A report published this week by Michigan State University's psychology department found evidence that using multiple forms of media at the same time is linked to symptoms of anxiety and depression. The study was conducted with data from two surveys of 319 undergraduate students, a group that engages in a lot of media multi-tasking.

One study measured symptoms of depression and anxiety, the other how the subjects engage in media multitasking, (i.e. video games, texting, apps)  to give researchers an idea of whether a subject was a high, low or medium media multi-tasker. It's important to note that the surveys measured indicators of depression and anxiety, but didn't serve as a clinical diagnosis. 

Participants with high levels of media multitasking were put into one group, those with lower levels in another. The latter group had a median score of 3.66 out 9 on a scale of depressive symptoms. The higher level group? 6.19 out of 9. The study also found that those in the higher range scored a higher median number for indicators of social phobia symptoms. 

While this is the first study of its kind to research the topic of multiple media usage and mental illness, it's not the first that has found a link between internet use and depression. In fact, earlier this year, Sriran Chellappan, assistant professor of computer science at Missouri University of Science and Technology and Raghavendra Kotikalapud, a software development engineer, penned a story for the New York Times about how depressed people use the Internet. Their method of data collection was similar to the Michigan State Study, as were their results. They found that the students with higher levels of depressive symptoms used peer-to-peer sharing (movies, music) more than those without. They also checked their email more often, which led the reseachers to believe this correlated with high levels of anxiety. 

Cause And Effect?                                                                  

There are plenty of questions  left to be answered, and plenty of room for future research. Mark Becker, lead investigator on the study, said in the report that the researchers aren't sure whether media-multitasking is causing depression and anxiety or if people already experiencing mental illness are using media as a form of distraction from their condition.

If media turns out to be the problem, Becker said that potential recommendations could include taking a "media vacation" to see if anything changes. While the direction of causality still needs to be determined, the bottom line is that multi-media consumption does seem to be linked with signs of anxiety and depression. "This could have important implications for understanding how to minimize the negative impacts of increased media multitasking," said Becker in the report. 

As for future research, in an email to ReadWrite, Becker wrote that the biggest challenge is to figure out which is the cause and which is the effect. Controlling a subject's day-to-day media multitasking habits and randomly manipulating it isn't easy, he added. "However, we hope to determine whether doing a task that requires multitasking with media produces a momentary shift in people's mood and/or anxiety. If so, it would provide some indication that media use can play a causal role."

Among a certain class of shutterbugs, there's a whole new genre called "camera toss" photography. Nikon knows about the phenomenon, apparently, because last week a patent from the company was published that shows how it's planning to build this feature into a new kind of camera.

What Is Camera Tossing?

Camera toss photography, or kinetic photography, is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You set the timer, toss your camera into the air and hope for the best.

It may sound accidental, but done properly, the results can be impressive. So impressive, that the fad has taken on a life of its own. There are several camera toss groups on Flickr, including one with almost 9,000 members. Countless websites, even Wired, have tutorials on camera tossing techniques.

That matters, because there are many different "tossing" techniques that can result in different kinds of photos.

First, keep in mind that height isn't the objective. It's more about arc, rotation and light. The more the camera rotates, the more variation you'll have and the photo could take on a more abstract look.

If you're able to keep the lens focused on a certain point (say, on you) you could get a neat picture of the ground rotating around the subject.

The higher the throw the more ground you cover, the more chaotic the throw, the more erratic the image.

Check out these photos from the Camera Tossing Flickr group pool for more examples of the technique can accomplish.

What Nikon Has In Mind

In Nikon's camera toss patent, a velocity sensor and accelerometer would be used to make snapping the picture more precise. Using speed and positioning, the accelerometer should be able to determine when and at what point in the thrown arc the best photo can be captured.

Nikon's patent also addresses the issue of protecting the camera in case you miss it on the way down - incorporating a collapsible lens and an impact resistant frame. Nikon Rumors has a Web-translated version of the patent with diagrams in Japanese that show the gist of how the technology would work.

If you're itching to throw a camera into the air, you may have to risk your current camera for a while. Although Nikon's patent has been published, there's no news yet on whether or how soon you'll be able to catch an actual camera that uses the technology.

Image credits: Alin S.(top), JohnPaul Golaski (middle) and David Hull (bottom).

When the Web was still text links and tables, Adobe Flash brought us rollovers, interactive games and kitten videos. But a hard stand by Apple was the begining of the end for the groundbreaking technology, and guess what? We'll be OK without it.

The Backstory

The early years of the Web were pretty barren, multimedia-wise. Browser inconsistencies, bandwidth disparities, perpetually evolving standards and the cowboy coding needed to hack everything together made interactivity beyond text forms a mess.

Quality online multimedia experiences were a joke. To fill the holes, ambitious developers released a slew of plug-in applications users could install to augment their experience. Some of these were specific enhancements, like allowing a browser to display a new image format, while others were entirely new environments that ran inside a browser. Over time, the best plug-ins tended to work their way into the browsers or updated HTML specifications, while lesser ones died on the vine as they became irrelevant.

The biggest exception to this rule was Macromedia Flash, a graphics and animation client plugin with its own design environment. Flash, which began as a Mac and Windows application called FutureSplash Animator, made it simple for designers to bring shrinkwrap-quality, graphically rich interactive media to Web users for the first time.

Over the next decade, Flash's powerful, simple authoring environment attracted legions of developers and designers and its user base exploded. Ad agencies and ambitious businesses jumped on the additional interactivity it added to vanilla HTML, and by 2000, Flash was unavoidable, showing up in interactive ads, pop-up menus and online video players. In some cases, it even replaced entire websites. Adobe's 2005 purchase of Macromedia further consolidated the design tool industry and gave Flash even more support.

While pop-ups and online games were the most noticeable example of the platform's dominance, Flash started creeping into traditional business applications, as well. The broad developer base and cross-platform appeal gave rise to Rich Internet Applications (RIA) like Balsamiq Mockups, a prototyping tool of which I'm both a fan and a paid user. RIAs require installation of a client framework (in Adobe's case, the Adobe Integrated Runtime environment), but developers can push out a single application in a very short time that runs on any compatible client, which is also a big plus for mobile workers.

The Problem

In a word: Apple.

Flash's problems run deeper than any one competitor, but Apple brought down the house. When Apple released the iPhone and iPad without support for Flash, it ended a long history of cooperation between the two companies (Apple actually owned a fifth of Adobe early on) and called into question the validity of Flash's cross-platform claims. Sure, Android supported Flash, as did Windows, Linux and Apple's own Mac OS, but iOS was a glaring hole.

There were a host of other problems with Flash, from serious security flaws to performance problems (many of which Steve Jobs called out in his now-famous 2010 post), but in the end, the lack of an iOS client spelled the doom of mobile Flash.

With iOS off the table, Adobe ceded the Android market, as well. That leaves mobile developers with the task of developing redundant native apps or – as Apple and others have long recommended – apps built in HTML 5.

And there's the issue. By giving up the mobile Web, Adobe has effectively abandoned the rest of the Web, too. Why bother writing a desktop-based browser app in Flash when you can just reuse (or at least tweak and repurpose) the code you've written for mobile platforms? It took 10 years longer than usual, but Apple's refusal to support Flash exposed a truth. Technology has caught up, and we no longer need Adobe's plugin–or at least we're close. Microsoft announced a limited role for Flash in Windows 8's Metro browser. It's an acknowledgement that we're not quite Flash-free yet, but the writing is on the wall.

The Prognosis

With tablets and smartphones outselling PCs, the mobile Web is the Web, so Flash isn't an option. Developers can bridge UI differences between devices (e.g., designing for both mouse-driven and touchscreen interfaces) within HTML 5, so Flash in the browser will all but disappear.

Can This Technology Be Saved?

Flash will never return to the prominence it once had, but it will linger on the desktop for as long as there are skilled developers willing to do the work. Adobe offers solid tools that appeal to a lot of non-traditional developers, and the development environment could continue to serve those users as they build apps for other platforms. However, compared to the juggernaut of an ecosystem Flash used to be, that's a niche market, so Adobe could easily decide to bow out or sell off the product.

Previous Technology Deathwatches

In-House Datacenters: No change

Point-and-Shoot Cameras: No change

Video Game Consoles: The utility of bundles apps like Netflix and Vudu seems to be slipping. An NPD Study showed that one in five consumers who view streaming video on their TVs do so without a peripheral device.

Blu-Ray: The same NPD study reveals that "online video is maturing” as users migrate to watching streaming media on their TVs.

QR Codes: It's been a mixed bag. While Bank of America is testing QR codes for mobile payments (good news for the technology), a security researcher demonstrated how a malicious QR code could be used to wipe a Samsung smartphone.

Company Deathwatches

For an update on our baker's dozen of company Deathwatches, check out our updated ReadWriteWeb DeathWatch Update: The Unlucky 13.

Steve Jobs image by Matthew Yohe.

After backing out of plans to compete with Netflix, Blockbuster is all but done. That's not great news for the streaming-video space, and Netflix is in a rough spot. But Blockbuster's latest stumble toward oblivion isn't necessarily the final nail in NetFlix' coffin.

On October 4, Dish Network scrapped its plans to revamp the Blockbuster brand and launch a subscription-based streaming-only product to compete directly with Netflix. Dish ran the numbers, evaluated its options, and (correctly) assumed it didn't have the assets to make a Netflix competitor work.

That leaves Blockbuster on the ropes again, with just 900 of its former 3,300 retail stores and no clear digital strategy. But don't assume that the math will work the same way for Netflix.

The Bad News For Netflix

Dish's decision confirms what I've been saying for some time: the flat-rate streaming market isn't a very profitable place. As I noted in Netflix Deathwatch over the summer: expensive bandwidth, second-rate content and strained relationships with content providers are par for the course for the entire industry.

Paul Sweeting, Principal at Concurrent Media Strategies, told E-Commerce Times that "…studios have long been leery of subscription-based streaming of movies because it produces the lowest per-view/per-capita return for the rights holder of any business model, and it cannibalizes higher margin businesses like pay-per-view rentals and even purchases." In the same article, another analyst predicted that flat-rate streaming may have only another five or six years of life.

The market is obviously sick, and it needs to change.

The Good News For Netflix

Troubled or not, Netflix still owns the streaming video market, and that brings advantages Dish and Blockbuster couldn't match. Most importantly, Netflix has existing content relationships that, while strained, put it in a better position than a startup.

In an October 8 analyst note, Morgan Stanley's Scott Devitt estimated that Amazon, which already has relationships with most studios, would need to spend an additional $1 billion to $1.2 billion in licensing rights to launch a similar service.

If that price is too steep for Amazon, it's probably beyond most competitors. Barriers to entry don't validate the streaming-video business model, but they do buy time for Netflix to try to sort out its problems.

In the long term, Netflix has an infrastructure advantage, since it owns its own Content Distribution Network (CDN), and its massive user base should help it secure content from overseas and underexposed independent sources.

It's also developing original content with headliners like Kevin Spacey to hedge against expiring contracts and differentiate from competitors. Netflix's margins per customer may not be fantastic, but with all those users, it has cash to invest in programming.

Eventually, though, Netflix needs to balance cheap back-catalog offerings with enough premium and custom content to create a profitable offering "good enough" to justify its prices. It also needs to keep an eye on Hulu, HBO and other content providers looking to ramp up their streaming businesses.

Put it all together, and I wouldn't want to be in Netflix' shoes. Blockbuster's implosion is a reminder of how tough things have gotten in Netflix' core business, but at least Netflix still controls its own destiny.

Blockbuster and Kevin Spacey images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Everyone knows optical storage discs are on their way out in the long run, but ironically, the the biggest, newest format of them all could become extinct before the rest. Here’s why Blu-ray might join VHS in the dustbin long before DVDs or CDs give up the ghost.

The Basics

In 2006, a consortium of media companies spearheaded by Sony launched Blu-ray Disc, a high-capacity (25GB) optical disc with the same dimensions as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray’s storage capacity and entertainment ties made it the leading contender to replace the aging DVD video format, and the results were impressive. Early Blu-Rays players delivered HD video and crystal-clear sound, and successive versions added extras like downloadable content.

Later that year, Sony made a major push, shipping Blu-ray drives in its Playstation 3 consoles and a number of high-end PCs. After a two-year standards war with Toshiba’s HD-DVD format, Blu-ray won the day in early 2008. Warner Brothers, Netflix, Wal-Mart and Best Buy dropped HD-DVD, so Toshiba abandoned the format, creating its own Blu-ray player. Since then, Blu-ray capacity has increased (to 128 GB for the newest quad-layer discs for BDXL drives), and it looks like even the Xbox 720 will support the format.

The Problem

Two of three console vendors will ship Blu-ray players into millions of homes, and Blu-ray disc sales as a percentage of total physical entertainment media are still climbing. So what’s the problem? There are actually three:

1. Timing. 2008 was a bad year to end a format war. With the Great Recession in full swing, many families were unwilling to spend to upgrade to Blu-ray, especially if doing it right required a new television and new content. A 2011 NPD study showed that 5 years after Blu-ray’s introduction, a full 57% of households were still using standard DVD players. According to recent Nielsen research published by Home Media Magazine, Blu-ray sales for popular films can account for as much as 75% of a title’s sales - or as little as 11%. As DVD players wear out and studios release more “must-have” HD titles like Avatar, Blu-ray’s share will likely increase. But that may be too little too late.

2. Netflix. Led by Netflix, Hulu and iTunes – with Amazon and a swarm of others in the wings – digital video is real, and it’s become a contender far faster than most people anticipated. As early as 2010, streaming surpassed optical disc rentals on Netflix. These days, every game console and most televisions bundle multiple streaming video services, every cable provider offers its own suite of pay-per-view titles, and iTunes offers thousands of films and TV episodes for purchase or rental. And those are just the legal sources. Service-based streaming models (ideally with some form of local caching for viewing off-network) are definitely where we’re headed.

3. Apple. Blu-ray is not just an entertainment delivery system. It’s also an efficient data distribution format, or it would be, if anyone but Sony adopted it. Unfortunately, Apple and most PC makers have opted to pass on Blu-ray drives, so software publishers have followed suit. If it doesn’t fit on a couple of DVDs, you’re getting it online. Apple actually shipped an entire operating system online, and no one seemed to mind. As a consumer alternative, USB flash drives are portable, reusable, and cheap ($40 gets you 64 GB), and they work with a much wider range of devices. Blu-ray may be still the most powerful player in the optical disc storage class, but that class has graduated.

The Prognosis

As video consumption moves toward alternative devices, Blu-ray’s significance will wane. DVD/Blu-ray/digital download packs (which are pretty cheap) will help bridge the gap for a while, but with dependable HD downloads and streaming, why would anyone bother with a physical disc? Eventually, Blu-rays will go the way of audio CDs, selling for a buck a piece at yard sales after their original owners have safely ripped them (possibly after using a VUDU-like conversion service).

Can This Technology Be Saved?

Americans still like to own things, and right now, Blu-ray is the most archivable, durable format for HD video storage. So until a cloud-based service emerges as a clear winner, there will be a case to keep that stack of discs by the TV. But all data storage formats run their course, and no amount of data-density improvements can stop the natural progression to streaming media.

As streaming and download services learn to take advantage of ubiquitous broadband Net access, Blu-Ray will be dead. It will happen faster than you think - and few folks will mourn its passing.

Previous Technology DeathWatches

QR Codes

Company Deathwatches

For an update on our baker's dozen of company Deathwatches, check out ReadWriteWeb DeathWath Update: The Unlucky 13.

You might think your existing broadband Internet connection is fast enough. It’s not. When it comes to Internet speeds, more is always better. That’s why we all owe some sincere gratitude to the intrepid men and women who bring truly high-speed Internet into our homes.

This post is a message of sincere appreciation - a love letter if you will - to the cable guy who recently upgraded the Internet connection in my San Francisco home. Whether you know it or not, you’ve made my life better in so many ways.

I’ve had broadband access at my home since DSL came to San Francisco in the 1990s. So I didn’t think getting faster service would make all that much of a difference in my life. Boy was I wrong.

My family and I just upgraded our cable Internet service from about 10 Mbps to 50 Mbps. And then we bought a new Wi-Fi router to extend that service to all our wireless devices. Now, 10Mbps isn’t that slow, and 50Mbps is far from the fastest service around (heck, ReadWriteWeb’s headquarters clocks in at an awesome 100Mbps). But I am still stunned at how much the change is affecting how we all use the Internet. And how much I want to hug the Astound cable guy who brought it to us.

Easy Upgrade

Compared to the early days of broadband, the process was amazingly simple. The Astound technician came out to our 115-year-old Victorian with a new Cisco DPC3010 cable modem (actually showing up in the first half hour of the promised 4-hour window!) The tech replaced our old unit and checked out the cabling in less than an hour. Bam, the speed of our hardwired connections instantly quintupled! No fuss, no muss.

Except that the increase was only visible on wired connection, not the fleet of smartphones, tablets, laptops and other devices where we do most of our work (and play). They got a bump to about 20Mbps. Faster, but suddenly pokey next to the wired connections.

Even though we had a relatively recent Belkin router using the modern 802.11n Wi-Fi specification, it simply couldn’t keep up. The tech - remember how much I love him? - recommended getting a new router that supported the DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) 3.0 standard. And because we have a mix of Apple, Windows and other devices in the house, my spouse decided to choose simplicity over economy and we splurged for an Apple AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi router.

Although its $179 price is almost double that of competing devices with similar specs, it was by far the easiest router to install and configure that I’ve ever used. Everything was up and running within five minutes, with none of the false starts and geeky questions I’ve encountered setting up other wireless systems over the years. I wouldn’t have chosen it, but I can’t say I missed the headaches.

More importantly, though, suddenly every device in the house was testing out at 50Mbps downloads. 

Faster Everything

The conventional wisdom holds that just about any broadband connection is sufficient for browsing the Web, and that faster connections don’t really provide much benefit in this regard.

Thanks to our cable guy, I can confidently state that conventional wisdom is dead wrong.

Web browsing at 50Mbps is noticeably faster and less annoying than browsing at 10Mbps. In most cases, pages begin loading faster and images show up along with the text, not a second or two later. Downloading large files, from software applications to data sets to high-resolution images is now something we do in real time, rather than a process we start and let run in the background. 

If general browsing got a mild boost from the faster speeds, working with Software as a Service (SaaS) applications delivered over the Internet enjoyed a serious kick in the pants. Gmail and Google Docs suddenly seemed almost as fast as email or productivity software running on a local machine.

Better Streaming

Perhaps the biggest, most noticeable improvement came when consuming streaming content. At 50Mbps, YouTube and other online videos leap into action, instantly jumping ahead with plenty of buffer room. Nice to see on the desktop, but positively intoxicating on an iPad or other tablet, which now seems seamlessly connected to the entire Internet. (I murmur soft words of thanks to the cable guy every time I watch anything on a tablet.)

I now find that I want to have the iPad close at hand at all times, because it’s just so darn easy to watch anything online as soon as I can type it in. Just as important, I’m now wondering why I need a tablet with 64GB of storage space when I can grab stuff from the Net just as quickly. (That makes my new Google Nexus 7 tablet seem more inviting.)

Not surprisingly, that holds true when using streaming media services - whether on a computer, iPad or big-screen TV. Services such as Hulu or HBO Go perform almost as well as our satellite TV service - and our Apple TV box delivers a more TV-like experience than ever before. If it weren’t for live sports, I’d already be considering cutting the cord. (I worry that the cable guy wouldn't like that, though.)

Better Backups and Sharing

All of the members of my household rely on Dropbox to sync and share files, and some of us even pay for extra space. And one of us relies on Apple’s iCloud to sync huge chunks of data among many devices. But syncing all that data to new devices used to take hours, and it churned through much of our 100GB per month data cap. No more. At 50Mbps down and 6Mbps up, those syncs and backups happen much faster. Syncing and backing up to the cloud now seems like a much more reasonable option than it used to.

Upload speeds are often the Achilles' heel of cloud services, but 6Mbps is fast enough to help ease the bottleneck. Still, if the cable guy wants me to buy him chocolates, it would be nice to have upload speeds closer to the downloads.

Bigger Data Limits

When you add up all this stuff, it’s pretty clear that my family is likely to churn through a lot more bandwidth every month - and we were already incurring fees by exceeding our old plan’s limit of 100GB per month. The new plan ups our data transfer limit to 300GB per month, but with the extra speed encouraging all these new uses, we’re actually worried we may blow past that figure as well!

We made the switch because we cycle through a lot of data in our house, and it seemed to make sense. But I think we were all surprised at how much a five-times boost in speed changed the quality and quantity of our Internet usage. I’ve become an instant convert to the idea that the future of the Internet requires that everyone get not just broadband, but really fast broadband.

I hear that Verizon FiOS now offers up to 300Mbps. A week ago, I would have said that’s ridiculous. Now I’m wondering if those speeds will ever be available in San Francisco (if not from FiOS, which apparently won't be built out any more than it already has been, then from another provider). Sorry cable guy, I appreciate how much you’ve done for me, but if the phone company guy shows up with six times faster service, I’m going with him.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Yoko Ono, widow of The Beatles' John Lennon, has released an iPhone app. The app, called #smilesfilm, allows users to share snapshots of smiling faces.

That’s great and all, but we came up with nine things that a Yoko Ono app really should do.

1. Break up your band. Whatever band you happen to be in.

2. Erase all Paul McCartney songs on your iTunes account. 

3. Turn all your album cover art to plain white.

4. Change your ring tone to 15 minutes of tuneless screeching, direct from the second side of Live Peace in Toronto, still the most unlistenable bit of "music" ever recorded.

5. Automatically send emails with virtual flowers to 100 top world leaders, complete with nagging messages about what they're not doing to save the world.

6. Turn off all the alarms on your iPhone. After all, you belong in bed.

7. Send an animated fly crawling over your home screen.

8. Put huge sunglasses on the faces of the pictures you take with your iPhone - including those taken in #smilesfilm.

9. Give Peace a Chance.

Lead photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Friday, June 8, is one of those days that rolls around every two years on which productivity throughout much of the world is going to take a gigantic hit. That's because the Euro 2012 tournament gets under way, and it'll capture the attention of every serious soccer/football fan around the planet. And we do mean "planet" - this competition among 16 European nations is second in quality and importance only to the World Cup, and even non-European fans will be tracking it avidly. Many will be watching it online - and here's how.

Let's face it: You can't take the entire next month off to watch all these games. (If you can? We want your job.) So online viewing of some sort is going to be indispensable for seeing the action while somehow simultaneously fending off your boss and getting your work done. And not everyone will be able to rely on the most legal methods to pull it off. Whether you're patched into a legal network or looking for an illicit stream, it's not that hard to find the games you want online or on your mobile device.

All Aboveboard

If you're tapped into one of the broadcast networks in a major country that has the Euro 2012 rights, you should be in good shape for seeing these games on your computer, tablet or phone. In the United States, that means ESPN, which is the sole rights-holder for the tourney. And you couldn't be in better hands for getting online access, given ESPN's continuing push to become ubiquitous on every device you might own, short of an original Kindle. ESPN3.com is your computer's portal to all of the Euro 2012 games, and you won't need to be at home and patched into your cable box to get it, either.

If you're away from that, ESPN3 will simply ask you to log in with your cable provider account first; once you've done that, you should be good to watch. The navigation is easy enough: Links for all of these games are likely to be on the home page, but you can also click the "Soccer" drop-down tab and choose the appropriate tab (Live Now, Upcoming or Replay).

Your phone should be just as simple to use for watching the tournament, now that ESPN has gradually extended access to its WatchESPN app for iOS and Android, originally available only to Time Warner customers, to those on Verizon, BrightHouse and Comcast. Comcast users with Android devices haven't yet gotten the updated app for streaming, but Comcast iPhone users and everyone else can fire up WatchESPN and find a game in real time with relative ease. AT&T U-verse subscribers can access games by using their mobile U-verse app and choosing ESPN Mobile TV. For replays, using any of the methods to access ESPN3 (which is one of the WatchESPN channels) is your ticket to entire game rebroadcasts - and if you have an Xbox Gold subscription, you can do that on your TV, too.

The situations are fairly similar in other countries where rights holders have websites and apps available. In the United Kingdom, the BBC and ITV have split the broadcast rights, and each network will be streaming matches online and through phone apps. (ITV just upgraded its iOS app Wednesday to allow for live streaming on phones, just in time for Euro 2012.) Australians can see all of the matches via Setanta Sports's Setanta-i online stream, with SBS picking up selected games for free broadcast. English-speaking Canadians will have to pay to see the games on TSN.ca, but TSN Mobile TV is free for Bell Mobility or Virgin Mobile subscribers on iOS, Android and Blackberry; Francophones have options through RDS. Wikipedia's comprehensive list of international rights holders should help you figure out what your options are in other countries.

A Little Bit Sketchier

But let's say that you can't get to a legal source for the tournament; maybe you don't have the right package, or you're one of those people who's chosen to bag cable and go entirely wireless with your life. Can you see these games at all?

Answer: Of course you can. A host of websites tap illicitly into satellite streams of worldwide soccer matches, often with several different links to feeds, and bring them to your computer. Every hardcore soccer fan ends up dealing with these sooner or later; even if you're paying for a cable or satellite package that brings you Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV in the U.S., those channels don't carry every single game you'll ever want to see. How else were you going to watch New Caledonia clinch a stunning 2-0 upset of New Zealand in the Oceania region World Cup qualifiers?

So, people turn to one of the many streaming sites. Understand, though, that - pretty much as with any illegal music/movies download site or other below-the-lines website - you're entering a sketchy world that can include popup pages, overlay ads, NSFW images and, yes, even viruses or other malware. Go into this with your eyes open, and try to follow these rules:

• Have your antivirus software on at all times.
• Use a popup blocker; it'll improve the experience dramatically.
• Don't install any software; these sites mostly are running Flash video, so you don't need the iLivid Download Manager (a ubiquitous choice) or any of the other offerings with which you'll be confronted.
• Don't pay any money. These sites will be happy to grab your credit card number in exchange for "HD video" that may or may not exist. Don't go there; if you want an HD experience, you should be using one of the legal methods, anyway.
• If you get one of those helpful "Malware Detected!" warnings, close your window or tab immediately and try the next site.
• If things go really haywire, be ready to force-quit your browser (Force Quit under the Apple menu on a Mac after you Command-Tab out of the application; Ctrl-Alt-Delete on a PC to kill the process on a PC).
• Click carefully. You'll be getting ads overlaid on the embedded video, and accidentally clicking on one can have 40 tabs opened on your browser before you know what's hit you. Make sure you actually hit the X or Close tab.
• And when you actually make it to your game video, try to run as few applications or other browser pages as you can. Your stream is bouncing around the globe before it gets to you, so you want to smooth out the experience as much as possible.

That said, it's entirely possible to find a video stream of a Euro 2012 game without suffering any mishaps. A Google search of "streaming football online" will bring up a plethora of choices. (Yes, "football"; don't forget that your stream is coming from countries that couldn't care less about the NFL.) I tested a few of the top results, FreeFootball.org, First Row Sports and 12thPlayer.com, and was able to watch game video with fairly minimal effort or problems at all three sites. 12th Player has the advantage of a clean interface without ad or popup clutter, and although FreeFootball does have those issues, that site has always been reliable in the past. Take your pick.

One caveat: Don't expect a great experience trying this on your phone, if you can watch at all. The iPhone will yell at you about Flash video, and that's if you even make it to a video - popups were a huge problem in my tests of the iPhone. The iPad is also going to hit you with the Flash issue. Android phone and tablet users may have a slightly easier time of it, but for the most part, you're better off using these sites on a computer.

Unlike ESPN3, these sites aren't likely to offer you replays on games. But it's still possible to see those if you're willing to download torrented game captures. Open services such as The Pirate Bay or membership boards like Demonoid are good bets to have captured game videos, in formats ranging from AVI to full HD-quality .ts MPEG Transport Stream rips (playable with the cross-platform VLC video player). With the popularity of this tournament worldwide, finding well-seeded torrents shouldn't be too tough within a day of any given game. And Usenet users might have some luck with the alt.binaries.multimedia.sports group.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Sportscenter image courtesy of ESPN.

The GIF was created by CompuServe in 1987, years before many of today's brightest Internet entrepreneurs were born. It became popular with Web designers in the early 1990s and the heyday of AOL dial-up Internet and exploded when the first modern browsers such as Netscape evolved in the mid-1990s.

The GIF, or Graphics Interchange Format, was designed as one of the first static image standards for the Web. It was first called 87a by CompuServe and later updated to 89a. Its counterpoint at the time was XMB, a black and white image standard.

Animated GIFs came later as CompuServe updated the standard to allow multiple frames in the static tile. Flames and flags became popular images. Older Web designers will remember the time in the 1990s where every site was static and uninspired lists of words and links. The animated GIF was a way to give a site a little pizzazz and style. Most GIFS at that time were cartoonish animations (such as the aforementioned flames) but the use of multiple images within a GIF through photography also existed.

Eventually there was a backlash against GIFs in Web design. They were simple and often childish and were an embarrassing element from an earlier generation of the Web that many designers wished to forget. The PNG (Portable Networks Graphics) were created both as a way to replace the GIF and as a way to avoid the Unisys patent on LZW compression. The PNG is now a popular image standard along with JPEG.

But the GIF never really went away. It persisted as an image standard even if PNG and JPEG started doing the heavy lifting.

Then came the rise of Web 2.0.

The rebirth of the animated GIF came with the height of MySpace. Remember all those tacky pages users would create and their obnoxious status updates with moving images? Yeah, most of those were GIFs. Really, when you think about it, the GIF was behind much of what has been annoying and tacky on the Internet for the last 25 years. GIFs have been popular in message board forums for over a decade.

I had not really thought about the animated GIF for a couple of years. Sure they were around every so often but it was not a standard that I encountered everyday. I had heard some vague rumor about Tumblr being the new realm of the animated GIF but I have never been a heavy Tumblr user. Then came Google+. The most active people on Google's social network tend to be those very same old Web designers and geeks that populated the Web in the 1990s. Hence, the GIF is their meme-generator of choice.

PBS Off Book created a video on the history of the meme that has been making the rounds on the Web this week. Check it out below.

Earlier this month, Facebook added new third party apps to its platform. Now, a change to Timeline itself has made media sharing even more prominent. The right-hand half of my Timeline is now dominated by my favorite third party media apps: Rdio, Pinterest, Goodreads. The question is: does this make Timeline too focused on media content, over socializing with friends?

This may be a limited user test by Facebook, so here are some screenshots of what I'm seeing on the right-hand side of my Timeline. It expands the sections for Rdio, Pinterest and Goodreads (the three media sharing apps I use the most on Facebook). It uses the extra room to add images - of albums, books, Pinterest imagery - thus making my Timeline more colorful.

Those are just two of my third party apps, Rdio and Pinterest, but it now takes up a significant amount of real estate on my Facebook Timeline.

Is More Media Sharing a Good or Bad Thing?

Not all of you are fans of MEdia sharing on Facebook. Judging by user reactions to Timeline over the past 6 months, many of you hate the firehose stream of (for example) songs from Rdio, Spotify and MOG appearing in your News Feeds. Although to be fair to Facebook, you're much more likely to see media sharing in the News Ticker, the constantly scrolling little ticker in the top-right of Facebook (if you have the sidebar open). Facebook does a pretty good job making sure your News Feed isn't clogged up with this "frictionless sharing."

That's why, in my view, it's a good move by Facebook to expand the media sharing areas in your Timeline. You may not be interested in the majority of media sharing that happens among your friends, but if a new song or book does catch your eye in the News Ticker, then you can click on that person's Timeline to find out more. For example, you may happen to be a Sharon Van Etten fan and see that I'm listening to the new album. If you check my Timeline, her new album is right there for you to click on and listen to it yourself. And you can start up a conversation with me about our shared love of Van Etten. Or check out some of the other music I listen to, as that may be a match for you too.

In the battle for the Interest Graph (essentially a graph of what you like) between Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, Facebook has one huge advantage. It has third party content deeply embedded in its platform. Google+ is actually better in many ways for finding and tracking media content, but it has no advanced API and therefore third parties cannot integrate into Google+ like they can on Facebook. And Twitter is too ephemeral. Media sharing is of the moment in Twitter and it's not properly archived - like on a Timeline.

With expanded media sharing on its Timeline, Facebook once again trumps Google+ and Twitter as the place to discover and share media.

What do you think about the enhanced media sharing on Timeline? Do you think it's a good thing, or is it making it even more difficult for you to do "real" social things - like have conversations and post images of cats?

The iTunes U website carries the bold title "Learn anything, anywhere, anytime." That's an overstatement for sure, with 500,000 assets it's more like learn something about many things. But it's great either way. I spent the weekend neglecting other duties to play with iTunes U and below are some thoughts, positive and negative. It's not perfect, but I am really excited about it and I know I'm not alone in that. I'd love to know your thoughts about it too.

"Algorithms are at the cutting edge of innovation, because they help move the line between the feasible & infeasible," says the Prof on the first day's lecture in MIT's Introduction to Algorithms. That's a tasty nugget to ponder, served up in the middle of a lecture which started with 15 minutes of "no cheating on tests" and other administrative advice. Most of the lecture was over my head, but I do spend a lot of time thinking about algorithms so I was very thankful for the opportunity to hear it. Thankful enough that I listened to it once on my phone while walking my dogs and once again on the iPad with the whiteboard visible, propped up in my cupboard while I put away the dishes in my kitchen.

Learn anything, anywhere, anytime? It was certainly feeling that way in the first few hours I was glued to iTunes U.

I found that in the business management section, much of the content isn't classroom lectures. Much of it is short-form video content made by non-traditional educational institutions. I listened to all of Jill Geisler's What Great Bosses Know segments, each about 5 minutes long, some I listened to twice. I'll probably go back and listen again. It's really just a podcast though, from Geisler who is associated with the Poynter Institute.

Geisler's content is heavily book-ended by promotions for her forthcoming book with the same title. I hope to buy the book. That experience was not like transporting into a college classroom though.

The Cranfield University collection on Leadership is similar, but in video with black backdrop and awesome, knowledgable, 50-year olds with British accents. It's great, but it's more like curated video podcasting than traditional educational content.

There are full, traditional classroom courses available though and I've subscribed to a few. I haven't worked through a full one yet and I haven't tried interacting with any of the worksheets or PDFs. I did jailbreak my iPad this weekend and turn the bottom right of my screen into a hot corner I can swipe from and pop up iTunes U immediately whenever I want. (Top right is Al Jazeera, if you were wondering, bottom left Twitter, swipe the title bar to launch the Sonos controller. It's a lot of fun.)

There's a lot of science and a good amount of humanities on iTunes U. Can you learn about anything? I watched an interesting video about a pizza place and there's plenty of content about beans, but search for Oregon and it's a real stretch. Transgender history (something my university in Oregon was great at teaching) is not a search query that brings much in the way of results.

Existentialism looks OK, psychedelics are a wasteland, rodentia is touched upon but birthday parties as a query is a bust. So it's a mixed bag! That was my whirlwind tour through brick and mortar university and I don't know that iTunes U can compete, but now that I'm a boring old 35 year old with a job, I love what Apple's put together so far.

Former RWW writer and leading education technology blogger Audrey Watters has criticized iTunes U for lacking in the social interactivity that so characterizes the rest of the web today and that delivers so much value elsewhere. At first I thought she was looking a gift horse in the mouth, but in time I've grown annoyed by that as well. Please, Apple, would you at least let people post comments on the videos, let other people vote comments up and down, and let us view either all comments or just those from our friends on Facebook, Twitter or...Ping? OK, so maybe it's not so hard to imagine why Apple skipped the social this time around. It sure would be nice if I could post a link to iTunes U content out to the web, though.

It is a walled garden, it's part of the iTunes Empire of Blah and there are other problems with it, but great content overcomes many things.

Witness the story of Jeremy Gleick (via), for example, a young man who has spent one hour per day learning something new, over nearly 1,000 hours now, often from iTunes U.

"Maybe you don't become an expert," Mr. Gleick says, "but you can get really good at something."

Maybe.

"What iTunes U is missing," argues web commenter Brian Crumley, "is a way to show you the steps needed to master a subject. We can all learn physics 101 but without a simple and easy way to find 102 and beyond it can get frustrating. Also the quality of many of the recorded lectures is not all that good."

Indeed, some of the lecture series aren't even in the right order in the app.

"Even though I am complaining here I still think it's an awesome service and hope it expands to anyone, not just schools," says Crumley. "If I have knowledge let me teach it to anyone in the world."

That sounds great, and it is in fact the world that is consuming the content that's here already. Estimates before the release of iTunes U on mobile were that 60% of the service's traffic comes from outside the United States.

The courses and content available on iTunes U are expanding the minds and lives of people all over the world, for only the price of an expensive machine to consume the free content. It's the only thing I've been interested in listening to when taking my dogs out lately (sorry HuffDuffer) and I'll be interested to see if I can take the time to work through some of the full courses it makes available.

Anybody that even claims to help me learn anything, any time, anywhere starts out in my good favor.

The Roku Streaming Stick is intended to give users all the functionality of a Smart TV without any boxes or cables. It can be controlled by a TV remote and offer most (but not all) of the features that a Roku player can offer. Internet TV is going to be a maturing market vertical in 2012 and on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, we are starting to see how the space will evolve in the new year.

Roku Partners With Brightcove

In addition to the Roku Streaming Stick, the company also announced today that it is partnering with video cloud content provider Brightcove to bring content from Showtime to the service. Essentially, Roku is making it easier for Brightcove customers to deliver content to Smart TVs powered by Roku. This will help cut down on creating user interfaces and design elements for adapting Internet content for televisions.

The Showtime app will feature HD-quality promotional content from shows like Shameless and House Of Lies. It does not appear that full Showtime content will appear on the Roku but rather clips, highlights, Web shows and interviews.

Roku Not The Only Game In Town

Everybody is waiting to see what Apple does with the TV space. Really, it is a natural vertical for Cupertino to move into. At this point the only product the company produces is Apple TV, the external box that can stream content and set up AirPlay that puts the content of your iPhone or iPad onto your television. There is also one of the original companies in this space, Boxee, which will likely iterate a new product this year.

One of the more interesting developments in the Internet TV space is being brought to bear by Myriad and Broadcom. Myriad is and Android development company that has introduced Davlik to the ecosystem with the intention of porting Android functionality everywhere. Myriad announced Alien Vue last month with the specific intention of putting Android apps and content on TV screens. Myriad is partnering with semiconductor company Broadcom to create set top boxes that will bring this product to life. The companies will be showing off the new product at CES.

What do you want from a Smart TV? Should it run apps from iOS and Android? Is streaming from Netflix and Hulu Plus mandatory? Let us know in the comments.

Fusion Garage is also the maker of the Grid 10 tablet, an Android slate that was released to terrible reviews and poor sales. As of Monday morning, a Grid 10 tablet was not available through the company's website. Fusion Garage appears to be on its way to a shallow grave, its path to demise lined with broken promises and bad products.

The impending doom for Fusion Garage reminds me of a line in the movie Tommy Boy where auto parts conglomerate Zalinsky, played by Dan Aykroyd, says, "We have to have the courage to take a few companies, tie them to a tree and bash their heads in with a shovel. That's progress."

Make no mistake, Fusion Garage's woes are progress. The tablet market can only withstand so many suppliers and the low end of the ecosystem already has established bottom feeders Acer and Asus cranking out cheap slates that most consumers will pass over.

With the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook providing cheap tablets that consumers actually want to buy, the squeeze is being put on the rest of the Android tablet market (or, really, the non-iPad market). The weak companies are going to start to die off if they don't find a strategy that actually makes money. Hewlett-Packard was probably smart to discontinue the HP TouchPad. Get out of the market before it collapses entirely and new products make your efforts look poor in comparison.

Another thing that hobbled Fusion Garage is the fact that they were never seen as playing fair. TechCrunch founder and now venture capitalist Michael Arrington has had a very public feud over the tablet that become the JooJoo. The project was originally supposed to be called the CrunchPad and would have pre-dated the release of the first iPad by months. Fusion Garage eventually cut ties with Arrington, released the JooJoo independently and were subsequently sued for fraud and breach of contract. That case is still ongoing, with AOL now representing TechCrunch's interests. Arrington posted to his personal blog this weekend that Fusion Garage's attorney has filed to be taken off the case because the company has not paid him and the relationship had become strained beyond repair.

Fusion Garage public relations company, McGrath/Power, dropped Fusion Garage earlier this year.

The signs are pretty clear: everybody involved with Fusion Garage is running away, the company is embroiled in lawsuits, the brand name is tarnished beyond repair and the one thing that could save it, the product, is insufficient.

The old guard of TechCrunch employees are reveling in Fusion Garage's woes. Arrington said, "Fusion Garage finally destroying itself certainly makes me happy. The fact that Quinn Emanuel and PR firm McGrath Power, who advised Fusion Garage on the right way to execute on the fraud, are left with unpaid bills also makes me happy. I'm sorry to the customers who tried to pre-order these things and may never see their money again. But, really, what were you thinking?"

At this point, there is probably nothing Fusion Garage can do to avoid the inevitable collapse. Call it progress, call it revenge, call it whatever you like. In 10 years, Fusion Garage, the CrunchPad/JooJoo/Grid 10 will be the answer to a trivia question that only a select group of geeks will be able to answer.

In the mobile realm, the debate rages on: Web or Native? The difference between the two is beginning to blur as HTML5 standards evolve. We examine what happened in HTML5 in this year in our third installment of 2011's top trends. Check out the rest of the series, starting with John Paul Titlow's music trends and Alicia Eler's mobile commerce trends.

1. Mobile First

Yesterday, we named appMobi as our ReadWriteWeb Most Promising Company of 2012. As a startup, the company is doing interesting work on the fundamental goal of making HTML5 easy to use and ubiquitous with an emphasis on mobile first development. appMobi is carrying the torch for mobile first but it is a trend that is fast sweeping the development community as smartphones and tablet use explodes with data usage projected to increase by orders of magnitude in the next several years.

Fundamentally, the mobile first initiative revolves around the simple yet loaded questions of Webs apps versus Native apps.

This year we saw some large companies go to mobile first initiatives in regards to HTML5 design. The Financial Times pulled its native app iPad from the Apple App Store over its subscription and in-app revenue policies and has done very well with its Web app, designed with HTML5 with mobile devices in mind. Game developers, as discussed below, are leading the charge in creating dynamic mobile Web apps.

The trend of developing for the mobile Web first will continue into the new year with the explosion of smart devices coming to dominate computing, especially on the consumer/consumption side of the equation. To a certain extent, users do not really care what an app is written in, as long as it works like they expect it to. With some of the evolutions of HTML5 described below, the line of capabilities between Web apps and native apps is starting to blur.

2. Game Developers Take The Lead

We noted multiple times throughout the year that some of our favorite developers in the mobile realm were of the gaming variety. To a certain extent, game developers have the most to benefit from taking on HTML5 as a platform to avoid the 30% that Apple scrapes from paid games in the App Store and in-app purchases. Games are some of the hottest selling apps in all of mobile and a one reason that platforms like Android and Apple look so attractive to people looking to buy a smartphone or tablet. It is not just about reading email or making phone calls and texts. If that was so, Research In Motion would be doing a lot better with BlackBerry than it currently is.

A lot of game developers are being pushed along by the likes of Facebook and Zynga. The future of the Facebook app ecosystem is based on HTML5. Game developers, such as those working at MocoSpace or Moblyng are hard at work creating HTML5 versions of their publication library. As Stewart Putney, CEO of Moblyng, told me in August, "do you know how hard it is to make a Texas Hold'em game in HTML5?"

Games are not all about Web apps though. Through the magic of PhoneGap and HTML5 development through appMobi's XDK, Web app mobile games can be wrapped for easy integration into the native app stores. The approach is very similar to what Facebook does with its own mobile app. Based of the Web and browser but wrapped for native functionality.

We wrote about how game developers have taken the mantel of pushing the bounds of technology from the porn industry and it is true. Porn, an industry that once was the bellwether for technological adoption, has now fallen behind the times. We expect this trend to continue in the next couple of years as HTML5 matures as a platform.

3. Responsive Design & Handling Screen Sizes

There are fundamental advancements that need to happen before HTML5 truly changes the way that development is handled across platforms. One big step was taken this year with the evolution of what is called "responsive design." Essentially, responsive design will let content adapt to any screen size that it is on. The brightest example of responsive design this year was when the Boston Globe released BostonGlobe.com, its mobile-first Web application designed to work on any screen size, anywhere. We interviewed Filament Group, the developers behind the Globe's responsive design, in September and learned that responsive design is not actually an easy to figure out. Some basic concepts had to be built from scratch, such as the notion of RespondJS that handles media queries. Learning what to do with photos and ads from third-party sources also proved to be problematic.

"I think some facets of this could have been done in the past. I mean, HTML5 has a lot more APIs available for targeting features. Like, being able to check for touch support is technically part of HTML5 even though it is not HTML5 markup," Filament developer Mat Marquis said at the time. "So, that definitely allows us to do all of that conditional loading and such. In terms of the markup itself, we are doing a lot of HTML5 with additional semantic meaning, it could have been done in HTML4, just not meaningfully in terms of the markup."

Dealing with responsive design has a lot to do with understanding how content is going to react to a particular screen size. ZURB, a Silicon Valley design company, is also working on responsive design implementations. Responsive design is based off the concept of "fluid" design and is complete shift in how content has been handled on websites and mobile devices for much of the last 16 years or so. It is still a work in progress but HTML5 is finally making it possible.

4. Device Access

One of the biggest barriers of erasing the line between Web apps and native apps is the ability for browser-based applications to have access to some of the most fundamental aspects of mobile devices, like the camera, contacts lists, calendar, accelerometer etc. This is another area where appMobi is a leader in the HTML5 space, especially after it open-sourced all of its APIs the day after Thanksgiving. Mozilla has also been working hard on creating device access through the Fennec mobile browser project.

To mobile developers, device access is the most exciting innovation within the HTML5 set. It means that true Web apps can come to mobile, without the need of doing any PhoneGap-style wrapping. Game developers will be pleased because aspects previously locked to them, such as the accelerometer or the phone's read state, can be integrated into games. This opens a world of possibilities, such as better cloud integration (which can help with in-app purchases, push notifications etc.) and enhanced game play. Depending on the platform, apps are fundamentally built off Javascript, CSS3, HTML and other programming languages and given functionality through APIs, SDKs, cloud functionality and dozens of other moving parts. HTML5 did not allow for many of those functions but until recently. That is beginning to change and will be a development to watch in 2012.

5. Offline Caching

Hold, wait a minute here. You mean that my app can work even when I am not connected to the Internet? Well, I'll be a goat in a canoe on the River Thames. The concept of offline caching is fairly new and still one of the trickier aspects of HTML5 development for Web apps to master. This year, the prime example of offline caching to be deployed on a grand scale is the Kindle Cloud Reader, a Web app from Amazon that is supposed to give the Kindle sync functionality through the browser and remember everything in in a users Kindle library. It works in Firefox 6+, Chrome 11+, Safari 5+ and iOS 4+. There is so much that can be done with offline caching but the prime benefits, combined with device access, are to make Web apps work when not actually connected to the Web. That possibility is what many pundits think will eventually be the doom of native apps because overall deployment of Web apps will be frictionless, of every platform and no platform.

Mozilla is also working on offline caching with Fennec. Actually, name any particular trend in HTML5 development, and Mozilla has a hand in there somewhere. Check out Mozilla's mobile roadmap that we wrote about a few weeks ago to fully understand how the open-source organization plans on integrating HTML5 into its smart devices platform.

6. Maturation Of Developer Tools

In August we wrote that, "HTML5 Can Get the Job, But Can HTML5 Do the Job," a riff on a Pinch/Zoom blog post on the anatomy of an HTML5 Web app. In that post, Brian Fling said this about developers planning on HTML5:

• Allow for time. Assume it will take far longer than any other project you've previously done.
• Budget appropriately. This is not a website, and it will cost you a lot more.
• Make sure you have the right talent in-house. If these problems are hard for the most seasoned experts in the world that do it every day, assume they will be hard for your team, too.
• The "tools" are non-existent. More often than not, you will have to build your own tools.
• Consider all your options. A dogmatic approach to technology is a surefire way to spend money unnecessarily. There are no right or wrong answers in mobile. Keep an open mind and focus on what your customers need.

The fourth bullet point on tools is perhaps the most pertinent of all because it is the aspect that has changed the most from August until now. In addition to the tools that appMobi provides, framework and IDE providers Sencha and Appcelerator have gotten into the HTML5 development game, providing new ways for developers to create apps with the set of standards. At this point those tools are not yet as power or simple as some of the native Android and iOS developer frameworks and tools but in the next 12 months they will continue to evolve. Frameworks, IDEs, emulators, bug detectors and other basic functions that developers have come to rely on will roll out for HTML5 development and become more ingrained into the ecosystem. When developer lives' are easier, the more productive they can be and the more Web apps we will start seeing flood the market.

Conclusion

Other functions of HTML5, such as forms and new standards, continue to evolve. Fairly soon, HTML5 will probably be just HTML as the community and the W3C work to standardize the set. The leaders in HTML5 development will be companies like Sencha, Adobe, Appcelerator, appMobi along with the titans of the industry in Facebook, Amazon and Google.

It is an exciting time to be a developer whether you are working on new forms of video rendering such as Brightcove or trying to figure out the best implementations of HTML5 for audio the way SoundCloud is. From the desktop to the mobile Web, HTML5 is making the Web's one true killer app, the browser, the centerpiece of innovation.

There could be several books written about the battle for Flash against mobile. "Steve Jobs' Last Laugh" could probably be finished in time for the holiday shopping season. "How To Kill Flash For Dummies" would be an enlightening title as well. It is a bittersweet day for many. We want to know: how are you reacting to the passing of Flash for mobile? Take the poll below.

The Fall Of One, The Rise of Another

The fall of one platform is often correlated to the rise of another. Look at Android vs. Blackberry or Chrome vs. Firefox, Google vs. Yahoo, Internet Explorer vs. Netscape. The death of mobile Flash is seen as the ultimate validation of HTML5. The evolution of this battle on mobile will take place with native apps vs. Web apps though there is no clear indication yet what will ultimately be the winner in that sweepstakes.

Adobe will now focus on HTML5 development and tools that can be used to help developers. The company's recent acquisition of PhoneGap maker Nitobi will help ease the pain in Adobe's mobile development cycles and should not be overlooked as a major factor in this decision to kill mobile Flash.

The pages of ReadWriteWeb have been filled with Flash news for the last four years. Like so many things in the last decade, the argument was created by our generation's largest tech luminary, Steve Jobs. A lot of pundits and tech insiders took Jobs' words for gospel and that fueled the bashing of Flash that has led to this point. On the other hand, there have been a lot of hardworking people (with a lot of money) that have tried to fix the problems Flash had on mobile devices for the last several years. This cannot be a good day for them as something they have been working on for years has been obsoleted overnight.

Take a look at some of the highlights of our Flash coverage from the last couple of years and take the poll below to let us know how you feel.

ReadWriteWeb's Notable Flash Coverage:

• Steve Jobs Wins: Adobe to Give Up Mobile Flash for HTML5
• Steve Jobs Speaks: Why We Don't Allow Flash on iPhones and iPads
• On Mobile Flash, Apple Stands Alone
• Does HTML5 Really Beat Flash? The Surprising Results of New Tests
• EU May Force Flash Onto Apple Products
• Adobe Releases Flash to HTML5 Conversion Tool
• HTML5 Scores a Point as SlideShare Ditches Flash Entirely
• Adobe: Flash is an Exception to Windows 8's 'Plug-in Free' Rule
• Adobe Flash Player 10.2 Ready For Honeycomb; Honeycomb Not Ready For Anything
• Farewell Flash? Adobe Launches HTML5 Web Animations Tool "Adobe Edge"
• Google Swiffy Converts Flash to HTML5
• B&N's Nook Color Gets Apps, Flash & More in Major Update
• Flash Video Comes to the iPhone, iPad with Skyfire
• How to Install Flash on your iPhone (The Easy Way)
• Apple Approved: iSwifter Lets You Play Popular Flash Games on the iPad
• Worried About Flash on the iPad? Apple Tries to Ease Your Fears
• No Flash? No Worries: Majority of Online Video Now Available in HTML5
• YouTube: Flash Still Beats HTML5
• Flash Now Importable to HTML5 Canvas
• Death to Flash: 3 Great HTML 5 Demos
• Adobe Celebrates, But Will Flash Developers Return to Apple?
• Proof of Concept Brings Flash to the iPhone
• MobiUs Accelerates Mobile HTML5 Development, Aims to Kill Mobile Flash

Using HTML5 for video also satisfies that little open Web standards advocate in all of us. In addition to all that, it enables a new level of interactivity and allows video content to be integrated with, and enhanced by, outside data sources using APIs.

For evidence of this new phenomenon, look no further than Popcorn, Mozilla's media framework for HTML5. It just launched version 1.0 a few days ago, which happened to coincide with the debut of a new animated Web documentary that utilizes the framework.

One Millionth Tower is a documentary film about high rise apartment building in Canada and how its inhabitants envision the future of their community. It uses the Popcorn.js toolkit, along with WebGL graphics and other JavaScript frameworks to create a dynamic, interactive video that pulls in data from various Web APIs and controls camera movement in the video.

As an example of what this technology can do, scenes in One Millionth Tower can reflect the current weather in Toronto, where the film is based, thanks to Popcorn's ability to integrate with live data from Yahoo's Weather API.

It can also be used to grab data from the likes of Flickr, Wikipedia, Google Maps and other popular Web services, allowing the video to be augmented with relevant Web content at timely intervals throughout the video.

The possibilities are only as limited as the Web itself. The Popcorn website has a collection of live demos that show how the framework has been used to enhance Web video and audio content.

We got one of our our first glances at the possibilities HTML5 brings to interactive Web video last summer when Google launched a browser-based music video for the band Arcade Fire. That "Chrome Experiment" as they called it utilized the 3D graphics rendering capability of HTML5, along with the ability to commandeer multiple browser widows at a time.

One Millionth Tower can be watched in most modern browsers, but the interactive portion of the project requires Firefox or Chrome.

The deal, which covers such popular film series as Shrek and Madagascar is expected to net DreamWorks Animation $30 million per movie for the duration of the agreement. What makes this deal significant isn't so much its price tag or the content involved. Its significance lies in the fact that this is the first time such a major Hollywood content provider has inked a deal that skips over pay TV distribution in favor of the Web.

The partnership, which will go into effect in 2013, is an exclusive one, and it replaces a prior agreement DreamWorks Animation had with HBO. It also moves Netflix further into what's called the "pay TV window," which helps it compete with traditional players. Explains the Times:

"The so-called pay TV window is one of the entertainment industry's most important business tools. In the past, HBO has paid steep licensing fees of about $20 million per picture for exclusive rights a few months after films arrive on DVD. But Netflix - capitalizing on a consumer shift to streaming content on computers, tablets and Internet-connected televisions - has been making similar deals, albeit mostly with smaller suppliers."

The two companies are touting the deal as a major achievement, but not everybody is convinced. CNet's Greg Sandoval wonders whether Netflix is "desperate to generate positive news" after several weeks of customer and shareholder disappointment.

The company has had a rocky September, which it kicked off by implementing a highly unpopular increase in their subscription fees. In the weeks that followed, more customer frustration followed as they spun off their DVD business into a service that's entirely separate from their streaming business. Meanwhile, the company is now expected to lose 1 million customers and has seen its stock price tumble.

What was less clear before today's press conference was exactly what the details would be. Those are now revealed, and as it turns out, what Dish and Blockbuster have planned is hardly the "Netflix killer" many predicted.

It's For Satellite TV Subscribers, Not Cord Cutters

The offering Dish unveiled today is not a stand-alone video streaming and DVD rent-by-mail service like Netflix, but rather it's a $10 add-on for Dish subscribers. This might be a really nice added value for existing subscribers, but it doesn't look as attractive to other consumers.

What turns a lot of people off from cable and satellite TV subscriptions is their price and the fact that providers bundle together a ton of content that they're not necessarily interested in. A growing number of people instead look toward Web-based, on-demand video content from the likes of Hulu, Netflix and others. This is especially true of younger consumers, who are moving fewer TV sets into their dorm rooms this Fall and instead packing merely their laptops.

Blockbuster Movie Pass may have its perks for Dish's 14 million pay TV subscribers, but for everybody else, it simply chains them to the old model of paying for and consuming content.

Even With Their Price Hike, Netflix is Still Cheaper

In this morning's presentation, Dish touted the price point of Blockbuster Movie Pass as one of its advantages over "the competition," an obvious reference to Netflix, whose pricing model they cited specifically. While it's true that $10 is less expensive than the $16 that Netflix customers must now begrudgingly pay for the DVD-and-streaming combo, Blockbuster Movie Pass ends up being more expensive in the end becaue it's tethered to Dish.

Blockbuster Movie Pass doesn't launch until October 1, and the prices listed on the Dish website now say that plans "start at" $19.99, a price that only appears to only be in effect for 12 months (and requires a two year contract). If the new service is an extra $10, then consumers will be paying a minimum of $30 per month.

Granted, this package gets you more than what Netflix offers, including all that satellite TV content and a DVR functionality, so the price comparison isn't apples-to-apples.

You Think Netflix's Streaming Selection Stinks? This is Worse.

People have long complained that the content available to stream on-demand from Netflix is limited. That's improved over time, but may take a major hit if the company can't manage to salvage its deal with Starz Entertainment.

Even so, the site has 20,000 titles available to stream instantly, whereas Blockbuster Movie Pass will start with only 4,000 that are available to stream to desktops. Interestingly, only 3,000 will be able to be streamed directly to TV sets.

Blockbuster Movie Pass may prove to be an attractive option for those already interested in traditional pay TV subscriptions, but for people looking for an alternative to Netflix, this probably isn't the way to go.

Blockbuster photo by yapsnaps.

If you believe the F8 conference hype, on Sept. 29 when Timeline opens to the public, Facebook is the place where every single inch of your life can be displayed, from the time you were born, to the time you die. It's also going to be the place where every single piece of media you share and consume will be distributed to everyone you know.

Here's a wrap-up of how they are doing that.

First, timeline will be like your live-streaming baby album, stretched from your birth until whenever you kick it. It will basically allow you to reach back in time, before Facebook, and post those pictures and information. Dust off that scanner.

Media will be the main engine of developer growth. Basically, app distribution will run on the backbone of the meaningful and colorful media you typically enjoy on TV, at the movies, or on other sites like Hulu or Netflix.

We're talking apps that stream music, movies, tv shows and any kind of media known to man, which will spur people to share and connect with people. That's 800 million people streaming media to, potentially, each of their friends.

But wait, there's more! There will be no app store for Facebook, according to Bret Taylor, the network's CTO.

The apps will basically run on people's profiles, as if they are channel, only sourced from non-proprietary third party platforms.

Taylor also said the Open Graph API is strongly leaning towards mobile.

There is a reason that Facebook delayed its developers' conference until the fall this year, after having hosted it in the spring or early summer previously. Simply, Facebook has been busy. It will have been nearly a year-and-a-half since Facebook last held a major event (Skype calls do not really count) and that is a long time for the platform to decide and then implement and announce where it is going next. We will learn exactly what the path is at f8 on Thursday.

So, what are we looking for? Facebook's recent release strategy provides a good road map. Since the release of Google Plus, almost all of Facebook's new features have been to counter Google's push into its territory. Those are just reactionary moves, blips in the road. Content is going to be heavily featured at f8 and the true ground shaking updates will be announced this week.

The Billion Dollar Boxing Match

There has been a trend recently where the major tech companies, while innovating at breakneck speed, are also taking their time with their major updates. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are in a billion dollar boxing match. As any big puncher will tell you, there are only so many opportunities during a bout where you can attempt to land a stunning blow. The rest of the time is duck, dive, dodge, duck. Land a few jabs and wait your turn.

These jabs are what keep the tech media busy during the year. In Facebook's case, they have spent the summer catching up with some of the features in Google Plus (jab, jab, jab) and are now ready to deliver the Web a left hook to the jaw.

Facebook has been readying content partnerships all year to get ready for the announcements coming Thursday. The theme of f8 is "Read, Watch, Listen." Facebook is readying itself to become the hub for content sharing across the Web. TechCrunch reported that there will be buttons specifically for read, watch and listen on the platform and perhaps as buttons across the entire Web Let's take a look at what to expect.

Read

The "Read" portion of Facebook's announcement is perhaps the most mysterious. Yet, it has the most precedent in what Facebook has rolled out in previous years and may be tied closely with the platform's social graph. We imagine that "Read" buttons will somehow be tied to content partnerships with major news purveyors like Yahoo and AOL or e-books from Amazon.

Part of Facebook's rollout of the concept of the social graph was the "Like" button and sharing across the Web. It would not be a surprise if Facebook is copying services like ReadItLater (or just partnering with it, perhaps). The idea would be to make it easy to share what you are reading and have articles and books shared through a "Read" button that gets sent to a vertical section within Facebook itself.

Watch

Think of it this way: is it a coincidence that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is on the Facebook board of directors? Or that Hulu and Facebook started a major content sharing platform earlier this year?

Facebook is already one of the top destinations for video on the Web. Most of that is shared content from the likes of YouTube, Vimeo and local news. This is going to be rolled out even further and it will likely to two-pronged - content sharing from outside of Facebook and consumption from within.

Facebook's relationship with Hulu and Netflix could be a sign of things to come. With Hulu, Facebook users can share links to what they are watching and Hulu generates clips (that can be commented on) from the shows that get embedded into Facebook. For instance, if you are watching the Two and a Half Men season premier on Hulu the next day and think that Ashton Kutcher's line at the 10:30 mark of the show is (stupid, hilarious, intriguing), you tag that spot and share it with Facebook. We could see similar sharing capabilities with Netflix.

There is also the notion that you will be able to rent shows and movies within Facebook itself, a la iTunes. Think of a content store tied to your social graph. That has big implications if Facebook could pull it off with its partners.

Listen

While we do not know the specific details of the "Listen" products, we have clues. The primary indicators are MOG, Rdio and Spotify, all of which have been tied to Facebook over the summer. "Facebook Music" will likely be a conglomeration with MOG, Rdio and Spotify that will allow users to use Facebook as an iTunes-like streaming platform. In this way it becomes a conduit of content without having to go into the messy business of actually licensing music through the major music labels.

Profile Redesign

What does this all point to? Well, a major profile redesign could possibly be in the works to feature all of this new content. Mashable is reporting that Facebook will announce a redesign at f8 and the idea is to become "stickier." There are scant details on what the design will look like, but imagine that content will be featured prominently on your Facebook landing page, embedded into the news feed and contained within different silos (for Read, Watch and Listen). Facebook could be the functional consumption hub of media on the Web along with the primary sharing tool and message board.

What do you want to see come out of f8? What are your thoughts of Facebook as the center of your media universe? Let us know in the comments.