Ok, I was going to write a post about how Google is killing off Gears in favor of HTML5 and how a lot of the features that Gears was going to have won't see the light of day (mainly Camera/Microphone access), but now that doesn't matter much as Intel, Nokia, Deutsche Telekom (owners of T-Mobile) and the W3C came to save the day by writting up a draft spec for a Capture API that allows Javascript to access webcams and microphones.
Right now though the spec is pretty limited (especially since it calls apps on the device to do things and not the browser itself), and it doesn't do as much as Google had planned for the Gears spec, but as long as it's in the W3Cs hands for someone to step in and revise it (preferably someone from Google, Apple, Mozilla or Opera) I'm happy.
It'll take ages to hit a final draft though (as with all things in the W3C).
(Source: Ajaxian)
