Tee hee.

Frankly, the way Google has handled the On2 acquisition and the release of VP8 simply has me puzzled. Google's not a bunch of dumb folks and I don't see why they would rush an inferior product out to the market, make it open-source and then hope it would unseat H.264 all while not getting any input from developers before the initial first release, even if it is beta. If Google permits changes to the spec and allows the developer community to help fix some of the glaring issues with VP8, I could see that approach. But at no time during Google's presentation yesterday did they frame the release of VP8 that way or ask for help from the development community to fix issues that they must know exist.

Hoorah!

How similar are these ads?!

The battle over Flash and its role (or lack thereof) on the iPhone really came to a head today when Apple CEO Steve Jobs published an open letter expressing why his company won’t support Flash on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen spoke with the Wall Street Journal to deliver his response. Unsurprisingly, the arguments from both parties are self-serving in parts and gloss over some of the real world realities.

It’s time to cut through the BS and break down what both companies are really arguing and, in turn, what the Apple-Adobe feud means for consumers and developers.

Interesting analysis from Mashable here, which mostly agrees that Flash sucks. What I don't get is why Adobe care so much - they make their money on authoring tools; if they really believed in the quality of their own products, why not just make great HTML5 and video authoring tools, and let developers choose whether to use HTML5 or Flash. I suspect I know which most would choose.

This party election broadcast truly - I mean genuinely - makes me feel sick and scared for our country. That one of our biggest parties would air such disgusting scaremongering in a slot that is supposed to convince me why they're a party I should vote for. That they should imply that my vote, my choice of who I want to run our country, should be voluntarily sacrificed to get over some tricky administrative problems that they would have to deal with as a result of our bizarre and flawed system of democracy just makes me want to cry. I won't rant on, but I highly recommend this post on how the Conservatives are trying to scare you out of your right to make a sensible democratic choice, and this post, a letter to the Tories asking why they won't just explain their policies instead of scaring me into voting for them.

Grrr.

> Quicktime H.264
(42mb)
> iPod Compatible
(17mb)
> Watch in Flash
(20mb progressive)

> Quicktime H.264
(29mb)
> iPod Compatible
(9mb)
> Watch in Flash
(11mb progressive)

> Quicktime H.264
(27mb)
> iPod Compatible
(10mb)
> Watch in Flash
(12mb progressive)

> Quicktime H.264
(18mb)
> iPod Compatible
(8mb)
> Watch in Flash
(9mb progressive)

John Behom at idents.tv presents an interesting comparison of the UK's 4 main news outlets covering the ash cloud.

I'm a little late to the party on this one today, but it's brilliant!

I think this tells me all I need to know about the "change" in the Conservatives.

Watch in HD, it's much better. Beautiful video of New York, no models involved, just clever shooting techniques.