Web design and development firm Raincity Studios today acquired Bryght.

The companies, both based in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, are pioneers of “Web 2.0” and open-source software communities. In fact, this acquisition is hailed as another success story from Vancouver B.C.’s new media technology industry, which has launched companies like Flickr, Dabbledb, Now Public and nitobi.

“This announcement is exciting for the local tech industry as Raincity Studios and Bryght are perfect examples of the rapid success achievable in the Vancouver new media sector with a good plan, talented team and hard work,” said Adam Gooch of New Media BC.

The expanded company will continue to create custom web applications and community websites, and offer hosting and infrastructure support and services to clients globally.

Kris Krug, renowned Web 2.0 expert and former head of Bryght, is the newly appointed President of Raincity Studios.

IT search engine start-up Paglo launched beta software Nov. 19 that’s designed to help IT personnel stay on top of their companies’ computer, network and security systems.

The Paglo search engine, which the company is billing as “Google for IT,” is said to be an answer to increasingly complex hardware devices, software programs and other technologies.

The Web-based Paglo application will crawl a company’s IT infrastructure and report on a wide range of queries about the hardware and software within the systems. It will run on IE7, Firefox and Safari browsers.

The platform includes the Paglo Crawler, an open-source discovery spider that businesses download on one computer to gather IT information from all devices and software.

Users can register for Paglo’s private beta, which is slated to go live later this month.

Traditional media can’t simply emulate their products onscreen.

That reflects the message put forth by Times Online editor Anne Spackman at a Society of Editors conference in Manchester this month.

“Digital evolves extremely fast, it wasn’t that long ago that our websites represented our newspapers on the computer screen,” said Spackman, who was appointed to her position last year and has expedited Times Online’s integration of print and website operations.

In fact, she likened the current pace of change to the Wild West. Indeed, given the fact that newspapers compete with thousands of websites around the globe, they need to progress with the rapidly evolving digital world.

The pressure is intensified by the content-driven nature of Web 2.0, which creates armies of public reporters. To stay relevant, major media groups need to deliver quality news that’s accurate, objective and up to date — and fully embrace the power of the Web.

Otherwise this new wave of “citizen journalists” will make today’s media giants obsolete.

When considering the best font for your website, look at the two most common options:

• Serif – they have cross-lines at the tips of each letter.
• Sans serif — no lines, they’re plain.

While studies show people read serif text faster in print, people actually read sans serif quicker onscreen.

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Internet users who don’t speak languages that are written using the Roman alphabet can now test web addresses in their native language.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — which is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers, such as domain names — has created a test that allows users to visit web pages with URLs in 11 additional languages.

“This is one of the most exciting times yet in the development of IDNs,” said Dr. Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. “Internet users who speak the 11 languages of the test can play a key role in testing how IDNs operate, and help us move toward full implementation for all the languages of the world.”

Internet users around the globe can now access wiki pages with the domain name example.test in the 11 test languages — Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil. The wikis will allow Internet users to establish their own subpages with their own names in their own language — one suggestion is: example.test/yourname.

The wiki pages can be accessed by typing example.test in the characters of one of the 11 languages, or by going to http://idn.icann.org.

“These wikipages are key to the test. We want to know how the URL displays in the Internet browser, if it works when you cut and paste it into the body of an email to a friend, and how all of this impacts the root zone,” Dr. Twomey added.

The 11 evaluation wikis will remain online until IDNs are fully implemented and the first top-level domain is introduced in the evaluation language.

The full introduction of IDNs will mean that people can write the whole of a domain name in the characters used to write their own language. Presently you can only use these characters before the dot, so .com, .net, .org and the like can only be written in characters from basic Latin. IDNs will change this so literally tens of thousands of characters will be available to the world.

A new survey of U.S. home computer users shows that the replacement of PC software by websites has already spread far beyond early adopters in the U.S., with over a third of U.S. home computer owners using at least one web application to replace software that was previously installed on their PCs.

“Most industry observers talk about ‘Web 2.0’ applications as something that’s coming in the future, but our research showed that some web apps are already spreading rapidly through the PC user base,” said Rubicon Consulting’s Michael Mace. “Most computer users are very practical. They don’t care if a software program is installed on their computer or built into a website. If it solves their problems, they’ll use it. The barriers to adoption of web applications are very low.”

The Rubicon study comprised feedback from more than 2,000 U.S. home PC owners during the summer of 2007.

Online competitive intelligence company Hitwise announced Sept. 19 that Google accounted for 63.98% of all US searches in the four weeks ending Sept. 1, 2007. Yahoo, MSN and Ask each received 22.87, 7.98% and 3.41% respectively. The remaining 48 search engines in the Hitwise search engine analysis tool accounted for 1.68% of U.S. searches.

Google an Increasing Source of Traffic to Key Industries

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories.  Comparing August 2007 to August 2006, the travel, entertainment, and business and finance categories received double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

There’s been a lot of concern surrounding the Facebook code that found its way to the Web in August due to a web server error.

While it reportedly hasn’t caused any members’ personal information to be exposed, it is a reminder of potential vulnerability on social networks. They can be enticing targets for hackers and identity theft.

For that reason, it’s probably a good idea to think twice before posting sensitive information on sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Too many web designers seem to be stuck in the 90s.

Like glammed-up big hair bands of the past, they’re churning out more flash than substance.

Meanwhile, for more than a decade, Internet experts and users alike have been calling for simple, unobtrusive and accessible designs. It seems straightforward enough: a website that promotes productive and positive online experiences will form a fan base.

Yet, useless Flash intros, superfluous splash pages, confusing menus and difficult-to-detect scroll bars continue to be created. Plus, music — usually of the cheesy genre — is still making users frantically reach for the mute button at the office and home (during the wee hours, when the rest of the household is fast asleep). The list goes on.

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Thousands of applications and millions of downloads are driving Facebook’s economy. Who’s behind it? Hackers.

Unlike MySpace, Facebook has opened up its network to developers, making it easy for them to make money from applications. A full list of third-party applications, designed to allow Facebook users interact with friends and networks, can be found in the official site’s application directory. They range from tools to compare people to applications that allow you to adopt virtual pets.

To witness this economy’s escalation, one only needs to stop by Adonomics (formerly Appaholics). The website, conceived by San Francisco-based programmer Jesse Farmer, provides stock-market-style analyses of Facebook features. Programmers can analyze the value of their applications in advertising dollars, and how it correlates to their applications’ growth.

Once a social networking site exclusively for college students, Facebook opened registration to the general public last year and attracted vast groups of visitors from outside the 18-24 year old age segment.  In fact, comScore reported last month the website grew to 26.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. in May 2007, marking an 89 per cent increase versus the same month last year.

Editor’s note: see Facebook security post