If you’re a keyboard lover and can’t kick that feature-phone addiction, there is a new handset on the block as of today. Samsung’s A927 Flight II sports a 3″ touch screen, sliding keyboard, and HTML browser. It is also full compatible with AT&T’s mobile TV service, featured a 2 megapxel camera, Bluetooth, aGPS, and support for up to 16GB of microSD storage. It’s available today from RadioShack stores, and most likely will be hitting AT&T store shelves in the coming week or so.

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As a part of its I/O 2010 keynote, Google has announced a new, open-source video format known as WebM. Based primarily on VP8, the royalty-free format also borrows from Matroska as well and Ogg Vorbis audio. Said to be efficient in its consumption of power and resources, Google is claiming WebM will work wonderfully on phones, tablets, netbooks and other portable devices. As of May 19th, all videos uploaded to YouTube shop in 720p and up will be encoded in WebM. Chrome, Firefox and Opera are the major browsers that will fully support WebM with nightly builds. Apple and Microsoft have not committed to WebM. Major arware partners include ADM, ARM, Broadcom, Freescale, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. Intel look to be the major holdout. Adobe announced it will update Flash with support for VP8.

Steve Jobs made headlines last month when he publicly dissed Adobe and its Flash technology and declared HTML 5 as the future of interactive media on the web. Though not as bold in its pronouncement, Virgin America has confirmed that it is switching to an all featured, interactive non-Flash website and has become the second high profile technology company to publicly dump Flash in lieu of HTML. According to Virgin CIO Ravi Simhambhatla, HTML will provide all the functionality Virgin’s website will need and will open up the company’s website to all mobile users regardless of platform and Flash support. Virgin is turning its sights towards mobile users as it seeks TSA approval for an electronic boarding pass that can be displayed on a mobile handset. If Virgin wants to grab the largest number of potential customers, it can not utilize Flash and risk excluding those users of non-Flash handsets, most notable of which is the iPhone. Not only is it interesting to see the HTML vs. Flash war play out in the technology industry, it is also interesting to see how Apple, through the success of the iPhone, is indirectly influencing the future of the Internet. But that was part of their plan all along.

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It was pretty clear from the start that Palm has big plans for webOS — despite blogger excitement when the company confirmed more webOS handsets would be coming, Palm obviously didn’t build a new OS from the ground up for one device. What has been and is still up in the air however, is how developers will respond to webOS and its development environment, the Mojo SDK. Palm, like other smartphone companies, will be relying heavily on third parties to enhance its platform by introducing exciting, innovative and useful applications. We know the Pre is sexy and we know the webOS UI is sexy, but what about the guts? According to Network World, developers who have been checking out the SDK so far seem to feel that Mojo is both very inviting and easy to work with. Score. Palm chose JavaScript, HTML and CSS the foundation for apps and as such, there is nothing new for developers to learn. If they can build a web page, they can build a webOS app. Christian Sepulveda, vice president of business development at Pivotal Labs is quoted as saying, “It’s a completely new way of thinking about an OS on mobile devices.” He’s right of course — Palm has taken old and familiar technology accessible to just about any dev out there, and hidden it beneath a stunning UI and UX. We don’t know about you, but we can’t wait to see what devs can do with this killer combo.

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It seems like we’ve been waiting so long for native HTML email support on BlackBerrys that we never thought this day would come. Thankfully, RIM is planning on upgrading their U.S. BIS system later this month, bringing a host of updates in anticipation of the arrival of their next-generation 9xxx device family. Most significantly, v2.5 of BIS will include support for HTML email delivery and rendering, a move that should finally bring the ‘Berry’s email appearance out of the stone-age. Further enhancements include support for OTA upgrades, calendar improvements, and a bit more. Bear in mind that your particular device will have to support these new features in order to allow you to take full advantage of the update, but seeing as we’ll all be carrying shiny new BlackBerry Bolds by the end of next month, you shouldn’t worry too much.

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