W3C HTML Working Group has recently released HTML 5 working draft. This is a very important step forward; the same is available for review and comment at http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-20080122/

The new standard addresses the need of web application developers in more pro-active way:

• Basic template facility has been implemented with facility to repeat elements
• There are also new elements for navigation, headers, footers, figures, and dialog
• Client-side persistent storage functionality (JavaScript APIs for key/value pairs & embedded SQL databases)
• Support for server-sent events, which will facilitate persistent connections to remote data sources

Some old features like frames have been removed.

Let us see how soon new browsers start supporting these new features of HTML 5. Currently the Opera browser has the best support (though it does not support all features) for HTML 5.

Footnote:

There is an overall trend to make HTML more developer friendly so that complex web applications are developed as per W3C standards and are compatible on different browsers on different mediums. With Bill Gate’s prediction coming in about different shapes and sizes of computers in this decade which will make computers more intuitive (like the table PC), this seems to be moving in the right direction.

So let’s think, how your website will look and take shape (as per device specific browser compatibility) when displayed on a coffee table as the people sitting around it mumble the name of your company!

Abhishek

I came across this quote today at BusinessPundit. 

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. - Kenji Miyazawa

How true When you start a company, you get rejected by almost everyone:

Bankers:

They want to lend you money only if you have a strong financial background. Ever thought, why will you even go for borrowing money if you have that solid financial backing!

Customers:

Have you heard prospects saying - You dont have enough credentials! Its a chicken and egg situation. You got to get few customers to build credentials. But to get customers, you need credentials.

Employees:

Have you heard people saying - I don’t see a future in your company. I would prefer to work for an established brand. Have you ever thought that "established brand" was also built by some "go getters" who came out of their comfort zone and took risk to build the "established brand".

I don’t want to rant about the pain. Just want to let you know that everyone faces this. Only those people, who use it as a fuel for their journey succeeds. Those who give up results in those 80% of the businesses that dies within the first few years of operations!

Keep going!

I have often seen people struggling with their business plan. I have a bit unconventional take on the subject. May be, because it has worked well for me till now. So here is what I sugget:

Recently, I finished reading "The Fourth Estate" by Jeffrey Archer.

It was a nice read - a bit long though. At some places it becomes boring.

The overall storyline is interesting. What is more interesting is its simmilarity to real life media tycoons Rupert Murdoch and Maxwell. There are too many simmilarities to ignore and it looks like the real story has been spiced up and censored wherever required to give it a look of a fiction novel.

Murdoch like Townsend, was born to aristocrat family in Australia and they moved on to United Kingdom and then to USA to conquer the media empire. On the other hand Armstrong like Maxwell followed the trail from war torn Germany to the British army and both ended up in United Kingdom and then in USA to fight the penultimate battle with his arch rival. The incidence of misappropriation of pension funds brings the fiction and real life drama a step closer. However the climax is the way the novel describes the death of Armstrong which is very simmilar to that of Maxwell.

I found it more interesting as I read this book after I saw biography coverage about Maxwell on History Channel (most probably).

Worth a read!

Abhishek