Dubbed the Thor Data Center, this facility is green and low-cost. It not only uses Iceland’s cool temperatures to air-cool servers, but is entirely container-based for easy expansion.

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, founder of Opera Software, said the company chose Thor because 100% of its energy is renewable. He believes the island will provide a “more stable supply of energy than most other areas in the world.”

And for extra peace-of-mind, the data center designers had the threat of volcanoes in mind from the very beginning. It is located in the far west of the country, which is dominated by an east-to-west wind pattern that sends all volcanic ash towards Europe.

Originally, HTML 5 video was supposed to support an open standard, such as Ogg Theora. Mozilla, Opera, and others were in favor of the standardization and began to support it. Apple and Google felt that the Theora codec was not mature enough and did not match the quality of H.264, a proprietary and patented codec. Mozilla, being a provider of a free and open source browser (Firefox), could not legally (or perhaps even ethically) support H.264, while Apple (in Safari) chose to only support it, and Google (in Chrome) supported both.

Not long ago, Google acquired On2 Technologies, the company that originally released the Theora format into the free software community. I speculated that it would be great if Google used On2 to improve Theora or create a new superior open format. Now it seems that Google is going to do just that, and Mozilla will support the new open codec.

Just as we predicted, Microsoft has announced that their latest incarnation of Internet Explorer, version 9, will included support for some HTML 5 elements, including video. Much to the chagrin of Mozilla and other open standard advocates, however, the new demo build of the browser only supports h.264 video, following Google and Apple’s insistence on avoiding the open Theora codec.

Among the other improvements are support for scalable vector graphics (SVG), CSS3, and built-in hardware acceleration. It is not clear if Theora support will be added (Google Chrome supports both h.264 and Theora). Microsoft joins the list of browser makers that includes Mozilla (Firefox), Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), and Opera.

For years, Microsoft neglected web standards and increasing security problems with their Internet Explorer 6 browser. The emergence of Firefox and other competitive browsers has encouraged the software giant to slowly adapt and reignite IE development. Nevertheless, up until now, Microsoft had resisted HTML 5 adoption, but with Google pushing it on YouTube and other sites like Vimeo following suit, they could not ignore it.

Now Microsoft has begun to open up to the HTML 5 development mailing list, indicating that they are interested in joining the discussion. Their latest browser, Internet Explorer 8, includes some HTML 5 features, although it is far behind Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera. Microsoft clearly wants to be involved now, a move that more than likely is the result of website owners embracing HTML 5 even in its development state and Google’s willingness to adopt it, with its huge Web presence.

HTML or hypertext markup language, is the technical language of the World Wide Web. It is standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C. Much of the HTML 5 development, however, has come from an outside organization called Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), which the major browser makers established as a reaction to their disappointment with XHTML 2.0. There has been a highly publicized debate about embedded video standards, whether to use Ogg Theora or H.264. Until now, Microsoft has been largely silent.
Source: ZDNet Asia

While the W3C intentions were certainly noble, the entire ordeal is now spiraling out of control. The initial proposal was simple: create an open standard for streaming video playback on the web, something to replace the vendor-locked, resource hogging, proprietary Adobe Flash player. Microsoft’s abstention was disappointing but not surprising. But what is more disturbing is that, of the four main participants: Mozilla, Opera, Apple and Google, only Mozilla and Opera were willing to sign on to using the open Ogg Theora format. Apple and Google both insisted on H.264, which might be an outstanding video codec, but it is not open and is laced with patents, making it not much better than Flash player.

Google has stated that they will at least ship their Chrome browser with support for both Ogg and H.264, but Apple refuses to support Ogg at all. As a result of this childish bickering, Ian Hickson, the man responsible for the HTML 5 audio and video tags, has removed the codec specification, essentially leaving us where we began, with multiple formats and no packaged solution. It is a company or web site owner’s nightmare to have content on their websites that not all visitors can view, but it happens all of the time, partly due to web developer arrogance and partly due to the impassible situation in which browser makers and video codec patent holders have left us. The future looks grim indeed. Who done it? It was Apple, Google and Microsoft in the comfort of their corporate offices, with their egos.

Photo: Flickr

Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said that the new version of HTML will support rich media (audio and video), rendering Adobe Flash redundant. Those who wish to keep their websites in compliance with web standards will be able to provide users with the same rich media content and features currently only available with the proprietary Flash plugin.

“You can do most things with Web standards today,” von Tetzchner said. “In some ways, you may say you don’t need Flash.”

He believes people will continue to and should have a choice between Flash or the new HTML 5 integrated media, but those concerned with web standards and the closed nature of Flash will now have an alternative.

Source: ZDNet
Photo: Flickr