The BBC has launched a beta version of its new homepage, and we at FoxLand Towers are quite excited about it. We love how you can customise the information it displays and then move your “info widgets” around the page. Some of us aren’t so sure about the use of a large Verdana font and the buttons may be a bit too Web 2.0, but the general concensus is that it looks great. And those of us who are old enough to remember get a twinge of nostalgia from the retro clock. Shame they couldn’t find room for the noughts and crosses playing test card girl…

For those of you who may be interested in such things, here’s a sneak peak of what the BBC may (or may not) be doing with their homepage. Personally, I like the retro clock. (Found via Plasticbag).

Jeffrey Zeldman explains web design: “The experienced web designer, like the talented newspaper art director, accepts that many projects she works on will have headers and columns and footers. Her job is not to whine about emerging commonalities but to use them to create pages that are distinctive, natural, brand-appropriate, subtly memorable, and quietly but unmistakably engaging.”

We regularly research Content Management Systems, and in a recent spate of Googling I came across an article by Jeffrey Veen called “Making A Better Open Source CMS” from 2004. Sadly, most of its points are still completely relevant. Three years later and it is still hard to find a system that feels it is put together with the average user in mind (i.e. not techies). While Wordpress is not in any way perfect (what is?) or powerful enough (what is, unless custom built?) for all situations, it is relatively easy to comprehend for the user, which is why we so often recommend it.

Not the most exciting of titles, but the The Web Standards Project discusses the UK’s drive for accessibility in government websites. It is bizarre and also shocking that so many content management systems in use by government agencies, ministries and quangos seem unable to generate good clean accessible and semantic code. 

Using Apple’s recent release of Leopard as an example, Scott Stevenson discusses how user interface design isn’t always a logical process backed up with user research and rigourous thinking. Sometimes it’s just because people need to feel new stuff is ‘new’.

Ever since MySpace, and then particularly Facebook, took off, the industry has been thinking about where social networking should go next. Most importantly, people have become increasingly unhappy about the way social networks keep personal information locked-up in their ecosystems. The web became as pervasive as it is today partly due to its ‘openness’ (look at and contact anything), but conversely social networks are popular partly due to their ‘closed’ nature (look at and contact only your contacts). So, how do we balance these two elements? Google has come up with the OpenSocial concept – a way of making the whole web your social network. See these articles on TechCrunch announcing the strategy, Marc Andreessen’s blog discussing the concept, and Wired does a good job of making the idea accessible. Update: Read/WriteWeb brings up three concerns about the OpenSocial strategy. 

Wolff Olins talk in the New York Times about their 2012 Olympics, New York City, New Museum of Contemporary Arts and other identities, and how they are all designed to be flexible, mutable devices that should not remain rigid. While they say that “in the era of blogging, social networking and mash-ups … a bit of flexibility is essential”, this is not such a new concept – companies such as MTV have been doing this for a long time – and surely does not need the web as a reason to think this way.

Yesterday saw the unveiling of the new MySpace Platform at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco - a move which has been seen as a clear counterstrike against main rival Facebook.

The MySpace plans are clearly a response to the huge success of the Facebook Platform, which launched last May and which has seen the creation of thousands of third party applications (some, admittedly, more annoying than others).

Showing how important MySpace is to News Corp, the announcement was made by Rupert Murdoch himself, along with Chris DeWolfe, the co-founder of MySpace. Indeed, of the $5 billion News Corp are expected to make in 2008 Murdoch predicted a significant contribution of $300 million profit will come from MySpace alone.

Giving a user a clear instruction on ‘how’ to move on in their task, rather than just ‘what’ they’re moving on to, is a good thing. Copyblogger and GrokDotCom discuss.

Jakob Neilsen talks about getting introductory text right. It sounds simple, but, as is typical when writing for the web, it is not.

Radiohead have announced the release of their new album ‘In Rainbows’ on the 10th October. They’re doing it on their own without a record label as a pay-as-much-as-you-want download and a fancy expensive CD/vinyl/book behemoth. This is pretty fundamental stuff: the record companies know it, and are scared of it. Time (which features the above quote from an anonymous exec) and many others are discussing what it all means.

Now, more than ever, is the time to fine tune your brilliant web idea that will change the world – or at least get bought by Yahoo/Google/Microsoft/News Corp. Techcrunch UK (which has recently relaunched) discusses a study that shows growth in venture capital in the UK and Ireland. So, if you ever thought that it might be difficult to get venture capital unless you were based in Silicon Valley, now is the time to dust down your ideas.
Update: Venture Beat has more about how venture capital is leaving Silicon Valley.

The New York Times has an article up about how the web’s users are getting older, and (as with other areas of the media) people are realising how they can be a more important and valuable audience than the much desired youth audience.

The Functioning Form blog summarises a talk by Liz Danzico about web design ‘rules’ that don’t stand up and should be seen as ‘considerations’.