Mark Edgington

Found this on Digg 12 Invaluable Sites for Web Design and Design Inspiration.

A New Facebook application that appears to make Facebook an OpenSocial container. Could this be the beginning of a guerilla attempt to lure Facebook into OpenSocial? — see full post at oreilly radar.

Withe the announcement of the Open Handset Alliance Google entered the mobile phone market. not with a phone as many had expected, but with an open source mobile operating system called Android. Android was purchased by Google back in 2005 and has been augmented to form a complete software stack for mobile devices such as cell phones, PDAs and high end MP3 players. The software stack is split into four layers:

• The application layer
• The application framework
• The libraries and runtime
• The kernel

Cell phone users work within the applications in the application layer. Android developers write those applications using the application framework. Android applications differing to standard mobile application deployment in that the applications that come with the phone are no different than those written by a developer. If successful the move to drive an operating systems would provide Google with a platform to deploy its tools, applications and advertising models to a much greater degree of the worlds population. The list of partners, while impressive is missing a few big names, most notably Nokia. We will have to wait until next year to get hold of a device and see how it functions. At present you can watch some videos at youtube

 My team have just launched the new Mazda 6 pre-launch site.  Its written in .Net 2.0, using Episerver as a CMS to create an HTML site feeding into a Flash component.  It’s integrated into a Sieble Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.  It is rolling out across 21 countries and will be enchanced in the coming months to become the launch site for the new Mazda 6.

The success of Facebook looks to have ruffled a few feathers at Google and they have recently launch OpenSocial. this is a set of three common APIs, that will allow developers to access core functions and information from a social network:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

The aim to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works across current and future social networks.Unlike Facebook, OpenSocial does not have proprietary code . Instead, developers use normal javascript and html (and can embed Flash elements). The benefit is that developers can create applications using the technology they already know and leverage there creation over multiple social sites.

Open Social launched with partners spanning two two categories hosts and developers. Hosts are the participating social networks, and include Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle. Developers include Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.