onfocus

Great article about the difference between Twitter and Facebook from Matt Haughey. Short version: Twitter = present, Facebook = past. See also: kottke, torrez

A game designer lays out his existential frustration. I really like the idea of stepping back and stripping away the 'best practices' around an activity to find its core function. And then asking if that core function is meaningful. Excellent food for thought. [via torrez]

Not only words, but it's important to think about all of the digital artifacts of living. They're all moving toward the domain of companies in the name of convenience. This conversation explains some of the problems with that. [via waxy]

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation."

Obama knows basketball. Nice to see a more casual side of Obama.

Jason Fried on being open to new ideas: "So next time you hear something, or someone, talk about an idea, pitch an idea, or suggest an idea, give it five minutes. Think about it a little bit before pushing back, before saying it’s too hard or it’s too much work. Those things may be true, but there may be another truth in there too: It may be worth it."

When Jesse meets Bootsy, magic. Update: Now that it's out, be sure to listen to Jesse's Best. Interview. Ever. It will improve your day.

Nice! Rdio is a great streaming music service with social features. It used to cost a monthly fee to listen to full songs, but now you can listen to a certain amount each month for free.

Ajax spinning image with no image! (A bit heavier than an image, though.)

"...it would seem that many who claim to be pro-business are trying to 'save' us from exactly the inclusive, creative, tolerant values that have made America's most successful company possible." Anil connects the dots.

UGH. "AT&T's killing their $10/1,000 text plan. Now, you'll have to choose between $20 for unlimited, or forgo a plan and pay $0.20 per message. AT&T calls this 'streamlining.' We call it what it is: an outrageous, gigantic scam."

Mat Honan quoting Mike Monteiro: "We used to design things to take us to the moon, now we design things to keep us from getting out of bed." Like!

Nice toolkit of design elements for building websites.

Handy chart that shows which browsers support various HTML5 form features.

I enjoyed this episode by Jesse, Adam, and the gang. I never really need to wear a suit, but it's amazing to the see the level of detail that can go into it.

This picture still looks like something out the future.

Fascinating presentation about the current state of gameification, and some suggestions for where application designers should be headed. Along the way he asks, "What vision of The Good Life do your designs convey?"

Check your work.

"Allow me to offer a suggestion. If you are privately communicating with someone for the first time, as a general rule, the best course of action is to be polite and to the point."

"In case you're as late to the party as me, it turns out that you can get web apps to behave like native apps." Nice run-down of some ways you can make a web app feel like a native app on the iPhone.

"...when you host your nameplate site (and blog) on a domain you control, it doesn't change, you never lose Google juice, and there's never a question about the canonical web page which identifies you." Gina is right!

A nice roundup of criticism of Ajax-spawned 'hashbang' URLs that sites/applications are starting to favor over traditional URLs.

Hey neat! James Taylor has some highly produced guitar lessons he's putting on YouTube. [via scottandrew]

"As we mature as developers, finding logic errors and incomplete solutions becomes our way of life. It defines us. But our engineering strength is also our social weakness." uhoh, I'm guilty of this sometimes. [via mathowie]

A nice modal window kit for Prototype.

"Amplify's goal is to simplify all forms of data handling by providing a unified API for various data sources." Looks like a write-once way to handle client side storage.

Filed for use: "...ultimate guide to 37 download resources for hundreds of [mobile] emulators and simulators."

In the early 80's Tim O'Reilly wrote a book about Frank Herbert? And the full text is available online? Yes and yes. [via MeFi]

Optimizes PNGs by dithering colors and limiting the palette. [via nelson]

This is the command line PNG optimizer that Google Page Speed uses to compress images.

New Dads have biological changes too. [via Daddy Types]