onfocus

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."

Matt rants about SEO, Conde Nast, and their peeing in our collective virtual pool.

Dam Kaminksy posted a follow-up to the Wired article on MeFi.

"'There is no saving the Internet,' he said. 'There is postponing the inevitable for a little longer.'" Amazing story of the DNS flaw discovered by Dan Kaminsky a few months ago.

"Stifling bullying online won't make bullying go away; it'll just send it back underground. The visibility gives us an advantage. If we see it, we can work with it to stop it."

"Indeed, these days posting words, photos, and videos online is sort of like getting tattoos. Think ahead, because they're going to be around forever whether you want them or not."

"It would have been a lot cheaper if we had a policy where the CEO of any sufficiently large investment bank was paid $100 million per year direct from the U.S. Treasury. In return for this guaranteed payout, he or she would forgo any numbers-based compensation..."

Find domain names for your projects beyond the big three.

[via magnetbox]

Lots of trails around Corvallis I didn't know about. I have my work cut out for me this summer.

"In this paper, EFF offers some suggestions, both legal and technical, for best practices that balance the needs of OSPs and their users' privacy and civil liberties."

This Yahoo! Stencil Kit looks like a good way to mock up iPhone apps in Illustrator. [via CreativeTechs Tips]

"Buying a new home, rearranging your room, or moving into a new office? You can save time and have more fun if you lay out your ideas ahead of time." Looks like nifty web app.

tl;dr

A web comic about branding. [via Brand New]

The Web's favorite tinsmith resigns his post with the Yahoo Web Trust for a more pastoral way. [via waxy]

"Talent isn't engineered. Hits are." David Weinberger argues that we aren't all cockroaches and monkeys here on the Web.

test any website to see if it's blocked in China. My site is blocked!

danah starts a discussion about virtual walled gardens, gated communities, whatever you want to call them. Be sure to check out the comments. The central question to me is: "who owns the walls?"

If you do any ColdFusion development (shut up!), you should check out this CF Textmate add-on. With this + Transmit, I prefer TextMate to HomeSite now for writing CF.

hooray! Click this link to set a cookie (with cookie technology) to disable those annoying Snap site previews that are popping up everywhere. [thanks torrez]