Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook

Facebook announced the opening up of their news stream to developers today, allowing for all sorts of new, fancy whizbang desktop clients to be developed using the Facebook API. The immediate impact of this annoucement is that existing applications such as Seesmic Desktop and Tweetdeck, Adobe Air apps which already have rudimentary access to the Facebook firehose, will now gain even greater functionality, and possibly have some very cool applications and advancements in the very near future. Mobile apps will also likely see a huge boost. Imagine a full fledged iPhone/Palm Pre/Blackberry application, integrating the Facebook news feed into a stream with other services, such as Twitter and FriendFeed.

Of course, this comes with a caveat. The stream of data which developers can access can be mixed around, messed with, and generally tossed around, but in the end, this information can only be displayed BACK to the original user. So, really, in the end you’re getting the same old Facebook news stream you had before, simply displayed back to you in an altered form. While this is still pretty cool, it doesn’t offer the same type of openness and coolness that Twitter and similar platforms offers.

Another aspect of the newly opened up Facebook is how applications and their access will be treated in the future. Will Facebook applications move into the desktop, and run as web apps within the applications developed? Will current games and applications integrate the Facebook news stream more tightly to the processes? Potentially, Facebook could become a unified social profile and identity, when combined with Facebook connect, that other services such as Disqus (which we use as our commenting engine here at Geek Troika!) are attempting to do.

The annoucement by Facebook represents a pretty big step forward, since the service has always been pretty dramatically closed and shut off. What the future holds for Facebook beyond a social service will be part of what defines it as a larger aspect of our social and Internet lives.

CommentsArticles API, applications, apps, desktop, desktop applications, developers, Facebook, mobile, mobile applications, News, news feed, news stream, posting, profile, social, social graph, social profile

Today, the Apple App Store surpassed 1,000,000,000 app downloads. It reached this milestone after a little more than nine months in existence. It is significant, auspicious, and whatever other hyperbolic adjectives you’d care to stick into this sentence. It bears reflection, discussion, and outlook onto what this means for the mobile device space.

The iPhone app store came into being following the clamor for applications by the iPhone/iPod touch community. Weeks after the iPhone was released, developers found ways to crack into the firmware of the device, access APIs and create hardware driven apps for the device. Demand for a sanctioned SDK supported by Apple built up to near impossible levels. Finally, Apple relented and released an SDK, and announced the opening of the App Store with the release of the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software update.

The App Store was met with a skeptical eye by many, including yours truly. After all, with no background applications allowed, and many Jailbroken apps doing at least what the Apple sanctioned apps could do, why would people go to the App Store? And, how could Apple’s method succeed where others (Palm, Nokia, the app distribution methods created by the carriers) had failed? Well, people went to the App Store, and they went in droves.

The App Store took something which is patently not an original concept - applications built for a mobile device - and made them easy to access and purchase. Rather than going to a developers site, downloading a package, hooking your device up to your computer, transferring the files, setting up the package on your phone, configuring the settings and finally using the app, the App Store stripped out all of the processes and made it dead simple to use an app. Open the App Store, find the app you want, hit install, confirm your password, and the app installs and configures itself right there on your phone. Seamless, fast and easy. Better yet, in many cases the applications were reasonably cheap, making it trivial to pile up pages and pages (and pages and pages…) of apps. Apple succeeded by doing what they do best: taking an idea floating around there, refining it down to the simplest and most effective form.

Now that Apple has sold the billionth application from the App Store, what is in store for the future of the platform? Well, using the past nine months as an indicator, plenty of smooth times ahead. Apple has managed to capture the majority of the developer share for the mobile market, despite the sizable headstarts which Windows Mobile and Blackberry held over the App Store. With the release of iPhone OS 3.0, there are more API and tools available for developers to tool around with, and with the install base of the iPhone and iPod touch growing every day, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the massive success of the App Store.

Kudos, Apple, for taking my money. I look forward to paying you for an app to monitor my liver while racing 3D go karts against my friends.

CommentsArticles app store, Apple, applications, apps, iPhone, iPod touch, microtransactions, mobile, money, one billion, steve jobs

One of the main problems with Apple’s App store is the fact that it is tied to the iTunes client. Which, of course, as we have noted several times on our podcast, is slow, and tedious to slog through when trying to find a specific app (or anything, really). So imagine my delight at finding App Store, a website which takes the interface of the App Store, but places it onto the web in a much speedier method of finding apps.

While we’re on the topic of the app store, another problem with the app store is not knowing the way an app will look before you buy it. Apps cost money (a lot of them, anyway), and until APple enacts some sort of demo model, we’ll all have to rely on App Theater for our app previewing needs. App Theater is effectively the YouTube of iPhone Apps, taking user generated reviews of various reviews. It’s extremely useful, especially for game apps, which obviously place a demand upon usability and screen real estate.

Other useful iPhone/iPod touch review/preview/search sites: AppBeacon, AppShopper and Apptism.

[some links via Gizmodo]

CommentsArticles app store, Apple, applications, apps, iPhone, iPod touch, recommendation, review