onfocus

Interesting thinking about the current state of weblogs. Will all blog-like activity be consumed by Facebook, or will new tools emerge to help with privacy? And how do private blogs mix with public tools like Newsreaders? Complicated questions to answer.

Nelson has a good roundup of the issues surrounding the Wikileaks story.

"Whatever restrictions we eventually end up enacting, we need to keep Wikileaks alive today, while we work through the process democracies always go through to react to change. If it’s OK for a democracy to just decide to run someone off the internet for doing something they wouldn’t prosecute a newspaper for doing, the idea of an internet that further democratizes the public sphere will have taken a mortal blow."

"If you host your content on a commercial provider or on a social network, there are different points at which you can be cut off." The Wikileaks case is pointing out a weakness in the completely libertarian web ideal.

The case for Instagram. I must be a photography snob. I can not see the appeal of a community based solely on heavily-filtered photos. 

Nice sanity check in the mobile Web App vs. Native App debate. Often a Web App will do.

"A naval officer told the present writer that he had often, when on deck, been both amused and surprised at the accuracy with which some of these girls used this form of signalling out of pure fun." People have always found ways to communicate over distances.

"It's easy to say all of our choices and all the aspects of our identity can be shared if we don't face any serious social or personal consequences for doing so." [via jessamyn]

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."

Cortex is go! Josh is using the All You Can Jet promotion from Jetblue to meet MetaFilter members across the country. This is where he'll be posting about his month-long adventure.

This is where you can adjust your Flash security settings, including managing Flash cookies that you can't control via the browser.

"More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plug-in to track users and store information about them..." [via schneier]

"Parents and other caregivers teach young children by paying attention and interacting with them naturally and, most of all, by just allowing them to play." [via Daddy Types]

"Superfeedr is Real-time Feed Parsing in the Cloud." Great idea that could help build specialized aggregators. Bummed it's ATOM at the end. I'd prefer RSS.

This blog connects Mad Men episodes with advertisements and details from the time. [via kottke]

ahh, dreams. [via joshua]

Privacy, Security, Lock-In, and Downtime. Gina runs down some problems with outsourcing your data management.

"The cloud, however, comes with real dangers...If you entrust your data to others, they can let you down or outright betray you." A good summary of some problems yet to be solved with cloud computing.

"Enclosure is a process whereby a resource held in common is taken into private control....The acts of enclosure of the information age are about social assets, they are subtle and invisible, and they are being implemented, to a large degree, by peer pressure." [via anil]

1. Start with an original but memorable phrase. 2. Turn your phrase into an acronym. "These mnemonic passwords are hard to forget, but they contain no guessable English words." [via lifehacker]

"Reassuring people about privacy makes them more, not less, concerned. ...sites would much rather obfuscate the issue than compete on [privacy] as a feature."

MetaFilter is #1 on a list of companies that don't get Oregon cred. Not only is Matt Portland-ish, but I'm Corvallish, and Josh is smack-dab Portlandy.

"...increasingly, we're seeing people with similar levels of access engage in fundamentally different ways. And we're seeing a social media landscape where participation 'choice' leads to a digital reproduction of social divisions."

A disposable email service for single-use, throwaway accounts. [via nelson]

"Different things work for different people but I thought I'd share what worked for me in the hopes that maybe one or more of these tips will help your own weight loss as well." Good tips and motivation for healthy eating.

"...asking users to input their email address and password from a third-party site like GMail or Yahoo Mail is completely unacceptable." This is still so true, and I'm surprised sites like Facebook haven't been shamed into changing their "Find People" features.

More photography in unusual environments: "When it thinks it's falling, the hard drive heads park themselves to prevent damage upon impact. Unfortunately, in zero gravity, the camcorder always thinks it's falling." [via waxy]

The hazards of commercial photography: "The doorway was about 12 feet away from the unit, so although I would be in the magnetic field, it wasn't strong enough to pull the camera off of my tripod."

"Indeed, these days posting words, photos, and videos online is sort of like getting tattoos. Think ahead, because they're going to be around forever whether you want them or not."

"It would have been a lot cheaper if we had a policy where the CEO of any sufficiently large investment bank was paid $100 million per year direct from the U.S. Treasury. In return for this guaranteed payout, he or she would forgo any numbers-based compensation..."