Arguing for training resource is something that we really shouldn’t have to spend too much time doing. This is a fast moving industry with new technologies, concepts and business practices seemingly emerging every other week. If we don’t keep ourselves abreast of these changes and their potential impact on our business operations then who else will? But, the realities are that new technology will get released after training budgets have been agreed and then we find ourselves spending valuable time on the cost-benefits rather than concentrating on educating and equipping our staff/teams and bringing insights & knowledge to the wider business.

Now, you’re probably asking yourselves what learning iPhone programming has to do with Advertising Operations, after all it’s not like you’re looking for seasoned C++ developers when recruiting a new Trafficker or requiring your Campaign Managers to have a Degree in statistical methodologies. But my argument has always been that AdOps lies at that intersection of Technology/Development, Advertising Theory, Statistics/Analytics and Business Development. When new technology rears and the business want to know how to leverage advertising on it then we’re the ‘go-to’ people. When there is no-one else in the company who can give a view on some latest gadget or have an opinion on how such technologies can be brought under the wider advertising strategies… you need to speak to AdOps. Keeping abreast of technological change is second nature for AdOps people, if your business doesn’t have someone with AdOps experience who is consulting with your Business Development group then you’re missing a trick.

This isn’t about getting your staff to become iOS developers, it’s about educating them to understand how these devices work in order that they are then able to advise how best to implement advertising technologies.
The more your staff are empowered by this knowledge and understand how such systems work, then the easier it will be when managing the impact of their uptake by your customers. Ultimately this should feed into the overall approach your company takes in reacting rapidly to such huge changes in the technology landcape.

All of the following courses contain between 10 and 13 videos each of which last approx 1-2hrs and will require access to a Mac running Xcode.

iPhone Application Development [Stanford]
http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/iphone-application-development/id384233225#ls=1

Developing Apps for iOS [Stanford]
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=395631522

iPhone Application programming [RWTH Aachen]
http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/iphone-application-programming/id390395304

Advanced iPhone Development [Madison Area Technical College]
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=407243032

I’ve got to be honest and say we’ve never run a Flash based mobile ad, so part of me is thinking that this isn’t going to affect us that much, however, it does mean those developers who were developing products across all three platforms now only have to worry about two. This, we can only hope equates to better time-to-market, reduced testing times and hopefully less complex development cycles.

Importantly it now signifies to us where we need to focus our product attention on development. So, the question is, do you have the requisite skills in your team (and personally) to support these technologies? If you don’t are there others in your wider organisation who do and if they’re not there either how will you ensure you meet these future requirements & needs of your advertisers & agencies?

CNet have a video article covering the news:

Here’s some stories (apologies if some of them are a bit sycophantic about Apple).
Wired: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/11/adobe-mobile-flash-dead/
Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/nov/09/adobe-flash-mobile-dead
LA Times: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/adobe-to-end-mobile-flash-plug-in-development.html

Joshua Hirsch, Big Spaceship
Marc Jensen, Space150
Ricardo Cabello, Freelancer
Aaron McGuire, Evolution Bureau
Markus Persson, Mojang AB
Evan Stark, Domani Studios
Scott Prindle, Crispin Porter + Bogusky
John Mayo-Smith, R/GA
Dave Riegler, TBWA\Chiat\Day
Keith Butters, The Barbarian Group

Link: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/top-10-technologists-135797.

Cloud Four has an article on iPad orientation detection through CSS here:
http://www.cloudfour.com/ipad-orientation-css/
They supply an example of their techniques as well:
http://www.cloudfour.com/ipad-css/

NCZOnline – iPad web development tips:
Amongst other topics covered this article deals with the all important: User-agent string, iPad detection through Javascript as well as ways to ascertain screen dimensions and orientation:
http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2010/04/06/ipad-web-development-tips/

Smashing Magazine has porovided some well thought out issues to consider when starting out developing web-pages for the iPad & iPhone:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/28/web-development-for-the-iphone-and-ipad-getting-started/

HTMLGoodies has an article detailing more in-depth approaches to orientation on the iPad & iPhone:
Detect and Set the iPhone/iPad’s Viewport/Orientation Using JavaScript, CSS & MetaTags

Using CSS to handle Orientation on the iPad:
So, the upside is that this is a lot easier than you might think. WebKit/Safari supports the CSS media query declarations based on orientation. You can simply specify two CSS files which contain the layouts for portrait and landscape and place the following two lines in your pages HEAD tag.

<link rel="stylesheet" media="all and (orientation:portrait)" href="portrait.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" media="all and (orientation:landscape)" href="landscape.css">

And then simply amend the layout for each orientation accordingly, in the example below they use it to hide/show a H1 tag accordingly. Here’s a working example:
http://www.cloudfour.com/ipad-css/.

Everything you need to know about HTML5 video and audio [Opera.com]
Is your browser ready for HTML5?. [Webmonkey]
Chrome shows off some fancy HTML5 tricks [Webmonkey]
The HTML5 Test – Score your browser on it’s readiness for HTML5.
HTML5 Browser Readiness
When Can I use? Great browser feature checking system
“WTF is HTML5 and why should we all care?” [Focus]
A Web Developer’s Guide to HTML 5[W3C]
The WHATWG Blog
Dive Into HTML 5
HTML5 Doctor
HTML5 Visual Cheat Sheet
HTML5 Gallery
Coding A HTML 5 Layout From Scratch
HTML 5 and CSS 3: The Techniques You’ll Soon Be Using
Structural Tags in HTML5
How to Make All Browsers Render HTML5 Mark-up Correctly – Even IE6
HTML5 Cheat Sheet
HTML 5 Visual Cheat Sheet
HTML5 Canvas Cheat Shee
HTML 5 Pocket Book

VIDEO:
http://apirocks.com/html5/html5.html
http://jilion.com/sublime/video
http://www.craftymind.com/2010/04/20/blowing-up-html5-video-and-mapping-it-into-3d-space/
Embed Videos In Your Web Pages Using HTML5 [Webmonkey]
http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/08/flashy-html5-experiments-point-to-webs-future/ [Webmonkey]
WhatWG description of the VIDEO element.

CANVAS:
http://www.benjoffe.com/code/
http://alteredqualia.com/canvasmol/
http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/
A truly brilliant example of what CANVAS can achieve http://www.andrew-hoyer.com/experiments/cloth

Experiments In HTML5:
http://hakim.se/experiments/
http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/?sound=1

Additions:
[2010-10-13] Introduction – HTML5 DOM Storage API Example
[2010-10-19] Admonsters HTML5 Advertising FAQ
[2010-10-21] http://woorkup.com/2009/12/16/html5-visual-cheat-sheet-reloaded

Sources:
Thanks to http://webdesignledger.com and http://www.designer-daily.com and http://www.webmonkey.com/ for a lot of the research in finding these sites.

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