onfocus

Mat Honan is experiencing a nightmare cascade failure of interconnected services. This is a good reminder to back things up and make sure your passwords are unique for each service.

Reading this article just reminds me that I'm still upset Google killed its Google Reader sharing features. The Reader bridge has been burned for me, but I agree they could do more inside existing services to improve Plus.

Hey, nice idea: public unit tests.

Background bird chirping in a YouTube video is mistaken for content under copyright. Highlights of a broken system ensue.

Horrible one-star Amazon reviews. [via MetaFilter]

"I thought it would be interesting to produce a kind of personal encylopedia: each volume cataloguing the links for a whole year." Great idea, a physical copy of your Pinboard/Delicious links.

"After using all the UI richness available for such a long time to make beautiful and differentiated products, app designers have realized that the user's work, not their own, is the star of the show."

"So maybe, instead of waiting for the MPAA’s next law and changing our Twitter avatars for a few days in protest, it would be more productive to significantly reduce or eliminate our support of the MPAA member companies starting today, and start supporting campaign finance reform."

Russ Cox explains how the retired Google Code Search used to work. It includes links to a similar project you can install locally to search code using the same method.

We've been using alpha and beta versions of jQuery Mobile at Fuelly for quite a while now. It's great to see it reach this milestone.

ThinkUp is a great way to archive/search your entire Twitter history and get some nice metrics in the process. Congrats on 1.0! (Don't miss Anil's post about ThinkUp and Software with Purpose.)

Nice collection of designs patterns and examples for mobile devices.

This is a nice alternate theme for Google Reader. Better type. Better separation and texture. The best part is that it tones down the in-your-face-red G+ share button.

Vint Cerf on Google: "...we couldn't run our system if everything in it were encrypted because then we wouldn't know which ads to show you. So this is a system that was designed around a particular business model."

This works well! And it does seem to speed up Gmail a bit.

Interesting look at "password padding" to create memorable AND secure passwords. [via Ask MeFi]

"We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future." Painful post to read but it makes sense. Now what?

"When people say there are no easy solutions to our problems, I don’t think they are thinking hard or creatively enough. If our problem is that we don’t have enough technically trained Americans, why are we not focused like lasers on educating people?"

"The kind of naming policy that Facebook and Google Plus have is actually a radical departure from the way identity and speech interact in the real world."

"A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen said Wednesday he was only doing it as a hobby." A hobby? Oh, that's ok then. ... WHAT?

"The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power. 'Real names' policies aren't empowering; they’re an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people."

Derek Sivers reminds us that the Web is made out of people.

"URL Parameters helps you control which URLs on your site should be crawled by Googlebot, depending on the parameters that appear in these URLs."

Deconstructing the new Gmail/G+ interface for design ideas.

ok, it's 2011. No site is perfect, but it probably is time to shame sites that store plain text passwords. Especially those sites from big companies with the means to change things.

Dear media, please give Andy Rutledge complete control over the design of your sites. Thanks.