"Independent developers cannot self-publish their own games on Xbox Live Arcade. Instead, they must get a publishing deal–either with Microsoft Game Studios or with a third-party partner. Games published on Xbox Live Indie Games are exempt from that policy, but that marketplace isn't necessary seen as viable." Seriously? How do we live in a world where Sony and even Nintendo get this, and MS don't? (This isn't saying XBLIG is going, but given how effective XBLIG was…) Compare that to Sony's attitude to indies making Real Games, and it just makes me sad.

"All Macs will be replaced with PCs, because this is a business, not a summer camp. If Russell Crowe can play Javert, you can use MS Expression to mock up your wireframes."

"Python has one. Ruby has one. Clojure has one. Now PHP has one too. Boris is PHP's missing REPL (read-eval-print loop), allowing developers to experiment with PHP code in the terminal in an interactive manner. If you make a mistake, it doesn't matter, Boris will report the error and stand to attention for further input." I use PHP increasingly little, but the lack of a REPL drives me insane. This looks… useful, at the very least.

"The same API that powers Forecast.io and Dark Sky for iOS can provide accurate short­term and long­term weather predictions to your business, application, or crazy idea." Crazy idea: yup, that'll do.

"Easily remove the background from your photos to create masks, cutouts, or clipping paths, all done instantly online with ClippingMagic.com" Blimey, that's some dark voodoo.

Some amazing quotations in this interview with Hoefler and Frere-Jones; highlights include "most of our projects take about a decade" and "how do you embody Steve McQueen in a typeface?"

"Currently your Arduino can only beep like a microwave oven. Mozzi brings your Arduino to life by allowing it to produce much more complex and interesting growls, sweeps and chorusing atmospherics. These sounds can be quickly and easily constructed from familiar synthesis units like oscillators, delays, filters and envelopes.

You can use Mozzi to generate algorithmic music for an installation or performance, or make interactive sonifications of sensors, on a small, modular and super cheap Arduino, without the need for additional shields, message passing or external synths." Ooooooh

"…the whole thing comes to a head with the Louvre, the only building in the game with four culture slots and a truly dazzling theming bonus if you can match the specific criteria. Offering massive boosts to your stats, the Louvre is essentially the headshot of the cultural world." The overhauls to the cultural victory in the forthcoming Civ V expansion sound great. Also: the way Christian writes about it is great.

"In the interim, Defense Distributed’s hack is interesting as a provocation. They’ve taken the world’s categories and grabbed and twisted the kaleidoscope. Suddenly, Maker movement adherents find themselves uncomfortably on the side of gun owners, which is a place I suspect few of them wanted to be or realized they were in the first place. Sales people and advocates for 3D printers promising that these new machines will let us make anything are learning that weapons are things. Now they find themselves standing shoulder to shoulder with gun enthusiasts arguing that a tool is just a tool and you can’t ban a thing just because of a few bad apples." A good article by Tim Maly: I really liked this nugget, though. The problem is: when you can make anything, who is to say what a thing is? Utopian idealism crashes into a reality; we're wobbling briefly through some turbulence. We'll probably make it out the other side, and we'll see which way things are heading. I also really liked the Deb Chachra quotation in this article.

"Xray is the missing link between the browser and your app code. Press cmd+shift+x (Mac) or ctrl+shift+x to reveal an overlay of what files are powering your UI – click anything to open the associated file in your editor." A lifesaver, if only for working with other people's code.