Seth Ladd's Blog

Aloha! Thanks to the Pacific New Media Center, I will be presenting an Introduction to HTML5 on September 10th at 7pm at University of Hawaii Art Auditorium, Art Building . This will be a fun and engaging talk with lots of time for questions and answers. Intro to HTML5 Abstract: This presentation will cover a very broad range of exciting and cutting edge HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript technologies that are powering the next generation web.  We will see lots of demos and code for a variety of features, and we'll learn why so many developers, large companies, and users are excited by the family of HTML5 features.  We'll focus on what's possible now (more than you think!) and we'll look to the future of what's to come shortly. This intro talk is targeted at web enthusiasts and web developers new to HTML5.  Anyone who has heard about HTML5 and wants to learn what it's all about and what you can do with it should attend. Who am I? Seth Ladd is a Developer Adv...

The Axioms When talking about the mobile phone market, have you noticed that it seems like everyone is taking about and analyzing "smart phones"?  That is, there's an incredible focus on smart phones, the vendors, the SDKs, the marketplaces, and users.  It's easy to see why: smart phones are extremely capable, monetize well, and there is a lot of competition which leads to innovation which leads to users winning. There are plenty of logical reasons why a developer chooses to develop for a smart phone instead of a legacy phone: smart phones have tremendous features and functionality smart phones typically have great SDKs smart phones integrate with marketplaces smart phones are evolving smart phone users are trained to spend money on apps There's a finite amount of energy in the universe, and the more it's spent on smart phones, the less it's spent on legacy phones.   In the mobile space, developers choose the target platform for their applicati...

HTML5 is being adopted quickly, with many of the specs already enjoying cross browser support.  Now is the perfect time to dive in and begin to plan HTML5 feature implementation to enable the types of Rich, Fast, and Highly Functional applications users are demanding. I can recommend the following set of resources to begin your journey.  Have fun, get creative, and start hacking! Overview HTML5 Rocks! Interactive presentation, Code playground, and Tutorials.  Produced by Google’s Chrome Developer Relations team. What is HTML5 and Why Should We Care? High level infographic illustrating the different HTML5 features and how they are related. HTML5 Readiness Browser implementation of individual HTML5 features.  This page itself is written using HTML5! HTML5 Demos List of demos by feature and browser support. Get Started HTML5 Presentation... in HTML5! An HTML5 presentation written in HTML5.  Covers all of the new features, with demos for mo...

Aloha! Thanks to TechHui and University of Hawaii's Pacific New Media for producing the TechHui 2010 Conference and inviting me to join. I was lucky enough to talk about HTML5 and then join the Rich Internet Applications panel to represent HTML5. The Star Advertiser even wrote up a short blurb on my involvement : Google guru to gab Google is sending one of its newest developer advocates to Hawaii for tomorrow's annual TechHui conference, where he will preach the gospel of an open Web to the glitterati of Hawaii's geek, er, tech community. Seth Ladd lived in Hawaii for seven years, "the longest I've ever lived anywhere," but he moved away about three weeks ago to join Google. He was most recently director of software at Camber Corp., a defense contractor with offices here. "Google's really betting on an open Web, open technology and open standards" for Web development, he said. For the dedicated HTML5 talk, I used the Interactive HTM...

Aloha, I'm at RailsConf 2010 this week, and really enjoying networking and learning from the Rails community. This community is very concerned with learning, improving, and writing clean code. Most Rails conferences, RailsConf and my own admittedly, are focused on server-side concerns (Model or Controller) to the detriment of front end engineering (View). This is neither bad nor good, but I would like to see more focus on the View. Consequently, it's difficult to get a good feeling of modern View engineering practices in the Rails community. Modern View engineering is, in my mind, adoption of the family of HTML5 features. HTML5 formalizes and standardizes on many of the rich user interface features that native clients and desktop applications have had for years. Web applications are now capable of providing very rich and immersive experiences. This should be extremely exciting for the Rails community! To help myself gain a real understanding of the Rails community...

Aloha! The Ruby on Rails community will be converging in Baltimore between June 7 and 10 for RailsConf 2010. Google will be on hand to take in the great talks, speak about OAuth, OpenID and the Google Data APIs and Scaling Rails on App Engine with JRuby and Duby , and to collect the feedback and ideas from the Rails community. Google announced a lot of interesting services within the past year, many at Google I/O, that would appeal to Rails developers. For example, the Google Apps Marketplace allows you to integrate, and monetize, your application with customers' Google Apps domains. The new Google Storage Service , a cloud data storage service, was also just announced with features such as write-read consistency. We know developers want to start hacking with these technologies, so Google will be hosting a Hackfest and reception at RailsConf 2010 . There will also be food, drinks, and swag. If you register for the RailsConf Google Hackfest before June 8th you can req...

If you are familiar with the iPhone or iPad, then you are most certainly familiar with one of its killer features: the App Store. The App Store provides a slick, and captive, distribution channel and monetization facility for developers. The App Store also offers an easily searchable, and easily purchasable, shopping experience for end users. Those are the Good Parts of the App Store. The App Store has its negative aspects as well. Applications written for the iPhone or iPad must be written in Objective C. This is not necessarily bad by itself, but it certainly limits your options and could prove to be a challenging learning curve. Also, the App Store has an ever evolving approval process. Applications can be rejected for numerous reasons, sometimes after they have been approved. This vague policy and sometimes seemingly random enforcement is a challenge for developers, and spell disaster if a money making application is suddenly pulled from the App Store. Those are some of ...