onfocus

A peek behind the curtain at Facebook with an anonymous FB developer.

"...Brad's work was altogether more messy and funny and human and passionate and complicated, just like the man himself. I can offer no more succinct summation of the man than that he was a good man and a good friend, profoundly funny and profoundly kind." Anil shares some memories of Brad.

"...the hero is the most damaging person on a team, particularly on a team that’s supposed to be writing high-availability or otherwise mission-critical software." Interesting analysis of team dynamics. [via jessamyn]

"One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation." Amit Singhal on how Google ranks Tweets for real-time search.

Rules for PR folks who want to work with bloggers. "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE means FOR IMMEDIATE DELETE."

Hey, blogs still exist. What do you know? This is a great list, and a good reminder that the best of the web is still delivered in chunks longer than 140 characters.

I had this reaction to Avatar too, glad to see io9 spend some time explaining this problem. Hadn't made the Dune connection, that's spot on. [via mathowie]

argh, burned by this on my personal mail server.

Regex snark traced back to Unix snark.

Matt's final post to PVRblog: a recap of the rise of the DVR and quotes from famous web folk talking about the impact of TiVo et al on their lives.

I need to try this. [via boingboing]

Fun article about the ubiquitous Zapf Dingbat snowflake. [via torrez]

J.D. has some good Oregon weather rules that sound right to me. I guess it really is eight months of rain, wow.

Another SQL-based log analyzer from Microsoft.

This handy tool lets you query apache logs with SQL. (Had to install on Ubuntu.) Much handier than awkward awk commands for me.

Why is Google offering DNS? "...they want to speed up people's Google search results."

Google takes aim at OpenDNS and John Gruber calls their response "Pure FUD". I agree, but any move Google makes has big repercussions. Distributed infrastructure is good.

Nice article about tapping into the Java chart component with ColdFusion to access chart types CF doesn't support.

Anil collects more thoughts on the coming storm of apps vs. open web. "This, for me, is a social issue, a cultural issue, and a political issue, not just a technological issue. Perhaps we need to speak of it that way more often, to make the stakes clear."

"...it's time for developers to take a stand. If you don't want a repeat of the PC era, place your bets now on open systems. Don't wait till it's too late." Tim O'Reilly on the coming platform storm. [via anil]

Ransom Note Typography has instructions for moving your data to another drive. I'm preparing now for a boot SSD drive.

Even though I haven't played a guitar for over ten years, apparently I haven't completely lost the gear fetish. Damn, this is a hot guitar.

You might need these stencils to go with your Notepod for sketching out iPhone apps.

Entertaining debut episode of Put This On, fashion for men like me who know nothing about fashion.

"A Collection of iPhone Home Screens." I found this a while back but couldn't remember the name or how to get back to it because the keywords are saturated. My Google-fu was hot today, and I'm bookmarking for future reference.

This Java class is full of helpful functions for escaping and unescaping strings, and it can be used within ColdFusion (if you're into that).

"Cultivating a Late 19th-Century Style at Home." This seems to be an IRL manifestation of that thing.

Aha! This answers a question I didn't even know I had, but I've been unconsciously wondering. I thought this "look" came from the image-collecting Tumblr crowd. But apparently it's a thing IRL.