There are so many times when I wish I had written about my short thoughts (months down the line). Anyways, without much explanation: seems there's a big shift away from XHTML to HTML5. Is this the next four years?

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Nat Friedman:

Alex asked me, “Nat, you and I and all our friends are pretty smart, capable people.  Why aren’t we working on something great that could save the world or be worthy of a Nobel prize?”

I love my work in the Linux world, and hope it has had some positive impact on the world.  But what Alex said hit home.  Right now, could I be doing something bigger?  Something better?  Could you?  Even if you are passionate about your work, it’s a good call-out and an important thing to reflect about.   If you’re not trying to do your very best, why not?  Do you have a good reason?

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"Who if not us? When if not now?"

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"Flexible workflows." Heard that phrase for the first time today to describe our product. It's a very powerful concept - the software is malleable to suit your needs. It makes the software humanizing. Software problems can either be solved technically or socially. I've always been a strong proponent of the latter, and it really does highlight one of the strengths of our software: you could drop it into any existing situation and use social pressures to enforce a pretty good process. Don't make a huge technical investment. Just see how people interact, and use the software to adapt around that. Encouraging.

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Transience is beautiful.

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Form follows function, but aesthetics is still important:

Researchers in Japan setup two ATMs, "identical in function, the number of buttons, and how they worked." The only difference was that one machine’s buttons and screens were arranged more attractively than the other. In both Japan and Israel (where this study was repeated) researchers observed that subjects encountered fewer difficulties with the more attractive machine. The attractive machine actually worked better.

But aesthetics is still not a replacement for usability - usability trumps all. Once it's usable... make it pretty.