What 'the web' actually is, and why building desktop-class applications on it is not what it was built for.

"Everyone knows that Google is killing the news business. Few people know how hard Google is trying to bring it back to life, or why the company now considers journalism’s survival crucial to its own prospects."

The story of Chat Roulette's teenage creator. Where will it lead?

Because there's no alternative, and it is valuable. But its privacy practices are awful.

On what Farmville is (not a game) and what it means (nothing good).

"The most immediate revelation, of course, is that at some point next year revenues from gigs payable to artists will for the first time overtake revenues accrued by labels from sales of recorded music."

"A collaborative music/spoken word project." A collection of YouTube videos of people playing various instruments all in the B-flat key. Start and stop and fade them each in any way at any time. This is awesome.

Sifting through HRO's sorta-haughty satire is worth it for the occasion post like this, where whoever Carles is gets tired of mocking teenagers and writes something true and intriguing about the state of the music industry and popular music culture (at least for the indie set).

A stylish, simple, infographical, curt, and summarily realistic at the world in which we currently live.

Basically: Publishing solves a problem that no longer exists, and we don't need newspapers; we need journalism. Amen.

I want to read this collection of articles someday, but I doubt I will.

This bookmarklet makes reading things on the web very simple and thus enjoyable by removing all of the often-useless and often-flashing worthlessness surrounding the content.

"My wifesd*porcupine hot pix for u."

Short, irreverent, accurate, and funny.

"A Mac OS X Leopard developer tool for debugging HTTP services by graphically creating & inspecting complex HTTP messages."

Who are these people?

"letmein"

Why privacy persists. "Along with new visibilities comes social understanding of those new visibilities." "If the end of privacy comes about, it's because we misunderstand the current changes as the end of privacy, and make the mistake of encoding this misunderstanding into technology. It's not the end of privacy because of these new visibilities, but it may be the end of privacy because it looks like the end of privacy because of these new visibilities."

"It's not your job to right a wrong / Just mark it FAIL and move along." With cute illustrations.

"...would he be instituting the most open and participatory executive branch our nation has seen, directly following the most closed and secretive? ... Oh, the answers are: yes, sure, and of course."

Badges for when discussion goes foul.

On the stress of full-time blogging.

Lodwick and pals debate capitalism through Tumblr. "This proves not only that Tumblr is a good platform for public debates, but that true debate on the Internet is possible." Didn't doubt that, but this is interesting.

What's new in OpenID 2.0. There are "160 million already existing OpenIDs." Still, we need "support for OpenID-authenticated commenting by the major blog hosters."

The head of a company that makes videos go viral explains exactly how it's done. The commenters go crazy. Very interesting in the specific sense, but even more so in the overall evolution of media.

It's a bubble, yes, but it may not pop in the same way it did last time. There's a coastal divide in opinion, too, with NYers skeptical and Valley workers optimistic despite the reality. We'll see...

Another Ze Frank project, this one centered on crowd-sourced advice. Write a letter to Ze asking for guidance, get it from everyone else. Intriguing!

A great profile of the director, whose latest film opens tomorrow in New York City.

Great interviews with web developers and luminaries, including Khoi Vinh, Jason Fried of 37signals, Jeff Veen, Merlin Mann, Heather Champ, Dan Cederholm, and Guy Kawasaki.

Notes on the growing importance of design in business. Good short reads.