Yesterday we started taking names for a temporarily closed Alpha.5 release. I am tempted to say Beta, but will save that for when we let everyone in. Those invites will start going out in the next day or so. If you still want an invite, please send us an email to pressarmy-invites@ultrasupernew.com with a little intro of who you are and we will get you hooked up.

You can check out the presentation here (although you need to excuse some of my jetlagged rambling) :

We are going to be giving follow up development discussion at each Tokyo2point0 over the next months. It is held at Fujimamas on the second Tuesday of the month… more details here : www.tokyo2point0.net

I also want to put out a big thanks to our USN crew who put in a big effort in the last week to get the project ready. So thank you to Malo, Takaaki, Asela, Alban, Jerome, Hirofumi, Toyo, Kissen for all your programming, designing, testing. And thanks especially Malo who responsible for the main engine and has been putting up with the evolving concept and my tweaking for a few months already.

[ UPDATE : Slides are available at Slideshare ]

This is a pretty open stab at Microsoft and their still market dominant (but waning) Internet Explorer which is famous for breaking web standards. Being responsible for putting together a lot of websites with my team, I have to say the lack of support for web standards in all flavours of IE is one of the biggest annoyances of our work.

On a related note, I recently spoke with Michael Smith from the HTML5 working group at the W3C (I also had him along to Tokyo2point0 recently, an event I co-organise to promote web development in Tokyo). He brought up a few interesting things about where the next web standards are heading from the W3C point of view. Over the past few years the trend with web developers has been to go towards the strict standards of XHTML where you have to be perfect for your code to validate. This movement is not quite working with about 95%, yes 95%!, of websites failing to validate. That includes HTML and XHTML sites, and the XHTML ones are just not a realistic goal for most developers.

The new movement at the W3C is to push developers towards to upcoming HTML5 standard which will be much more accepting and allow a lot more legacy code and make many of these old pages and old code structures work again. What they are also doing is clearly defining the way browsers should render the syntax, making life much easier for a browser that has any desire at all to meet standards.

The rollout of HTML5 is not going to be quick, but we can at least look forward to more easily obtainable standards in the future.

For now, the goal should be to understand that standard you are attempting to meet, use a validator to check your code, and stop using syntax that doesn’t work as specified on all browsers wherever possible.

We can all lament the mess that is IE and scheme for new ways to encourage users to get rid of it in favour of a browser that works properly such as Firefox or Opera. Perhaps this effort by the Mozilla Developer Center will help.

[event information republished from the tokyo2pont0 site]

Tokyo2Point0 #8: HTML 5 & ONGMAP.COM & Trendmap v3

Tokyo2Point0 events are designed to bring together people with an interest Web 2.0 for informational presentations and networking.

Register for the event using the ‘Sign Up’ link at:
www.japanevents.net or email andrew@tokyo2point0.net

Date: Tuesday January 15th
Time: 7-10pm
7.00-7.30 Doors open & Networking
7.30-8.00: Presentation 1
8.00-8.30: Asian Tapas Buffet & Networking
8.30-9.00: Presentation 2
9.00-9.15: BONUS Presentation
9:15-10:00: Networking

Cost: 2,500 yen – Includes Asian Tapas & 2 drinks
Venue: Fujimamas 6-3-2 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Map & Directions: www.fujimamas.com

PRESENTATION 1: Michael Smith, World Wide Web Consortium: HTML 5

Michael will be talking about some of the changes we can expect to see in HTML 5. Quoting from the working draft specification:

“The World Wide Web’s markup language has always been HTML. HTML was primarily designed as a language for semantically describing scientific documents, although its general design and adaptations over the years has enabled it to be used to describe a number of other types of documents.

The main area that has not been adequately addressed by HTML is a vague subject referred to as Web Applications. This specification attempts to rectify this, while at the same time updating the HTML specifications to address issues raised in the past few years.”

Speaker Profile
Michael joined the W3C in 2007 as part the W3C Mobile Web Initiative and is now part of the Interaction domain. He’s been based in Tokyo since 2001. Prior to joining the W3C, he worked for Opera Software, and prior to that, for Openwave Systems — most of that time involved with design, development, testing, and deployment of software for mobile operators.

PRESENTATION 2: Yuki Naotori, CEO, Sevens Inc. : Award Winning Google Maps Mashup: ONGMAP.COM

ONGMAP.COM (on-gmap) is a mashup of Google Maps and many other geo-related web apis. Its user interface is built on a Javascript framework ExtJS and works like a desktop application. Yuki will show how ONGMAP is built, what it can do, and hopefully new project based on ONGMAP.

Speaker Profile
BS from Florida Institute of Technology, MS from Stanford University. Started his career at Andersen Consulting (Accenture) in 1995. Founded Open Associates in 2000 after working for Infinity Financial Technology, Monitor Company, and InsWeb Japan. Founded 7ns.jp in 2007

BONUS PRESENTATION:
We are pleased to welcome back Oliver Reichenstein of Information Architects who will give a brief presentation on v3 of their trendmap and highlights of their predictions for the internet industry in 2008.

Version 2 of the Information Architects Trendmap