onfocus

"There is an error in most photography scaling algorithms." Wha? This is hard to believe.

I think we're safely out of spoiler territory now so I can post this great analysis of Toy Story 3.

Neven Mrgan has a great point: when a satire gets too close to the subject it's taking down is it still satire?

Great 50's comic art.

Frozen bananas in a food processor = ice cream? I need to try this!

Great idea, I'd use them.

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.

Hacking architecture with John McClane.

Nice Inconsolata mod that straightens out the quotes. I use Inconsolata as my programming font, haven't noticed a quote problem, but I'll give this a shot.

"I think that it’s a real possibility that in 10 years, general purpose computers will be seen as being strictly for developers and hobbyists." Rafe has an important analysis of the iPad announcement. We're headed toward closed platforms.

He used the Processing environment to calculate the number of track layouts possible with a simple train set from Ikea. I'll have to try these! [via Daddy Types]

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."

Using a bunch of Amazon metrics to track the popularity of game systems. [via AWS blog]

Jerry Michalski on outsiders [via msippey]

an ex World of Warcraft top player explains why he quit: "Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: I was providing them with an escape from their problems and nurturing the very thing that was holding them back." [via waxy]