The Commonwealth Bank today rolled out a suite of new mobile banking applications including NetBank for iPad and Android tablets, and a new CommBank mobile banking app for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7 smartphone platforms.

Sometime in the near future, users might not only read Web pages but hold conversations with them as well, at least if a new activity group in the W3C (World Wide Consortium) bears fruit.

When it comes to new security issues, the security team for the Firefox browser have the new version of the Web HyperText Markup Language, HTML5, foremost on the mind.

Sencha on Thursday is rolling out a mobile application development framework that leverages HTML5 technologies.

It's time for your weekly slice of geek. This week the team has news on what chips have been revealed at the recent Computex expo in Taiwan, how Apple is showing off the capabilities of Web technology HTML5, and details on how Flash is becoming a reality on the iPhone.

A mobile advertising company has written a JavaScript library that makes Flash advertisements viewable on devices such as the iPad, working around Apple's opposition to Adobe Systems' multimedia platform.

Norwegian browser maker Opera has high hopes for the combination of mobile browsers and HTML 5, which will let web-based applications compete better with native applications, according to co-founder Jon von Tetzchner.

Adobe Systems, embroiled in a Web technology feud with Apple that is at least partially attributable to the HTML5 specification, will nonetheless add on Wednesday HTML5 and CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets) support to its Dreamweaver HTML authoring tool.

Microsoft and Google are fighting yet another public relations battle, this time over the HTML5 video standards to be used in the next generation of Web browsers.

Among Web developers, anticipation is mounting for HTML 5, the overhaul of the Web markup language currently under way at the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C).

Development of HTML 5, the highly touted upgrade to the language of the Web, is progressing but still faces obstacles, including lack of a standard video codec, said an official of the World Wide Web Consortium at a gathering on Tuesday.

HTML 5, a groundbreaking upgrade to the prominent Web presentation specification, could become a game-changer in Web application development, one that might even make obsolete such plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX.