Where we’ve seen a need to push content and interactivity forward, we’ve innovated to meet those needs. Where a format didn’t exist, we invented one – such as with Flash and Shockwave.1 And over time, as the web evolved, these new formats were adopted by the community, in some cases formed the basis for open standards, and became an essential part of the web.
But as open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web. Over time, we’ve seen helper apps evolve to become plugins, and more recently, have seen many of these plugin capabilities get incorporated into open web standards. Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins.
Category: General Tech
Inside SoundCloud⇢
Dani Deahl and Casey Newton have a breathtaking look at what’s going on inside the sinking ship of SoundCloud. If you’re hosting your podcast there, I’d spend this weekend looking for a new host.
World Emoji Day
Today is World Emoji Day. Started by Emojipedia founder and very handsome man Jeremy Burge in 2014, it’s a day to celebrate the tiny icons that have taken over much of our communication.
To help mark the day, Apple is previewing the new emoji coming to the company’s operating systems later this year. Beyond the press release, Apple Podcasts is getting into the day in a big way:
Happy #WorldEmojiDay!
Come play along with us and turn podcast titles into emojis with #PodcastEmoji.
Panobook⇢
The Studio Neat guys have launched a Kickstarter for a lovely new notebook:
It all started with an insight about how we use notebooks. Even though we spend 8 hours a day doing digital work on a computer, notebooks are an essential analogue tool. We noticed, while sitting at a computer, it would be great to have a notebook directly in front of us. But that would require a different type of notebook, one with more of a panoramic ratio. So that’s what we made.
Road ID for Apple Watch⇢
David Sparks shared a page to Road ID’s Apple Watch product.
If you aren’t familiar, Road ID makes identification meant to be worn during a run or bike ride. I’ve had one for years in case I’m involved in an accident when working out alone and someone needs to know about my basic health or contact my spouse. I have worn it on the opposite wrist of my Apple Watch, but now I won’t have to.
Yahoo-Verizon Deal Closes, Marissa Mayer Out as CEO⇢
Marissa Mayer, writing on the Verizon-owned Tumblr:
It’s been my great honor and privilege to be a part of this team for the last 5 years. Together, we have rebuilt, reinvented, strengthened, and modernized our products, our business, and our company.
Looking back on my time at Yahoo, we have confronted seemingly insurmountable business challenges, along with many surprise twists and turns. I’ve seen our teams navigate these hurdles and mountains in ways that have not only made Yahoo a better company, but also made all of us far stronger. During these past 5 years, we’ve built products that delight our users, focused on our clients’ businesses, driven substantial value for our shareholders, and endeavored to make Yahoo the absolute best place to work. I want to take a moment to remind you of some of our many achievements together. They are remarkable, and we should all be very proud.
Mossberg’s Tech Museum⇢
Walt Mossberg is retiring this year — he’s already written his last column, hosted his last Code Conference, and taped the final episode of Ctrl-Walt-Delete in front of a live audience in New York. But Walt’s also assembled an impressive collection of notable gadgets over his two decade run as a reviewer and columnist, and we asked him to talk us through some of the more notable items as he cleared out of his office.
The MP3 Isn’t Dead
MP3, the digital audio coding format, changed the way we listen to music and drove the adoption of countless new devices over the last couple of decades. And now, it’s dead. The developer of the format announced this week that it has officially terminated its licensing program.
The gist of the story is pretty simple. The Fraunhofer Institute has licensed certain MP3 patents, and recently announced that program has come to an end:
Swift Being Ported to Haiku⇢
Joseph Hill is undertaking one hell of a project: porting Swift to Haiku. For the uninitiated, Haiku is an open-source operating system based on BeOS:
Haiku has ports for several modern programming languages available to developers, but some of them are in the form of version specific patches, which haven’t been upstreamed yet. As new releases of programming languages come by, maintenance of platform support through patches becomes increasingly difficult and Haiku misses out on official support for those languages. By working directly with the Swift community, this task aims to add Haiku support specifically for Swift and its sub-projects in the effort to not only improve Haiku’s programming language diversity for future developers, but to make Swift a possible alternative programming language to develop Haiku apps in.
On Passwords and Loss Recovery⇢
Fraser Speirs and his wife had a bag stolen on vacation. In it was her iPhone, which set Fraser down a road of loss recovery when he had a realization:
I use 1Password for Families, so my data is hosted by 1Password itself. I have 2-factor authentication turned on for every account that supports it, including my Apple ID, personal and work Google accounts, Dropbox, Evernote and others.
All my devices have passcodes. I use alphanumeric passcodes on my iOS devices. I have Touch ID enabled. My Apple Watch locks when I take it off. Find My iPhone is turned on for all devices and Activation Lock is enabled.
Verizon to Merge Yahoo and AOL Into New Company Named Oath⇢
Avery Hartmans and Julie Bort:
When Verizon merges Yahoo with AOL after its acquisition of Yahoo closes, the newly created division will get a new name.
That new name is Oath, sources tell Business Insider.
Yeah, I’m sure this will go well.
Twitter Replaces the Egg⇢
I’m sure this will fix all of the service’s problems.