There are a growing number of 3rd party web services giving access to their data that can be consumed and made useful on your website. Sites like Twitter, Yelp, Google, Yahoo!, and Weather.com facilitate this connectivity often at no cost. The services provided by these sources are useful to your visitors, but still would be important to have on your website to increase the value of your site.

Microsoft has just unveiled their new phone operating system and phone manufacturer partners this week as they prepare the mobile arena once again. Nine different phones across US carriers are due to ship next month giving customers another choice of powerful smartphones. The outcome will likely result with smartphones in more hands. Microsoft’s strategy stands to greatly benefit developers and users with application and game development.

 Lately, we’ve discussed some interesting new features in HTML5 for video playback. Phill explored options for dealing with inconsistent features and support between multiple browsers. However, these options are somewhat cumbersome as they add additional time to producing and delivering your content. Understanding the valid reasons for these inconsistencies is key for developing work-arounds to create a seamless A/V experience.

We gave some tips for designing websites that are smartphone friendly in a recent blog post. While smartphone browsers have gained in features and functionality, there are still a few things to consider when developing sites with mobile devices in mind.

The traditional website architecture paradigm in some applications is on the way out. It is less important for content to exist in a strict tree structure or to be found in only one category. Content can be loosely organized in multiple categories providing many logical click-through paths.

We make some pretty nice looking websites – our designers are pretty awesome at what they do. They create a plethora of custom art for every site that we the developers have to use to produce the site. Even though high bandwidth connection availability and internet connection speeds have rapidly increased in the last few years, no one wants to wait around for pages to load.

So I have my Google Wave Beta invite and have been using it a bit with about 15 friends. Unfortunately, I haven’t had any invites myself to give out, so for now I’m the only one at the office riding. So what is Wave? Google says...

Big News: the FCC announced that it would prevent broadband carriers from limiting your access to high speed Internet for things like Internet-based voice calls (VoIP), video streaming, and legal file sharing - things they would love to make you pay extra for, or even block. What's more, is that the FCC is looking to extend these rules to cellular networks with the rise of smartphones and 3G equipped netbooks.

(or don't because it annoys the people around you). Here at Silverscape we have a pretty diverse taste in music and some big music fanatics. You'll see our Last.FM playlist Top 40, to real eclectic and underground stuff. But when that's not cutting it, we all have our iPods/iPhones/iRivers(if you're Jake). Finding the right tune to match what you're working on along with your mood, for me personally can mean a difference in productivity.

PC Mag released their yearly Top 100 Website list of 2009 (I guess the other five months left in the year don't count), though they aren't ranked in any particular order. But first few entries are really indicitive of some growing trends on the web.

The web is becoming bendable and mashable. Some of the most popular social sites on the web are opening up letting developers consume all sorts of data and information. It’s the very same information that makes those sites wildly successful.

We all know that times are tough. Everyone is working hard to get through this downturn to the brighter days that lay ahead. But, at Silverscape, we're proud to say that we're keeping busy with some of our most interesting projects yet! We were thrilled this month to launch the new website and e-commerce store for Taza Chocolate, and organic, bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturer, and the only chocolate maker in the US that produces 100% stone ground organic chocolate. Yum!