarlo, 2011). Even more favorable for Flash, Google, Apple and Microsoft are direct competitors, with Apple’s OS X Lion challenging Microsoft’s Windows and Google’s Android with Apple’s iOS and Google’s search engine with Microsoft’s Yahoo. The three way fight between these giants means the probability of working together to develop HTML5 is slim. Even if they do, the cooperation is superficial. In fact, it might be possible that each company is developing HTML5 because they are attempting to hold patents in this field. In 2011, W3C is seeking to invalidate Apple’s attempt to patent technology used in HTML5 (Bindra, 2011) because its role is to ensure openness and royalty-free use of HTML5 technology. The direction of progress of HTML5 by these 3 big companies is worrying as there is a high probability the development can break down if it resorts to the browser fight like the one in 1990s between Netscape and Microsoft.

Back then, the browser fight caused great disparity between the two browsers and it was common to place disclaimer such as “Best viewed in Netscape/Internet Explorer”. This was a huge barrier for innovation and created the opportunity for Flash as it works with any browser. It is worth observing whether the three companies will result in a browser war.

Firefox as savior

Firefox as mentioned earlier was the key contributor to HTML5. Firefox as of October 2011, it holds the largest browser market. With its innovations and support for HTML5, Firefox can possibly bring HTML5 into a new era and strengthen its position even further.

However, Firefox, unlike the rest does not have deep pockets to dig into. Since Firefox is available for free, it has limited options to generate revenue even though it is the market leader. In fact, approximately 91% to 94% of Mozilla’s revenue was generated from Google. Mozilla had partnered Google, thus Mozilla’s default search engine is Google and Google pays Mozilla for every search query made by Mozilla user (Mozilla Foundation and subsidaries, 2009). In 2008, Google had developed its own browser, Chrome and has over 30% of the market share as well. It is becoming dubious whether the partnership between Google and Mozilla will maintain and if the partnership fails, chances are Mozilla will become the next Netscape. And if Mozilla falls, one lead contributor of HTML5 will be lost. 

Other challenges of HTML5

The strength of HTML5 can also be its greatest weakness. As HTML5 becomes more powerful, it has the capability to replace native software or mobile applications. For users, it might mean more applications to use as operating system is no longer a restriction. However, for the manufacturers, this is a huge bane. Apple is counting its App store to drive hardware sales and if HTML5 homogenize all the apps, Apple will lose its competitive advantage. Yet, Apple is a key driver of HTML5 too. The conflict of interest here can cause a slowdown in HTML5 development as it is not likely for Apple to kill its own blockbuster App store.

Similarly, Microsoft faces the same dilemma with its support for HTML5 and its Silverlight. Its Silverlight plugin was created to compete with Flash by supporting rich internet applications. By developing HTML5, it is making its own Silverlight obsolete. But if IE were to forgo supporting HTML5, IE might become obsolete itself.

On the other hand, Google have the plenty of incentives to push for HTML5 support. Android’s apps trail Apple’s, thus with HTML5, it can narrow the gap between Android and iPhone. Google’s new browser, Chrome too needs a strong selling point. In fact, Google’s Chrome has the best support for HTML5, with a score of 341 followed by Firefox (HTML5test, N.D). Google is betting big time on HTML5 and is likely to be a key driver of HTML5 in future.

Security issues

Internet security has been a very serious issue lately when customer identity, credit cards and governments’ secrets have been stolen on large scale basis, such as Sony’s credit card hack. Systems uptime is also as stake, such as Iran’s nuclear program was shut down by a computer worm. Security features are becoming an area of focus when choosing which system to use.

HTML5 itself is fundamentally safe. It has too many professional developers to have significant loopholes. However, the feature of local storage means it might be possible for hackers to hijack the device or plant a worm to steal the local storage system, making it easy to steal users’ details.

Browser developers are not taking this lightly either. Browsers have been looking into better security and protection, such as implementing new headers that can protect broad class of attacks (Shema, 2011)

The biggest problem when it comes to security will not be HTML5 itself but developers developing the apps. Developers will have to take into consideration more factors when utilizing HTML5 functions to ensure security of users. Developers will be the key in making or breaking the internet security of browser technology.

HTML5 is not a fix for security issues but it is not likely to generate new security issues either. Nevertheless, it is a developmental product and nothing can be certain about it.

Stress test of HTML5 vs Flash

                Source: http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html

 Source: http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html

This stress test was conducted by Ozer on Windows and MacBook. From his results, the CPU usage of HTML5 and Flash are mixed. HTML5 did significantly better in Safari on Mac but not so for other browsers, especially on Windows. Furthermore, Flash is capable of supporting better graphics and higher resolution and HTML5 is still weaker in that aspect (Ozer, 2010).

Based on this result, it appears that HTML5 still has a huge amount of tweaking to do but potentially, it has the ability to outdo Flash. Reducing this CPU usage is particularly important for HTML5 as one of the key strengths is mobile browser and mobiles have limited battery life. Thus, efficient battery management can determine the take up rate of HTML5.

Editor’s note: Ozer has done seminars and written books featuring Adobe products, therefore makes money from Adobe Flash. There is a probability this test can be biased (Perez, 2010)

With HTML5 still not living up to expectations, it is not likely to overtake Flash anytime soon. Flash too is developing its own mobile Flash to compete with HTML5. In the near future, it is more likely that people will embrace both technologies as they can complement each other, using HTML5 for simpler functions and Flash for more graphics intensive applications. We do not know the limits of HTML5 yet until it is fully developed, thus we do not know the full impacts of HTML5. However, HTML5 certainly promises to develop much more than what we are experiencing now.

Conclusion

HTML has definitely been a revolutionary technology and its successor, HTML5 is likely to be yet another revolutionary change. It will drastically improve user’s experience of internet service with better graphics and richer applications. Users will no longer be able to tolerate slow, inefficient browsers and websites that are static or boring.

On a larger scale, HTML5 can conceivably cause some companies to fall and some companies to rise. Assuming HTML5 will be fully developed with W3C supporting it, companies which manage to support HTML5 will prevail. Currently, Safari, Chrome and Firefox appear to be performing well. IE on the other hand is an extremely slow adopter of HTML5. If it doesn’t speed up, it is likely to sink into oblivion like Netscape, even an OS dominance might not save it. 

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