Netflix dumps Silverlight

Netflix the video on demand service has dropped Microsoft's Silverlight in favour of using HTML5 vide extensions.

Though Microsoft have said they will support Silverlight until 2021, Netflix have been ready to migrate for a while and users can be unhappy with the browser extension that can be troublesome to install.

The video extensions Netflix will use are Media Source, Encrypted Media and Web Cryptography API which will be implemented in Google's Chrome browser and ARM based Chromebook and are likely to be native to other browsers soon. As the extensions are part of the W3C HTML5 specifications, users wont have to install any browser plug-ins to support them.

Nokia releases MeeGo v1.1

Nokia has released version 1.1 of the MeeGo Operating System (OS) which contains Linux Kernel 2.6.35, X.org server 1.9.0, Web Runtime, Qt 4.7, and Qt Mobility 1.0.2. It's available in several versions optimised for the devices that they run on i.e. MeeGo for Handsets, MeeGo for Netbooks, MeeGo for In-Vehicle Entertainment.

The Netbook version is actually 2 versions, one with the completely open source Google Chromium browser and the other with Google's Chrome browser which requires the suer to agree to Google's EULA.

Though the handset version supports Nokia's N900, they say it works but it's not really for end-users yet and the the user interface (UI) isn't ready for prime-time.

The IVE release supports text-to-speech using the open source Festival speech engine and speech recognition using PocketSphynx (which is based on the open source Sphynx speech-to-text system).

Though Nokia are developing MeeGo (which is the combination of Nokia Maemo OS and Intel's Moblin OS) it may be another dead-end OS as Android is starting to dominate the smart-phone market and Google will release their ChromeOS for Netbooks (though Android is already being used on tablets).

Qt (the cross-platform toolset that Nokia acquired with Trolltech) is the key technology that Nokia want to push (it sits on top of MeeGo and Symbian as well as MacOS and Windows) and MeeGo may just be a way to ensure they have an in-house development platform that's use don live devices, but that cant be a long-term strategy (MeeGo is only officially supported on the N900 and Aava devices in terms of handsets).

MeeGo version 1.2 can be expected in 6 months i.e. April and will include a more polished UI and other new features.

Google releases Chrome v3

Google released it's 3rd version of Chrome last week on the anniversary of its launch a year ago. That's not too exciting as you'd expect Google to update the browser every now and again.

Chrome's market share is now 3.5% of the browser market which is no where near competing browsers such as Firefox or IE, however it's now ahead of Opera and Safari which have both been out there much longer so isn't bad for a browser that's only been around for a year and Google haven't really yet pushed it.

When Google release their Chrome OS (designed for Netbooks) which also uses the Chrome browser (the browser is the main entry point on the the Internet) the installed base could increase dramatically, Chrome will also be optimised to work with Google apps (or is that the other way around) so for Chrome OS Netbooks, everything sits in the browser.