No Plug in Required

There is a new video player out for the web. HTML 5 is now available on Vimeo and YouTube. It allows you to view a video with out any plug in being installed on your computer. It is currently still in beta testing and is only compatible with a couple browsers at this point. Those browsers are Chrome, ChromeFrame on Internet Explorer and Safari at this point.

It appears that not every one on the net is happy about this development. Vimeo spokesperson Brad Daugherty said "Almost every thread on the Internet about HTML 5 devolves into some kind of flamewar. Please don't comment here extolling the virtues of open source or unencumbered codecs,". Deborah Szajngarten, director of Marketing and Communications at Vimeo points out this is only a test at this time and their goal was to provide the video community with the best tools out there.

So what are the other reasons that are railing against this change. I mean how could a User-Friendly plug in free player be a bad thing. If you are Adobe or Microsoft, you would be thinking other wise. Videos are big business. Both companies want to keep their footholds in this business via their propriety platform.


The article writer thinks that by the end of the year there will be more devices like the IPhone that doesn't support flash will be introduced to the game and the war will be on.

Open Source Office Suite

As I am trying to figure out what to Blog about, for my final Blog, I realized that I don't have a word processing application on my laptop. I usually do my work on my desktop which has Office 2007 but I just felt like vegetating in front of the Television. So, I decided to go to openoffice.org and download the office suite. This is yet another Free open-source application and it is mostly, from what I found, compatible with Microsoft's Office suite.


“OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. (OpenOffice.org)”




Open Office is included with the Linux Distribution that I use and is also supported on Mac OS X and Windows.

I am seriously considering switching to a Linux desktop, with Open office, after I graduate since I will not need to worry about being compatible with Microsoft after that.