I spend a substantial amount of time either thinking about or working on Samosapedia, which is not surprising for any co-founder. Software alone is not really what keeps me busy. The very smart Braxton, who joined us because he loves the concept, stewards the code (Ruby on Rails straddling Heroku) really well, and puts up with our proclivity to IST with humor, which cemented our bond. The big questions to me include the editorial oversight needed to build the world’s largest cultural dictionary.

Let’s first touch very briefly on the imperfection of calling it The Definitive Guide to South Asian Lingo, since in choosing to call it that, we reveal something about ourselves as editors. One of the most priceless reactions we got to the term “South Asian” was “Aren’t South Asians Filipinos?” It turns out the term “South Asian” causes a small modicum of irritation and confusion. Other observations were that we shouldn’t use the term South Asian at all, but instead say “desi” or “Indian.” On this one, we’re sticking to our guns. There are enough commonalities linguistically and culturally, and enough radical differences, for us to be geographically inclusive on the site. The term “South Asia” may come from a taxonomy generated outside South Asia itself, but we can’t find a better, more inclusive term that matches our aspiration for a giant cultural dictionary. We’re ceasing to worry about labels. The existing one has been well received so far — thanks to our users, we have over 6000 entries now, and we’re going to keep on growing.

What becomes interesting is that sometimes, definitions aren’t merely objective. We don’t really want them to be objective, which is why we allow for multiple entries for a given term. Take for example entries like the one for the Jan Lokpal Bill, which as of this writing, still features prominently in popular press in India. One user’s idealism may test another user’s opinion on the whole approach taken by the bill, with the result being controversy. We welcome it — the lingo we’re collectively cataloging is multifarious, and controversy is the by product of engaged users. By that same token, one user’s humor may offend another. Here, we’ll traipse as lightly as possible, because we want to allow maximum self-expression, liberating language and encouraging our users to be creative and playful. Soon enough, we’ll also want to have users help with moderating words. It’s not just a dictionary we’re building here, but a community, responsible for its own editorial oversight, without the founders being gatekeepers.

Samosapedia has rapidly become a small anthology of South Asian writing, and makes people laugh, bringing delight and nostalgia (nostalgindia?). I am really excited about it, and about all the things we’re going to do with it in the future.

HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript Demos

• The Web O’ Wonder Website works in browsers that support the latest web standards.
• The Beauty of the Web site showcases a bunch of different things with a bit of an IE9 slant.
• HTML5 Rocks showcases a lot of great demos, which work best in Firefox 4 and the latest Chrome (but the site uses feature detection, so much of it will work in IE9 and Safari.).
• FourSquare Playground has a strong IE9 bias, but showcases HTML5.
• IE Test Drive. Need I say more about bias? Showcases HTML5, with the promise of some demos that may work cross-browser.
• Here’s a presentation I gave, which may actually have a Firefox bias, given that I showcased technologies that were “Moz” prefixed (e.g. MozOrientation). Still, shows off some great demos in a variety of arena (Geolocation, etc.).

WebGL Demos

To get maximum mileage out of these, you’ll want a fast PC with the latest Chrome or Firefox.

• The CopperLicht Stuff from Ambiera blows my mind every time.
• Flight of the Navigator is a really compelling mix of different elements.
• Remixing Reality is really compelling demo of the use of models.
• The WebGL Demo Repository at Khronos contains demos that are classic GL ones (that 3D programmers are all well familiar with).

Resources

• Can I Use provides incredibly useful feature matrices to determine which browser supports what in the HTML5 and CSS arena.
• Quirksmode is the go-to place for compatibility tables.

• Hacks is Mozilla’s showcase for articles, demos, and API updates.
• HTML5 Rocks features great stuff about HTML5, and includes code snippets and documentation for developers.
• HTML5 Now is Tantek Celik’s book on the subject.
• HTML5 for Web Designers is Jeremy Keith’s book on the subject.
• Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp’s HTML5 Lands
• Learning WebGL and the WebGL Cookbook are great sites to learn WebGL

Once again, it’s a contentious time for a web platform discussion (which is what has made moderating this panel fun, really). Firstly, there’s the small question of whether web browsers themselves are no longer the juiciest part of the newest new technology and media landscape. The nice folks at Wired Magazine think the web’s kind of done (as in, dead), since everyone’s using apps on iPhones and happily signing in to closed systems now (they mention HTML5 in passing twice).

But then again, for the past two years, HTML5 has been the dubious all-inclusive catch phrase for all that’s new on the web and in mobile, and has found itself at the fore of various axes that corporations have to grind against each other. But catch phrases easily lend themselves to obfuscation, and sometimes companies have to be told off for all the nuance that’s lost through their misguided HTML5 advocacy. Even the W3C got into the act, first sanctioning the all-inclusive catch phrase and then recanting in favor of nuance.

Let’s cut to the chase: how fast can we evolve the web really, what’s with app stores, HTML5 video, and where are the painful spots with disagreements when we collectively craft standards on behalf of developers? As always, audience participation is a huge part of the discussion, so come with burning questions and pressing curiosity. March 15, 2011.

Let us also say you’re vague on the answers, mumbling something about a startup, about Sanford Meisner, about films, and about some writing that you intend to do. You like what Woody Allen said about how much of life and success is just showing up, so you show up a lot: you’re seen loitering at TEDx events; you attend meetings at generalassemb.ly; you fidget in the background at writer’s meet-ups in Brooklyn; at the New York Public Library, you find the quietest reading room possible and skulk there with your laptop; you hang out with web developers at a hackspace, doing something; once, you’re even seen on stage in an off-off Broadway scene. The vagueness doesn’t bode well, since it doesn’t douse the curiosity about your structured sabbatical, and certainly doesn’t help answer the hardest questions of them all: are you happy and do you like NYC? To complete this picture, let us also say that on Big Love Day in mid February, you aren’t certain that you even want to go out, really. You don’t like Valentine’s Day, owing to circumstances beyond your control.

But you do go out, in the end. Your buddies Dave and Dhruva — the guys behind Sub Swara — tell you it’ll be a cool house party, and something about staying in by your lonesome smacks of concession to the winter (you resolved earlier on that you wouldn’t bail on things because of the cold). Before long, you’re in the Village, and you find yourself in one of the nicest apartments you’ve ever seen. You look around and have some questions. Like, why is everyone at this party so tall? And who is the host? And who are these people? The food’s really good, though, and soon you’re in line waiting for a shot at the punch bowl. A really intense young woman plays piano and sings her ass off about heartbreak. She’s a friend of the host’s, and you’re impressed with her song. The host has musical friends, and an incredible record collection.

“GORDON is going to sing soon! Right after Joan!” someone tells you.

Oh, you say. You politely nod. She seems a bit nonplussed by your attitude, and walks over to someone else.

“Do you even KNOW who Gordon is?” she says to no one in particular.

So you feel embarrassed. You want to ask her how you can possibly know who Gordon is, since you’re new around here? Or who Joan is. You just walked in, and you only know the two people you walked in with. You want to point out that her irritation is unreasonable, and express that you wish she wasn’t so snooty, but then, you’re afraid you’ll seem unreasonable, and you’re not actually unreasonable. You lose yourself to the punch bowl for a while, and make small talk with people.

You soon discover that you’re surrounded by musicians, and by music. And then, when Joan finally does sing a lovely song with a piano accompaniment, you realize that Joan is Joan Osborne (who is demonstrably one of us — unlike God — but with more ethereal beauty). The Gordon mentioned haughtily earlier is actually Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes.

You find yourself enjoying yourself at this party now. You marvel at the fact that you could have stayed in, but you chose to go out. When Gordon actually sings, you know you’d recognize that voice anywhere, really, given enough context. He’s really short, and he’s losing hair (but so are you) and you flash back to long discussions about his unique voice in college. You remember listening to Blister in the Sun and Kiss Off and Gone Daddy Gone and you remember a beer-sodden conversation once about how much Gordon was in all your favorite music at the time: Gordon Gano from the Violent Femmes, Gordon Downie from The Tragically Hip, and then the album Gordon by the Barenaked Ladies. Dave is playing drums at the party while Gordon is singing, and it is all improvisational, and you suddenly feel awed by circumstances beyond your control.

It dawns on you then that this year, with her fluoridated water and her ad hoc punch bowl and her frigid winds and impatient snootiness, New York City is your Valentine, and you resolve to court her for some more time yet, as best as you know how.

Of course, soon after I left, the Giants are making a World Series run, making me long to be near Willie Mays plaza. I love San Francisco, with its micro-climates, improbable topography, and draconian parking inspectors. I spent one third of my adult life here. I worked with inspiring people to advance the reach and capability of a massively hyper-connected world; I played enthusiastically (if not adeptly) in the magnificent outdoors; I got up to all the usual urban shenanigans in my twenties, even getting my heart broken and wizened; and — at the great risk of courting the obvious metaphor — I emerged from the fog of a prolonged adolescence into what I hope will pass for maturity. I’ll miss the City by the Bay. There’s no place like it in all the world.

Within reason, I relish change, and seek it out whenever I feel I’m getting lulled into complacency. I’ve wanted to explore non-technical projects for a long time now, and the best way to do that was to leave the epicenter of technology for a while. My childhood brought with it much travel; I was raised in India, Hong Kong, Ethiopia, Russia, China, and France, with some time in Canada. I often dodge direct questions about where I grew up, preferring the quick version of the story, but I am sticking to the facts when I tell people that San Francisco is the longest I’ve ever lived in any one place. So why, then, New York?

I’ll spare you my romantic observations about cities. E.B. White (of Strunk and White and Charlotte’s Web fame) said it much better than I ever can back in 1948 (but you should read him in 2010, since his words have aged so well). A small snippet:

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last — the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.”

For the next conceivable while, then, I’ll be a settler. I’ll bring to New York my “what if” questions, and see what happens when I pursue the answers with passion.

The transition does mean I’ll miss the people I worked with over the years, particularly at Mozilla, a project I grew up with almost right out of college. Few things compare to the thrill of contributing to something that you really believe in. Mozilla paved the way for what is now the triumph of open-source on the web over a closed-source monopoly. Not working on it full-time means that I’ll no longer be associated with some things, like being the Chair of the WebGL WG or being front and center for developer relations. But it also means I can take on some manageable tasks and make sure they get chaperoned through to completion.

I’m in what seems to be a a bigger pond now — a chaotic, crowded one with four seasons and a subway and even more draconian parking inspectors. The Fall is lovely here, and I am optimistic.

Tantek and I first met as competitors in 2002 at an event called Meet the Makers (organized by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey), where he was the IE guy and I was the Netscape guy. Along with Doug Bowman (who had just redesigned the Wired news site with pure CSS), we were on a panel at that event discussing web standards with a bunch of web developers. And while at that time we each worked for organizations whose fierce competition characterized the early evolution of the web (*sigh with Netscape moving from underdog to extinction), I was struck by how motivated Tantek was to get standards right.

It is remarkable what the passage of time can do. Not only are we furthering common goals for the betterment of the web, as we have in the past, but now we’re both working in various capacities for Mozilla. Tantek will help us out with the CSS3 Flex Box Model, figuring out what the right thing to do with respect to stylable HTML5 form controls are, and help us with fundamental questions of identity and the open social web in connection with the account manager initiative in Firefox.

Update 1: here’s a bit on C|Net about Mozilla working with Tantek.

Update 2: here’s a Belorussian translation of this blog post.

What makes a compelling story for me is the browser peace, though. The web as a platform (“The Web Platform”) wins through consensus about standardization. I blogged recently about standards in the device era. What I didn’t touch on is whether patents will thwart the attempt to build out the promise of a seamlessly interoperable web. I’m not moderating a discussion dubbed “Browser Wars” this year, but I’ll leave last year’s attendees (as proxies for their browser companies) some fly-by notes:

Dear Darin (aka Google Chrome guy): I’m sorry I went easy on you last year. You guys can afford to move faster than us on some things, because you don’t have the marketshare considerations we do. You also have an armada of people working on Chrome (I think you have more PR people than we have employees, but that’s cool). I value interaction with you guys, not least of all because you have big web applications that can help drive use cases for all the stuff you put through in standards (GMail, etc.). We don’t have that, so we need to be diligent about developer relations, which is my big passion these days. We’re doing great things with WebGL (and the guys you have in standards are top-notch). I just hope we can agree about other stuff, like the right course of action on HTML5 Video.

Dear Chris Wilson (aka Microsoft guy, aka “go to” guy for IE team for years and years): You really handled my nagging last year with grace, and you made me look bad for doing it (I’m sorry). And you know what? You guys’ recent blog post about working with the HTML5 Community was really, really encouraging. I’m glad we agree on some things, like the fact that the SQLite API is the wrong choice for the web, and that we’ll work to fix this with a successor proposal, like Indexed DB. But what about video, canvas, 3D graphics, and all those other things? I’m watching, and expecting big things from you guys. What’s generally surprising to me is that with the promise of an agreement on fonts and other things, we’re agreeing more than disagreeing. Maybe browser ballot issues in the EU, coupled with the stance organizations are taking about killing IE6, will collectively improve the situation for the web (that you guys kind of caused).

Dear Apple: *sigh. I guess you couldn’t make it to the panel for the past three years, but that’s no biggie. Your participation in standards more than compensates for your restrictions on public speaking. The iPhone’s got some great stuff with respect to Orientation Events for Safari in it. Maybe we can agree on standardizing this stuff, just as we agree on other device capabilities, like WebGL (which works in nightly builds). And Safari 4.05 really moves the needle on the web platform, implementing the kinds of Ajax improvements we worked on together. I’m optimistic that your patent portfolio won’t cloud the future, and that the web will benefit from your smarts.

Dear Chaals, Opera Guy: You’re a standards titan. You guys implement everything! Congratulations on Opera 10.50, which has slick features. Particular kudos on doing the right thing on HTML5 Video in Opera 10.50! It’s clear, however, that we don’t agree on Widgets vs. the Open Web. They are very different, but some of your guys argue that they really aren’t that different (see my general thoughts on what to do in the device space). I think equating them as the same thing is sheer folly on you guys’ part. That being said, Opera Mini is a smart piece of technology, and I definitely felt a little rueful that Firefox for Mobile (Fennec) won’t work on all the devices Opera Mini works on that I saw used by the audiences I addressed in India.

Lastly, Dear Web Developer: I’m keen to spend time with you here at SxSW, since you’re really what drives us all. Brendan’s here as well (as are lots of the Firefox team, addons, JetPack, etc.), and I’ll try and get the other guys (mentioned above) to come out for beers, maybe some time after the Mozilla Party at SxSW.

February 28, 2010

We’re in Bangalore. I’m excited to have sethb and ragavan hang with me in my home town, meet some of my friends, and generally get some exposure to the city where my parents live. As far as work trips go, this one has been a rollicking good time so far. We got a chance to visit a Bollywood studio in Mumbai, actually had a celebrity sighting or two, and met some amazing people. But the Mozilla DevDay we are organizing in Bangalore is really the main part of our trip. We’ve “co-organized” the event with Mahiti, an open-source non-profit based in Bangalore, and the Centre for Internet Society. We bought plenty of schwag: t-shirts, wrist bands, posters, and even a few Firefox plushies. We’re expecting over 200 people (at least!) at the National Institute of Advanced Studies campus, where the event is held.

sethb acts as MC, and gives us a glimpse into Firefox.next. We’ve also got Lucian Teo and John Britton joining us to talk about Mozilla Drumbeat and Peer to Peer University. I give a demo-driven overview of the web platform’s promise similar to the one I gave at GNUnify in Pune, but this time, there are plenty of questions, and a 45 minute session runs to about an hour and half. We’ve also got Mahiti’s CTO, Sreekanth Rameshiah talking about Mahiti’s projects, and the Centre of Internet Society’s Pranesh Prakash talking about software patents, and the relevance of these to video on the web. ragavan runs a session on Mozilla Labs, once again prompting great questions. Each session is interactive, with lots of questions, even though the delicious lunch organized by the CIS folks introduces a kind of postprandial stupor.

Vineel Reddy, one of our campus reps and regional leaders, then shares a little bit about what it’s like to be part of the Mozilla Community. Vineel’s been interviewed by the New York Times for the slick video he produced likening Firefox to a sports car. That video, made on a shoe string budget, went viral very rapidly. Marketing, typically a corporate function in most “classic” companies, is often a community outreach endeavor for our project, with volunteers expressing their passion for participation in creative ways. Vineel’s story is inspirational, and he gets a lot of follow-up questions when folks approach him after his talk.

In the afternoon, I do something a bit scary. I run a “hack” session with live coding on screen. I think my example is simple enough: I solicit a camera from the audience (but end up using my Nano) and shoot some video of the MozDevDay folks applauding, which I then embed in a web page (with the <video> element and some JS, of course). It works, but it’s not smooth sailing. If you tempt fate, you’ll encounter the proverbial obstacle — Firefogg’s transcoded OGV file has to be renamed with a *.ogg extension to work. It’s not quite a bug I can diagnose, since *.ogv files do appear to work in general. Maybe it’s a Firefogg thing.

I could give you my own breakdown of MozDevDay in Bangalore, but what others say about the event is far more interesting:

• Lucian Teo on MozDevDay
• Ragunath Jawahar on the experience
• Manish’s breakdown of things
• And thoughts from a self-professed Chrome user in India

We may not have a dedicated office in India (yet), unlike other browser companies, but we do have a vibrant community of volunteers. They showed up in numbers to our Bangalore event, and I’m absolutely thrilled. We can’t succeed in India without them.

February 21

The guy working at the bakery knows where it is, or so he says. He gesticulates emphatically, pointing to the alley behind the neon INRI above the cross, which serves as an illuminating reminder that we’re in a big Roman Catholic neighborhood. I’ve been leading sethb and pike on a tour of Mumbai’s narrow winding lanes, all to further the discourse about the Open Web. We’re in Chuim Village on a Sunday night, after having left GNUnify 2010 in Pune. We’re on our way to the pad.ma offices and are following Sanjay Bhangar’s detailed directions. We’re here to talk to some of the Mozilla Mumbai community about HTML5, video, and emerging web technologies, and to ingest beer and delicious biriyani. We find out that Jan Gerber (who wrote Firefogg) and Sebastian Luetgert are in Mumbai as well, representing the impressive 0xdb.org movie database and working with pad.ma. It promises to be a very interesting evening, if we can actually find the place.

Earlier in the same Sunday, sethb, ragavan, pike and I spoke to the PuneTech community, consisting of local startups and techies in the Pune area. We talked about the entrepreneurial opportunities accorded by the open web. Here’s the presentation I used to stimulate discussion. I talked about HTML5 (inclusive of the WebApps APIs, such as the File API and Orientation Events), CSS3′s @font-face property, and discussed the potential this had for Indic fonts. We closed with demos of Ambiera’s amazing Copperlicht JavaScript 3D engine built on WebGL. There was lots of talk about what open video and the video API actually meant for web applications, and the questions flowed freely. sethb then ran an ad-hoc entrepreneur’s competition to come up with great open web applications, splitting the room up into groups of three. Ideas included an Indian equivalent to typekit.com and e-learning for the hearing challenged using the HTML5 video API to nest videos within videos (with sign language in the interior video explaining the exterior one). Gurminder gives us a summary.

There weren’t as many questions on Friday, when I gave a similar demo-driven talk about the open web as part of GNUnify 2010. ragavan talked about Mozilla Labs, and sparked much discussion about OpenID. It’s clear that identity is probably one of the juiciest problems on the web. pike gave an overview of advances the Mozilla project has made with respect to localization.

You’d think I’d be exhausted by the time we leave Pune and get to Mumbai, but I’m simply hyper by the time we arrive on Sunday evening. Following the guy in the bakery’s directions, we navigate our way up some stairs to a charming rooftop overlooking Chuim. The pad.ma folks have got us together for an eclectic evening of code and cinema, and have a large screen with a projector trained on it. My open web demos this time around are choreographed by fireworks from a local wedding, punctuating their punch. Attendees ask us a bunch of questions, and I relish the opportunity to geek out a bit with Sanjay, Jan, Sebastian, and folks from the gnowledge.org project (who have a bunch of SVG questions for me). Jan and Sebastian have put together really slick UI on 0xdb.org, and are passionate advocates of stylable scrollbars, a la WebKit. All the while, we’re drinking beers and eating Mumbai’s best biriyani.

Our trip is off to a great start. Firefox accounts for 30% of the Indian browser market, and it’s clear that we have a vibrant community here. We have a few days of meetings lined up in Mumbai, and I’m going into all of them fairly amped.

It’s also being cleverly co-opted as a symbol for MozCampMumbai, another amazing Mozilla community event, taking place on Sunday July 19 in Mumbai.

Speaking at MozCampDelhi was one of the highlights at the start of this year, and I’m sorry I can’t be at MozCampMumbai in person. Asa, Mary and I recorded a video for the occasion, which I suspect we’ll post on Air Mozilla before long. I spoke about font-face, HTML5 Video, and a few other things that I think are particularly relevant to folks attending MozCampMumbai.  If you’re attending MozCampMumbai and reading this after you’ve watched me prattle on in the video, happy MozHunt   Enjoy some vada-pav, hackery and conversations about the Web.