Parse simplifies the process of mobile app development by providing “mobile backend-as-a-service.” Basically, the company takes care of the server side of things so developers can focus on areas like user experience and design. Now, mobile developers that need a web presence can host that content through Parse.

“Combined with our JavaScript SDK and Cloud Code, developers can now host their entire web presence on Parse and there is no need for a third party to host the static assets like HTML, JavaScript, or CSS,” said CEO Ilya Sukhar in an interview. “We always dog-food our own platform and found it annoying that we had to use another party to host the web component even though the heavy lifting was done by Parse. Externally, we heard the same thing time and time again from our customers across the spectrum of size and use case.”

Parse Hosting will join Parse Data, Parse Social, Parse Push, and Cloud Code as available services. Developers will be able to host landing pages to support their mobile app and data from that app will be accessible through the Parse API. Parse’s platform powers more than 80,000 applications and tapped into a wide community of developers (and consistent revenue stream), which contributed to Facebook’s interest in buying the company.

The acquisition marked Facebook’s first foray into paid business-to-business services and an emphasis on growing its relationship with the developer community. During an interview with Sukhar about the deal, he said that while Parse could offer developers infrastructure, the startup could not offer distribution and monetization. He said the partnership with Facebook will bring “huge reach” in terms of developers and raw users and make Parse a “one-stop shop for all your application needs.”

However, whenever a smaller company gets scooped up by a larger company, there are concerns about the smaller company getting snuffed out. Sukhar said that Parse will continue to exist and innovate, and Parse Hosting builds off the momentum from the acquisition.

“This announcement goes to show that both parties are committed to continuing development on the Parse platform,” he said. “We’re going to expand the Parse product offering, not contract it. Platforms that are going away don’t significantly expand their product offering a week after announcing an acquisition.”

Parse launched in 2011 and participated in Y Combinator. It raised $7 million before the acquisition, which is rumored at $85 million.

What will that Google user do now?

According to some testing code that Google Operating System caught in the wild, Google is testing a Google Now experience for its home page. Google Now, of course, is the home screen on the latest versions of Android, which brings together relevant and contextual information like weather, traffic conditions, how your favorite stocks are doing, whether your sports teams won, and so on.

“Just the right information at just the right time,” Google said. Now it’s testing that mobile experience on the web.

Sounds almost … Yahoo-ish?

The code on the page in testing shows functionality that will allow Google users to set and edit their home and work locations, as well as their current location, and “Discover Google Now.” Presumably, those location settings — as well as other preferences entered — would create a customized page with news, events, personal information, and perhaps even Google offers or deals close to you.

Google has long had iGoogle, a personalized homepage with your latest mail, calendar events, weather, tweets, bookmarks, and more. It’s — frankly — an ugly, almost awkward widget-ized implementation of what Google Now has become on Android phones, and nowhere near Google’s current level of user interface sophistication.

It has also conveniently been scheduled for “retirement.” In an announcement dated April 8, just a couple of weeks ago, Google said it will retire iGoogle on November 1, 2013. The reason? A Google Now-like experience on mobile:

We originally launched iGoogle in 2005 before anyone could fully imagine the ways that today’s web and mobile apps would put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips. With modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for something like iGoogle has eroded over time …

Almost certainly, a Google Now for the web would include integration with Google+, the social glue between each of Google’s services. And in fact, this might be seen as a way to drive more of the social features of that network to the average user of Google’s search engine who does not currently use that social network.

If Google is planning to release a Google Now product for the web, presumably it would do so some time before iGoogle is fully retired.

I’ve asked Google for comment and will update this post with the company’s response.

Image credit: Google

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Ron Piovesan is the global lead for content acquisition for Mozilla

One meme that will happily be put to rest is if HTML5 can handle gaming.

The answer is a resounding “Yes”! Whether on desktop or mobile, HTML5 is now at a stage where it can support the most challenging game experiences.

Gamers are a notoriously demanding bunch. And that’s understandable. You don’t want any hiccups or stutter in gameplay when you’ve got compounds to storm, races to win, balloons to pop, and ropes to cut.

The latest proof that stuff’s getting real now is that developer Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 game engine has been ported to the web. This means it will be almost impossible to tell the difference between a native code game and a web game running on the browser. The same 3D graphics and immersive experience hard core gamers are used to can now be handily served up via a browser.

Browsers are getting better, too. The new OdinMonkey JavaScript engine shipping on upcoming versions of Firefox and has a performance boost of about 1,000 percent (yes, that is three zeros) over anything else out there. Now you’ve got JavaScript running lighting fast and providing a mind-blowing gaming experience right in the browser.

Want to see what a boost in performance can provide? Check out the future of web-based 3D gaming on the totally awesome (but goofily named … it wasn’t my idea) BannanaBread demo, an incredible 3D first-person shooter running on nothing but web technologies. And if you’re not into playing games by yourself, you can now have immersive multi-player action served up over the web via WebRTC.

But never mind the technology — let’s talk game experience. As EA’s Rich Hilleman points out in the video below, games are about magic and pushing the limits of imagination. One potential the web offers is the possibility of a single, contiguous gaming experience that carries with you wherever you go.

In a multidevice, multiplatform world, the consumer won’t accept playing their game in only one environment. As they move about their day, they’ll want to access their game, at the right state, on the device they have handy. The ubiquity of the web provides for that.

Also, by extending games to different devices and different form factors, the web helps open up gaming to the casual user, who is a great new customer for the gaming industry.

How else can the web help the gaming industry?

• Massive reach: It isn’t called the World Wide Web for nothing!
• Marketing and discoverability: Developers aren’t restricted to marketing a game in the confines of an app store. The expanse of the web and all of its inherent linkability and shareability are available so developers can reach new customers.
• Payments: People have been doing payments on the web for years. With the web, developers have the flexibility to charge what they want, and use the payment processer they want.
• Easy updates: The game is on your server. Developers can update when they want without having to bother with store approval processes.
• Easy analytics: Again, the game is on your server so you don’t have to wait for analytic reports from an app store, you get all the analytic information you need, in real time.
• Customer relationship: Distributing a game on the web means the developer has a direct relationship with the customer. Game developers don’t need to go through an app store or any other third party to manage payments or updates. You have a direct line to the customer. No one is in the middle.

But ultimately, as Chris Ye of Uken Games says in the below video, gaming is about spreading happiness. If a developer is getting the performance they need from the web (and we think they will), then HTML5 lets them spread happiness across multiple platforms without the unhappiness of needing to maintain and upgrade multiple code bases for multiple devices.

The web still has some work to do to live up to its full potential as the ultimate global game platform, but it is getting there. And realizing the benefits the web provides, the industry participation in building out a game ecosystem is closely tracking the improvements in web game performance. That’s a trend we’ll see across the game market.

Image source: Epic Games

Ron Piovesan leads business development for the Firefox Marketplace and is responsible for signing distribution deals with major content and games providers. His team has closed over 200 distribution deals and helped lead Mozilla’s first strategic equity investment. He also leads the content acquisition strategy for the new FirefoxOS phone in Brazil, in partnership with Telefonica. Prior to Mozilla, he was a marketing director with DataDirect Networks. Piovesan spent over seven years at Cisco. Piovesan lectures on marketing and social media strategies at Stanford University. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Carleton University in Canada; a master’s degree in media and communications from Goldsmiths College, U.K.; and an MBA from the joint program at the Columbia and UC Berkeley Haas GSB.

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The new law, Bloomberg says, will require people to provide their full names when ordering landlines, mobile phones, and Internet connections, and it will also mandate online services such as Weibo, the Chinese Twitter, to require real names when posting or tweeting or blogging.

“The Internet is a free and open stage,” an editorial in the People’s Daily said on Dec. 24. “But absolute freedom of the network does not exist … the virtual society and social reality are inseparable.”

The editorial paints the prime issue as one of public safety and well-being, adding that with the rule of law, “the network can be more civilized, more healthy, more secure” and enhanced with more “positive energy.” Others, however, are wondering if it isn’t critique of the government’s sex scandals and shoddy handling of disasters that is more the issue.

Whatever the case, the law is certainly going to further impair online freedom in a country that already isn’t shy about censoring and restricting online communications, as Google’s Eric Schmidt said earlier this year. Although some, including Sinocism China Newsletter author Bill Bishop, say there is already no Internet freedom in the country.

reality is there is already no anonymity online in china, ESP if you use a mobile device on services like weibo. Govt can already find you

—
Bill Bishop (@niubi) December 28, 2012

True or not, the reality is that in a country with more than 538 million Internet users and a billion mobile phone owners, implementing the new law will not be easy or quick.

Image credits: Aelius Aaron/ShutterStock, M. Dykstra/ShutterStock

Foursquare’s homepage is now  a whole lot more useful– even if you don’t use Foursquare.

The location-based social network is opening up its Explore recommendation engine so that visitors don’t need a Foursquare account to take advantage of it.

While Explore has been a part of the service’s mobile experience since 2011, it didn’t get a web interface until this January. So while mobile is the company’s bread-and-butter, it’s clear that Foursquare isn’t ignoring your desktop.

But Foursquare’s latest move has a larger, more obvious focus — compelling new users to sign up. Because the service is only as useful as the information Foursquare has on users’ habits,  visitors to the new homepage will be better served by actually creating their own accounts. And that’s exactly what Foursquare wants.

“The more you check in, the smarter it gets,” Foursquare’s head of product Alex Rainert told VentureBeat way back in January.

But while check-ins are a clear focus for the social network, Foursquare says its data is now so robust that it doesn’t need users to check in before it’s able to recommend new places.

The webpage redesign also brings with it some of the tweaks Foursquare made to its apps in June. Now, users can search for things like “free Wi-Fi” or “late night” to get results that are more flexible and not tied solely to what a venue sells.

Google and Yelp had better watch out.

A certain kind of developer loves to hate on PHP. They are really going to hate where PHP’s custodians are taking it next.

PHP was created by Danish programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995. In 1997, Israeli programmers Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski rewrote the parser, creating the base for PHP 3. By 1999, they had built the Zend Engine, which is still the interpreter for PHP.

Update October 18: Andi Gutmans just gave us more details about where PHP is going in mobile.

Gutmans and Suraski continued their partnership with Zend Technologies, a commercial entity that creates add-on products and services for PHP developers, particularly developers in the enterprise.

Today, after multiple massive iterations to the codebase, 35 percent of web traffic is handled by PHP, says Gutmans. Wikipedia says 75 percent of websites use PHP. Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and Photobucket are all built in PHP. WordPress, the most popular blogging platform in the world, runs on PHP and probably accounts for half of that 35 percent. Most of the other major content management systems, such as Drupal and Joomla, are also built in PHP.

No respect?

Still, the language can’t seem to get any respect and has been derided for years by programmers coding in C, Java, .NET, Python, or Ruby. In terms of trends, PHP as a search term has been dropping for years, and the mobile app revolution has led to the revival of Objective-C and Java.

So is the programming language that powers so much of the web disappearing gently into the night?

Not if Gutmans has anything to say about it. VentureBeat talked to him about PHP and the future, and he’s more bullish than ever, especially when it comes to the mobile-focused ace up his sleeve.

Riding the U.S.S. Enterprise

“All dynamic languages are gaining share from Java and .NET right now,” says Gutmans. “We’re getting a lot of benefit.”

Source: Wikipedia

Andi Gutmans

So the noise around trendier technologies like Ruby on Rails or Node.js doesn’t especially bother him. Mindshare is nice, of course, but market share is nicer. And market share is what Gutmans is focused on, especially in the enterprise.

“From a maturity point of view,” Gutmans told me, “I don’t think any other dynamic language right now has the full tool set. Our competition is Java and .NET … never with other dynamic languages.”

While he likes what Ruby on Rails is doing, and thinks there are some things there that PHP can learn and grow from, Gutmans points to PHP’s massive support in packaged solutions like WordPress, Drupal, and Magento.

“We’re better off than we were eight years ago … today we’re the only ones who have really hit the mainstream enterprise,” says Gutmans. “We do believe that the momentum and the size of PHP will continue. We don’t see it slowing down right now.”

Gutmans speaks with the enthusiasm of a founder; of course, there are other companies catering to the PHP-related needs of the enterprise. But Zend remains one of the biggest and best-known, especially due to its provenance.

And he’s got a point: Two-thirds of developers in a recent study reported spending half their time in PHP. And in a recent study by Rails developer Marc Gayle, half of all developer job postings on Craigslist call for PHP developers. When I talked to Gayle, he surmised the reason might be PHP’s super-popular content management systems.

“I think that is skewing the results,” he said. “But I can’t be sure.”

And a mysterious mobile story, coming soon

When it comes to mobile apps, Gutmans sides with the likes of JavaScript creator Brendan Eich in a firmly held belief that the web and web languages will eventually catch up and win out over native stacks.

But, he hinted to me, PHP and Zend will be providing client-side app-enabling tools.

Gutmans declined to comment further, saying he would only announce the full details at Zend’s conference in late October. However, it sounds like PHP will have a mobile app story of some sort, in spite of being the web’s predominant server-side language.

What that looks like and how it will be distributed is still mysterious. But a strong mobile story, says Gutmans, will only help PHP continue to grow.

It’s hard to argue with that.

photo credit: Red Bonzai

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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VEVO just provided its answer by giving 50 million music lovers in the U.S. and Canada access to the videos they love anywhere, anytime, on any device. That means iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry Playbook (!), and now…the mobile web.

Native apps are designed for a specific mobile platform, such as iOS or Android, and are distributed via app store downloads. While they can be richer, more customized experiences, mobile-friendly websites or web apps are automatically available to anyone on any device with a modern web browser…without a download.

VEVO’s new announcement means you can have this desktop experience:

On your iPad or any other mobile device with a modern browser:

…all without downloading an app.

VEVO has more than 50,000 music videos in high definition and is seeing 45 billion views a year on a global basis. The service is a sort of Pandora for music videos: Users sign up, VEVO scans both their music libraries and Facebook likes for music they love, and then VEVO creates a playlist of their favorite artists with maybe a few new recommendations thrown in.

Adding the mobile web allows VEVO to be platform-agnostic, letting its millions of users watch music videos however they want.

Another major benefit? Users who click (or tap) on Twitter or Facebook links to VEVO videos have a seamless experience, seeing the video in a browser, instead of being forced to enter (or even download) an application.

VEVO serves videos in over 200 countries via a partnership with YouTube, and over 200 million people use VEVO to watch music videos. However, it’s not clear whether this new announcement means that video will be available on vevo.com for users outside of the U.S. and Canada. VEVO has typically distributed internationally via YouTube. (VentureBeat has inquired, and we’ll update this post as we learn more.)

VEVO is a partnership between Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Abu Dhabi Media Company and has offices in New York, L.A., Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco.

Image credit: Regien Paassen/ShutterStock