Starbucks remains a business AND tech innovation vanguard with its new Starbucks Card App for mobile. The app eliminates the need for a plastic Starbucks card rather, once you register, you simply use your Starbucks card app to pay via onscreen bar code. If you’re concerned about security, you can password protect the app (settings). It’s important to note that not all Starbucks are participating in the Mobile Card App game yet as it’s still being rolled out however, the app itself offers a location map to find participating Starbucks as they expand.

This saves plastic trees of course, actually it is a savings because plastic is a petroleum by-product and we need LESS dependence on oil for everything not to mention the non-degradable waste a plastic card becomes.

What’s of particular interest to myself as a User Experience/New Media kind of guy — the video which is playable via the app on mobile devices and starbucks.com online. The video works well to explain how to the card works and how to use it.

You’ve probably heard the term HTML5 mentioned recently as a factor involved in video and animation online. What is html5 and what does it mean to you? If you have been posting videos online since the advent of YouTube then, whether you knew it or not, flash was THE method used to display/embed those videos. Flash has been (primarily) the only game in town up until recently. If you want video and some animation for your content posted online from here on in — there is now another option — html5 code to make things happen.

Html5, according to Wikipedia, stands for the latest revision of html which is the code allowing text, graphics, links and so on to function on the internet. Html5 code factors in media such as video and animation.

Is it necessary to choose html5 over Flash? There is a debate — check out a friendly game of PONG coded with Flash AND html5 http://labs.codecomputerlove.com/FlashVsHtml5/.  Computerlove‘s point here is that Flash is fine for some things and html5 is fine for some things (and can even be mixed) and cautions that this isn’t a war rather the platform should be chosen for what would best suit the content and/or device.

Some Technologists (like Steve Jobs) and Web Developers contend that Flash isn’t facile enough for today’s browsers and video content. Movement toward more mobile computing devices (iPhone, Nexus, iPad) with newer types of operating systems and processors call for lighter, faster processing of video and animation than ten year old Flash can offer.

Adobe will not allow Flash to be dissed so quickly and has a flash-to-html5 converter in the works called Wallaby. Apparently, flash keeps video content contained to one batch of code in one place whereas html5 is separate pieces of code working together from multiple places to run one video; Wallaby helps break up the Flash code and distribute it as html5 pieces. I’m not a software developer but I am guessing that older ways of coding and reading html (everything tagged inline and in one place) has obviously given way to distributed code across multiple documents to display one web page for example. So whereas fifteen years ago html for one web page was pretty full up with tags, these days one web page will have a base code page, pages associated describing things like font and colors, pages handling parts of that page (header, footer) and now it follows that code for one video would be shared among associated documents.

So maybe that shed a wee bit of light on what people are talking about when you hear html5 and Flash. If you’d like to explore this further on your own you can easily find an example of html5 code when choosing a video to EMBED either at YouTube or Vimeo. Once in vimeo, for example, and a video is selected to embed, vimeo offers you a default choice to embed “new” code and that code is html5.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, comments or concerns. If you are a developer/coder I’d be interested if you have anything to add about html5/Flash debate.

There have been lucky some instances in my life when I moved into a new pad and found cable on and running magically — no bill nor cutoff. Those days are all but a far away dream and for many years now I’ve had to pay for cable like everybody else — $98/month to be exact. The alternative to cable, up until recently, has been satellite (a wee bit cheaper than cable). Cable companies have been trying to stay relevant during the age of Internetting by sticking a fiber optic finger into the pie in hopes of cementing relationships with customers. But I see through all that.

Do you find yourself watching less and less TV because of the magical internet? If so, you are not alone… and sites like hulu.com, netflix online streaming, news outlets, online gaming sites are all making it easier and easier for you to ween off of cable and come hang with them. Companies like Roku, Apple and TV manufacturers like SONY are making things easy to dump cable and keep you on your couch by making YouTube, Netflix, iTunes (music, tv and movie rentals) one click away.

I use my three year old PS3 for Netflix streaming ($7.99/month), some gaming via Playstation Network downloadables (costs range from free to $60 a game), Hulu Plus ($7.99/month) some viewing of YouTube videos via the and music streaming from my PC with Qriocity ($3.99/month or $9.99/month premium). I should mention that if I didn’t have a PS3 I supposed I’d get the Apple TV ($99). Roku (box is $59) has Netflix streaming, Hulu Plus and Pandora for music plus specific news and sports outlets. Apple TV offers Netflix Streaming, Hulu Plus and iTunes in all its glory with on demand everything, movie rentals, music, video podcasts and so on. So to do a rough estimate of month costs (excluding the cost of a box) I could do Netflix streaming, Hulu Plus (for TV shows past and present) and add music in there for under $30/month if I don’t go nuts buying video games. The savings are obvious and make a serious case for dumping cable.

Would I miss the Daily Show? No, because I can watch it via Hulu or just off of Comedy Central’s website. Am I going to miss a beat with Futurama? No, again, I can see all that with Hulu. Will I miss HBO — heck NO because with Netflix Streaming I can watch movies (all you can watch buffet) in HD! Now it’s just a question of complacency and or laziness in my way of calling the cable company and cancelling. I’d love to know what you think, are you ready to dump your cable for new, cheaper internet options?