Another edition of Friday Focus. It’s hard to believe we’re already at Week 15. We’ve covered a lot in 14 weeks, and well, enough talking and down to business for number 1-5!

Sites of the Week

First up this week is Spicypage. Spicypage is a digg like resource for judging submitted sites, with up and down ratings and the ability to leave comments. As an extra bonus, you can search Devlounge and give us a thumbs up…but that’s just an idea.

Next up is creative bits. Cool pastel colors give way to a nice and simple looking site. The fact that they have Devlounge listed at the bottom as a favorite resource doesn’t mean anything, it was just extra nice to see

Finally up this week is Magic Marker. A darker design gives way to a one page display of work. I’m all for one page portfolios, so this one gets a nod.

Digg Weekly

Design: How to become a web designer
A completely excellent guide (ok, not really) to becoming a web designer. The point of this article is to poke fun at common beliefs about various design related issues.

Programming: The Story Behind Digg
Digg was created for $200, and it turned Kevin Rose into a million dollar man. If Devlounge ever sells for millions, I’d be happy, but this definitely provides some insight on how the silliest and sometimes simplest projects can turn out to be the “big one” everyone hopes they create.

Question

One thing we wanted to know this week was your thoughts on feeds. Our main feed is by far the most popular, but someone recently brought up a question that I’d like to ask for the community opinion. The problem? Some sites may want to aggregate our feed, but don’t want site announcements, jobs, etc. They are only looking for articles and interviews. What are your thoughts on this? I’m unsure how to combine the two, but if enough people are interested in a condensed feed like this, we’d get it done.

Prebuilt 3 first mocks

That’s right, first mocks. Earlier this week I introduced the first Prebuilt 3 concepts, and today I began work on some early design mocks of the next edition of our most successful theme. You can have a look here, feedback is appreciated!