Brightcove, a company that has previously focused on providing an online video platform, has announced it is branching into the world of mobile app development and publishing.

A new service, expected to be fully available in the second half of 2011, will help clients release apps made for all the many devices that use them, from the diverse phones running Android, to iPhones, to tablets of varying sizes.

Called App Cloud, Brightcove's new content app platform will help customers port apps to devices of varying sizes and specifications based on a single template design. Localization has long been a pain point of mobile development, and Brightcove's solution aims to smooth the process for big-budget organizations. In its simplest form, the concept boils down to build it once for one device, and let Brightcove take care of making sure the app works on all other devices.

Read the full article here from PCMag.com

YouTube has some bad news for those of you hoping the site would soon ditch Flash in favor of HTML5 video tags: It isn’t going to happen any time soon.

That’s message from the YouTube developer blog which cites half-a-dozen areas where Flash trumps HTML5 and explains why “the <video> tag does not currently meet all the needs of a site like YouTube.”

The emerging HTML5 standard, which is quickly being adopted by browser manufacturers and developers, offers native video-playback and animation tools that don’t require Adobe’s Flash plug-in. However, while HTML5 handles the basics of video, it lacks many of the extra features that sites like YouTube, Vimeo and Hulu currently offer through Flash-based video players.

To switch to pure HTML5 video would mean YouTube would have to give up features like live streaming, dynamic video quality control and the ability to allow users to jump to specific points in a video.

While YouTube claims to be “excited about the HTML5 effort and <video> tag,” the post makes it pretty clear that HTML5 isn’t going to take over the site any time soon. The video-streaming site Hulu has previously said the same thing: HTML5 lacks the extra features Flash enables.

Read the full article here from WebMonkey

While YouTube should be standard equipment for mobile Web surfers—"The Mean Kitty Song" belongs alongside Angry Birds—a blizzard of video formats has left some devices out in the cold. Today, YouTube announced that the service is gaining support for Google's open format, WebM video, with the aim of improving access to its most popular videos first.

As it stands, about 30 percent of the site has been converted to the format. However, that 30 percent reflects approximately 99% of YouTube's viewing activity, says the site. So chances are, if you want to watch it, that laughing baby video already has WebM support, and all new uploads will be coded in the format.

Unlike proprietary audio-video formats, WebM is royalty-free and uses an open video-compression format. Because it's accessible to outside developers, changes to format and integration could eventually improve the mobile video experience. Google, which owns YouTube, has thrown its weight behind the project, challenging existing video-format titans, Adobe Flash and H.264 video, backed by Apple.

Read the full article from PCMag.com here

Teachers already use Skype to connect with other classrooms around the globe, bring in guest speakers without asking them to travel, and take virtual field trips.

Now, Skype is making it easier for them to do so.

The company launched Skype in the Classroom, a dedicated teacher network, on Tuesday. Using the platform, teachers can create profiles that describe their classes and teaching interests. They can also search a directory of teachers from all over the world by student age range, language and subject.

Skype Blog says: Almost everyday we hear a wonderful story about how our simple software is being put to good use for learning. From international projects on weather, mega-cities, and world populations, to classroom exchanges on earthquakes, culture and language, to helping deaf children communicate, teaching English to Haitian children, connecting students with experts from lawyers and authors, survival experts, paleoanthropologists, and other inspirational guest speakers on global issues such as peace and the importance of intercultural cooperation.

Read full article from Technology Digital here