In a somewhat surprising announcement one the first day of their MAX 2011, Adobe Systems announced that it was acquiring Nitobi Systems, the creator of PhoneGap.

At Ness we’re big supporters of PhoneGap and have used it for clients in some cases, so we’re happy to see this deal happen (not at happy as the Nitobi guys are ) as we think it will lead to more enhancements to an already strong platform.

I think this is an important development that mobile devs needs to pay attention to.  There are three things that I think mobile developers should take away from the announcement:

1. Adobe is Looking Forward

With the purchase of Nitobi and Typekit, Adobe signals that it is unequivocally moving to reorient their development tools and “Write Once, Deploy Anywhere” strategy around Open Web standards of HTML5, JavaScript and CSS and moving on from the legacy of Flash. This is great news for all developers for two reasons: first from a skills development perspective it simplifies things. Secondly all of Adobe’s energies will be to ensure that their industry-leading tools will stay there. Certainly this is part of a plan to re-engage and re-energize the developer community who on average prefers an open, rather than proprietary approach.

2. It’s a Great Fit

This was a surprising deal to me only because I didn’t think Adobe was shopping for one of the mobile cross-platform framework companies. But it makes a ton of sense. Now developers can create the apps in HTML5 using Adobe CS5 and then deploy that code into native binaries via the PhoneGap framework with the click of a button. Dead easy (oversimplification, but you get the idea). I expect that the integration between CS5 and PhoneGap will improve over time to make it a seamless experience.

And I expect that this is the end of Adobe’s Packager for iPhone to translate CS5/Flash files into iOS compatible code. Good. I hope they put the extra development dollars from that project right into PhoneGap.

Further Adobe also released the third public preview of Adobe Edge a HTML5 motion and interaction design tool that enables Flash-like animation to websites and mobile apps via the Open Web Holy Trinity (HTML5/JS/CSS3, not to be confused with onion/celery/carrot for you cooking fans).

This has a chance to really get devs excited about Adobe again…not that Adobe hasn’t had great products all along  – they have – but with all the posturing over Flash in their spat with Apple, they haven’t generated the excitement with the developer community that they had in years past. That should change now.

3. Adobe Continues PhoneGap’s Open Source Culture

Initially I wondered whether Adobe would continue to keep PhoneGap open source and include the developer community in enhancing the platform or if it might simply make the code available as Google does with Android. But Adobe was pretty emphatic in its support of the Open Source community as the code was donated to the Apache Software Foundation.

The Open Source nature of PhoneGap is part of what made it so popular with developers.

Now if I was cynical or suspicious I’d think that the donation to ASF was the final effort of the Nitobi management to ensure its legacy is maintained. Perhaps the Nitobi founders made it a condition of the deal?  You only have to modestly parse the statements in the press release to say that Adobe endorsed the decision post the transaction, not encouraged it.  Who knows and who cares. What’s important is that it’s done.

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Are you using PhoneGap already? Does this announcement make you more or less interested in it as an option for mobile development?  Let me know in the comments.

Oh, and one more thing. Do you think Samsung, Motorola and RIM will stop advertising Flash compatibility as a reason not to buy an iPad now? God, I hope so.

April 8, 2014. That’s the date that Microsoft has set to end all support of Windows XP. Yes, XP will almost be old enough to be Bar-Mitzvah’d at that point.  Oy vey.

That date is important to mobile developers because XP is the boat anchor that is holding back full-throated supported for HTML5-based apps.

Managing support of older browser platforms – especially when you have to balance desktop and mobile browsers – is a pain for everyone and the costs and resource requirements of doing so are significant. Last month Google declared that it is ending support for Firefox 3.5, IE7 and Safari 3 as of August 1.

While it’s hard to find reliable statistics on OS market share, XP sadly still plays a prominent role in many enterprises. And the limitations of XP are what’s holding many developers hostage to this day. A Forrester report from as recent as Q3 2010 indicated that a whopping 75% of PCs are still running Windows XP[1].

In Windows chief Steven Sinfosky’s appearance at All Things Digital’s D9 conference last month, Microsoft demo’d Windows 8 [prior coverage] the most important announcement in my view was that HTML5 & JavaScript would be the primary development environment for building apps. That Microsoft has made such a strong statement of support for the open HTML5 standard over a proprietary one (essentially demoting Silverlight to whatever is past the scrap heap) is a major coup for the HTML5 movement.

That is in addition to Microsoft’s move to add support for HTML5 in Internet Explorer 9 and 10.  But alas, neither of those browsers are available for Windows XP users.  Factoring in the limitations of XP and the resulting significant share of non-HTML5 compliant browsers IE 6, 7 and 8, application developers can’t fully commit to HTML5.

Here are some graphics I found on HTML5 browser compliance that I thought were worth sharing. They paint a pretty clear picture (Source: : http://www.findmebyip.com/litmus).

Therefore they stuck with the challenge of having to develop multiple presentation layers, rather than being able to consolidate under the HTML5/CSS3/JS umbrella. This naturally multiplies development, testing and support costs which can rob the ability of development organizations to invest those resources in other activities that move the product/service forward. Not good, right?

Yet this is exactly what Adobe should be thanking Microsoft for.  Many of the older desktop and web applications were built using Flash and Flex. So developers are handcuffed to these platforms and it makes investing in new versions and support for mobile devices (remember that iOS doesn’t support Flash) more challenging.  And there are 3 more years until XP goes away and therefore 3 more years that Flash hovers over the industry like a spectre.

Now my colleague Avinash Kaza writes that even if Flash goes away it’s not a big deal as Flash drives a relatively small portion of Adobe’s revenues and that tools are where the money is.  That is true to an extent. But Flash has had a halo effect on Adobe’s business far greater than the revenues indicate. By making Flash player free, it transformed Adobe into a web publishing platform, that drove the sales of its tools. Even though Adobe probably makes the very best design tools for HTML5, if Flash were to go away Adobe would lose that halo and be positioned as a great tools company.

I was just talking with a client who is trying to figure out how to bring their Flash-based app to mobile, with the iPad as a key target platform. Unfortunately there are no easy paths forward.  In the same boat as many other companies, they don’t have a lot of budget and many of their customers are accessing the app via IE 6, 7 & 8. They did ask me for projections of when XP will fade in the enterprise so that we could build a product roadmap to migrate the product towards HTML5. I thought I’d share some of the information I found so far:

• XP still has a significant role in the enterprise. Forrester’s data shows a 75% share for XP, but forecasted that Windows 7 would exchange share with XP.  This clearly hasn’t happened to the extent forecasted, but the chart that follows shows a much smaller number, but still significant progress. I believe that the Pingdom number includes consumer PCs too because of the relatively high share for Vista which most enterprises avoided like the plague (with good reason). We might have been in a very different place if Vista wasn’t such a disaster of a product. In my opinion, Vista cast a pall over Windows 7 that stunted enterprise adoption.

• Windows 8 is not due until (early) 2012. The demo and D9 looked great. I have not been able to find any info on projected enterprise adoption. While I love the Metro UI and tile interface, I wonder if the stark differences in UI will delay enterprise adoption because of anticipated higher training costs and impacts on user productivity during the initial transition.
• Here are current browser share that seem to show that gains by IE9 are correlated with Windows 7 adoption. Also to be noted is that Firefox users (based on the Gecko rendering engine) are pretty quick to update to the latest version (Firefox 3.6 has pretty good HTML5 support and Firefox 4.0 is even better)  – Source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp.

Did you find this information useful? Are you struggling with the same issues?

If you have chosen a particular technical direction, please share with the group and make us all smarter for it!

Yesterday Google introduced Swiffy, a web-based app that “converts Flash SWF files to HTML5, allowing you to reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads).”  It’s great to have another tool like this although Adobe itself offers better ones (if you can afford them).

But I think Swiffy may have only marginal value at this point. Today it only supports “…a subset of SWF 8 and ActionScript 2.0, and the output works in all Webkit browsers such as Chrome and Mobile Safari.” This leads to two main problems as I see it:

1. ActionScript 2.0 is a 5-year old technology that was superceded in 2006 by ActionScript 3.0. So many current Flash applications can’t take advantage of Swiffy.
2. It seems as if Swiffy is tuned for the Webkit browser which powers many of the desktop and mobile web browsers on the market. However it does leave out Firefox and Internet Explorer which still represent a significant part of the market.

So while I think this is a positive bit of news from Google, I hope that they keep pressing forward and continue to enhance Swiffy to make it a more valuable product.

Of course the big news was the Earthquake off the coast of Japan and resulting tsunami. The devastation is complete in some areas. The before and after shots are stunning.

Please consider making a donation through the Red Cross.

Now here is the other news that caught my eye last week:

1. I’m putting this atop the list because I thought it was the best piece I read all week. Google developer evangelist Don Dodge Dodge always has some great insights in to what’s happening in the tech sector and particularly start ups. This piece is dead on. There are a lot of tech start ups, but not many cross the finish line.  For those of you who think that there’s too much attention paid to Valley start ups with little substance, this post is for you.
2. HomeAway files for an IPO to raise an estimated $230M. The move continues the momentum for travel tech in the financial markets. But what makes this a good offering is that it’s a company that actually makes money, generates cash and is only tapping the potential of a highly disorganized sector.
3. Last week was ITB/Berlin, the world’s largest travel industry trade show. It was my first time and was overwhelming in its sheer size. Tnooz’s Kevin May highlights some of the facts and trends from some of the presentations at ITB.
4. Travelport sells GTA to Kuoni for $720M on the eve of ITB.
5. There’s a lot of data out there in the travel industry and getting control of it and turning it into actionable information is a challenge. This article of by the CTO of Comtec begins to paint the picture.
6. Pretty much as expected, Adobe has semi-capitulated to Apple and has released a Flash-to-HTML5 converter. Now this is not saying that Adobe is giving up on Flash, nor is to say that other mobile device makers won’t still be hawking their ability to play Flash as a competitive advantage to Apple. But at least if you’ve made an investment to Flash as a development platform, you’re no longer held hostage to it as a technology any longer.
7. There was a very public spat between Verifone and mobile payment start up Square over security. I think it’s a testament to Square’s value prop and the amount of money on the table that Verifone called them out.
8. HomeAway takes a step towards taking online payments for rentals. If only that was in place when I booked my summer vacation in Cape Cod last month via HomeAway.
9. It looks like Google Maps’ new hotel pricing may provide fast results, but does speed count if the quality of the results isn’t there? RockCheetah’s Robert Cole gets right to the point: “Google will certainly get clicks for hotels instead of customers going to intermediaries,” Cole says, adding, however, that conversion rates may be “a totally different dynamic.”
10. Pegasus Solutions launches its MetaSearch Services product, extending the hotel metasearch to all 90,000 hotels that the company provides distribution services to.

Lots of mobile platform announcements this week and that’s even before the Mobile World Congress kicked off. But some big travel industry news too, leading off with…

1. ITA Software renewed its agreement with Orbitz thorugh 2015. This is the first contract that was renewed since the announced acquisition by Google.  This should definitely help clear the way for DOJ approval.
2. Nokia chooses Microsoft for future smartphone OS platform in a move that wasn’t all that surprising.  Well except maybe to this ex-Nokia guy who is more bitter than 4-day old coffee grinds. Some may argue that Nokia should have licensed Android as WP7 has a teeney-tiney market share, but could Nokia have competed on an even field with HTC, Samsung and Motorola selling a modestly different version of the same phone?  At least being one of the few with a WP7 phone gives them a chance to appear different in the marketplace. Scoble agrees. Then again, what HP unveiled the other day makes this an even more difficult task.  Either way, the markets didn’t react well to the news.
3. Many people, including myself, have been advocating for HTML5 and promoting the mobile web over apps. But TechCrunch’s MG Seigler points out that while it all sounds nice, apps are still where the action is.
4. HP re-launches the WebOS platform it got when it bought Palm. All of the elements that make WebOS a delight (I do own an original Palm Pre) are there and improved upon. The only problem is that WebOS has almost no apps to speak of (see previous item). Getting developer mindshare is going to be a problem. And while they brought on a high-powered guy to take on the challenge, it might only be enough to leapfrog RIM. But that’s a pretty low bar. BTW, in retrospect, I think my first take on the HP/Palm acquisition was pretty on target.
5. Traditional web search is increasingly important and feels more and more like a system to be gamed – fairly or not. Here’s an interesting article in the NY Times that delves into the ‘black hat’ shenanigans that JC Penny used to dominate search. Fair tactics? No. But great results as Penny had one of its best recent quarters. The most interesting question about what happened is posed on the last page of the article: “Is it possible that Google was willing to countenance an extensive black-hat campaign because it helped one of its larger advertisers?”
6. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber looks into his crystal ball and sees what Apple will do next in response to the recent announcements from Google, HP, Microsoft and RIM.
7. Cloud provider Rackspace bought Anso Labs, one of the key figures behind the open source PaaS project known as OpenStack, also championed by Rackspace. Many rushed to wonder whether Rackspace will dominate the OpenStack community the way some complain Oracle and IBM have done with Java. Personally I don’t think so. I think Rackspace sees this as a way to maintain leadership in the cloud space and create mindshare with developers.  I believe OpenStack could be a really valuable platform for those looking to move to the cloud, especially those that may deploy on different IaaS providers across multiple geographies.
8. Mary Meeker who was the stat queen while at Morgan Stanley keeps the info flowing at Kleiner, Perkins. Check out her latest presentation.
9. After much pomp and circumstance, Amadeus finally sells Opodo to private equity firms AXA and Permira in a deal valued at €450M.
10. Google touts their new WebM CODEC as the open source future of web video…until MPEG-LA questions whether WebM is based on patents they control. It’s telling that thus far Google hasn’t agreed to indemnify others who use the WebM codec. As an old Vorlon friend of mine used to say: “And so it begins”.

Happy Halloween everyone.  Of course the most important event from last week was Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity/Rally to Keep Fear Alive. HuffPo provides responses from the “media”.

In other news…

1. Appropriate given that we’re at the height of the election season and have just recapped the Rally to Restore Sanity, another organization twists the word “fair” to protect their own interests in the status quo and to block a competitor’s progress (most political orgs insert “freedom”, “life” or “for a better America” just as disingenuously).  Hey, I don’t trust Google as far as I can throw them, but I really don’t see this as anything more than posturing in hopes of getting a concession.  Coverage with different persectives from The Wall Street Journal, Tnooz and TechCrunch.
2. Speaking of Google, they keep adding to their travel portfolio…this time indirectly with a reported $25M investment in Homeaway…at a stunning $1.4B valuation, the web’s largest vacation rental site.
3. While social technologies playing an increasing role in travel companies operations – and in just about every other sector too – it’s probably hard to find two companies that are approaching the integration of social the same way, both technologically and organizationally. Enterprise 2.0 guru Dion Hinchcliffe looks at who should be in charge from an organizational perspective. Should be considered required reading.
4. Vertical integration at work: the leader in online sales of tours and attractions, Viator buys OurExplorer, a Sydney, Australia based company that provides resources for discovering such activities. Ray Ozzie’s long and winding goodbye…or as some may refer to it “Here’s everything that I wish I did or would have liked to have done were I to have stayed around” letter.
5. RedMonk’s Michael Cote recaps the Adobe MAX conference and provides his usual sharp analysis. The most important takeaway is that it seems that Adobe has finally seen the light that they need to focus on web development tools and HTML5 and that Flash is to be treated as a feature rather than the platform. But time will tell whether their actions match their words.
6. Adobe tries to regain control over mobile device UI by launching Adobe AIR 2.5 for Windows Phone 7, Android and the RIM PlayBook. RIM made the biggest bet on AIR by essentially ceding future of the development platform for the device to Adobe – you want to build an app, you’ve got to build it in AIR. The technology is slick, but if for one reason or another Adobe slows down their investments in the technology, RIM has not given themselves – or their developer partners –  many backup options.
7. Adobe isn’t the only one who’s abandoning proprietary UI platforms in favor of HTML5. At This year’s Professional Developer’s Conference, Microsoft announced a shift in their strategy for Silverlight, the Flash-like runtime UI environment.  Seems like Apple has won the day.
8. PayPal grabs the lead on micropayments from Google again and announced a partnership with Facebook…invoking the ‘enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend’ strategy.
9. HTML5 wasn’t the only thing discussed at Microsoft’s PDC 2010. In fact it wasn’t even the most important thing (many will argue it was Kinect for Xbox). Altimeter Group’s Ray Wang breaks it down.
10. What’s one of the gates to cloud adoption? Not being able to differentate between “moving to and “building for” the Cloud.

Well I hope that everyone enjoyed their holiday. But before I get to the tech and travel news, I must comment on “The Decision”.  Yes, I was among the 10 million people that watched LeBron James rip the heart of his own city when he announced his decision to play for the Miami Heat next year. Like many I feel terrible for Cavs fans and LeBron is diminished in my eyes. Not for the choice that he made. I mean hey, if I was a single, 25-year old mega-millionaire, I’d probably want to play with my two best friends and live in South Beach too. For LeBron South Beach won’t be eye-candy, it will be candy.  And he’s the owner of the candy store (or at least COO with Dwayne Wade as CEO).

Credit: Al Diaz/Miami Herald

But what was unforgivable for me was the way that he manufactured the drama and built-up his own TV special when in fact the decision had been made days, if not months ago. I just can’t imagine that as an Ohio native that he didn’t understand just how his decision to leave would devastate the community and his fans…and how dragging out the process and announcing his decision on national TV would make the effect even worse.  Jeff Van Gundy had it right on the broadcast when he said that the one thing he’d regret is not informing the Cavs of his decision before the broadcast. I think that Cavs’ owner Dan Gilbert’s fantastic/unfortunate/comical “open letter to Cavs fans” is testament to that.

OK, on to this week’s curation.

1. Everbread raises about $85M from Bessemer Ventures. I guess it pays to be named by Google as a competitor.
2. YouTube Mobile goes HTML5. Seems as if the mobile web site beats the app, which seems to jive with Google’s strategy of moving towards a mobile web, rather than an apps.
3. There has been a lot of talk about how Facebook could have an impact on the travel industry via their OpenGraph. Well Facebook made their first overt move into the travel space by acquiring NextStop, but then immediately shut it down.  In all likelihood we’ll see the NextStop tech in another form, but it will continue to get interesting.
4. Last week OpenAxis debuted, this week it’s the BLLA announcing the development of a new standard for defining boutique and lifestyle lodgings in hopes to level the distribution playing field with the large hotel chains.
5. Very interesting stats on how people are using the iPad from Resolve Market Resarch. On a related note, Enterprise Irregular Jeff Nolan recants his original take on the iPad and notes that besides e-Readers, netbooks are getting smacked down in favor of iPads.
6. Good sign for a future recovery: US Venture Capital fundraising is up 13%, although that’s still only half of what was raised in the first half of 2008, it’s moving in the right direction. And since emerging businesses are the real jobs engine in the country (many say small business, but really it’s new businesses), this is promising for the future.
7. Continental re-ups their GDS relationship with Travelport through 2013. It’s interesting that CO is doing these kinds of deals with the merger with United scheduled to close later this year. I understand the urgency on Travelport’s part, but with another year on the existing deal, why did CO jump now? At some point doesn’t a merged CO-UA have to re-evaluate and re-negotiate these kinds of contracts?
8. Next week is Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner conference in DC and Azure (Microsoft’s Cloud Computing platform) is supposed be front and center. Altimeter Group’s Ray Wang gives Microsoft partners some Azure rewards and risks to keep in mind while listening to the presentations at the conference.
9. Just a week after OpenAxis is announced, American Airlines announces that it will be making all its optional services available exclusively through Farelogix.
10. Two weeks in a row a major technology company buys a travel firm.  This time it was Facebook buying Nextstop. At first there was speculation that this was Facebook first step into the travel sector to keep up with Google and Apple, as had been rumored after they unfurled their OpenGraph at f8 in April. But according to TechCrunch it looks like perhaps they’re just accumulating talent.

Last week I presented on a webinar alongside PhoCusWright analyst Bob Offut, entitled “Travel Innovation and Technology Trends: 2010 and Beyond”, sponsored by my company Ness Software Product Labs.  I’m providing links to both the PDF of the slides and the replay of the webinar via WebEx below.

In the webinar, Bob talks about the Top 10 travel technology trends, based on PCW’s report that came out in March (subscription required).  Then I pick up at the 45:00 mark (slide 81 in the PDF) to discuss the impact of Cloud Computing and Mobile on the travel industry. Some highlights from the presentation:

• Cloud Computing and Travel
  • Watch out for Cloudwashers. There are a lot of people who are either trying to prey on those still confused about Cloud, some of which are purposefully obfuscating their solutions to cash in on the trend.
  • Cloud can be an important part of a modernization strategy, but isn’t an end in and of itself. Evaluate the “Six degrees of Modernization” and think about how Cloud can fit within the direction you chose.
  • The Public v. Private Cloud debate is interesting, but it’s not necessarily and either/or proposition. Private Clouds do lack certain attributes and benefit of Public Cl0uds, but think of the difference as an evolutionary process, not alternatives.
  • Moving to the Cloud requires a change in perspective from mere software development to a systems engineering mindset.
• Mobile and Travel
  • Mobile Devices are Becoming the Center of Traveler Interactions
  • 5-step Framework to a successful mobile strategy. Understanding the use cases of your customer and the role that you want mobile to play in their overall experience with your brand is critical.
  • Determining whether you want to take an mobile web-oriented approach or an app-oriented approach, and what platforms/devices your target customer is likely using make a big impact on the technology choices you make.

Anyway, enjoy the presentations. I had a good time and I hope you find the information interesting and useful.  Please let me know what you think. Contact me directly  or add to the conversation in the comments.

Well it was not a particularly newsworthy week. Partially because of the shortened week for Memorial Day as well as the expected lull between Google’s I/O conference and Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) that kicks off today.  But there were still a few items worth noting. As an FYI, I’m heading out on vacation on Friday for about 10 days (10 year anniversary + wife’s xx-th birthday), so no column next week. Not sure if I’ll squeeze out another post this week, so if not “Mahalo”.

1. Adobe announces new technology to power digital publishing for the iPad, iPhone that’s behind the Wired iPad app. Burton Group’s @pragkirk believes it outputs Objective-C, yet unconfirmed. Seems this is all Apple ever wanted. They didn’t care about the tool, just that it results in code that delivers high performance and doesn’t crash. So now if CS5 can output to HTML5 and this new tech, why do we need Flash again?
2. How would travel search look if fare search engines knew who you were? Interesting proposition, presuming that the travel suppliers kept a customer-centric perspective and tried to build a better relationship with their customers rather than implementing this solely to squeeze more ancillary revenues from travelers.
3. The much awaited Google Chrome will launch this fall.  As with any OS, I think adoption is going to be predicated on the availability of apps. If it’s just going to support Google Apps and web browsing, I think there’s limited uptake. So the announcements surrounding the Chrome OS will be more telling than the OS announcement itself.
4. Say what? HP CEO, Mark Hurd says that they didn’t purchase Palm to be in the smartphone business, but mainly for the underlying IP in WebOS to use on a variety of devices.  As an owner of the an H/Pre, up til now I was hopeful that there would be an investment into improving WebOS for the phone. Now, I think I’m more motivated to switch to the upcoming new iPhone or Android than when it looked like Palm may go bankrupt L
5. Amid all the debate about Facebook’s privacy policies, Mark Cuban wonders whether Facebook’s “simplified”, revised privacy policies actually hurt Google and provide a path for newspapers to chart out a new future.
6. At TRAVDEX, I mentioned how Siri might really change the game for travel search as a “do engine” rather than a simple search engine. Robert Scoble paints a picture of how location, search and social might transform how we plan and book travel and how we do other things in our daily lives by 2012.
7. Just days before WWDC, AT&T screws Apple again by abandoning “all you can eat” data plans. People who love their iPhones have abandoned them for Android solely to because of AT&T’s terrible service. This about-face a mere 4 months from the iPad announcement just gives AT&T haters another reason to hate. UPDATE: AT&T has said they’ll grandfather anyone who buys an iPad 3G through June 7, even though they’re currently backordered.
8. Social media superstar, Chris Brogan is launching a new site called “Man on the Go” where he will share his experiences and recommendations of travel gear, hotels, restaurants, etc. It should be interesting to watch what effect he may have on the travel industry. Already he’s highlighted a company called ExpertFlyer.
9. Not necessarily what I would call breaking news, but the New York Times notes that while the airlines have introduced new capabilities leveraging smartphones, they are still – as Henry Harteveldt says –  “prisoners of their past” from a technology perspective.
10. Looking for a place to eat while on the road? Good news. Yelp takes its restaurant reviews to the next level, integrating restaurant booking via OpenTable.  A smart move given that 3 out of 10 businesses reviewed on Yelp are restaurants. Another example of how companies are shortening the distance between investigation and booking.

Well perhaps this week’s installment should be 10 things that happened at Google I/O. It surely dominated the conversation last week. But a few travel items make it as well including a post from FareCompare CEO Rick Seaney. news on Amadeus and Travelport and Google’s Friday acquisition of Ruba.  And in honor of the last episode of Lost, a bonus #11. 

1. Farecompare’s CEO breaks down the airfare pricing rules that seem to make no sense to the average traveler. And it’s just getting harder to make any sense out of it with all the airline fees (or as they call it ancillary revenue).
2. Bob Warfield talks about the huge lead that Amazon has in the Cloud derby and the barriers of entry that they’re creating. However, the recent moves to integrate the VMWare SpringSource technology into Google and Salesforce’s Cloud offerings should make those considering Cloud/PaaS provider take a second look.
3. Travelport becomes the first GDS to buy a meta-search player. I wonder whether this will be the first of several transactions and how much the rumored acquisition of ITA Software by Google is creating a sense of urgency among the GDSs.
4. Big announcements from Google I/O: the Chrome Web Store, Google Wave ready for launch, the open sourcing of the WebM video CODEC (see next item), Google partners with VMWare for AppEngine.  And that was only day one.
5. Google open sources WebM video CODEC, which may throw a monkey wrench into the H.264 bandwagon.  However, perhaps WebM won’t be royalty-free for long, says AllThingsDigital’s John Paczkowski.
6. Netflix jumping on the HTML5 bandwagon with both feet.  And the Wall Street Journal notes that Apple is winning ground in the fight against Flash. Although much of that gain may be given back in light of Froyo and other announcements from I/O.
7. On its face, Google TV looks to be a very big deal. It’s everything that many hoped AppleTV would be.  Although Mashable thought that there’s little here that’s not already in TiVo. But since only about 8 people on the planet own a TiVo, this will be pretty cool to most everybody else. Some think this isn’t so much a shot across Apple or other set-top box maker’s bow, than it is to TV providers.  Here’s some more info, but I’m not sure how much adoption it will see if you still require a cable/satellite set top box.
8. Amadeus making gains with US Travel Agents. Very interesting stats around financial incentives given to travel agents by the GDSs.
9. A good point about the importance efficient software development made on the Ness Software Product Labs blog that I hadn’t really thought about before: Cloud Computing puts a premium on efficient code.  Less efficient code requires more CPU cycles and therefore incurs higher costs in the pay-by-the-drink world of Cloud Computing.
10. Google takes another step on its journey into the travel industry with its purchase of Ruba, the online travel guide and travel community. Ruba’s visual search approach is apparently what caught Google’s eye.  Looks like it will be integrated into iGoogle, at least for now.

And in tribute to the Lost series finale which aired last night…

• A fabulous review of the Apple-Google rivalry by TechCrunch’s MG Siegler…even more so if you’re a “Lost” fan like me.