It is fascinating to see how HTML 5 buzz is spreading all over the Internet. Accelerated by Apple's decision to not support Flash on iPad, the news is now everywhere. Just follow HTML 5 keyword on Twitter and there will be no shortage of folks expressing their love to the new buzz word.

It is understandable that Scribd's CEO is "ditching" three years of Flash development in favor of HTML 5, but to say across the board that HTML5/CSS3 + JavaScript is a good replacement for Flash or Silverlight is absurd. Playing video is one thing and HTML 5 with appropriate browser support can probably compete there, though when it comes to anything a bit more complex than rendering text and changing button colors, the mix of HTML, CSS and JavaScript is an unfortunate choice.

Lets face it, HTML/CSS was created to output static textual content and images. JavaScript, a Netscape by-product, was broadly adopted later to provide for the lack of interactivity via browsers' crippled and buggy DOM interfaces. Since then it seems that the greatest invention was jQuery that gave us a simplified interface for DOM manipulations and XMLHttpRequest that provided some means for asynchronous processing. Now there is canvas and the ability to draw lines and have pixel access... Not too shabby. Adobe's Flash/Flex/AS3 is light years ahead.

Here is just a few thoughts that come to mind:

• Strongly typed ActionScript language
• Truly object oriented with real classes and inheritance
• Compile time error/type checking
• Robust security model
• Exceptions
• Modular (packages, libraries, components)
• Compiles into binary packages
• Rich event architecture
• Native XML support
• Clear code/presentation separation (not talking about frame scripts here)
• World class design and development tools with profound integration
• Slew of multipurpose libraries

Silverlight is even further ahead with mature C# language, feature rich .NET platform/FCL, multi-threading, real debugger, and best development tools.

Who is to say that these RIA technologies are closed or proprietary? They are as closed as Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc., all of which have their own proprietary take on how to interpret HTML/CSS specifications, DOM, and the rest of the "modern" hotchpotch of open web standards.

We at WebRotate 360 are affected by Apple's decision to stop supporting Flash on their mobile devices. 360 product photography aside, all of our 360 product views and other rich media components are done in Flash. It makes perfect sense for us and a few thousands of other companies who wants superior technology for client-side web development. Yes, absolute majority of browsers out there do support Flash. More so, its adoption will be expanding rapidly thanks to the new Flash plug-in that will be coming soon to the Android devices. Still, we and our clients now have to adjust to the growing issue of compatibility.

On the bright side, our new rich media solution has been designed with the goal of addressing this and many other problems that e-commerce companies are facing today.

Adobe has released another excellent survey of their Scene7 customers. For those of you who are not familiar with Scene7, it's a great tool or rather a service by Adobe that helps companies incorporate and manage rich media content on their websites. Serving big clients such as Sears and Macy's their price entry is steep with an yearly charge of 30-40K for publishing and managing rich media catalogs online.

The survey was conducted from November 9, 2009 to January 15, 2010. It covers a variety of industries across major markets: North America, Asia-Pacific, Western/Eastern Europe, Middle East , Africa, and Latin America. It's a 60 page document that goes into pretty good details evaluating how different industries/markets plan to adopt latest trends in digital media in 2010 with a primary focus on Interactive Rich Media, Social Media, Mobile Features and Personalization. Total of 546 companies have provided their feedback.

Here's what we found most interesting:

• Current adoption of 360-degree product views is still very low. Only 7% of all responders have adopted this feature. Though, unsurprisingly, its planned adoption growth in 2010 is highest across all 21 rich media features evaluated. 22% of all responders plan to adopt 360 product images in 2010. This is a 200% increase!
• Combined with 3-D visualization that shows second fastest growing adoption rate (9% adopted vs 23% planned) and product tours (13% adopted vs 23% planed) we think we have a busy year ahead of us. To give you a comparison point, well established functionality such as Quick Looks/Rollover views and Alternative Images show marginal adoption growth with 20% adopted vs 21% planned and 17% adopted vs 18% planned respectively.
• Product tours (combinations of guided spin, zoom imagery, videos or animations with copy) is ranked highest in effectiveness across all rated rich media features.
• 27% more responders said that 360 product spin is the most effective feature to drive conversion/sales comparing to similar survey last year.
• 70% of survey participants in North America have less that 10 million in annual sales with quarter of all responders being interactive/advertising agencies.

It's great to see companies embracing interactive rich media, and while e-commerce is still in its infancy (Forrester research says only 8% of all sales will be done online in 2014), the trend is clear and this survey only reassures that we are on the right track.

You can request a full copy of the survey here.

E-commerce is embracing rich media with unprecedented pace. Did you hear about Zappos' new idea to use augmented reality in product videos or 2009's E-commerce Innovation winner GlassesDirect with their 3D video mirror? Though cool, these technologies are still in their infancy and may not work well for everybody or even for Zappos or GlassesDirect. 360 product views that we create at WebRotate 360 have proven to quickly bring value to our customers. Read more »

Today is the best time to follow this growing trend and get 360'd with us. Here's why...

Free Hosting of Your Rich Media

While larger companies have their own "dedicated" servers, smaller folks rely on shared hosting which may not have sufficient bandwidth to deliver additional media smoothly. Hosting companies also charge an extra fee for additional disk space and bandwidth required to support "heavier" rich media such as 360 product views.

To address this issue we are now offering free hosting and maintenance of rich media for any clients receiving less than 10,000 product views per month.

Free Website Integration

We've come to realize that the technical integration of 360 views is perceived as a barrier. It's actually quite straightforward but with our new hosting service it's even easier. Now it's just a matter of pasting some code onto the web page and we're helping clients with that as well.

Free Hot-spot with Any Order

Have you seen our latest 360 viewers with animated hot-spots? If not, check out our updated online 360 viewer tour samples or click the links below to see some cool pre-production samples we're developing for our clients:  

June 8th, 12 - examples have been removed as part of our new website deployment. You can find our latest samples here

Today we offer a free hot-spot of your choice that we will place on each of your product views free of charge!

Free Service Test

Do you have 20 or more products that you wanted to convert into interactive 360 degree product views for your store but were hesitate to proceed for particular reason? If so, we have great news. Send us just one of your products to test-drive our service. If you don't like it, you keep the money.

Free 360 Viewer Template Customization

This has been a paid add-on for a while now. For a limited time only we offer free 360 Viewer customization to match your website styles (colors, fonts, gradients, etc).

Free High Resolution Images

At the end, all of our 360 product views are made of a series of product images. We capture these images with very high resolution and then edit them in their original size so we can produce best results possible. We thought you might like it if we share these images with you for free.

Free Return Shipping

No more need to provide us with return FedEx or UPS slips - we'll ship your products back to you free (some limitations apply).

Get a Quote Now or Read what our clients say

We are constantly thinking about how we can bring more value to our clients. We've been listening to you too... Time has come for us to start offering free web hosting for your 360 degree product views. If you are one of our customers who doesn't get beyond 10000 views per month combined on their repository of 360 product views, we thought this would be a good deal for you!

Our competitors still charge monthly fees for disk space and bandwidth regardless and relie on their servers that are not geographically distributed or sometimes robust (we've been there too!). At WebRotate 360 we have made the leap though, and this is going to be part of our standard offer through February 2011.

This is one of many announcements we've been planning in 2010. Stand by for more good news!