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In season 1 of AMC's hit show Mad Men, Rachel Menken comes to the advertising firm Sterling Cooper because she wants to give her department store, Menken's, a makeover, so to speak. She wants to transform it from a successful department store into an elite one. "What kind of people do you want [coming into your store]?," Creative Director Don Draper asks Menken. "I want your kind of people Mr. Draper. People who don't care about coupons -- whether or not they can afford it. People who come into the store because it is expensive," Menken replies. Based on what we're hearing, HP has been having similarly themed meetings in recent months. They want to transform themselves -- from HP, the successful tech juggernaut, into Apple, the sexy one. When you think of HP, what do you think of? For most consumers it's either printers and sort of crappy, cheap computers that you get at Best Buy. But that's not what HP aspires to be anymore, sources familiar with HP's thinking are telling us. They want to be Apple. They want be the makers of high-quality consumer gadgets all connected by way of a digital ecosystem. An ecosystem they own and operate. One tied together by webOS.

Atlassian has raised $60 million from Accel Partners , the venture capital company that has funded such companies as Facebook, Dropbox and Etsy. The funding is one of the most sizable investments we have seen by any measure in the social enterprise community. It's a validation that a company focused on social product development tools can receive such a large amount of funding. It shows the demand in the enterprise for tools that include a collaborative, social component. Sponsor
Atlassian is not a pure social software tool provider but it has social components that provide ways to collaborate on product development. Jira is the company's most popular tool. it's primary use is to sniff out bug issues and for the software development cycle. Jira integrates with OpenSocial, the gadget platform initially developed by Google and MySpace to compete against Facebook.
Its success shows that the enterprise is adopting social tools. Product development ...

Steve Jobs’ ban of Adobe’s Flash technology for videos, animations and interactive mini-applications from his iPhone and iPad computers is one of the most widely controversial decisions the Apple founder has made. In an attempt to prove that Flash isn’t necessary, Apple has posted a set of seven demo pages that show off the power of HTML5, the emerging new standard for Web content that will run, theoretically, in any browser on any device.

The demos require you to use Apple’s Safari browser.  (Update: See the comments below this post for instructions on running the demos in Chrome.) This seems counter to the core premise that other browsers — Chrome, Firefox, Opera — are able to display HTML5 content. But if you’re willing to install Safari on a PC, you can see most of the technical tricks on display in these pages. Some features only work on a Mac.

Video — HTML5 lets you resize the video while it’s still playing, rather than needing to redraw a new window. You can also tilt the viewing angle, and apply a “mask” that, in the demo, shows the video playing inside the letters TRON (the video is a trailer for upcoming movie Tron Legacy.) Typography — HTML5 can change the size, color, and font of text in a browser window. It can adjust the transparency of text, the angle at which it’s written, and adjust both vertical (leading) and horizontal (tracking) alignment of letters. Apple’s demo also adds a shadow that can be turned on and off. Gallery — Apple’s demo manipulates a set of photos on the fly. They fly into position onscreen in five different formations from a straightforward grid to a corny 3D wheel. Audio — You probably won’t be surprised to learn that HTML5 pages can included embedded audio clips with player buttons to control them. 360 Degrees — This one’s impressive. You can rotate a photo of three iPhones to view them from any angle. Yes, it’s been done before, but what counts is that it runs smoothly, rather than sputtering as you spin it. VR — Apple presumes you know that VR stands for virtual reality. It’s like the 360 Degree demo, with more flexibility. You can move around inside the photo of an Apple Store.

If Jobs gets his way, Web developers will abandon Flash and use these HTML-based tricks instead. He’s got one big hurdle in the way: How to get everyone on the Internet to upgrade their browser. Flash, remember, became ubiquitous because Web surfers needed to install it to watch YouTube. What Apple needs is a compelling website for which people will install a new browser to avoid being left out of the fun. Just as Adobe’s Flash was popularized by a video startup, the killer site for HTML5 almost certainly won’t come from Apple.

Tags: Flash, HTML5

Companies: Adobe, Apple

People: Steve Jobs

I didn't plan to pick a fight with Steve Jobs last night. It just sort of happened: An iPad advertisement ticked me off; I sent the Apple CEO an angry email; he told me about "freedom from porn." The electronic debate proceeded from there. Of course, there was a bit more to it than that. There's the context: Jobs' legal fight with my employer Gawker Media, over the handling of an iPhone prototype; my long - simmering worries about Apple's growing power to limit self expression through its lockdown on iPad apps; and the fact that my wife, who might normally (and quite sensibly) veto the idea of spending Friday night sending email flames, was out of town. So in retrospect I was primed to lash out. But there was some serendipity too: Watching a new episode of 30 Rock on my digital video recorder, I somehow failed to skip over an Apple ad I'd never seen before, one that billed the iPad as nothing less than "a revolution." You can see an excerpt of the ad at the bottom ...

Our first glimpse of Firefox 4 was limited to a few tasteful mockups; this time, Mozilla 's main man Mike Beltzner has revealed the company's plans for its next generation web browser in its entirety. While exact features and dates are sketchy, his presentation reveals Mozilla would like to hold the Firefox 4 beta in June, before unleashing a CSS3, partially HTML5 compliant web browser with multitouch support, background updates, geolocation, Firefox Sync (aka Mozilla Weave) and a greatly streamlined UI this holiday season. The presentation has "PLANS MIGHT CHANGE" written all over it in large red letters, so trust us when we say none of this is for sure, but we like the direction Firefox is going and we'll be happy to see more. Video presentation at our source link, full slideshow after the break. Continue reading Mozilla shares tentative vision for Firefox 4
Mozilla shares tentative vision for Firefox 4 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 May 2010 22:48:00 EST. ...