How HTML5 Will Shake Up the Web

The new standard will make Web apps more powerful and less buggy.

HTML5, the next version of the markup language used to build Web pages, has attracted attention for its ability to show video inside a Web browser without using plug-ins, such as Adobe's Flash. But lesser-known features could ultimately have a much bigger impact on how users experience the Web.

Experts say that what HTML5 does behind the scenes--such as its network communications and browser storage features--could make pages load faster (particularly on sluggish mobile devices), make Web applications work more smoothly, and even enable browsers to read older Web pages more easily.

Many websites now act like desktop applications--Web-based office productivity suites and photo-editing tools, for example. But many of the sophisticated features of these sites depend on connections that developers create between different Web technologies, such as HTML, javascript, and cascading style sheets (CSS)--connections that don't always work perfectly. As a result, websites can be sluggish, may work differently from browser to browser, and can be vulnerable to security holes.

Bruce Lawson, who evangelizes about open Web standards at Opera Software, says that to make websites perform functions the Web wasn't originally designed for, developers must perform complex coding tasks that can easily introduce errors and make applications fail.

Future Gazing with Search Data - Search queries aren't always better than traditional trend-spotting methods.

For the past few years, computer scientists have touted Web-search data as a way to spot emerging trends--from changes in housing prices and unemployment numbers to the next box-office hit or the location of the next flu epidemic. But research released today gives a more nuanced view of what these data are good at predicting, and why.

A group of researchers at Yahoo analyzed queries fed into the company's search engine and found that such searches aren't always the best way to spot a trend. They studied the volume of search queries related to a particular movie, song, and video game up to six weeks before each came out. The total number of searches was highly correlated with the revenue a movie made on opening weekend, the first-month sales of a video game, and the rank of a song on the Billboard chart.

The researchers then compared these results with those produced using traditional methods. For movies, they looked at the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a futures market for trading box-office revenue for upcoming titles, or figures showing the number of theaters at which a movie will be screened. For games, the researchers examined the ratings provided from critics. For songs, they looked at its reviews as well as an artist's current and previous rank on the Billboard chart.

Search-based predictions fared only a little better than these methods, and were sometimes worse. The research is published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

How Websites Make You Spill Your Secrets

People divulge more sensitive information on sites that look less safe.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that the appearance of website has a big effect on how honestly people answer personal questions put to them by the site. But paradoxically, it turns out we're more likely to spill our secrets on websites that appear less reputable. The way a website phrases questions also affects our willingness to disclose revealing information, the researchers found.

The findings could have implications for privacy online--affecting how marketers approach consumers, and how policymakers try to protect consumers from privacy abuses.

Companies are constantly collecting information about people online: Google stores billions of search queries every day, and Facebook tracks the interests and social habits of millions of users. Much of the information collected online comes from tracking how people behave, but some is volunteered willingly.

The Carnegie Mellon researchers designed several tests to determine what encourages people to give out personal information online. "We're interested in particular in the dichotomy between what people say they desire in terms of privacy, and what we all actually end up doing online," says Alessandro Acquisti, an associate professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon. Acquisti was involved in the work along with doctoral candidate Leslie John and economics professor George Loewenstein.

The Browser Takes All - Google's new computer throws out everything but the Web.

This week, Google unveiled a computer like no other: the Cr-48, a notebook that relies on the Web for all its software applications. Yet the Web search giant thinks the notebook can compete with computers that run all kinds of installed software.

The matte black Cr-48 won't be sold to the public, but thousands are being sent to consumers and businesses who have volunteered to test it. It introduces a new kind of operating system, called Chrome OS, that turns to the Web for almost everything. Google is pitching Chrome OS as its vision for a new form of computing—one that shifts the data, functionality and almost everything else you would expect from your desktop computer into the cloud. Chrome OS will get its biggest test when Acer and Samsung start selling notebook computers customized to run the software in mid-2011.

Google's Chrome OS vision is perhaps best understood by examining the differences between Chrome OS and the operating systems commonly used today, says Sundar Pichai, the vice president of product management for Chrome OS (and the related Chrome Web browser). Those differences come from a single design decision about the relationship between a person and his computer, Pichai says.

"Operating systems today are centered on the idea that applications can be trusted to modify the system, and that users can be trusted to install applications that are trustworthy," he says, "it turns out those are bad assumptions."

In contrast, Chrome OS assumes that applications and users can't be trusted. And it has just one application: the browser. "There's a cascade of things that happen when you make this core assumption," says Linus Upson, a Google VP of engineering working on the project, from making it easier to protect against malware, to reducing the need for users to act as administrator for their own system.

Chrome OS—based on a pared-down version of the Linux operating system—automatically downloads and installs its own updates. Any data downloaded in the course of using the Web is kept carefully in a secure place, separate from the OS.

Google still needs to prove that the simplicity of Chrome OS doesn't undo its usefulness. To this end, it has built a Web "app store" to encourage developers to create Web-based software that will match the diversity and functionality of the applications that can be installed on the hard drive of a Windows or Mac computer. These apps are basically advanced websites that offer similar functionality to desktop apps software.

Users of Chrome OS—as well as the Chrome browser on a conventional computer—can search or browse the Chrome Web Store and with a single click install apps. The store has far fewer software applications than are available for a conventional machine. But some Chrome apps can compete with more traditional, desktop applications,