onfocus

"This is an era of networked wealth, going to scale, first mover advantage, positive feedback loops, virtuous cycles, high concentration, and high disparity. These are some of the intolerable conditions of the time we call (with subversive hope) Late Capitalism." [via anil]

"[Technical separation] lets the trolls and the normal society stay safe, but it also prevents those two from ever running into each other, from ever having that chance to understand each other. I don’t know how to let the trolls and straights run into each other in a productive way, but it’s one more thing we should think about."

Tim O'Reilly reflects on his successes and failures in building a sustainable business. "While our ideals are what define us, combining those ideals with a results-oriented business culture is how we have continued to thrive." [via anil]

This was a fun surprise at the GEL conference this year.

Me too! I spent my money on hardware up-front, dammit. Don't nickel and dime me to death with software. (Yes, I know it's irrational.)

Fun new application by Simon Willison for finding conferences your Twitter contacts are attending. Nice design and use of Twitter oAuth.

Matt told some MetaFitler stories at GEL this year in a great talk about unconventional community lessons.

The jokes were strong at MaxFunCon. Churchill strong.

"Most of these tweaks, besides providing for a longer lifespan for SSD disks, should improve overall system performance even on an non SSD disk."

Matt has a great summary of South by Southwest Interactive 2010.

Google Tech Talk by Amy Jo Kim about "Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software".

Jesse Schell talks about Facebook games, moving beyond them, and the scary future of achievements unlocked in real life.

Gina's timely conference tips for people like me.

Jay Rosen's question/answer site that tries to wed unanswered questions with journalists. "The eventual plan is to recruit journalists, or partner with an existing news organization, to answer the ones that a.) interest the most people and b.) require reporting, investigation and explanation--in other words, real journalism."

What Jay Rosen will say at SXSW about desperately needed explanation of major stories in the news.

"We have all our story elements in place. It's all politics from here on. Bring in the sports and war metaphors and let automated processes carry the rest. Don't dig, just dine. The sausage-machine rocks on." A nice explanation of how journalism's stories need to change. [via mneznanski]

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]

J.D. finds a gem for Thanksgiving: Desiderata by Max Ehrmann, 1927

Audio and video from the Web 2.0 conference.