The very first transmission on the ARPANET, on October 29, 1969, was from UCLA to SRI. That means the working Net turned 41 today!

In those days, the ARPANET looked like this:

By 1972, the ARPANET was comprised of 37 computers. In 1983, the ARPANET was opened up to universities and various scientific bodies. In the years since then, this small network has grown into the Internet we know today.

Google just released an HTML5 site offering demos and tutorials to developers. HTML5Rocks features nine tutorials on HTML5 features. And there’s a code playground to let you mess around with your own code. I like this set of introductory slides. Here’s how Google describes the site:

Because HTML5 and its related technologies cover so much ground, it can be a real a challenge to get up to speed on them. That’s why today we’re sharing HTML5 Rocks, a great new resource for developers and teams looking to put HTML5 to use today, including more information on specific features and when to use them in your apps.

One of the better HTML5 demos I’ve seen is this Time Zone page which was designed for the iPad. Keep in mind that there are no images at all on this page!

Light on the data, heavy on the aesthetics. Super pretty by Section Design.

It is striking to see the different trajectories mobile operating systems are on when compared to the mobile web.

In 2006, two smartphone operating systems accounted for 81 percent of the market. There were really only four platforms to worry about: Symbian, Windows Mobile, RIM, and Palm OS. These represented 93 percent of the market.

Fast-forward to the present and the picture is different. No single operating system has more than 50 percent marketshare. There are seven operating systems being tracked and even within operating systems there are fragmentation concerns.

The future promises more operating system fragmentation, not less:

• In February, Nokia and Intel joined forces to create a new open source smartphone operating system called MeeGo.
• HP’s purchase of Palm means that WebOS isn’t going away any time soon.
• Windows Phone 7 will replace Windows Mobile, but not immediately. It is also unclear how Kin fits into the picture.
• Samsung will ship its own operating system called Bada later this summer. Before you discount Bada, remember that Samsung has the highest percentage of U.S. mobile subscribers, sells more touch screen phones than anyone else, and aims to sell 18 million smartphones this year.
• HTC is rumored to be considering its own operating system. HTC is the fourth largest manufacturer of smartphones.
• Motorola is rumored to have bought its own mobile operating system. Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha said during Q1’s earnings call, “I continue to believe that at some point … that owning our own OS will be a very important thing.”

This list doesn’t include differences within each particular operating system. Much has been made of Android fragmentation due to different user experiences like MotoBlur and HTC’s Sense UI. And some argue that even the homogenous iPhone platform is starting to fragment.

There are more mobile operating systems coming and no signs of the mobile OS market narrowing any time soon.

The mobile web is converging

By contrast, the mobile web is converging on HTML5 and WebKit.

Unlike mobile operating systems, mobile browsers were fragmented a few years ago. The list of early mobile browsers include a series of proprietary browser engines:

• jB5 Browser
• Polaris Browser
• Blazer
• Internet Explorer Mobile
• Openwave
• NetFront
• Obigo
• Blackberry Browser

That’s a fraction of the browser options that were available to mobile phone users. And while there is still work to be done to make mobile browsers more consistent, it is nothing compared to the inconsistencies between early mobile browsers.

Today, every mobile browser is moving toward HTML5 support, if it isn’t there already:

WebKit: The dominant mobile platform

The WebKit browser engine now has a dominant position in mobile browsers. When BlackBerry ships its new browser based on WebKit, 85 percent of smartphones will ship with a WebKit-based browser.

WebKit is also used by numerous feature phones. Vision Mobile estimates that at the end of 2009, WebKit had been embedded in more than 250 million devices.

Advancing the mobile browser

In many ways, HTML5 is just the baseline of where mobile browsers are headed. Many companies, from carriers to handset manufacturers, are looking to mobile browser innovation as a key to their mobile strategies.

• WebOS extends Javascript to provide access to device characteristics like the address book, camera, and accelerometer.
• Sony Ericsson worked with the PhoneGap community to create its WebSDK.
• Symbian is wooing developers with access to the dialer, calendar, camera, contacts and other tools using web technology.
• Forty carriers and handset manufacturers have formed the Wholesale Application Community to build an open platform that will work on all devices. They seek to combine JIL and BONDI. JIL and BONDI provide access to device APIs via web technology.

There are two common threads in each of these stories.

First, companies throughout the ecosystem are extending mobile browsers to provide more functionality and attract developers to their platforms. Second, they are all approaching it in similar ways built on HTML widget technology.

Much like WebKit, there will be inconsistencies between these efforts in the near term, but all of these efforts are headed in the same direction.

Two to many, many to one

In 2006, two mobile operating systems controlled 81 percent of the market. This year there are 10 different smartphone operating systems.

Over that same period of time, mobile browsers have gone from many different proprietary rendering engines to the point where WebKit alone will power browsers in more than 85 percent of the smartphones sold.

From two operating systems to many. From many browsers to one. We have two core mobile technologies headed in opposite directions.

Yahoo announced a relaunch of Yahoo Profiles and their “all in” integration with Facebook Connect, including on the Yahoo home page. According to Yahoo:

Yahoo! has reached an important milestone in its partnership with Facebook. Starting globally today, people who use both Yahoo! and Facebook can link their accounts and view and share updates with friends across both networks. People who connect their accounts can consume their Facebook newsfeed on the Yahoo! homepage and in Yahoo! Mail and other Yahoo! sites and services. Additionally, people who create and share content on Yahoo! sites – including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Flickr, and many Yahoo! entertainment sites, such as omg!, Yahoo! TV, and Yahoo! Movies – can easily share their contributions across Facebook. Additional integrations will be ongoing.

I first wrote about the changing Web of Third Party Platform Integration back in late 2009. This new move by Yahoo! is further evidence of the Web’s ongoing evolution towards cloud-based mashups of platforms that communicate with each other. This is an obvious win for Facebook as it solidifies their place as THE ‘real world’ social communications medium or hub of the web. But this is also a major win for Yahoo! in that Yahoo! controls a massive content network that will gain visibility through social media integration.

Many would argue that this obvious short term win would be a risky long term strategy but I believe there is an underlying plan at play here. While Yahoo! does have a large amount of registered users across many web properties they do not have the amazingly rich social graph that Facebook has created, nor can they easily replicate it. By providing a strong bilateral integration into Facebook they have the opportunity to mine a great deal of socail related data across many web properties in order to apply the fundamentals of data science.

The future belongs to the companies who figure out how to collect and use data successfully. Both parties have a massive opportunity to gain access to large amounts of valuable data.

As a Canadian entrepreneur with first hand experience navigating the difficult and convoluted immigration/visa process in the United States, I’m happy to hear that Silicon Valley VC Dave McClure is organizing a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who will travel to Washington D.C. to talk with government officials about the Startup Visa Act. The act, introduced last week by Democrat John Kerry and Republican Richard Lugar, proposes a new type of visa for immigrants who create startups and jobs in the U.S. A similar proposal is part of an immigration reform bill in the House.

The Startup Visa Act of 2010 would create a two year visa for immigrant entrepreneurs who are able to raise a minimum of $250,000, with $100,000 coming from a qualified U.S. angel or venture investor. After two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur is able to create five or more jobs (not including their children or spouse), attract an additional $1 million in investment, or produce $1 million in revenues, he or she will become a legal resident.

I think this is a ‘no-brainer’ really. It will attract great minds and fuel the economy with little to no downside.

It would have been nice to at least have this option on the table when I made my way to California from Toronto. I initially entered the U.S. under TN (Treaty NAFTA) status after getting an employment offer from a mobile technology startup based in So-Cal. TN is temporary employment status and not a residency VISA so your time here doesn’t count towards an eventual naturalization. It allows Canadians, Americans and Mexicans in certain high-demand professions to work temporarily in other parts of North America and all that is required is a properly prepared Offer of Employment. This is handed to a border patrol officer who spends about 20 minutes interrogating and demeaning you (or at least in my case) before stamping your passport. The status has to be renewed yearly and there is no guarantee that you’ll get it renewed. TN workers whose employment opportunities are extended to permanent positions generally have to request that their employer sponsor an H1B visa which is a long, expensive, and convoluted process that has no guarantees because of the high demand for H1Bs.

I graduated from a university which at the time ranked in the top-20 globally with a skill set that was in high demand and came from a country that shares the longest unprotected border in the world with the United States – and I found the immigration process difficult and frustrating. I can’t imagine how difficult it is for the undiscovered would-be genius entrepreneurs overseas trying to work towards the American Dream.

America was built by the best and brightest who came here from around the world. As such, the Startup Visa Act is a testament to Americanism and the history of this nation. Let’s hope the delegation of Entrepreneurs have their voice heard.

As we’re all well aware, Google released the Nexus One yesterday, the first supposed “Google Phone.” But it’s hardly an iPhone killer. For that role, Google has something much more sinister in mind. Meet the “Fuck You iPhone” Phone.

It was inevitable, and now it’s here, Google has just launched real-time search integrated into search results pages. The new feature updates a real time results module as it discovers new real time results from around the Web — for example, live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles and Web pages now stream in on the actual result pages for your query.  Google has signed deals with Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and others that integrates these third party platforms to pull in data in real-time.

By Google taking the plunge and integrating data APIs from third party platforms, it definitely validates the emerging new era of a connected Web of platforms.  A decade ago, the Web was mostly comprised of a presentational layer of static html pages.  Then we saw an explosion of web application development that took these static pages and made them a lot more interactive and dynamic. While these web applications were much more powerful and interoperable, search & discovery has remained relatively unchanged.

Twitter changed things.  Largely a result of its early adopters, Twitter evolved into more of a platform for communication (and development) than an actual web application.  Others have followed suit and we are now at a point that we have these behemoth disparate systems that getting more an more connected to the rest of the Web.

What this means for marketers that you can no longer brush Twitter, Facebook, or other platforms off as fad.  With Google moving full steam ahead integrating these third party systems, you’re SEO and SEM strategies will undoubtedly be affected.  When users search for your keywords, they are going to see real time sentiment in the search results.  This empowers consumers and marketers are going to need to find ways to market to the real-time Web as well as create more intimate relationships with their customers – or suffer the consequences.

What this means for developers is that you need to start thinking about how your technology fits into the rest of the web and how you can leverage all of its disparate platforms. Smart integration of all these systems into unified web applications is going to be occurring over the next few years.  That doesn’t mean setting up a  Twitter account and hiring an intern to send a few tweets out everyday.  It means intelligently developing a strategy to integrate all platforms seamlessly into your own system to leverage the power this new connected Web of platforms.

Citysourced is an iphone application that empowers citizens to identify civil issues (potholes, graffiti, trash, snow removal, etc.) and report them to city hall for quick resolution – they are calling it a “mobile civic engagement tool”.

Here’s how it works. You know that pothole your car keeps falling into as you try and pull into your driveway? CitySourced can help with that. Pull out your iPhone, snap a pic, select the report type and hit send. CitySourced will geo-tag your picture and send a PDF report to the city council member that handles that district.

Here are all the items that you can tag and report:

• abandoned bicycle or vehicle
• animal services – biting, deceased, not leashed, not permitted, pest control
• driveway cleaning, danger, degradation, obstruction
• graffiti removal
• homeless encampment, nuisance
• illegal dumping/trash, fire/burning
• leaf collection
• parking illegally, illegally in driveway, in red zone, without permit
• parking meter broken, parking sign
• plants/trees danger, degradation, obstruction, overgrown, removal
• roadway cleaning, danger, degradation, obstruction
• sidewalk cleaning, danger, degradation, obstruction
• street light, sign
• trash can/bin broken, removal
• water leak driveway, fire hydrant, sidewalk, street, unknown
• yard waste removal
• other including building code enforcement, noise complaint, property violation, any not listed

Currently there are over 1900 cities in the database and users have the ability to add a city from the CitySourced website. The app is free to download and according to Kurt Daradics, Co-Founder of CitySourced, the way they plan to make money is off of the individual cities.

I think this is a great example of how private companies can leverage technology to improve the bureaucratic inefficiencies of local government while still generating revenue.

In his blog post titled Mobile 2.0 – Apps vs. Browser Based Web Services, Dennis Bournique of WapReview.com concludes that “within five years standalone mobile applications will largely be replaced by browser based mobile services  just as is happening on the desktop today”.  I, for the most part, agree with this statement.

Prior to the launch of the iPhone in June of 2007, developers looking to get any sizable distribution were forced into difficult and long business development processes with wireless carriers who generally took very large proportions of revenues generated.  A developer with a free ad-supported app that was lucky enough to negotiate a distribution agreement would be left with little revenue.  Additionally, none of the handset manufacturers were exposing much of their device’s OS capabilities and handset browsers were far behind where they are today only two years later (the BlackBerry 8700 was one of the hottest devices on the market).

Apple’s iPhone and App Store launch created a perfect storm for independent mobile application developers.  Developers were given a rich SDK that would enable them to build apps that were unthinkable a year before, while simultaneously providing a massive distribution opportunity.  A two year onslaught of Apple’s marketing and TechCrunch’s iPhone application coverage ensued.

The tech community, especially in Nor-Cal, often get caught up in the latest tech trend and one of the more recent ones was the iPhone and the ‘there’s an app for that’ concept – which of course has been extended to other platforms beyond iPhone OS.

And here we are today.  I’ve spoken to various individuals from investors, marketers, to application developers who only seem to see the here and the now – native application development (or more often iPhone application development).  As Dennis put it, “there seems to be a tendency today to see apps as the future of mobile and to dismiss all browser based mobile services as second rate.”   I personally believe that this is a very short sighted view of the future of mobile.  I’d prefer to look to visionaries like Eric Schmidt who in May stated “mobile will be a larger business than the PC-Web. But it will take a few years.”

Those barriers to entry and barriers to development that made native application so essential are being broken down with every new device released.  Manufacturers are exposing more and more of their OS, GPS for example, through Javascript APIs available on the mobile web.  And now with HTML5, mobile Web apps can take advantage of on device data storage.  Mobile Web applications can indeed provide comparable user experiences to their native application counterparts and will only continue to improve.

I foresee a continual ‘blurring’ of the distinctions between mobile web/mobile client applications, as well as the distinctions between desktop/mobile websites.  Within a matter of a few years, the mobile web will share the same capabilities as any other platform and will indeed replace native applications as the development platform of choice.  Developers who are in early stand to gain the most.