Obey Alien Orders: This New York Times article describes how some file-sharing executables actually "share" any affiliate purchasing you may do. Some of these companies are set up so that they're outside the reach of any legal grievance you may file. It's good to know whose instructions you're executing. [More at Slashdot and Mac Observer]

Weird Flash article: This guy seems to be living in 1999, but I have a cold right now and my judgment may be off... I'll hit the "comments" there when I've got time to register with them. Initial take: You can learn a lot more, quicker, by getting involved with the development community.
[via Flazoom]

"Studio MX" presentation: This presentation lasts over sixteen minutes, and yet starts quickly. If you've already drunk the koolade, then turn off the audio and figure out how the designers did it.

A Guide to Building Secure Web Applications I've skimmed this, but haven't studied it or evaluated it. Looks like some good info here, but may also benefit from input from readers of this blog...?

Holisitic Web Services: Jeremy Allaire notes that user experience is more important than implementation details, and laments that much of the current discussion about web services is lengthy argument over syntax instead of examination of actual user experience. Quote: "Let's turn the debate around and focus again on the broader vision of software as service rather then keep ourselves down in the plumbing."

(He links to this Infoworld article where Marc Benioff of salesforce.com says "'Enterprise software and software as it exists today will be completely gone... Every Web site that's out there is really a service,' said Benioff. He compared having in-house software deployments to having 'an outhouse and you manage it and maintain it." Pungent observations.)

$10 GPS: Motorola announces a new chip, half the size of a main processor chip, which communicates with satellites to determine precise location. Sure, it helps if you want to know where you left something, but it also enables a whole new class of database applications as well. (I don't know whether each chip has a unique ID sent to the satellite, or whether you can retrieve positioning info anonymously.)
[via Jenny Levine]

Smart Mobs: Howard Rheingold has a new book, with accompanying blog, about how new communication tools change group behavior. I haven't gone deeply into his perspective yet, but have this on my short list.

MIT openly posts courseware: I'm not sure of which material will be posted (and which learning experiences will remain face-to-face), and I'd guess that their business model to pay the rent would be through accredition rather than structured access to special materials... raises more questions than it answers, but looks interesting.

Creating Applications with Mozilla: Available for free online, as well as nicely bound from O'Reilly. Most of us don't have the luxury of designing for this one engine, but it's good to know what its capabilities are.
[via Scott Andrew]

Effective Mailing List Email: An oldie-but-goodie from Matt Haughey... applies design principles to email.

The Web's future: XHTML 2.0 This article by Nicholas Chase at IBM DeveloperWorks triggered a lengthy debate on , including some speculation about whether markup even needs further versions, citing previous threads on an XHTML list. (I've got no opinion myself, but it's a thought-provoking conversation.)

Flash Remoting expansion: Versions tailored for .NET and J2EE announced: "While the base functionality of Macromedia Flash Remoting MX is the same across platforms... each version of the server is also specifically tuned to take advantage of the strengths of each platform... Macromedia Flash Remoting MX for Microsoft .NET supports Microsoft ASP.NET pages, ADO.NET Objects, DLLs, Assemblies, and Web Services... Macromedia Flash Remoting MX for Java supports Java resources such as Java Objects and Java Beans, and J2EE resources including Java classes, EJBs, and JMX MBeans."