The latest version of the web standard markup, HTML 5, was been greeted with a mixed reaction on it’s launch, but has gained grudging acceptance in the past year or so despite being an unfinished project. It’s aim to integrate multimedia functions is gaining traction, mainly due to people’s dislike of Flash. Apple has done its part to help this along through its ongoing fallout with Adobe, making sure that Flash is not supported in any of its new products.

What HTML5 has undoubtedly done is to provide some amazing browser based experiments, to show what’s really possible without flash. What practical use they have is yet to be seen, but it puts it out there for people to explore and play around with. There are already some amazing canvas experiments, here are some of the best and other interesting HTML5 sites:

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Image via Wikipedia

So Many Avenues – So Little Time

When it comes to truly making social media work, it can actually take a lot of work. There are so many networks to chose from, so many roads to travel, so many avenues to stay away from and so many potholes waiting to sabatoge what you hoped would be a smooth ride. In the end, if you’re not careful, you could find your hopes and dreams dashed as you limp along the cyber-highway we call the Internet. Before you know it, you can end up with so many user names and passwords you need to contact your local travel agent to find your way home. Either that or drop some cyber-crumbs along the way in the hopes that some hacker doesn’t come along and hide them on you.

As my author description reveals, I’ve been in the wonderful world of broadcasting and communication for a number of years. Well, okay, a lot of years. Through those years I’ve seen a lot of change when it comes to achieving effective communication. I still remember the overnight radio shifts where I echoed the famous Genesis line – “Is there anybody listening?” You find yourself asking that quesiton at 3 in the morning as you’re playing yet another song wondering if anyone is up. You even start begging for calls on the phone just so you speak with someone else who has to be awake at o’dark hundred. Many times the voice on the other end of the phone was that of some teenie-bopper who figured you were talking just to her and she wanted to meet you after your shift. (Ick! Pimples and all – no thanks I think I’m busy).

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So the other day I noticed that my FireFox was letting me know that V3.5 was ready to download and upgrade, great I thought the next version which had been promised to be faster that previous incarnations of the browser.

Without any hesitation I updated my Firefox to 3.5 and found several thing straight away!

For starters a few plugin that I use were not compatible with 3.5 and were disabled, not too much of a fuss as there were only two that wouldn’t work one was the Microsoft .NET framework assistant and the other was the EntreCard Toolbar, now the toolbar is something that I do use, so not been able to use it has caused a drop in my EC, but I’ve had to resort to the original method of dropping, for now anyway.

The other thing I noticed after running Firefox 3.5 for the first time is that it’s faster, not turbo fast, but as least twice as fast as the earlier version which has made my browsing that bit faster.

So here’s a run down from the Firefox site on what’s new:

Firefox 3.5  is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past year. Firefox 3.5 offers many changes over the earlier version, supporting new web technologies, improving performance and ease of use. Some of the notable features are:

• Available in more than 70 languages. (Get your local version!)
• Support for the HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements including native support for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio. (Try it here!)
• Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
• Better web application performance using the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
• The ability to share your location with websites using Location Aware Browsing. (Try it here!)
• Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Support for new web technologies such as: downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, <canvas> text, ICC profiles, and SVG transforms.

Developers can find out about all the changes and new features at the Mozilla Developer Center.

So far everything is running great, I have noticed an increase in speed on sites that I used to visit and this is great, if your not too fussy about your plugin and can wait for the updates to arrive then I would recommend updating now, if you are concerned with your plugins, then just give it a little longer and then upgrade, by which time those plugin should have upgrade

I’ve recently been using some more Twitter websites lately which I find quite useful, so I thought I would bring an update to the Previous posts that I had posted about Handy Twitter Websites, so lets get on with it

Now I’ve just started using this website and so far it’s been very useful in seeing what my Twitting is currently like, such as my influence, generosity, velocity and clout in the Twitter Community. There is plenty of information on how to improve your Twitter stats, so quite handy really.

TweetEffect – Another website that I’ve just starting using, this is handy to show what effect your tweets are having on gaining and or losing followers. You can see simple how many you have gained or lost on the last 200 tweets that you have made, so you can use this information to find out what you worst tweets are like and the best tweets to make to gain followers.

TwitPWR – Ok so you can already create a short URL of a link when tweeting with software such as TweetDeck and Twhirl, but with TwitPWR your short URL will get stacks on how many times it has been clicked as well as producing a “Power Rating” on the website, so helping you boost your link as well as your Twitter followers!

If you enjoy my Blog then please follow me on Twitter.

Since I last posted my original post on Some Handy Twitter Websites! I’ve been finding and using some more and thought it was time to share them with you.

Twopular grabs the latest trends that are been tweeted about and display a list of them for you to use in your tweets, giving you the ability to have your tweeting discovered that little bit more

Friend or Follow will give you a selection of lists on who you are following and if they are following you back, once you enter your twitter name you will be able to select either “following”, “fans” or “friends”.

Quite useful to see who you may want to stop following etc.

Also check out The Top 21 Twitter Applications at TechCrunch for more software etc to use with your Twitter…

If you enjoy my Blog then please follow me on Twitter.

Now this is an awesome bit of news for me, this blog has been nominated for the Best Bloggers Blog at the Blog Net Awards.

I would really be grateful to all my readers of my blog to stop by the Blog Net Awards page for Blazing Minds and find it in your hearts to give me a big vote.

It really means a lot to me that my humble blog has been recognized and all votes are extremely appreciated.

Thanks everyone