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.

Interesting take on Montessori-inspired apps: "In a Montessori classroom, children work from the concrete to the abstract. I fear that exposing young children to virtual Montessori materials may hamper this important developmental process."

Tax patriotism is on the rise!

Noteworthy photos from Google Street View. [via rafe]

Pictures from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.

Gloves that work with an iPhone. Great idea!

This post is a great antidote to all of the benchmark lists you see that tell you where your child should be. [via caterina]

Interesting discussion about different approaches to managing an online community.

A quick behind-the-scenes look at "20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web" that explains some of the unique features of HTML5.

Nicely designed "book" about the Web.

Interesting experiment that creates web icons with pure CSS.

yep, has comedy potential.

"Without a Steve Jobs, Facebook is going to become the new Google. A technical powerhouse that can't build usable software, because the super-smart engineers have lost touch with real user problems."

"...by permitting a third party to own and control access to the customer database, restaurants have unwittingly paid while giving away one of the crown jewels of their business, their customers."

Bruce Sterling on Flipboard. "I would counter that what this thing really massacres is weblogs. Flipbook makes weblogs look archaic, much more than it makes magazines look archaic."

I always wondered about those people at library book sales with scanners. Now I know. [via TYWKIWDBI]

A browser extension that blocks all of those annoying 'Like on Facebook' buttons.

This work by a Slovenian painter in the early 20th century is eerily similar to our own century's Jim Woodring.

Learn the constellations the 1940's Navy way!

I don't care what science says, Mexican Coke is better! (Glass bottles alone are better.)

Pinhole lenscap for Micro 4/3 cameras. [via hchamp]

Rev Dan Catt explains why applications that rely on the social graph have scaling problems.

Nice program for moving shows off of TiVo, converting for devices, and adding to iTunes. Works very well with my old Series 2. [via joshua]

"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]

Bloglines is shutting down and people are leaving Google Reader in droves. [via pkedrosky on Twitter via my social netw...OH, I see what's happening.]

Turn any Flickr RSS feed into The Big Picture by resizing the photos from Small to Large. I have my issues with Yahoo Pipes and their agressive scraping, but I have to admit this does make viewing Flickr photos with Google Reader fun.