What if ?Gamification? Meant Apps You Actually Want to Use?
Seeing some of the new games out for the holidays this year has reminded me of what a high quality user experience really is.  ?Gamification? has been the hot meme lately, referring to the use of game mechanics to non-game applications.  Usually those game mechanics include capabilities like scoring, badges, leveling, and so on.  But I think there?s a more subtle aspect that underlies it all: high quality user experience.  What about thinking of ?gamification? as making interfaces that are as polished, responsive, attractive, and intuitive as a game?

T-Mobile JavaScript comment stripper breaks websites ? The Register
Attempts by T-Mobile to speed up mobile data connections are breaking websites. The bug intermittently affects mobile device users and PC users using tethered connections. It is caused by "optimisations" to the sites' Javascript code made on the fly, in attempt to optimise the amount of data received. Instead of stripping out comments, the optimisation ? or more precisely, "pessimisation" ? also strips out strings in the code itself.

LexisNexis open sources code for Hadoop alternative ? Cloud Computing News
HPCC Systems, the division of LexisNexis Risk Solutions dedicated to big data, has released the open source code of its data-processing-and-delivery software it?s positioning as a better version of Hadoop.

Standards - ColourWiki
There are several standards connected with color management. Some technical standards are about color management should work. Other standards are more about the exchange of color data in daily practice. On some points, both groups of standards interfere. Some standards are maintained by official international standard-organisations like ISO, IEC or W3C. Some standards are maintained by a consortium of vendors. At least there are de-facto standards of only one vendor, because he is the market dominator.

Alice.js
Alice.js - (A Lightweight Independent CSS Engine) is a micro JavaScript library focused on using hardware-accelerated capabilities (in particular CSS3 features) in modern browsers for generating high-quality, high-end visual effects.

Creating Triangles in CSS « Jon Rohan?s Web Developer Field Guide
Jon Rohan: I've come across a few techniques and tips in my career, while working at my last gig a co-worker pointed me to this technique. I believe this was originally discovered by the legendary Eric Meyer, but I couldn't find much documentation about it on the web so I thought I would describe it here.

Facebook Wins ?Worst API? in Developer Survey | TechCrunch
A survey of over 100 developers, previously posted here on Hacker News, aimed to determine which external APIs were the most difficult to integrate into developers? projects. The winner?or rather, the loser? Facebook. Developers mentioned the Facebook API the most in terms having bugs, poor documentation, never-ending API changes, slow response times, and other headaches.

DIY Spy Drone Sniffs Wi-Fi, Intercepts Phone Calls | Threat Level | Wired.com
Launch your personal, specially equipped WASP drone ? short for Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform ? to fly overhead and sniff his Wi-Fi network, intercept his cellphone calls, or launch denial-of-service attacks with jamming signals.

OpenSocial 2.0: Will key new additions make it a prime time player in social apps? | ZDNet
Introducing OpenSocial 2.0 Now in 2011, OpenSocial has the largest revision coming in its history. Version 2.0 brings with it what I think are very significant as well as pretty smart additions that may finally make it compelling for a broad audience as well as the enterprise.

Improving DOM Performance for HTML5 Games - HTML5 Grind
This article will look into four ways to update game objects in the DOM to find which performs best.

RICK - IKS Project
RICK provides an infrastructure to manage referenced Sites. RICK comes with out of the box support for commonly used protocols such as Linked Data but also allows extensions to work with sites that do not support standards. RICK allows the use of local caches. Such caches can store some/all information of referenced sites and are typically used if one needs to work offline, to increase query performance or to support queries that would not be possible/feasible by directly using the services provided by the referenced site.

peter.michaux.ca - JavaScript is Dead. Long Live JavaScript!
Peter Michaux about the warts, hopes and challenges for JavaScript the Language

Byte-saving Techniques - GitHub
This is a collection of JavaScript wizardry that can shave bytes off of your code. It's mainly intended as a reference for those creating entries for 140byt.es.

Mobile Web Application Best Practices Cards
These cards summarize the Mobile Web Application Best Practices (MWABP) document. These guidelines aid the development of rich and dynamic mobile Web applications. A PDF version of the cards is available.

Greatest Secret of IT Revealed « Big Men On Content
The secret is ? your IT department really does hate you. That?s right. You are not paranoid and it is not your imagination. Before you cringe and get defensive you have to understand that this is a conditioned response brought on by the horribly dysfunctional relationship between IT departments and the businesses they serve. As with all counseling sessions we begin by asking what are the things about the other party that cause this response. A few things are undeniable in your relationship.

FunctionSource: Thread, JavaScript, and Ringo
Node.js gets most of the server-side JavaScript love, but for those folks that are limited to JVM solutions, RingoJS provides an interesting alternative. It?s an evolution of Helma, one of the oldest server JS solutions around; it leverages Rhino to provide a server JS environment that can be cleanly deployed in a WAR/EAR file for those stuck in enterprise hel^H^H^H^H land.

Threads in JavaScript: yes it can - Hannes Wallnöfer
The following is based on the actual implementation of and experience with threads in Rhino and Ringo. As a historical note, Ringo started out with shared-nothing threads where each thread got its own version of each module scope and modules were able to opt-in to shared state. Since shared modules proved to perform much better and be easy to write, that has been reversed and modules now default to shared.

Retailers Retool Sites to Ease Shopping via Mobile Phone - NYTimes.com
85% of mobile customers expect to be able to shop on their phones and want the experience to be as good or better than on a computer.

The Usability of Passwords (by @baekdal) #tips
Thomas Baekdal dives into the world of passwords, and looks at what makes a password secure in practical terms.

35 Awesome CSS3 Examples And Helpful Resources For Web Designers
35 Awesome CSS3 Examples And Helpful Resources For Web Designers

Apple handcuffs 'open' web apps on iPhone home screen ? The Register
Apple's iOS mobile operating system runs web applications at significantly slower speeds when they're launched from the iPhone or iPad home screen in "full-screen mode" as opposed to in the Apple Safari browser, and at the same time, the operating system hampers the performance of these apps in other ways, according to tests from multiple developers and The Register.

CSSWARP - CSS Text to Path Generator
Canvas/JS based generator for CSS/HTML Font on Path effects.

Project Intro
The Open Cooperative Web Framework provides JavaScript enablement of concurrent real-time interactions among remote users and external data sources. This emerging class of applications is referred to as cooperative web applications. The framework handles remote notification of user changes, the resolution of conflicting changes, and convergence of application state using Operational Transformation algorithms. The objective of the framework is to support cooperative web concepts across all browsers and devices.

Alan Friedman/ ISS from WSP / 1 March 2011
Amazing photograph of the sun, providing a background to the ISS

xkcd: Server Attention Span
Stateless discussion between a Server and a Mobile. That so reminds me of pre Intermedia times.

22 not-so-short links about web performance ? Web Performance Today
The best articles, studies, and blog posts about web performance.

Dynamic traffic simulation
See why you're wasting your time on the road.

Understanding the Social Media ROI Cycle
How do businesses go about setting up, launching and running their social media campaigns?

IE6 Countdown
Friends don't let Friends use Internet Explorer 6

Bruce Sterling: Closing Keynote | IxDA
Bruce Sterling: closing keynote at IXDA 11

A ?Comprehensive? Guide to Mobile Statistics « Cloud Four
A ?Comprehensive? Guide to Mobile Statistics February 17th, 2011 by Jason Grigsby A breakdown of various statistical approaches to test the significance of a mobile platform

Controlling Video Games With Your Pee ? SEGA Brings Awkward Fun to the Restroom | Singularity Hub

The Secrets of Consulting: The Universal Pattern of Huge Software Losses
Some perfectionists in software engineering are overly preoccupied with failure, and most others don't rationally analyze the value they place on failure-free operation. Nonetheless, when we do measure the cost of failure carefully, we generally find that great value can be added by producing more reliable software. In Responding to Significant Software Events, I give five examples that should convince you.

W3C Mobile Web Best Practices : ska: unmasked interrupts
Image resizing server side considered best practice

Google Android phones biggest network hogs: study | Reuters
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Users of Google's Android phones, such as Samsung's Galaxy S, use more data services than those with other smartphones, threatening to choke wireless network capacity, an industry study showed.

» Mobile Application vs. Mobile web and Where Mobile is Headed | CakeMail
When you think that there are hundreds of types of devices all running different operating systems, you?re in for a big headache to make your website compatible with most of them.

Ben Strong's Blog: Google and Microsoft Cheat on Slow-Start. Should You?
Tweaking TCP parameters to achieve a faster page load? Let's see how Google and Microsoft do that...

InfoQ: Effective Agile Meetings
A good, short and comprehensive guide to plan and handle meetings.

Anonymous Pro
Anonymous Pro (2009) is a family of four fixed-width fonts designed especially with coding in mind. Characters that could be mistaken for one another (O, 0, I, l, 1, etc.) have distinct shapes to make them easier to tell apart in the context of source code.

Lawsuit: Disney, others spy on kids with zombie cookies
Ars Technica: A flash based tracking cookie resists deletion and is aimed on kids web sites.

Mana Bar :: Australia's First Video Game Bar
Australias first video game bar - Princess Peach never before looked that tempting

You're Doing It Wrong - ACM Queue
You're Doing It Wrong Think you've mastered the art of server performance? Think again.

Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline | Electronic Frontier Foundation
To help illustrate Facebook's shift away from privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has highlighted some excerpts from Facebook's privacy policies over the years. Watch closely as your privacy disappears, one small change at a time!

Amazon.com: Contech Electronics CRO101 Scarecrow Motion-Activated Sprinkler: Patio, Lawn & Garden
When you listed your product on Amazon, be aware of user generated content, especially product images. This product got some really great use-cases added.

Improving download behaviors in web browsers ? Alexander Limi
The confusing and inconsistent state of downloading files using a web browser has long been a pet peeve of mine. The current situation is pretty much a mess in every web browser. Issues with file systems in general notwithstanding, even doing simple downloads to a centrally defined folder can be confusing, even frustrating.

Employers: Look to gaming to motivate staff - Training & Development - Business - News - iTnews.com.au
Clearly defined goals and fair, incremental rewards are two game design techniques that could motivate the 'gamer generation' in the workforce, according to a US academic.

Edge 313
David Gelernter: Time to start taking the internet seriously

Linguistic profiling: The sound of your voice may determine if you get that apartment or not | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis
Speakers with German accents ? even if they stumble into grammatical errors ? are considered brilliant, John Baughs research has shown. The listeners may not even be able to name the accent as German-American. Baugh expects that the brainy stereotype comes from comics and cartoons mimicking Albert Einstein's German-American accent and from a duck ? Walt Disney's Germanic scientist Ludwig Von Drake.

The Brads ? a comic about web design » The Brads ? Why DRM Doesn?t Work
How to Download an Audio Book from the Cleveland Public Library

Forrester: The new Era of Social Innovation
In this era, innovation will be driven by empowered customers and employees and IT and Marketing will need to join forces and collaborate as never before. The CIO and the CMO, IT and Marketing, will jointly power this new era of Social Innovation by bringing together their extensive domain expertise to create a Social Innovation Network.