There are people who have dropped out of college to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. Some of them did not even complete schooling at all.
1. Bill Gates
"In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone."
The world's best known billionaire, co-founded one of the world's largest software companies -- Microsoft.
Gates dropped out of Harvard in 1975. He took interest in computer programming since he was 13 years old.
Hailed as one of the chief architects of the personal computing revolution, he is also a great philanthropist donating billions of dollars to charity across the globe.
He has also been the worlds' richest from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008 (when he was ranked third).
2. Michael Dell.
"There are a lot of things that go into creating success. I don't like to do just the things I like to do. I like to do things that cause the company to succeed."
Michael Dell became an entrepreneur at a young age of 12, made his first $1,000 by selling stamps, and later sold newspaper subscriptions for Houston Post, making enough money to buy a BMW at 16.
Michael Dell later founded Dell Inc, one of the world's most successful IT companies.
3. Richard Branson
"A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts."
At age 16, Branson published a magazine called Student while still in school.
In 1970, he set up an audio record mail-order business. In 1972, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records, later known as Virgin Megastores.
Branson's Virgin brand grew during the 1980s and along the way he set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label.
Today, his Virgin Group owns over 360 companies.
4. Steve Jobs
"I think we're having fun. I think our customers really like our products. And we're always trying to do better."
Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College after one semester and went to work on designing games.
Later, he teamed up with Steve Wozniak, an engineer to start a business.
In 1975, at the age of 20, Jobs and Wozniak started working on the Apple I prototype.
Apple Inc today designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers.
5. Walt Disney
"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."
Walt Disney (1901-1966) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator and a successful entrepreneur who co-founded Walt Disney Productions.
One of the best-known motion picture producers in the world, The Walt Disney Company, has annual revenues of about $35 billion.
6. Henry Ford
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."
Henry Ford (1863-1947) was the founder of the Ford Motor Company.
He is known for the introduction of the Model T automobile which revolutionised transportation and American industry.
He is credited with 'Fordism', mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Henry Ford never attended college.
7. Milton Hershey
"I think if you study-if you learn too much of what others have done, you may tend to take the same direction as everybody else."
Milton Snavely Hershey (1857-1945) was founder of The Hershey Chocolate Company.
He dropped out of school when he was just 14 years old, he got a job at a candy factory in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
After working a few years at the candy factory, he decided to open his own little candy business near Philadelphia.
After a series of failures, he finally tasted success selling caramels. Today, Hershey's is the largest chocolate manufacturer in North America.
8. Larry Ellison
"I have had all of the disadvantages required for success."
Larry Ellison left the University of Illinois at the end of his second year, after his mother died.
He later studied computer designing and moved to California.
After doing several jobs for eight years, in 1977, Ellison and his Ampex colleagues, Robert Miner and Ed Oates, founded Software Development Labs, with $2,000.
The company was later renamed Oracle Corporation. Oracle is today the world's second largest software company.
9. Coco Chanel
"Fashion is made to become unfashionable."
Gabrielle Bonheur 'Coco' Chanel (1883 -1971) a French fashion designer founded the famous fashion brand Chanel.
Starting with the first millinery shop, in 1912, she grew to become one of the most famous fashion designers in Paris.
10. Ty Warner
"As long as kids keep fighting over the products and retailers are angry at us because they cannot get enough, I think those are good signs."
H. Ty Warner is an American toy manufacturer and businessman.
After dropping out of Kalamazoo College in Michigan, he tried his luck in Hollywood as an actor but failed.
He then began working for toy maker Dakin. By 1986, Warner mortgaged his home and invested his life savings into founding Ty Inc.
11. Simon Cowell
"The object of this competition is not to be mean to the losers but to find a winner. The process makes you mean because you get frustrated."
Simon Cowell is also the owner of the UK-based TV production and music publishing house Syco.
He is best known for judging TV talent shows, including Pop Idol, The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and American Idol.
12. Debbi Fields
"I knew I loved making cookies and every time I did, I made people happy. That was my business plan."
A housewife turned entrepreneur, Debbi Fields founded Fields Bakeries.
Initially, she was discouraged by her husband who said she will not be bale to sell $50 worth of cookies on the first day.
But when she saw people were not coming to her store, she went out on the streets and sold cookies worth $75.
13. Barry Diller
"This is a world in which reasons are made up because reality is too painful."
Barry Charles Diller is the chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp.
He played a key role in the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting.
Ever since he dropped out of college, he had set his eyes on the show business.
Starting his career as an agency mail clerk, he rose to become one of the famous and richest media barons.
14. Frank Lloyd Wright
"Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes."
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 projects.
Wright started using new technology, materials and engineering to create some of the 20th century's most iconic buildings.
At 18, Wright joined an engineering course at the University of Wisconsin, Madison but dropped out to join the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee.
Want to be an entrepreneur check this post
Check the tips for becoming a successful entrepreneur
Monday, October 25, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Start using HTML5 today!
I read another great article about "Should
be using HTML5 today"
The author says the following on why web developers should adopt HTML5 sooon,
Despite all the hype about HTML5, there are still many people (mainly web developers!) out there who are wondering whether or not they should use it in their next site. The main issues seem to be browser compatibility and the myth that HTML5 won’t be ready for mainstream usage until 2022.
To begin with, let’s bust this myth once and for all. For any specification to be deemed “ready”, it supposedly needs to be fully implemented in two browsers. If this rule was true, CSS2.1 also wouldn’t be “ready”, and do you hear people advising you to hold off on using that? No, and quite rightly so too. And the same should go for HTML5.
As for browser compatibility, the latest versions of browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera all support various parts of the HTML5 specification, and older versions of these browsers support bits of the spec. The major headache, as always, is Internet Explorer. However, with the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 9, which will support HTML5 features, this is improving. That said, there will of course be many people who remain on older versions of IE and how will they cope with HTML5?
He concludes in the following way,
There are a whole host of websites out there using HTML5 already and most of them work just fine. There are sites out there dedicated to showcasing websites using HTML5, such as HTML5 Gallery and 101 Best HTML5 Sites. They’re well worth taking a look at to see what others are doing.
Personally I think that there’s nothing to stop you from going out there and using HTML5 today in your websites. It works now and is only improving. So the answer to should you be using HTML5 today is a resounding yes!
Do you have any specific reasons on why to use or not to use HTML5?
be using HTML5 today"
The author says the following on why web developers should adopt HTML5 sooon,
Despite all the hype about HTML5, there are still many people (mainly web developers!) out there who are wondering whether or not they should use it in their next site. The main issues seem to be browser compatibility and the myth that HTML5 won’t be ready for mainstream usage until 2022.
To begin with, let’s bust this myth once and for all. For any specification to be deemed “ready”, it supposedly needs to be fully implemented in two browsers. If this rule was true, CSS2.1 also wouldn’t be “ready”, and do you hear people advising you to hold off on using that? No, and quite rightly so too. And the same should go for HTML5.
As for browser compatibility, the latest versions of browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera all support various parts of the HTML5 specification, and older versions of these browsers support bits of the spec. The major headache, as always, is Internet Explorer. However, with the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 9, which will support HTML5 features, this is improving. That said, there will of course be many people who remain on older versions of IE and how will they cope with HTML5?
He concludes in the following way,
There are a whole host of websites out there using HTML5 already and most of them work just fine. There are sites out there dedicated to showcasing websites using HTML5, such as HTML5 Gallery and 101 Best HTML5 Sites. They’re well worth taking a look at to see what others are doing.
Personally I think that there’s nothing to stop you from going out there and using HTML5 today in your websites. It works now and is only improving. So the answer to should you be using HTML5 today is a resounding yes!
Do you have any specific reasons on why to use or not to use HTML5?
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Be your own boss!!
Few days back I posted about "Want to be entrepreneur" and listed the challenges/traits for entrepreneurship..
Today I read an interesting article How to Make Your Business Dream a Reality...
In the article, "Scott Belsky" (author of Making Ideas Happen) argues that most entrepreneurs suffer from idea-to-idea syndrome, jumping from one big idea to the next while executing none.
Here are Belsky’s three tips for using the Action Method to create a company that executes.
1. Hire the killjoys.
The first step to activating the Action Method, Belsky says, is to create an "immune system" that kills ideas. This means hiring killjoys to capture every action step and say no to new ideas -- rightfully so, in most cases.
"It's important for entrepreneurs to hire people they don't necessarily want to have a beer with but who can be the immune system in their startup," Belsky says.
Founders sometimes play this role, too. Francis Pedraza, a long-time Reserve Officer Training Corps student from a military family, enforces focus at his Ithaca, N.Y.-based startup of 17 fellow Cornell University students, The DoBand Campaign.
DoBand is a social network where participants hold each other accountable to get things done. Each participant has a wearable band that identifies them and their proposed tasks.
Pedraza, who manages the company using Belsky's Action Method productivity software, says the team's performance slipped during the summer months while working remotely. Upon their return in the fall, he brought in new team members, challenged others and cut those who weren't performing.
"If you've got enough guts to fire one or two people on the team, miracles start to happen," Pedraza says. In this case, he and his team raised $75,000 in funding just a few months into the life of the business.
2.Work with a bias toward action.
No doubt accountability is a key feature of the action-oriented startup, but perhaps the most important attribute is a propensity to act. For that to occur, Belsky says entrepreneurs need to unlearn some things.
"It's important, in the early stages of a creative project, to almost do the opposite of what we're taught growing up, which is to think before we act," Belsky says. "Startups have to recognize that their competitive advantage against the big guys is that they have the space to [experiment]."
What they don't have is time. Today's startups build and release products in days rather than months. In that environment, action is a survival skill, Belsky says, especially if the original concept was right all along.
Evan Saks, founder of build-to-order mattress maker Create-A-Mattress.com in Needham, Mass., learned this lesson the hard way. He says his team spent two months talking with suppliers about adding options before his design agency pushed him to focus on getting the company's website live. Feedback would dictate changes, the agency's owner said. It was just the wake-up call Saks needed.
"Following that meeting, I created a roadmap that let the other vendors see there was a place for them in the future. Then, I set the roadmap aside and put all energies into launching the core website the way it was originally conceived," Saks says.
3.Change your vocabulary
While taking action can be the key to getting unstuck, talking action is often necessary to produce growth. "You need an environment where people are obsessed with taking action steps," Belsky says.
This behavior manifests in various ways. Belsky says he's seen action-obsessed managers run meetings in which no one's allowed to sit. The thinking: Weak-kneed participants are more likely to keep discussion short and focused. Others force meeting participants to speak aloud the action steps assigned to them. The theory? If you speak what you intend to do aloud, you're more likely to do it.
Atlanta-based brand development agency Matchstic uses this second tactic to improve how its teams and project managers work together.
It wasn't always this way. In the past, project managers would take client requirements and pass them along to team participants and wait for results. When team members failed to get things done, the project manager would bear the consequences.
Recognizing this problem, Matchstic chief strategist and co-founder Craig Johnson says management bought Belsky's book for everyone on the team. They read it together in the spring, and as an agency, began to change their approach to getting things done. Now, no meeting ends without every participant reviewing his or her action steps. Revenue is up 30 percent since, Johnson says.
"Adopting action-oriented vocabulary in our office has made a huge difference in how things get done," Johnson says. "If something doesn't get done, it's clear who's dropped the ball, which means people drop the ball much less often."
More here
Today I read an interesting article How to Make Your Business Dream a Reality...
In the article, "Scott Belsky" (author of Making Ideas Happen) argues that most entrepreneurs suffer from idea-to-idea syndrome, jumping from one big idea to the next while executing none.
Here are Belsky’s three tips for using the Action Method to create a company that executes.
1. Hire the killjoys.
The first step to activating the Action Method, Belsky says, is to create an "immune system" that kills ideas. This means hiring killjoys to capture every action step and say no to new ideas -- rightfully so, in most cases.
"It's important for entrepreneurs to hire people they don't necessarily want to have a beer with but who can be the immune system in their startup," Belsky says.
Founders sometimes play this role, too. Francis Pedraza, a long-time Reserve Officer Training Corps student from a military family, enforces focus at his Ithaca, N.Y.-based startup of 17 fellow Cornell University students, The DoBand Campaign.
DoBand is a social network where participants hold each other accountable to get things done. Each participant has a wearable band that identifies them and their proposed tasks.
Pedraza, who manages the company using Belsky's Action Method productivity software, says the team's performance slipped during the summer months while working remotely. Upon their return in the fall, he brought in new team members, challenged others and cut those who weren't performing.
"If you've got enough guts to fire one or two people on the team, miracles start to happen," Pedraza says. In this case, he and his team raised $75,000 in funding just a few months into the life of the business.
2.Work with a bias toward action.
No doubt accountability is a key feature of the action-oriented startup, but perhaps the most important attribute is a propensity to act. For that to occur, Belsky says entrepreneurs need to unlearn some things.
"It's important, in the early stages of a creative project, to almost do the opposite of what we're taught growing up, which is to think before we act," Belsky says. "Startups have to recognize that their competitive advantage against the big guys is that they have the space to [experiment]."
What they don't have is time. Today's startups build and release products in days rather than months. In that environment, action is a survival skill, Belsky says, especially if the original concept was right all along.
Evan Saks, founder of build-to-order mattress maker Create-A-Mattress.com in Needham, Mass., learned this lesson the hard way. He says his team spent two months talking with suppliers about adding options before his design agency pushed him to focus on getting the company's website live. Feedback would dictate changes, the agency's owner said. It was just the wake-up call Saks needed.
"Following that meeting, I created a roadmap that let the other vendors see there was a place for them in the future. Then, I set the roadmap aside and put all energies into launching the core website the way it was originally conceived," Saks says.
3.Change your vocabulary
While taking action can be the key to getting unstuck, talking action is often necessary to produce growth. "You need an environment where people are obsessed with taking action steps," Belsky says.
This behavior manifests in various ways. Belsky says he's seen action-obsessed managers run meetings in which no one's allowed to sit. The thinking: Weak-kneed participants are more likely to keep discussion short and focused. Others force meeting participants to speak aloud the action steps assigned to them. The theory? If you speak what you intend to do aloud, you're more likely to do it.
Atlanta-based brand development agency Matchstic uses this second tactic to improve how its teams and project managers work together.
It wasn't always this way. In the past, project managers would take client requirements and pass them along to team participants and wait for results. When team members failed to get things done, the project manager would bear the consequences.
Recognizing this problem, Matchstic chief strategist and co-founder Craig Johnson says management bought Belsky's book for everyone on the team. They read it together in the spring, and as an agency, began to change their approach to getting things done. Now, no meeting ends without every participant reviewing his or her action steps. Revenue is up 30 percent since, Johnson says.
"Adopting action-oriented vocabulary in our office has made a huge difference in how things get done," Johnson says. "If something doesn't get done, it's clear who's dropped the ball, which means people drop the ball much less often."
More here
Monday, October 18, 2010
HTML5 storage instead of cookies...
When web developers think of storing anything about the user, they immediately think of uploading to the server. HTML5 changes that, as there are now several technologies allowing the app to save data on the client device. It might also be sync'd back to the server, or it might only ever stay on the client: that's down to you, the developer.
There are several reasons to use client-side storage. First, you can make your app work when the user is offline, possibly sync'ing data back once the network is connected again. Second, it's a performance booster; you can show a large corpus of data as soon as the user clicks on to your site, instead of waiting for it to download again. Third, it's an easier programming model, with no server infrastructure required. Of course, the data is more vulnerable and the user can't accessit from multiple clients, so you should only use it for non-critical data, in particular cached versions of data that's also "in the cloud". See "Offline": What does it mean and why should I care? for a general discussion of offline technologies, of which client-side storage is one component.
The technologies are:
Web Storage simply provides a key-value mapping, e.g. localStorage["name"] = username;. Unfortunately, present implementations only support string-to-string mappings, so you need to serialise and de-serialise other data structures. You can do so using JSON.stringify() and JSON.parse().
Web SQL Database gives you all the power - and effort - of a structured SQL relational database.
Indexed Database is somewhere in between Web Storage and Web SQL Database. Like Indexed Database, it's a straightforward key-value mapping, but it supports indexes like those of relational databases, so searching objects matching a particular field is fast; you don't have to manually iterate through every object in the store.
File Access is an API for reading file content in JavaScript. Given a set of files the user has added to a "file" input element, you can read the content of the file or reference it as a URL, e.g. if the user has specified an image file, you can show the image. There are also proposals underway for file writing capabilities.
Local storage and session storage
In HTML5 we can do better than that: use sessionStorage and localStorage in place of cookies.
sessionStorage sets fields on the window. When the window is closed, the session fields are lost, even if the site remains open in another window.
localStorage sets fields on the domain. Even when you close the browser, reopen it, and go back to the site, it remembers all fields in localStorage.
These two web storage objects can be used to persist user data on the clientside for the length of the session or indefinitely. Their data is not transferred to the server via every HTTP request, either. They have an API that will make you happy to be rid of cookies. Here are both APIs, using cookies as a fallback.
// if localStorage is present, use that
if (('localStorage' in window) && window.localStorage !== null) {
// easy object property API
localStorage.wishlist = '["Unicorn","Narwhal","Deathbear"]';
} else {
// without sessionStorage we'll have to use a far-future cookie
// with document.cookie's awkward API :(
var date = new Date();
date.setTime(date.getTime()+(365*24*60*60*1000));
var expires = date.toGMTString();
var cookiestr = 'wishlist=["Unicorn","Narwhal","Deathbear"];'+
' expires='+expires+'; path=/';
document.cookie = cookiestr;
}
HTML5 Storage is supported by IE8, Firefox 3.5+, and Safari 4, Google Chrome..
There are several reasons to use client-side storage. First, you can make your app work when the user is offline, possibly sync'ing data back once the network is connected again. Second, it's a performance booster; you can show a large corpus of data as soon as the user clicks on to your site, instead of waiting for it to download again. Third, it's an easier programming model, with no server infrastructure required. Of course, the data is more vulnerable and the user can't accessit from multiple clients, so you should only use it for non-critical data, in particular cached versions of data that's also "in the cloud". See "Offline": What does it mean and why should I care? for a general discussion of offline technologies, of which client-side storage is one component.
The technologies are:
Web Storage simply provides a key-value mapping, e.g. localStorage["name"] = username;. Unfortunately, present implementations only support string-to-string mappings, so you need to serialise and de-serialise other data structures. You can do so using JSON.stringify() and JSON.parse().
Web SQL Database gives you all the power - and effort - of a structured SQL relational database.
Indexed Database is somewhere in between Web Storage and Web SQL Database. Like Indexed Database, it's a straightforward key-value mapping, but it supports indexes like those of relational databases, so searching objects matching a particular field is fast; you don't have to manually iterate through every object in the store.
File Access is an API for reading file content in JavaScript. Given a set of files the user has added to a "file" input element, you can read the content of the file or reference it as a URL, e.g. if the user has specified an image file, you can show the image. There are also proposals underway for file writing capabilities.
Local storage and session storage
In HTML5 we can do better than that: use sessionStorage and localStorage in place of cookies.
sessionStorage sets fields on the window. When the window is closed, the session fields are lost, even if the site remains open in another window.
localStorage sets fields on the domain. Even when you close the browser, reopen it, and go back to the site, it remembers all fields in localStorage.
These two web storage objects can be used to persist user data on the clientside for the length of the session or indefinitely. Their data is not transferred to the server via every HTTP request, either. They have an API that will make you happy to be rid of cookies. Here are both APIs, using cookies as a fallback.
// if localStorage is present, use that
if (('localStorage' in window) && window.localStorage !== null) {
// easy object property API
localStorage.wishlist = '["Unicorn","Narwhal","Deathbear"]';
} else {
// without sessionStorage we'll have to use a far-future cookie
// with document.cookie's awkward API :(
var date = new Date();
date.setTime(date.getTime()+(365*24*60*60*1000));
var expires = date.toGMTString();
var cookiestr = 'wishlist=["Unicorn","Narwhal","Deathbear"];'+
' expires='+expires+'; path=/';
document.cookie = cookiestr;
}
HTML5 Storage is supported by IE8, Firefox 3.5+, and Safari 4, Google Chrome..
Tips for faster wepapps with HTML5
Below are 10 tips to make web applications faster with HTML5
1. Make use of web storage instead of cookies
2. Use CSS transitions instead of Javascript annimation
3. Use client side databases instead of server roundtrips
4. Javascript improvements lend considerable performance improvements
5. Use cache manifest for live sites, not just offline apps.
6. Enable hardware acceleration to enhance visual experience
7. For CPU-heavy operations, Web workers deliver
8. HTML5 form attributes and input types.
9. Use CSS3 effects instead of requesting heavy image sprites.
10. Websockets for faster delivery with less bandwidth than XHR.
Each and every tip will be explained in the upcoming posts.
1. Make use of web storage instead of cookies
2. Use CSS transitions instead of Javascript annimation
3. Use client side databases instead of server roundtrips
4. Javascript improvements lend considerable performance improvements
5. Use cache manifest for live sites, not just offline apps.
6. Enable hardware acceleration to enhance visual experience
7. For CPU-heavy operations, Web workers deliver
8. HTML5 form attributes and input types.
9. Use CSS3 effects instead of requesting heavy image sprites.
10. Websockets for faster delivery with less bandwidth than XHR.
Each and every tip will be explained in the upcoming posts.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
HTML5 webapps going to rock!
Last week, I went to the Future of Web Apps conference in London. It’s an event that’s primarily targeted at developers, and much of the discussion was focused on newer web technologies and techniques, such as HTML5, CSS3 and geolocation. As a non-developer, what I found most exciting about the conference was that it offered me some insight into how the web apps we use will change as these new technologies become more widely available and developers figure out how to use them.
SMALL PIECES, LOOSELY JOINED
The presentation that really brought home the potential of these next-generation web technologies for me was by Brad Neuberg, a developer who used to work at Google. Neuberg’s talk had the theme of “Small pieces, loosely joined,” and showed how technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, SVG, Canvas and WebGL can be used together to create stunning applications within the browser. The centerpiece of his presentation was the slide deck. It wasn’t a standard PowerPoint or Keynote presentation, but rather, a jaw-dropping, browser-based, 3-D slide demo, built using the very tools that Neuberg was talking about,. Neuberg could slickly navigate between the various slides in the presentation at will, and many “slides” contained a live demo of the technologies discussed. If you have Safari on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you can check it out here. (Note: To navigate between the slides, use the arrow keys. You can zoom in and out using the space bar. The 3-D slide demo only works properly in Safari currently, but you can view a video of it in action in this blog post). While these technologies are impressive on their own, Neuberg’s demo showed that the way they can be easily combined in the browser will lead to real innovation in web apps over the next few years.
READY FOR PRIME TIME?
It’s unlikely that we’ll see all of these technologies being used to their fullest potential for a little while yet, because they aren’t yet fully supported by all of the browsers. However, the various browser manufacturers seem to be racing each other to incorporate support as quickly as possible. Even Microsoft, lambasted for its poor support of web standards in previous versions of Internet Explorer, has upped its game with the release of a beta of IE9 that has decent HTML5 and CSS3 support. It won’t be long before many of these technologies are widely available, and developers can start using them in web apps; indeed, Neuberg mentioned that both Firefox 4 and Chrome betas would soon support the technology used in his slide demo.
IT’S NOT JUST THE FLASHY STUFF
At the moment, many HTML5/CSS3 apps are flashy demos that show off the potential of these technologies, but while Canvas and SVG demos look cool, many of the most useful bits of HTML5 do stuff that’s mainly “under the hood.” For instance, these are tools that do things like enable geolocation. Because some aspects of these technologies are already available in many browsers, we’re starting to see them used in some web apps. Google has already started incorporating some HTML5 features into its web apps, for example, as has Facebook. While Facebook’s and Google’s use of HTML5 isn’t visually impressive like Neuberg’s slide demo, these companies are making their existing apps better by enabling innovative features like geolocation and drag-and-drop.
As technologies like HTML5, CSS3, SVG and WebGL start to become more mainstream, not only will the web apps we already use become more useful, but we should also see developers building web apps that do things that previously could have only been done by desktop applications. It’s an exciting time to be working on the web, both for the developers of web apps, who have a plethora of new technologies and techniques to experiment with, and for users of those apps.
Source Gigaom
SMALL PIECES, LOOSELY JOINED
The presentation that really brought home the potential of these next-generation web technologies for me was by Brad Neuberg, a developer who used to work at Google. Neuberg’s talk had the theme of “Small pieces, loosely joined,” and showed how technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, SVG, Canvas and WebGL can be used together to create stunning applications within the browser. The centerpiece of his presentation was the slide deck. It wasn’t a standard PowerPoint or Keynote presentation, but rather, a jaw-dropping, browser-based, 3-D slide demo, built using the very tools that Neuberg was talking about,. Neuberg could slickly navigate between the various slides in the presentation at will, and many “slides” contained a live demo of the technologies discussed. If you have Safari on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you can check it out here. (Note: To navigate between the slides, use the arrow keys. You can zoom in and out using the space bar. The 3-D slide demo only works properly in Safari currently, but you can view a video of it in action in this blog post). While these technologies are impressive on their own, Neuberg’s demo showed that the way they can be easily combined in the browser will lead to real innovation in web apps over the next few years.
READY FOR PRIME TIME?
It’s unlikely that we’ll see all of these technologies being used to their fullest potential for a little while yet, because they aren’t yet fully supported by all of the browsers. However, the various browser manufacturers seem to be racing each other to incorporate support as quickly as possible. Even Microsoft, lambasted for its poor support of web standards in previous versions of Internet Explorer, has upped its game with the release of a beta of IE9 that has decent HTML5 and CSS3 support. It won’t be long before many of these technologies are widely available, and developers can start using them in web apps; indeed, Neuberg mentioned that both Firefox 4 and Chrome betas would soon support the technology used in his slide demo.
IT’S NOT JUST THE FLASHY STUFF
At the moment, many HTML5/CSS3 apps are flashy demos that show off the potential of these technologies, but while Canvas and SVG demos look cool, many of the most useful bits of HTML5 do stuff that’s mainly “under the hood.” For instance, these are tools that do things like enable geolocation. Because some aspects of these technologies are already available in many browsers, we’re starting to see them used in some web apps. Google has already started incorporating some HTML5 features into its web apps, for example, as has Facebook. While Facebook’s and Google’s use of HTML5 isn’t visually impressive like Neuberg’s slide demo, these companies are making their existing apps better by enabling innovative features like geolocation and drag-and-drop.
As technologies like HTML5, CSS3, SVG and WebGL start to become more mainstream, not only will the web apps we already use become more useful, but we should also see developers building web apps that do things that previously could have only been done by desktop applications. It’s an exciting time to be working on the web, both for the developers of web apps, who have a plethora of new technologies and techniques to experiment with, and for users of those apps.
Source Gigaom
Top 5 HTML5 questions...
Paul Gubbay is vice president of engineering for design and web atAdobe. He has spent the past 25 years working in the software industry with a specialized focus on creative and web professional tooling and solutions.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about HTML5 and confusion about what it is, what can be done with it today, the best way to learn it, etc.
With so much hype in the marketplace, I wanted to tackle the questions we hear most from creative professionals who want to take advantage of HTML5 but are unsure about how to get started.
1. What is HTML5?
In its simplest form, HTML5 is the evolution of HTML. Interestingly, it has become a “catch all” term for many technologies that can move the web forward, including CSS3, SVG and Canvas. What it offers most web professionals is a new set of functionality for creating richer interactivity for websites and applications across multiple screens. Due to the adoption of WebKit on mobile devices, HTML5 is gaining a lot of traction around smartphone and tablet development. In its early days, HTML5 will feel incremental in terms of how users can take advantage of it. But as the ecosystem evolves, frameworks and tooling will enable web professionals to create a new world of interesting experiences including applications that are accessible on a variety of devices.
2. Can I Use HTML5 Even if Users Have Outdated Browsers?
Although HTML5 is still in its infancy, there are several ways users can employ new language elements while ensuring that content degrades gracefully on unsupported browsers. There are plenty of articles on the web that discuss these techniques. For example:
- Developers can work conceptually with new structural elements such as Header or Footer by creating classes with the same name and attaching them to divs within a user’s page.
- You can take it a step further by using the new HTML5 elements today with a combination of JavaScript and some CSS to ensure compatibility with older browsers.
- Developers can leverage JavaScript libraries such as Modernizr that take advantage of emerging technologies (HTML5, CSS3) while providing control over older browsers that may not support this functionality.
- Developers can use HTML5 forms with new Input elements and types to provide richer functionality on modern browsers that support them with no penalty on older browsers where they will degrade gracefully to text inputs.
Of course if you are just targeting mobile browsers, you can take advantage of many more HTML5/CSS3 features. The mobile browsers that are primarily based on WebKit provide a lot more support, although there are still some inconsistencies across different implementations.
3. What Should Designers and Developers Learn First?
Developers should start incrementally by expanding their skills with technologies they already understand. Leveraging new functionality in CSS3 is a great place to begin. I also recommend following blogs to stay on top of what’s going on and keeping an eye on the different JavaScript frameworks that are springing up. There is a lot of innovation happening around mobile frameworks and runtimes right now. Some good resources to watch include:
Developers should also make sure they keep in mind the platforms they are building for, because the gating factor right now is browser support.
4. Am I Behind the Times?
Hype about a particular technology can often lead to designers and developers feeling like they’re behind the curve, but that just isn’t true with HTML5. While there are some really cool examples out there today, in reality it is a much smaller subset of web developers that can create them, and the content works on an even smaller subset of devices.
There are significant hurdles to face when developing for devices, in addition to the typical cross-browser desktop compatibility issues everybody experiences. How do you take advantage of hardware acceleration? How do you take advantage of device APIs (e.g. touch, geolocation, offline cache, etc.)? What do you do when device APIs are not consistently accessible through the browser implementations?
Look for JavaScript frameworks and tools that can abstract across these differences and provide a set of building blocks that work consistently across the devices you are targeting. While there are many exciting capabilities being made available, most users will need to be pragmatic in their approach.
5. Why the Wait?
The gating factors right now for the widespread adoption of HTML5 are the browser vendors and the HTML5/CSS3 specification. Similar to the browser wars in the early days of the web, there is a significant amount of innovation happening within the browsers themselves. WebKit is becoming the predominant browser for mobile devices, but there are multiple implementations. Firefox and Chrome continue to push the boundaries on the desktop, with IE9 now joining the race with deeper support for HTML5/CSS3. While fast innovation is good news for web pros, it also creates inconsistency. This is where the Spec comes into play. The Spec drives the standard that all browsers need to adhere to. However, the Spec will not be ratified for many years.
Most web pros will be well served by standardizing on frameworks and tooling that can help them take advantage of the new functionality while degrading gracefully on the browsers that are still behind. Sites such as HTML5 Readiness can give users insight into what is and isn’t supported across Browsers.
What Is Adobe’s Stance on HTML5?
This is a question we get a lot at Adobe. As the current landscape continues to evolve rapidly, we believe people will benefit from implementing a hybrid strategy where Flash and HTML5 technologies are both utilized depending on the business need. For instance, if you are building an enterprise RIA with a multi-function team that needs a strong development framework, ubiquity across devices, and one vendor behind the technology, then Flash makes a lot of sense. If you are building a dynamic website that targets desktop, tablet and mobile, then HTML5/CSS3 is likely the right technology. In short, there will be places where HTML5 makes the most sense and provides basic interactivity, but there will always be a place for richer interaction and guaranteed consistency, and that’s where Adobe feels that Flash technology excels.
Conclusion
There’s no question that designers and developers should familiarize themselves with HTML5, learn what capabilities are currently supported, and, most importantly, where those capabilities are available based on the audiences they’re trying to target. Users shouldn’t make the mistake of falling in love with a particular site element and charging ahead only to find out that it doesn’t work at all in a browser that matters to their customer.
These are exciting times for designers and developers. We have some great challenges and opportunities in front of us that will have a huge impact on the future of the web. I can’t wait.
Source: Mashable
Want to be an entrepreneur?
Nowadays many people prefer to have self-employment rather than working 12 hours each day at some office. There are so many factors to consider before you decide to become entrepreneurs. Even if you have capital/backup to conduct the business, you cannot be one hundred percent sure that it can provide high returns in the future. Building a successful business can take years filled with setbacks, long hours with little reward. How can you figure out whether you're suited for self-eIf you’re reading this and wondering where to start on your quest for entrepreneurship, there is one good piece of news for you. Entrepreneurs are not born – they are made.mployment?
Here are the 10 questions (from WallStree Journal) to ask to see whether you're up for the challenge of entrepreneurship,
1. Are you willing and able to bear great financial risk?
2. Are you willing to sacrifice your lifestyle for potentially many years?
3. Is your significant other on board?
4. Do you like all aspects of running a business?
5. Are you comfortable making decisions on the fly with no playbook?
6. What's your track record of executing your ideas?
7. How persuasive and well-spoken are you?
8. Do you have a concept you're passionate about?
9. Are you a self-starter?
10. Do you have a business partner?
Gigaom has an excellent article with some great thought provoking statements for entrepreneurship..
I really like this advice in the article which says "If you want to be an entrepreneur, a great way to learn is to be an early employee at someone else's promising startup".
There are few traits you need to cultivate in order to succeed as an entrepreneur,
- Passion
- Plan, plan and then plan some more
- Be disciplined
- Be a cheapskate
- Understand that you're always marketing and selling
- Know that your client is the most important person in the business
- Remember that in business, Image is more important.
If you’re reading this and wondering where to start on your quest for entrepreneurship, there is one good piece of news for you. Entrepreneurs are not born – they are made.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
HTML5 - Getting started
Welcome to the series of HTML 5. I'm planning to cover several new features that have been introduced in HTML 5 specification.
Before we dive into HTML5 features letz see the basics of HTML5.
What exactly is HTML5?
Well, HTML5 is the evolution of HTML standard. It is a new version of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 focusing on the needs of Web application developers. Due to the adoption of WebKit on mobile devices, HTML5 is gaining a lot of traction around smartphone and tablet development.
Before we dive into HTML5 features letz see the basics of HTML5.
What exactly is HTML5?
Well, HTML5 is the evolution of HTML standard. It is a new version of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 focusing on the needs of Web application developers. Due to the adoption of WebKit on mobile devices, HTML5 is gaining a lot of traction around smartphone and tablet development.
The true power of HTML5 is Coordination. It helps all the browser vendors to standardize on a common set of features.
Wikipedia says,
Like its immediate predecessors, HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1, HTML5 is a standard for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. The new standard incorporates features like video playback and drag-and-drop that have been previously dependent on third-party browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight.While HTML5 specification is not finalized yet, you can use it with any browser that supports it. It shouldn’t be long before all browsers are 100% compatible as HTML 5 has been designed to make things easier for browsers to render a web page, powerful applications, rich multimedia, stunning designs are all on their way to a computer screen near you.
Google more than anyone, is pushing HTML5 on all fronts.
Watch this space for the series of posts about HTML 5!
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