Chris Messina proposes some new syntax for Twitter: slashtags, namely...

/via - transported over from the blog world, where via has long been a standard for crediting someone for making you aware of something you're now sharing.

/by - a method for direct attribution.

cc - carbon copy, to be used if you want someone to see a tweet, as in "cc @eugenewei"

Web power users can be self-important about syntax, especially when it comes to open systems like Twitter, where the whole joy is in seeing how users take something atomic and simple and use it to build more sophisticated structures. But I think this proposed syntax is sensible.

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Farhad Manjoo grabs a comment from a thread at Bruce Schneier's security blog and shares a sensible and simple process for devising online passwords that are easy to remember for you, hard to guess for others.

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I've long used ecto as a blogging client, but some time ago it was bought by Illuminex, and since then, bugs have slowly piled up with no updates. When it was just the work of one lone developer, updates were posted regularly.

It's clearly time for me to look for a new blogging client, but I bring this up as another example of why I always hate when a piece of software I love, developed by a passionate individual or individual(s), gets purchased by a larger entity. There are many reasons things can go south--maybe the company just wanted to purchase the developer, not the software, or maybe the software becomes neglected among the dozens of priorities in the company, or maybe the urgency to serve the customers of that software well are diluted by the broader customer set of the larger entity--but the end result is often a tragic ossification for a once relevant product.

RIP, Ecto.

ecto, security, software, syntax, twitter