According to the Facebook Developers Blog, Facebook has been driving some serious mobile traffic to apps and games. Out of the social giant’s 425 million monthly mobile users, as many as 60 million are driven to apps created by 3rd party developers, adding up to a whopping 14% of Facebook’s total monthly mobile traffic.

Facebook has also revealed that mobile visitors were responsible for more than 320 million visits to mobile apps last month. “BranchOut, for example, a social-professional networking web app, sees more than 350 thousand visitors from Facebook mobile every day. This traffic has already grown by a factor of twenty since the start of the year. And Diamond Dash, a native iOS game by Berlin based developer Wooga, sees more than 1.9 million monthly visitors to their mobile app from Facebook.”

More from Facebook :

Many of the developers benefiting most from Facebook Platform are those building mobile Open Graph apps. Timeline apps integrated with Open Graph are all about sharing moments in your life through the use of objects and actions posted to the Open Graph. And since many of the exciting activities in our lives happen while we are out and about, it is only natural that many of the interesting Timeline stories are those captured via mobile apps. These activities start discussions among friends that can drive more installs and engagement with the apps that make these conversations possible.

The major risk here is having to find the balance between spam and growth, as the Facebook Platform becomes more crowded over time. Whether this growth is sustainable or not is still unclear, but at the moment, the results have clearly been phenomenal for many 3rd party developers — all while strengthening Facebook’s stronghold as a social platform.

If you’ve never yet felt frustrated by how bad a restaurant’s website sucks, chances are you’ve just not visited a restaurant website. Ridiculous, Flash-based designs, terrible navigation and non-embedded, PDF food menus are apparently de rigueur. But restaurant owners are a busy bunch, so who can blame them for having a lack of time to worry about a website? Now, with the release of happytables, there’s no excuse to suck anymore.

happytables is the brain child of Noel Tock, along with 2 co-founders. They’re WordPress developers who started out selling WordPress themes, but saw that they were “only solving a fraction of the problem”. The obvious gap in the market was a simple, great-looking way for restaurants to make and maintain a website. So happytables was born as a sort of Squarespace for restaurants, which makes designing a great-looking and functional site incredibly easy.

Signing up for happytables, you’ll first notice that there’s a plethora of site designs from which the restaurant can choose. Once that’s done, the fun part begins because the entire site is fully customizable. Since it’s built on WordPress, it also utilizes widgets which bring in important functions with just a drag and drop.

Most importantly, the happytables team has spent a lot of time making sure that the menus are usable and actually look good. You can choose to highlight dishes by adding pictures, or you can save screen real estate on smaller, nondescript items such as drinks.

The next thing that happytables does differently is end duplication. Often times you’ll see restaurants run specials or announce events on their Facebook pages, but then they have to be copied and pasted over to the website. Not only does this take time, but it’s also an unnecessary step. With a happytables site, restaurants can pull in those Facebook events directly to a dedicated page, so that they update dynamically and only require maintenance in a single location. They can also be embedded into a widget, exported to a feed or used with MailChimp integration.

Setting up happytables for a first-time user is amazingly simple. Since it’s WordPress, there’s a GUI backend which is fully customized. Restaurants will see a few startup tasks to help them get started, but then the customization begins, up to and including the ability for advanced users to utilize their own CSS. Tasks such as menu organization are set up in a WYSIWYG fashion, so that what you’re seeing behind the scenes is exactly how it will appear on the site itself.

As with anything that can make life simpler, the old adage applies – you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. Unless happytables can gather users, nothing will change. Fortunately there’s a plan in place to help make that happen too. Right now, the next 100 customers will lock in $29 per month pricing for life. That’s a $10/month discount over the normal pricing, and there’s no credit card or long-term commitment needed.

The team is also offering a white-label version of the platform, so if you’re a developer who wants to make a business out of making restaurant websites better, the door is open to you. My fingers are crossed, and I’m incredibly impressed by what the team has accomplished. So let’s spread the word and start getting better sites for everyone.

➤ happytables 

Twilio has made a name for itself by making it super-easy for developers to add telephony features to their apps. Now the San Francisco-based startup has launched a native SDK for iOS.

With the launch of Twilio Client for iOS, developers will be able to add VoIP support to their apps with ease. In addition to allowing users to make phone calls via an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad’s data connection, it offers presence support, so that apps can detect when another user is available for a voice chat.

Billed as “Audio pipes for voice communication,” and initially launched in July 2011, Twilio Client allows users to insert VoIP features into apps with just a few lines of code. It can be used to add features like ‘tap to call’ to a business’ app or conference calling. Pricing is on a pay-as-you-go basis.

While taking part in StartupBus Europe in December 2011, Twilio Developer Evangelist Stevie Graham used an internal build of the iOS SDK to build YoBro, a group voice chat app. Having observed the development of the app, we saw that the VoIP functionality was inserted quickly and painlessly. Today’s launch brings that convenience to the wider developer community.

If you’re an iOS developer interested in getting involved, you can dive straight in by following the link below.

➤ Twilio Client

Mozilla has announced Persona, a new public-facing name for its BrowserID technology, which aims to make it easier to sign in to websites and Web apps.

Launched in July last year, BrowserID simplifies the login procedure by making it a one-click experience for users. The user’s identity is stored in the browser, meaning that logging in is a simple case of confirming their email address.

As yet, the still nascent BrowserID has seen limited adoption across a number of Mozilla’s own products, although notably not its popular Firefox browser as yet. That may be set to change as it appears Mozilla is now ready to present the technology to the public under the Persona name.

As Mozilla explains in a blog post announcing the new name, “The Persona name resonates with the idea of personhood as well as online identity as a facet of our lives, and therefore strongly tied to user identity. We’re very excited about this new name and the new features our identity system will offer.”

While the technology behind Persona will still be called BrowserID, the public-facing product is set to offer an identity dashboard, ‘user data interconnect features’ and more. The new name causes some conflict with ‘Personas’, the name for the Firefox feature that allows users to customise the appearance of their browser. However, it was recently announced that this would be renamed, although a new title is yet to be revealed.

There’s no official launch date for Mozilla Persona, but the team behind it says in its blog post that it looks forward to “an action-packed 2012,” so expect further news later in the year.

The news follows yesterday’s announcement that Mozilla will launch its Marketplace for apps built on open Web technologies to developers at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.

Method & Craft is a ridiculously useful collection of video tutorials and general advice for working and aspiring designers. The site calls itself the “DVD extras of design: the stories behind the work, who made it, how they did it, and the techniques people have developed throughout their professional career.”

M&C is spot-on in its description. As designers, we all use the same tools, but we use them differently. The site hopes to educate designers on more efficient, creative, and engaging ways to work. It’s like looking over the shoulder of your favorite designer.

There are countless how-tos, tutorials and design guides all over the Web, some of them much better than others. What makes this site special is attention to the little details that make designers so efficient. The more you learn about your tools (Photoshop, Fireworks, Pixelmator, etc), the more they become an extension of your own creativity.

M&C’s video guides include niche advice like optimizing textured artwork for PNG export to simpler things like creating easier parallel lines in Photoshop. The site also includes useful articles, tips and interviews such as the ups and downs of global lighting and pen tool shortcuts.

Check out the site via the link below or learn about the team behind it here. If you have any killer resources to share, feel free to leave them in the comments!

➤  Method & Craft

For more inspiration, check out other articles from TNW’s Design + Dev channel!

A résumé or CV (the longer of the two) is a summary of all your work, gathered together onto a single sheet of paper, PDF or site. It’s a traditionally mind-numbing requirement for every job application, but remains incredibly useful nevertheless.

But instead of blending into the crowd and throwing together a single column list with Times New Roman, what if your résumé could covey much more?  I’m not talking about a tacky, overly Photoshopped monstrosity, but a classy, concise way to show taste, personality and attention to detail.

Designers and non-designers alike (myself included) are guilty of boring the hell out of employers, so I believe it’s time to showcase a set of highly impressive résumés for our own inspiration, all via the impressive collection at CV PARADE. Some are minimalist, while others push the envelope. All are worth a peek:

Ailton Henriques

Anthony Cruz

Monica Yael Garcia

Robert Northam

Baptiste Dumas

Justin Colt

Kelly Haller

What do you think the examples above? Do you prefer classic simplicity like Justin Colt or more daring, photographic styles like Ailton Henriques? Feel free to post your resume in the comments below! For more inspiration, check out CV PARADE.

For those of you attending the TNW2012 conference, the 25th of April will probably mark a day of travelling, checking in to your hotel, getting in the mood at the pre-conference party and mentally preparing for your upcoming two days of doing business. On that very same day however, The Next Web and its developer brand Kings of Code will be joining forces to host the third official TNW Kings of Code Hack Battle.

Developers and designers: Get ready to hack

In less than 30 hours, our goal is to bring together the world’s leading platforms (APIs and SDKs) with an international group of coders. Mobile and web developers and graphic designers from all over the world are hereby invited to come to Amsterdam to hack cool applications on top of these Web APIs and mobile platforms.

Besides an interesting, inspiring and amazingly fun day, there are three other reasons that make the hack battle a ‘must-attend’ for developers:

• Final presentations of each team will be on stage during the conference.
• Hackers can win prizes from our Hack Battle partners
• Each participant will receive a ticket for the final conference day!

So who’s in?

We have awesome API and SDK partners, so get ready to build a neat hack on top of a.o.: Facebook, Twilio, Mailchimp, SendGrid, SkyDrive, Tendril and KPN. Besides a majority of time being spent on hacking, each of our partners will be giving short presentations on how to work with their products and will be around to offer their help and support during the day.

A great Hack Battle contains two very important ingredients beyond great developers, designers and APIs: free beer and pizza. These two important things will be provided by our friends from .me. The TNW Hack Battle will be held at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam (next to the Conference venue).

Find out more about the Hack Battle on our Agenda page or check out this impression of last year’s hack battle.

How to take part

If you want to sign up for an invitation to the Hack Battle, you can do so here. There is limited space and only 100 developers will be selected to the Hack Battle. The cost to join the Hack Battle is zero, zilch, nada, free!

Sponsorship possibilities for the TNW Kings of Code Hack Battle are sold out! If you’re a company with an API or SDK and want to engage developers with your product then you can always partner with us for future events. Download our Hack Battle info sheet for more information or contact Sophie to schedule a call.

When first starting out on a project, major aspects of a site like color, form, shape and whitespace get all the attention. Of course, these traits are extremely important, but it’s imperative to see that larger elements of your site aren’t the only things that deserve your attention. Experienced designers know that what makes or breaks a website is often hidden in the details.

Little Big Details, curated by Floris Dekker of Gidsy.com, offers up a much-needed dose of UI inspiration that takes a deeper look at the user interfaces we use everyday, and deciphers some of the hidden gems. Think of it as Dribble but with follow-up rational for what’s exactly special about each screen grab.

LBD collects exemplary UI designs, looking at the finer details from popular sites we use everyday like YouTube, Twitter and Gmail. It gives designers the chance to see why some experiences are so enjoyable, even if the best parts go unnoticed.

YouTube - When typing in the search box, the autocomplete dropdown size will be limited so it doesn’t cover the video.

Mixcloud - The favicon indicates whether the music is playing or paused.

Gmail - While in the inbox, the Compose button is red. Then when composing an email, the Send button is red instead.

IMDb - The rating for ‘This is Spinal Tap’ goes up to 11

Little Big Details shows that you can’t shy away from looking at your design on a pixel-by-pixel level. Subtle signals of what’s been selected, visual cues during loading and highlighting important information in special contexts are just some of the ways to drastically improve user experience while keeping your design beautiful. If you neglect the details, your users will often hate the results without even understanding exactly why.

Check out the site and let us know what you think in the comments below! Do you have a favorite UI (or even UX) detail to share?

➤  Little Big Details

The logo was designed by the highly renowned  Paula Scher of Pentagram, and kicks aside the famous glossy flag for an angled set of blue windows. The concept makes perfect sense and aligns well with the Metro UI, but many still find it chucks years of brand recognition into the trash.

While I completely hate crowd sourcing, including the kind featured on 99 Designs, this “just for fun” contest to redesign the Windows 8 logo (by Archon Systems) was too good to resist. And since it’s not for an actual company, but a large-scale challenge to the massive hoard of critics, I support it.

Clearly, as this competition wasn’t created by Microsoft, your design won’t be used. Still, if you think you can do a better job, or just want in on the Windows 8 logo bashing fun, check out the competition via the link below. The winner will be awarded $295. Ready? Go!

➤  Redesign Microsoft’s Windows 8 Logo (Just for fun)

You can read our analysis of the Windows 8 Logo here.

Saul Bass was one of the greatest designers of the 20th century. His legendary poster and film title design helped propel giants like Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese into the stratosphere, all while practically inventing motion graphics with his movie title sequences.

Back in 1962, Bass worked with Leonora Klein to create a children’s book called Henri’s Walk To Paris, and boy is it gorgeous. According to Brain Pickings, the book ”spent decades as a prized out-of-print collector’s item. This month, exactly half a century later, Rizzoli is reprinting Henri’s Walk to Paris — an absolute gem like only Bass can deliver, at once boldly minimalist and incredibly rich, telling the sweet, aspirational, colorful story of a boy who lives in rural France and dreams of going to Paris”

There’s no word as of yet if the book will ever be sold digitally, but consuming it in its original form will probably be the most rewarding experience anyways. It’s a shame that such a gem was kept hidden from the world, but 50 years later, it’s finally ready for design-minded adults and children, alike.

From Amazon:

“No question, this is the kind of children’s book that arty parents like to display in their Dwell-decorated nurseries. But it’s also the kind of book that will stir a wandering spirit in imaginative children. Klein’s delightful text, like Bass’s bold graphics, is spot on.” ~The New York Times

Our own Matthew Panzarino has already ordered one for his daughter, and if you have a kid of your own, this is the perfect way to make sure he/she is raised with good taste in design ; ).

➤  Henri’s Walk to Paris (For less than $13!)