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RIM joins WebKittens litter with Torch-Mobile buy

Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry, has acquired Torch Mobile, developers of the WebKit-based Iris Browser. A brief posting on Torch Mobile's blog says: "Our team of developers will join RIM’s global organization and will now be focused on utilizing our WebKit-based mobile browser expertise to contribute to the …

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John Sanders
Go

Good, good but...

I would have preferred to hear they were allowing pop3 support once and for all besides their proprietary push system.

The possibility of having email on the blackberry when under wifi coverage without GPRS and the like would be a killer feature.

One can dream though.

sleepy

It's all falling in to place for Apple and Google

To ensure web content is searchable by Google, it needs to be in non-proprietary format. To ensure Microsoft or some new monopolist cartel can't lock Apple's "whole widgets" out of the market again, Apple also needs to ensure web content and protocols are open. Hence the selection,and substantial enhancement of open source Webkit by Apple, and its return to the community and use by Nokia, Google etc.

HTML5 has won the day; proprietary elements of Internet Explorer and Active X are vanquished; there's a level playing field for Apple, Google, Microsoft, and anyone else who wants to join in, such as RIM.

Hooray. And stop whingeing about Apple being control freaks; it's Apple who made this happen. It's taken them seven years, and it's a much better world as a result.

Tom Chiverton 1
Boffin

@sleepy

Google can happily index Flash content, tyvm : http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html

Do keep up :-)

sleepy

@Tom Chiverton 1

Adobe and Microsoft must now behave better than than they otherwise would have. Including letting Google index Flash.

Joel Fiser
WTF?

Google indexing Flash is like Google indexing Javascript.

Flash is a platform for displaying content. It is not the content itself. While some beginner level Flashers embed actual content (text, images, etc) inside a SWF, professional Flashers load configurable content at runtime using JSON, XML, etc.

Using Progressive Enhancement, professional Flashers create an experience that can be read by search engines, screen readers and users who don't have the Flash plugin. Using this method, only users with the Flash plugin see the Flash display. Search Engines Spiders don't have the Flash plugin - so they see only text - and index it.

This is not new. We've been doing this for at least 6 years.

RIM realizing that they need Flash to provide a complete experience leaves just one notable exception among the major smart phones - Mr Steve. He has cleverly milked his users for what he could - but now he'll have no choice. Flash on the iPhone within 1 year. He has to or become irrelevant.

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