One of the most exciting — and polarizing — aspects ofHTML5 is the specifications for HTML5 video. The promise of HTML5 is immense; no longer just a markup language, as robust applications can be built and deployed using the power of the browser.

One of the big promises of HTML5, at least for video, is that it will be possible to serve and play back hardware-accelerated video in the browser, on a smartphone or tablet, or in an embedded device, all without having to do lots of special coding.

Let’s look at some of the ways HTML5 is already influencing the future of online video, as well as some of the challenges that still exist.

Styling Video

Most content publishers serve video in HTML5 primarily to deliver a solid experience to users who are on devices that do not support Adobe’s Flash player. Although this is a valid (and increasingly popular) use case, there are additional advantages to using HTML5 video.

One of those advantages is the fact that because the <video> tag is just another HTML element, it can be styled with CSS3 and JavaScript.

This lets developers create special transformations, custom controls and other effects directly in the markup and stylesheet. Apple has a cool video effects demo using the Tron Legacy trailer and some mask properties in the WebKit rendering engine.

With Firefox 4, Mozilla has proven that it is embracing HTML5 in a big way. The Mozilla team released a set of video demos showcasing the power of HTML5 video when paired with CSS3 transforms in the lead-up to the official Firefox 4 release.

Read the full article here from Mashable

105 Companies Join Forces With Obama to "Change The Equation" for Education

Out of 30 industrialized nations, the United States ranks 21st in science and 25th in math. We’re spending more money than ever on schools, but with few results. Huge federal programs such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are clunky, slow-moving bureaucratic nightmares. The American education system is broken. In order to fix it, the public sector needs to start keeping pace with the private sector. How? By getting the private sector involved.

Read all about it HERE

White House unveils STEM Video Game Challenge

By James Fudge, GamePro

President Barack Obama unveiled the National STEM Video Game Challenge at a White House event this morning.

The competitions are part of the Educate to Innovate campaign. STEM is an initiative to encourage interest in "science, technology, engineering, and math" education in America.

"Our success as a nation depends on strengthening America?s role as the world?s engine of discovery and innovation," said President Obama at the event. "I applaud partners in the National STEM Video Game Challenge for lending their resources, expertise, and their enthusiasm to the task of strengthening America?s leadership in the 21st century by improving education in science, technology, engineering and math."

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US education grants beckon Pye

Early education publishing empire founder Wendy Pye is chasing a big share of new multibillion-dollar United States federal and state government grants to improve child literacy, capturing the first rights in the world to use her multimedia products on new Texas electronic textbooks.

Texas is offering US$650 million (NZ$902m) of "oil money" to fund initiatives to make sure every child in the state is "21st century literate", Ms Pye told the Global Women Forum 2010 in Auckland this week.

Ms Pye's NZ$100m Auckland business is also targeting New York, Florida and California for sales of its multimedia literacy and maths learning products.

She said the US Federal Government had committed US$3.4 billion to improve teacher performance and lift child literacy standards.

She urged the 150 businesswomen at the forum to write down their dreams, advising that about the only thing they probably could not achieve in their lives was to be president of the United States because they did not have a US passport. Everything else was achievable, the entrepreneur said.

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Cisco plans to buy Skype

SAN FRANCISCO: Cisco has made a bid to buy Skype for around $5 billion, before the privately-held internet phone company goes public, the influential Silicon Valley blog TechCrunch reported Monday. 

Skype allows users to make free internet telephone and video calls to other Skype users and charges relatively low rates for calls from computers to land and mobile phones. The company is facing stiff competition from Google which last week launched a similar telephony service for users of its Gmail system. 

Cisco is the world's leading maker of internet networking hardware and had been active in developing and acquiring communications systems that complement and increase demand for the switches and routers that manage traffic on the internet. 

Ebay bought Skype in 2005 for $2.6 billion and then sold it back to private investors headed by Skype's founders for $1.9 billion in 2009. 

Skype has a reported 560 million registered users and is planning to offer its shares in an IPO, though no details about the timing and value of the public share sale have yet been released. In the first half of the year, sales rose 25 per cent in to $406 million but profit was only $13 million.

The original article exists HERE