hymanroth

Sounds obvious now, but I remember advising quite a few people "not build their house on other people's land" several years ago.

It was true then, is true now, and will always be true.

Very interesting. Thanks

Excellent comment, thanks. We would require location and touch functionality. The core use case is really quite simple: users provide both text and numerical feedback based on their location - that's basically it. Nothing fancy. It needs to quick and easy to use, work on as many platforms as possible, and - given the nature of the application - is unlikely to be downloaded prior to when it's needed. People are more likely to use it "on impulse" and that's another reason we like the idea of accessing the service as you would a web site.

Well, we'd basically want to target them all! Given that people change their phones more often than their PCs, one would expect the installed mobile browser base to 'fresher' than the PC one. In other words, over the medium term (say 2 years) the rendering issue should hopefully fade away.

It's just a question of timing - when is it going to be OK to go 100% HTML5? (assuming, of course, the app is not particularly complex)

Yes, but that implies the app is an end to itself.

What if you just wanted to present an existing web service to mobile users in an "app-like" UI?

Sure, cycle intensive use cases will probably use native code for a long time to come.

The idea of adding native wrappers around a pure HTML/JS implementation sounds very interesting - like having your cake and eating it....

Yes, but it implies the user anticipating the use case... Would you download an app which talks you through fixing a car engine before you actually needed it, for example?

Thanks - that is exactly what I'm talking about. But don't you have a problem with older mobile browsers not being able to render the site correctly?

Good point. I should have mentioned monetization is not an issue. In other words, if what we aim to build were in an app store it would be free anyway.

Basically I'm asking whether HTML5 will be mature enough both in terms of functionality and browser market share in around 6 months time.

Yes, but Google's valuation is confirmed by trading volumes.

In the early days of computerized trading it was quite common for even quite liquid stocks to be suspended limit up/down because of programming bugs.

But by Joel's logic, the market has 'spoken' and these companies are now worth 10% more/less than 30 seconds prior, when in fact all that has happened is some faulty code just ripped through the book on minimal volumes.

The point is that 'true' valuations are validated by significant volumes. Hence Google's valuation is real. Depending on your viewpoint, the size of the recent transactions in FB may or may not be material - and I think this is the point that David was making.

Hi Joel, ex stock analyst here. What you say re minority trades is correct in so far as that is the way market valuations are calculated. However, what David says is also correct: just because someone pays X for a tiny fraction of the company doesn't mean someone else will pay the same for all of it.

Wily investors always look for meaningful volumes before taking big jumps/declines in share prices seriously.

One of the easiest ways to ramp a stock (apart from getting your journalist buddy to write a puff piece) is to continually lift the offer for small volumes.