Then Yegge switches gears to talk about Google.”That one last thing that Google doesn’t do well is platforms. We don’t understand platforms. We don’t ‘get’ platforms,” Yegge wrote. “Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo).” The G+ platform, Yegge wrote, is a “pathetic afterthought” and Google lacked an API at launch.

Google’s biggest blunder, he added, is that it didn’t emulate Facebook’s plan of building “an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work.”

via Google Engineer Accidentally Posts Rant About Google+.

Facebook’s new Timeline design gives users a large “cover photo” space at the top of the page. We think this revamp is a great opportunity to get creative with your profile presentation.

We recently asked the Mashable readership to share how they’ve played with the new design. Here are 10 examples of Facebook Timeline cover photo designs we think are particularly creative, and that offer a witty take on the new layout.

via 10 Facebook Timeline Designs That Will Blow You Away [PICS].

Facebook is now closer than ever to becoming the phone book for the internet. The site recently launched a Directory of people, Pages, and Places to allow users to find friends and official entities by name. The People Directory displays an alphabetized list of all users who’ve made public search listings available in their privacy. In addition to browsing by first letter, the Pages and Places Directories surface the most popular presences first for speedy discovery

Until now, users could only find people, Pages, and Places through search, the personalized Find Friends feature, and the buried Pages Browser. Directories will assist users that are looking for things with common names or that they’re not positive about the spelling of. Though certainly slower than search, it could become a powerful last resort for people intent on finding someone or something on Facebook.

via To Complement Its Search Engine, Facebook Launches People, Pages, and Places Directories.

Google Analytics, the super dominant free web analytics platform, has to date offered analytics that were roughly 24 hours behind. The wait to stop waiting has come to an end and today the company announced that Google Analytics is now rolling out real-time reporting to its users.

via Google Analytics Finally Goes Real Time (Plus New Premium Accounts).

When undertaking such an important and often complex task, it’s helpful to have some handy resources for both education and inspiration. We’ve put together a list of some of our favorites below. Since we can only scratch the surface of the wide variety of UI design resources available, we invite you to share yours in the comments.

via 9 Essential Resources for User Interface Designers.

Responsive design is no longer just something you’ll find on the portfolio websites of the designers and developers who pioneered the idea. These days using media queries to adapt to varying screen sizes is well on its way to being a mainstream design goal.

Head over to a responsive design showcase like Media Queries and you’ll find plenty of “real world” websites — like Opera or Arizona State University — using media queries to build responsive websites.

via Build Faster Mobile Websites with ‘Adaptive Images’ | Webmonkey | Wired.com.