I’d love to run, edit, and write for a publication bigger than just me and my blog. I don’t have time, so I won’t, at least not any time soon. But if I were to run a publication, I’d have a few rules.

If you’re interested in learning something new, this article is for you.  Broken down by subject and/or category, here are several top-notch self-education resources I have bookmarked online over the past few years.

Security companies and IT people constantly tells us that we should use complex and difficult passwords. This is bad advice, because you can actually make usable, easy to remember and highly secure passwords. In fact, usable passwords are often far better than complex ones.

Welcome to TikiToki, a web app that makes it dead easy to make stunning, animated timelines that work in your browser. Our basic account is completely free.

Forrst is a community of passionate developers and designers focused on helping themselves and others get better at their craft, providing thoughtful critiques, and sharing their knowledge to build better applications and websites.

Bryant says, “I reply all the time by saying, ‘Thank you for writing, I appreciate your opinion though I don’t know why you needed to insult me.’ The general response is ‘Gee, I didn’t think anyone was paying attention.’ And they want to be pals with you. It’s the kick-the-dog syndrome. People believe no one’s listening; they think we’re not people, they think there are these giant monoliths controlling thought. Then when they realize someone is listening, they rediscover their manners.”

This is not a dating site, not a social network for artists or an underground association fighting against a repressive regime. From today on, we will delete all unidentifiable comments.

Among fans and artists, of course, Ticketmaster is widely despised. It extracts high service fees (known commonly as “those goddamned Ticketmaster service fees”) but has offered very little innovation in ticketing over the past 30 years. The Pixies, for example, added thousands of names, complete with contact info, to their marketing database thanks to the Troxy gig—something they can’t generally get when they sell tickets through Ticketmaster. And now, in the wake of the Live Nation merger, many in the concert industry are worried that Ticketmaster might be more interested in promoting its own artists and venues than in selling tickets for rival acts.

WASHINGTON — How did a 153-year-old magazine — one that first published the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and gave voice to the abolitionist and transcendentalist movements — reinvent itself for the 21st century?<br />
<br />
By pretending it was a Silicon Valley start-up that needed to kill itself to survive.

A thief broke into my car. I used Craigslist, a dating site, MySpace and a fast food joint to track him down

Playdio offers broadcasters and listeners the chance to share podcast-like shows with fully licensed, full-length music and, of course, DJ banter.

With ge.tt you can share any number of files, no matter how large, within seconds.

The most common emails I get about this blog are questions about physics, astronomy, and some very speculative theories. But second most common are questions asking where I get my pictures.

“What am I passionate about?” This is the essential starting point for any discussion of what the Web is, what it is becoming, and how it should be presented. The individual, with their needs, their passions, their opinions, their desires and their goals is always paramount. We tend to forget this, or overlook it, or just plain ignore it. We design from a point of view which is about what we have to say, what we want to present, what we expect to communicate. It’s not that that we should ignore these considerations, but they are always secondary. The Web is a ground for being. Individuals do not present themselves as receptacles to be filled. They are souls looking to be fulfilled. This is as true for children as for adults – perhaps more so – and for this reason the educational Web has to be about space and place for being, not merely the presentation of a good-looking set of data.

The key to good writing is not that magical glass of Bordeaux, the right kind of tobacco or that groovy background music. The key is focus. What you need to write well is a spartan setting that allows you to fully concentrate on your text and nothing but your text. Many professional writers use SimpleText or Textedit because these are the only writing programs that are totally distraction free. But text editors are not perfect. That’s why we made Writer.

Minecraft is a the biggest game of the year, & it was made by a single dude in Sweden, & it's crazy: http://t.co/5oRoh0s
– Robin Sloan (robinsloan) http://twitter.com/robinsloan/statuses/25044178142

Online degrees and video courses from leading universities.

RT @clicker: Wes Anderson's first full-length movie as a director was Bottle Rocket & now it’s free online. Sweet. Check it out: http:// ...

@rogre I can't overstate just how fantastic this post is: http://bit.ly/9r0tQa I've been reading each link over last few days. Thank you.

The word is douche bag. Douche space bag. People will insist that it’s one closed-up word—douchebag—but they are wrong. When you cite the dictionary as proof of the division, they will tell you that the entry refers to a product women use to clean themselves and not the guy who thinks it’s impressive to drop $300 on a bottle of vodka. You will calmly point out that, actually, the definition in Merriam-Webster is “an unattractive or offensive person” and not a reference to Summer’s Eve. They will then choose to ignore you and write it as one word anyway.

Yes. You know the conventional wisdom: long-form journalism doesn’t do well on the web. Our attention spans are too short and sentences are too long and and we’re too easily distrac — oooh, Macy’s is having a sale! — and, anyway, complex narratives are inefficient for a culture that wants its information short, sweet, and yesterday. Long, carefully wrought articles are tasty, sure; online, though, the news we consume is best served up quick-n-easy. The web isn’t Chez Panisse so much as a series of Sizzlers.

Spike Jonze's I'm Here is strange, funny, beautifully sad and worth 30 mins of your time: http://www.imheremovie.com/

Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It is a "lossless" tool, which means it optimizes the images without changing their look or visual quality. After Smush.it runs on a web page it reports how many bytes would be saved by optimizing the page's images and provides a downloadable zip file with the minimized image files.

RT @tcarmody: Lovely video from the digital marketing team at MacMillan on how books are REALLY made (via HarperStudio): http://j.mp/bhvpWl

Zoe Fraade-Blanar presented a wonderful piece of work as her MFA thesis project for NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. “Current” is a Java application designed to sit on the desktop of a journalist and monitor trending topics on Google and the appearance of those topics within Google News. The application looks for stories that have widespread reader interest (i.e., they are trending on Google Trends) and little press coverage – these, Zoe theorizes, are the stories most profitable for news organizations to cover.

The future for blogs may be special-interest publishing. Mr Kelly’s research shows that blogs tend to be linked within languages and countries, with each language-group in turn containing smaller pockets of densely linked sites. These pockets form around public subjects: politics, law, economics and knowledge professions. Even narrower specialisations emerge around more personal topics that benefit from public advice. Germany has a cluster for children’s crafts; France, for food; Sweden, for painting your house.

"The OpenLearn website gives free access to Open University course materials. This is the LearningSpace, where you'll find hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. Study independently at your own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others."

"In 1999, when I left a staff job at a newspaper to start my own copywriting business, I never even thought about writing for the web. A decade later, most of my work consists of web projects. It struck me recently that this medium has led me to develop a different way of writing—tighter, simpler, more transparent. The results, I believe, are greater clarity and persuasiveness, and a speedier, more user-friendly read."

"American journalism is in trouble, and the problem is not just financial. My profession is in distress because for more than a decade it has been chasing the false idols of fame and fortune. While engaged in those pursuits, it forgot its readers and the need to produce a commercial product that appealed to its mass audience, which in turn drew advertisers and thus paid for it all. While most corporate owners were seeking increased earnings, higher stock prices, and bigger salaries, editors and reporters focused more on winning prizes or making television appearances."

All kinds of useful stats about social web usage.

Great alternative to OneNote - excellent for ubiquitous capture, as it runs on Mac, PC, iPhone, Blackberry etc.