Ever since Facebook began to dominate headlines, people have been criticising their "closed wall" approach to the web by not allowing developers to build apps on other sites that can use the network's data, and by not joining Google's OpenSocial project.

“… Users will be able to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems …”

Facebook recently disapproved of Plaxo's Pulse, an app that allows you to link your Plaxo and Facbook accounts and grab all of your friends' information including (the bit that Facebook really rejected to) email addresses. Facebook responded to Plaxo by banning people (mostly reporters trying out the new system) from Facebook entirely.

The biggest surprise of this announcement is clearly the unexpected (and sudden) willingness of Facebook to progressively become more open.

Will this change anything in the near future? Who knows, but it can only be a good thing if the major companies are (at least) appearing to work together on more open, flexible standards.

This move will surely help to make several more major players think about becoming open.

The open web is the future.

The search engine, set to "take on" Google, built by the same people as Wikipedia has finally been released as a public beta.

Much to the disappointment of the majority of the media, Wikia is in no way a finished product.

I have spent a while experimenting with the new "human powered" search project, but, mainly due to the limited search index, am bitterly disappointed with the quality of search results. For example, searching "GoSquared" on Wikia will, as the first result, give one of our previous most popular posts, while Google will present you with the GoSquared homepage. Which is more useful to our potential visitors: our home page, designed to provide easy access for first time viewers to anywhere else on the site, or a blog post we wrote several weeks ago?

Wikia's search index needs updating fast, and their social tools for promoting "good" pages, and demoting "bad" ones need to be developed greatly, and fast. Thankfully Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and Wikia, has already responded to many criticisms by commenting on various blogs, including TechCrunch. He made the comment "It’s a project to *build* a search engine, not a search engine."

Whatever is said, I sincerely doubt many will be switching from Google just yet.

Apple's PR article here.

Interesting to see the focus in this article on how Andrea Jung is so successful at running "the company for women".

Apple looking to increase their products' appeal to women will surely aid their already strong affinity with the opposite sex. How many other computer companies do you know that employ the CEO of a beauty company?

We're looking to expand GoSquared's data storage facilities soon.

Amazon S3 is an efficient, affordable solution for web developers to store data on for their web applications.

Despite being hosted on Media Temple, we intend to use a decentralised storage system for more user data. We have looked at Amazon's S3 to store our growing sums of data on.

Anyone using S3 at the moment? We would love to hear from you.

Please leave your comments on GoSquared Discuss.

More and more, we are getting used to getting new software by downloading from the web.

Downloading, as opposed to going to a shop, purchasing a CD or DVD with ridiculous amounts of packaging, bringing it home, putting it in our computer, and hitting "Install".

I have been wondering how long it will take until the major manufacturers of software such as Microsoft and Apple start releasing their major applications, and even operating systems as downloads. There are several problems with this method of distribution however, including piracy, and the fact that, believe it or not, not everyone has an internet connection yet.

Rogue Amoeba have come up with a solution that could take care of the problem faced by many software manufacturers: Live Disc.

Live Disc isn't terribly revolutionary, it's just using the idea of updating your software online in a new way. When you put the CD in your computer, and install an application from it, the Live Disc application will first check to see if there are any later versions on Rogue Amoeba's server. If there is a later version, it will download that first, and then the install process will begin.

The beauty of this idea is that it works great for people who have an internet connection (they get the latest copy), while those that don't have the internet can still get a recent version of the software just as they would before.

If you are attending Macworld this year, be sure to come by Rogue Amoeba's booth (#2738 in the South Hall), and grab a free disc to see Live Disc in action.

What's your opinion on Software in the internet age? Is it time companies stopped selling boxed software once and for all, or is the packaging part of the purchase for you?

Already, it's 2008.

Our first post of the year is not about us*, it's about our friends over at WP Candy, and their fabulously minimalist redesign.

This blog, for a start has gone from nothing to something in a matter of months, and to keep up the pace, a redesign always helps.

It is brave decision to go for such a minimal look and feel - with large white space everywhere you look. However, the white has been well balanced by the bold Helvetica logotype in the top left that draws the eye.

The logo size is of key importance here. As you may have noticed, last year we transitioned to a new design across the whole GoSquared site, and one of the main reasons for this was to promote our name, our brand. I'm very glad to see WP Candy making their name loud and clear to everyone who sees the site, I am sure this will help them to be recognized in the future. Also, a standard rule of user navigation is to ALWAYS link your name and/or logo in the top left to your home page: another thumbs up for WP Candy.

Fonts

The choice of Georgia as a title font has worked very well, although would not have been my first choice considering the difference between that and their logo's font. However, it seems that the more traditional styling of Georgia gives the minimalist theme some needed delicate character to stand out from the average mundane "web 2.0" boldness of so many blogs.

The use of Helvetica as the body font is wise, as it corresponds with the logo perfectly. If Georgia had been used for the body, the theme would have lost a lot of its slick feel to overcomplicated, less readable text.

Subtle Niceness

On the homepage, hover your cursor over the footer of every post entry. A simple method used to great effect: making a common set of links more subtle so as to not draw your eye until they are needed. When the user hovers over the rectangular space reserved for these links, they are darkened, making them more readable all at once. This same effect has been used at the bottom of the page to make it easier to read individual footer areas such as "Recent Commenters" and "Popular Articles" without drawing away your eyes to other sections of the page.

I am also impressed by the very restricted use of images on the site (OK we admit it- we like using images to add a little gloss or grad here and there). At the time of writing, on the homepage, there were only 19 images, most of them the tiny 10px x 10px icons for post entries.

Possible Improvements

It's a great redesign by WP Candy, but as with every design, ever, there are always ways to improve.

One area I have noticed to be slightly less useful now is the sidebar on the right. It is lovely to have a minimal page, but for most screens, it would be helpful to have at least the "Categories" title above the fold.

Promotion of your RSS feeds is becoming ever more vital for success, so it is always a good idea to make the link to your feed as clear as possible. Perhaps moving the "Syndication" title higher up the page, or simply reducing the paragraph spacing in the sidebar would help. It is good to see another link to the RSS feed at the top as well: an example of sensible (instead of logical) placing. The placing of "RSS" in the navigation bar is not logical since most of the links at the top are to different sections of the site, not actions that may remove you from the site, however, there is a higher probability that people will click through to the feed in this position.

* As Seth Godin writes: "The truism of the web: people talking about you is far more effective than talking about yourself."