I first saw Yahoo's 13 Simple Rules for Speeding Up Your Web Site referenced in a post on Rich Skrenta's blog in May. It looks like there were originally 14 rules; one must have fallen off the list somewhere along the way.

1. Make Fewer HTTP Requests
2. Use a Content Delivery Network
3. Add an Expires Header
4. Gzip Components
5. Put CSS at the Top
6. Move Scripts to the Bottom
7. Avoid CSS Expressions
8. Make JavaScript and CSS External
9. Reduce DNS Lookups
10. Minify JavaScript
11. Avoid Redirects
12. Remove Duplicate Scripts
13. Configure ETags

It's solid advice culled from the excellent Yahoo User Interface blog, which will soon be packaged into a similarly excellent book. It's also available as a powerpoint presentation delivered at the Web 2.0 conference.

I've also covered similar ground in my post, Reducing Your Website's Bandwidth Usage.

But before you run off and implement all of Yahoo's solid advice, consider the audience. These are rules from Yahoo, which according to Alexa is one of the top three web properties in the world. And Rich's company, Topix, is no slouch either-- they're in the top 2,000. It's only natural that Rich would be keenly interested in Yahoo's advice on how to scale a website to millions of unique users per day.

Coding Horror: YSlow: Yahoo's Problems Are Not Your Problems

Octopart is a search engine for electronic parts.

Super Neat.

Octopart - Electronic Parts, Electronic Components, Datasheets

Learn a new language

What is Learnit? A tool for learners which helps your brain store new words quickly.

Learnit helps you:

* Learn words quickly
* Say them right
* Know the most important words
* Test what you know

A nice little embeddable widget that teaches you 10 words a day in a foreign language. Defintely value here.

Learnit Lists

Health: Yellow fever vaccination certificates are required by anyone arriving from infected areas, and immunisation is recommended for all visitors travelling outside the main cities. No other vaccinations are required for entry to Nigeria, but there is a high risk of malaria, typhoid and hepatitis (A & B) and visitors should seek the latest medical advice on inoculations at least three weeks prior to departure. At present there is a high risk of polio infection in northern Nigeria, as well as regular outbreaks of cholera and meningitis. HIV/AIDS is prevalent. Nigeria has the world's highest rate of Onchocerciasis, or river blindness, which is caused by black flies that breed in fast-flowing rivers. Bilharzia, dengue fever and sleeping sickness also occur.

Travel Guide - Nigeria - health, safety, passport and visa, currency exchange, tourist office

When Chua wrote his seminal paper, he used mathematics to deduce the existence of a fourth circuit element type after resistors, capacitors and inductors, which he called a memristor, because it "remembers" changes in the current passing through it by changing its resistance. Now HP claims to have discovered the first instance of a memristor, which it created with a bi-level titanium dioxide thin-film that changes its resistance when current passes through it.

"This new circuit element solves many problems with circuitry today--since it improves in performance as you scale it down to smaller and smaller sizes," said Chua. "Memristors will enable very small nanoscale devices to be made without generating all the excess heat that scaling down transistors is causing today."

Memristors, they exist!

When I first started at SEOmoz about 9 months ago, I was the web development intern. My experience prior to the internship was limited entirely to writing code. Since then, I have spent literally hundreds of hours expanding my knowledge into different areas. Specifically, I have focused on accepted SEO techniques and small business practices. My beginner SEO checklists of the last few weeks have been the tangible result of my newly acquired knowledge. In an effort to return to my roots, I spent the majority of the day compiling what I believe to be the mother of all technical SEO cheat sheets. The recommended viewing format of this cheat sheet is as a PDF rather than the traditional blog post (I found the blog posts inconvenient to print). Let me know if this new format works better for all of you. I also included snippets below so you can see what is on the cheat sheet before you download it. Enjoy!

SEOmoz | The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet

The decline of places like Windy Ridge and Franklin Reserve is usually attributed to the subprime-mortgage crisis, with its wave of foreclosures. And the crisis has indeed catalyzed or intensified social problems in many communities. But the story of vacant suburban homes and declining suburban neighborhoods did not begin with the crisis, and will not end with it. A structural change is under way in the housing market—a major shift in the way many Americans want to live and work. It has shaped the current downturn, steering some of the worst problems away from the cities and toward the suburban fringes. And its effects will be felt more strongly, and more broadly, as the years pass. Its ultimate impact on the suburbs, and the cities, will be profound.

The Next Slum? - THE END OF SUBURBIA

The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, thinks there's a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era. Kunstler, 59, predicts a return to towns and cities centered around a retail hub—not unlike his hometown of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. But the shift to this new paradigm, he says, will be painful. (Kunstler could be off the mark; he predicted technological Armageddon after Y2K.) BusinessWeek writer Mara Der Hovanesian spoke with Kunstler about suburbia, which he calls "the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known."

GO OIL GO! GO OIL GO! KILLLLLll SUBURBIA! MURDER IT!

Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?

>Uncle Sam
Today I stole a sticker from a little girl at Disney World and made her cry.

>rezidew
you monster

>Uncle Sam
That was her father's contention.

My contention was that I thought the sticker was garbage, as it was a free promotional piece of crap, and was in the floor of an abandoned Disney stroller in a pile of popcorn and napkins.

We did not find common ground.

>rezidew
lmao
you're gonna get ejected from diney world

>Uncle Sam
Yeah
It was like an episode of Larry David
The guy was screaming YOU STOLE THE STICKER
I can't decide if his daughter really cried, or if he exaggerated for effect.
Either way, I felt super guilty.
I was like, "Isn't that a free sticker?" He was like, "IT DOESN'T MATTER YOU STOLE IT!" I was like, "It was in a pile of garbage in the floor. I thought it was discarded." IT DOESN'T MATTER YOU THIEF!
If his daughter cried, I forgive him his anger.
But if he made it up for effect to justify his materialism, I object.

>rezidew
lmao
LMAO
it was on the floor?

>Uncle Sam
Whats more... why was he hauling his kid around in a stroller filled with garbage?
Dude, it was in a pile of popcorn and napkins.
And the stroller was not in a stroller parking area, it was just sitting there.
It was a DISNEY stroller.
1) If it was not a disney stroller, I would never have taken the sticker.
2) IF the sticker was not obviously free, I would not have taken the sticker.
3) If the sticker was not obviously (to me, at the time) garbage, I would not have taken the sticker.
4) If I had thought anyone could have actually been upset at me taking the sticker... I would not have taken the sticker.
morally, I think I'm clear
Woman disagrees because "I couldn't be SURE it didn't belong to someone."
But I say that wasted material should be liberated, and that takes priority at some point once the odds of it being owned drop below a certain point. My error was in not realizing that kids love fucking stickers in my estimation of that equation.

>rezidew
LMAO

>Uncle Sam
There was a roll of 8. I took the blue donkey.

>rezidew
so did they see you take the sticker?

>Uncle Sam
His contention was that his daughter was attached to those stickers big time, and that she learned that men are evil because of me.
No. He came up to me 20 minutes after I took it.
It was on my chest.
Who the fuck steals 1 out of 8 stickers and puts it on his chest and remains at the scene of the crime?
THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO KNOW.

>rezidew
lol
who leaves their stroller unattended for 20 min?

>Uncle Sam
Everyone, at Disney. But most people park them in designated areas.
Actually that is the weak part of my argument: there were 2 other strollers nearby, but they were not Disney.
But because the thing was FILLED with garbage, I thought it abandoned.
Who the fuck hauls a kid around in garbage?
THAT is outrageous.

I made a little girl cry by stealing her sticker at Disney World

Tibetan Technology Center

The Tibetan Technology Center is a charitable organization dedicated to harness modern technology for helping the Tibetan community in India.

The center is located at the Tibetan Children's Villages School (TCV) which host and supports it.

The center is managed by a board of directors who work closely and consult with a large group of local and International technology experts.

Tibetan Technology Center | Tibetan Technology Center