Google Labs just launched Swiffy, a new web-based tool that allows developers to easily convert Adobe Flash animation SWF files into HTML5. This will allow developers to make Flash ads and basic ActionScript interactions accessible to users on devices that don’t support Flash, like the iPhone and iPad.
Swiffy is very similar to a tool that Adobe released earlier this year called Wallaby. The main difference is that Swiffy is web-based, whereas Wallaby is a client that runs on a Mac or PC. Additionally, Wallaby’s code is designed to be edited and reused, whereas Swiffy’s code is optimized and compressed in such a way that makes editing difficult.
The Swiffy demo page shows off the power of the tool. In addition to converting basic banner ad animations, click-event interactions can also be converted to HTML5. To be clear, this won’t convert videos, complex animations or games, but the tool meets its desired goal quite adequately.
Swiffy takes advantage of more advanced SVG features, which means that the only browsers that support the converted code right now are Webkit-based. That means Safari and Chrome on the desktop and Mobile Safari on iOS will support the converted files.
We’re impressed by what Google has cooked up. A web-based conversion tool will be a boon to advertisers who don’t want to have to recreate certain assets for display on Flash-free devices.
More About: Flash, Google, google code, HTML5, swf, swiffy, wallaby
For more Dev & Design coverage:Follow Mashable Dev & Design on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Dev & Design channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Location-based services are expected to bring in $10 billion in revenue by 2016, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. The biggest chunk, just over 50 percent, will come from location-based search advertising.
The firm said the biggest obstacle is consumer privacy concerns about location data, something that has been stoked lately by recent questions about tracking from iPhones and Android devices. But if location services provide enough transparency about how they use and store this information, it should not derail the approaching money train.
But there are a lot of other opportunities in location. I recently talked with Location Labs about how they’re building toward an IPO by providing security and safety features for families. There will be other more “boring” utility plays that leverage location and can gather in revenue without being a sexy check-in app.
And to be sure, consumers are getting more comfortable with location-based services, especially when those services are dressed up with offers and discounts. That will be the key — to provide consumers with clear value and information that is relevant to them.
At this point, it’s hard to say what the revenue potential for location-based service is going to be. Mobile advertising overall generated $550 to $650 million in the U.S. last year, far behind online advertising. But as smartphone penetration rises (it’s expected to account for half of all phones this year) and people start to think of their phones as personal computers and real-world sensors unlocking valuable information around them, there could be a huge bonanza waiting. It’s up to location companies to come clean about the way they use location data, as Skyhook’s Ted Morgan recently told me. But if that happens, there could be a lot of winners.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):
Dutch tech site All About Phones claims that Google Maps Navigation will get a true offline mode later this summer. In December the Android app received an update that cached routes and the surrounding areas, but without a data connection you still couldn’t enter a new destination. A source inside the Dutch telco industry said that Goog would removing the requirement for coverage — an obvious next step for the nav tool, especially with Ovi Maps bringing its turn-by-turn prowess to WP7. The move is also bound to be another thorn in the side of standalone GPS makers like Garmin and TomTom. After all, it’s tough to compete with free.
Thanks to my eternally trustworthy pal Paul Gailey, I was made aware that one of my favorite analytics tools, Post Rank, has just announced it has been acquired by Google. And I don’t think its wise to underestimate how important this will be for the world of search and social media.
I suspect a lot of people in the UK have never heard of Post Rank—or at the very least have rarely used the service beyond tinkering. But for more than three years, this has been the bread and butter of blog analytics for both me and the clients I have built and serviced blogs for.
In short, Post Rank attributes a value to each social gesture that a reader may perform on your blog. So, if you look on the left of this blog, there is a list of posts which have attracted a score depending on their popularity. Retweets score differently to bookmarks, comments receive a different score to Facebook shares, and so on. The hugely important distinction to make, is that whilst the values do not necessarily mean anything in any financial or volume-based context we may already be familiar with, the system allows us to set targets and assess something that we are all looking at: attention and authority.
Any post can be widely read—but if nobody re-tweets it, is it in any way influential on that topic? In the same way that Facebook Likes, Retweets, Diggs and so on each represent a modern day “vote” of favor to a piece of content, Post Rank allows you to collate all these votes and provides you with the intelligence to shape your content plan to ensure that it is relevant more often than not, and in being relevant, stands much more chance of being re-posted (and seen) elsewhere.
I have developed over time, a methodology of posting content by very specific content categories (based on conversation monitoring), which is then measured against a Post Rank score for each category of post. Depending on the score of each post, we accurately know what type of content is most responded-to by the audience and can therefore post more content of this type—whatever it is.
Social Search Engine Results Pages
But what does this have to do with the future of search? Look at where search has gone over the last few years and the overwhelming focus has been on addressing the volumes of social content on the web.
Universal search introduces video (typically from YouTube) and images alongside standard search engine results pages (SERPs).
Google’s Caffeine update places more influence on delicious (among other things).
Real-time tweets for popular topics appear alongside “static” SERPs.
The Google avatar of friends in your network who have shared content that appear in SERPs are visible.
And so on …
The point is, that without any doubt, google’s issue has been one of attributing human “votes” to content. Post Rank fills this gap.
Take a look at its Google Reader filter below, and you can begin to see just how Post Rank’s system can provide such huge feedback on human votes of confidence in content.
I can now filter my Google Reader content according to what Post Rank has been able to determine are Good, Great or Best (or all) score. This means, it is giving me a score based on the human voted-for scores of content that is out there on the web.
Google Reader is giving me the most relevant content as judged by the interactions/votes of my peers and indeed the myriad people who have also “voted” for this content by sharing, rating and bookmarking it.
Granted, it may not be the most recent (and I have to admit, I don’t know how frequent post rank indexes the content, but it seems pretty instant).
A Ready-Made Human Recommendation System
So, in Post Rank, it would appear that Google is acquiring a ready-made system that provides the much-lauded human attribution of search relevance. What it will look like, maybe the above graphic gives us some clues, but I just hope they maintain the service as-is and not let it disappear like they did with Jaiku. Post Rank, please tell us one way or the other!
