2010 is sure to usher in many new products, innovations, and creative endeavors. Even more exciting than Jersey Shore returning for another agonizing season, is the batch of new technology just over the horizon! Welcome to “Tech in the Tens,” an on-going series of predictions and observations about photographic technology in the 2010.
With an overwhelming amount of technological innovation occurring on a daily-basis, and in order to avoid carpel tunnel for another week, I’m going to focus on two new technologies in this post. The Apple iPad and HTML5.
Every Apple fanboy this side of the Milky Way was glued to gizmodo’s liveblog hoping to catch a glimpse of Steve Jobs holding up his newest creation, the iPad, like Moses with the Ten Commandments tablets. But as with any new product as hyped as the iPad, there are bound to be haters. A lack of flash support, no built-in camera and other shortcomings were instantly noted by both fans and foes. I predict that once application designers get some time to build iPad specific Apps, nobody will miss these initial “shortcomings.” With proper integration of HTML5 the iPad will be one of the best way to view media-rich content.
The exclusion of Adobe Flash support seems to be biggest negative point people are concerned about, since the vast majority of web videos, and some websites are flash-based. But exactly one week before Jobs’ iPad announcement, YouTube turned heads by announcing it’s beta HTML5-supported video player. This is just what the iPad (as well as iPhone and iTouch) needed, as now videos embedded in HTML5 will play seamlessly in the browser window where Flash videos would show only as an error icon. Prior to YouTube’s beta launch, Vimeo made the same announcement of an HTML5 beta. Imagine being able to stream hi-def videos or sideshows on the iPad’s screen virtually anywhere! This could prove very beneficial for photographers and videographers.
Keep an eye out for more Technology in the Tens posts dealing with things such as Micro Four-Thirds Cameras, USB 3.0, CSS3 and the Drobo.
