onfocus

Matt reflects on ten years of MetaFilter.

"On July 14th, 1999, a programmer named Matthew Haughey made the first post on a blog he'd set up for himself and a few friends in an attempt to collect interesting links." Nice profile of MetaFilter! [via MetaTalk]

Nice collection of icons for web applications. Click Preview to see them all. [via glass]

It'd be interesting to see how much performance you'd gain moving to HTML 5. Maybe I'll try it with one of my personal sites. [via anil]

"Is there a formula--some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation--for a good life?" [via peterme]

Modern take on classic propaganda posters: "Loose tweets sink fleets."

MetaFilter is turning ten and we're celebrating with meetups across the globe. We have members planning meetups on six continents. We just need to find a MeFite in Antarctica to cover them all.

A collection of pictures and postcards from Portland's past. The design is wacky but the stories are good. [via MeFi]

Fun discussion of the song Aquarela do Brasil, WWII propaganda, Frank Sinatra, and Disney.

Why are passenger trains slower today than in the 1920s? Short answer: more freight, interstates, jets. [via MeFi]

The new iPhone OS will have an interface for physical peripherals. "A rapid prototyping platform for physical/digital interactions? A mobile sensor platform for personal and urban informatics that's going mainstream?" I missed this new feature in all the cut+paste celebration.

One computer scans incoming calls for the Caller ID number and then broadcasts the number over the network to various devices. Looks like something fun to hack around with.

That's not Chernobyl, it's Detroit. [via kottke]

"This system of 50 symbol signs was designed for use at the crossroads of modern life: in airports and other transportation hubs and at large international events. Produced through a collaboration between the AIGA and the U.S. Department of Transportation, they are an example of how public-minded designers can address a universal communication need." [via migurski]

People share and vote for their favorite command-line snippets at this site, and these are the most popular. Didn't know about "sudo !!"—that's worth the price of admission right there.

Cameron expands on the Economist article: "...while the average Facebook user communicates with a small subset of their entire friend network, they maintain relationships with a group two times the size of this core."

"...people who are members of online social networks are not so much 'networking' as they are 'broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren't necessarily inside the Dunbar circle'..."

SBJ's talk at SXSW about the future of news. "...in times like these, when all that is solid is melting into air, as Marx said of another equally turbulent era, it's important that we try to imagine how we'd like the future to turn out and set our sights on that, and not just struggle to keep the past alive for a few more years."

"Las Vegas casinos increasingly pay attention to their customers - their likes, dislikes, moods and patterns - in order to create an engaging experience." This was my favorite talk at Gel 2008.

"What Bruce Sterling Actually Said About Web 2.0 at Webstock 09."

"It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves -- the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public -- has stopped being a problem."

Paintings of alchemists in their laboratories. Posted to Flickr by the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

"People went to Google to find specific information about the President-Elect and the ceremony. People go to Twitter and Facebook to share the experience with one another. That means, Twitter and Facebook are delighting users more than Google, because they are keyed into natural human needs and emotions that trigger far greater and more addictive endorphin rushes than just finding a piece of information." [via msippey]

Tom Armitage on journalists learning to code: "Learn to think like a programmer. What's really important is to not understand how to do magical things with code, but to learn what magical things are possible, what the necessary inputs for that magic are, and who to ask to do it." [via rc3.org]

"None of which is saying you shouldn't be talking to your sources, and questioning what you're told, and trying to find other means of finding stuff out from people. But nowadays, computers are a sort of primary source too. You've got to learn to interrogate them effectively - and quote them meaningfully - too." [via migurski]

The new whitehouse.gov robots.txt file lets search engines and other bots roam free. This is a fantastic change, but I can't help wondering what they're hiding in the /includes/ directory. I want an open government with no disallows!

Fun discussion overthinking the timing of the President's oath of office with some nice historic trivia thrown in for good measure.

The history of Sinterklaas, Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, etc.

This iconic, cliched, overused Apollo 8 picture of the Earth from the Moon is still incredible.

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]

"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."