I just finished reading Jordan Mechner’s old journals from his time creating Prince of Persia - it’s long, but probably one of the most fascinating things I’ve read online in months. A real gem.

I loved the Prince of Persia games when I was a kid (who didn’t?), so it was great to get a peek behind the scenes at how it was made - I didn’t know, for example, that it was all basically made by one person. Some great posts:

Original source for the Prince of Persia animations
Rough animation test
More work on the animation
Shadow man
Sword fighting footage
Princess animation footage
Source code documentation

Even better, however, was the first-person view of something great being created: the passion, the excitement, the uncertainty, the highs, the lows, and the eventual satisfaction and recognition (followed, of course, by “what’s next?”). While not exactly the story of a start-up, it definitely read close to one - it might be one of the most motivational stories I’ve ever read.

So thank you, Jordan, for taking the time to make these journals available, and hope there will be more.

This is a great presentation I found on Hacker News:

http://www.slideshare.net/stephenpa/the-art-science-of-seductive-interactions?type=presentation

The presentation gives some pointers on how to seduce users to explore and maybe fall in love with your app.  It echoes a lot of the lessons I picked up developing Facebook apps.