onfocus

A multifunction utility for system maintenance, optimization, and personalization.

Is there anything better than engravings of alchemists' laboratories?

"...future versions of Firefox plan on supporting the new W3C Geolocation Specification, which adds the native ability for Web sites to request, and you to optionally grant access to, your location." [via veen]

You can launch a web app in its own process on the iPhone (outside of mobile safari).

I do not condone this. But I'll link to it anyway. For the lulz.

The history and current state of product placement on TV. [via Fimoculous]

Looks like a neat screen saver that uses grid computing to generate its patterns. [via Cool Tools]

"Perhaps they know better than we do how deeply the American people long to be done with the problem of democracy...Sarah Palin represents what many people want: a retreat from reason; a regression to childhood." [via MeFi]

Netflix has an API now. It includes their movie catalog, reviews, and manipulating queues (oauth for that). [via waxy]

A talk David Simon gave at the Berkeley Townsend Center. [via sippey]

Search the Google of 2001 when my blog was the 3rd result for "Paul". I guess Pagerank and I have drifted apart over these last seven years.

Nice post by Ted Rheingold summarizing some of GA's advanced features.

The word lifestream makes me gag, but this is interesting anyway. A self-hosted, PHP, social stuffs aggregator. [via Hackszine]

Funny idea and video from Sara Silverman. (nsfw)

"PhoneGap is a free open source development tool and framework that allows web developers to take advantage of the powerful features in the iPhone SDK from HTML and JavaScript."

A photography blog about books. [via jessamyn]

"The Federal Government now controls what were -- up until last month -- vast private assets. These are extreme -- truly radical -- changes to how our society functions. Does anyone have any disagreement with any of it or is anyone alarmed by what the consequences are -- not the economic consequences but the consequences of so radically changing how things function so fundamentally and so quickly?"

Lawrence Lessig gives one of his trademark presentations about Palin's experience compared with past Vice Presidents.

A startup that wants to help people raise money for their projects. (via Waxy, who's on the board.)

Oregon's Peter Defazio on the bailout.

Robert Reich rants about the bailout. And he's right.

Representative Marcy Kaptur from Ohio on the bailout: "Real reform now, or nothing."

Nice to see Obama put out an ad where he talks about his plan.

I need to read these. [via bojack]

Holy crap. A 5D with HD video capture. (Not cheap.)

An Alaskan blogging about local politics (now suddenly national politics). [via queso]

The Ignite theme is coming to my town November 13th. I wonder what I'd present about for five minutes.

"Apple's current practice of rejecting certain applications at the final hurdle - submission to the App Store - is disastrous for investor confidence." We're already running into problems with the centrally-controled application distribution system for the iPhone. [via waxy]