Ok, so it didn't really, but I promised Kam I would put something in my blog this week, and under the threat of not getting a croissant at our weekly meeting I thought I'd better write something or come up with a good excuse..

I was actually going to write something about whether I REALLY needed to upgrade my Flash player. For the past few months I've been experiencing a problem accessing Flash sites. I get a message saying I need the latest Flash player. I know I have the latest Flash player because the first couple times it happened I downloaded a new version, but it didn't fix the problem. I thought it would be interesting to see how many sites that I couldn't view actually contained anything I really needed to see. After several months I found that there were a couple of sites that I thought might interest my daughter, so I sent her the link, but other than that nothing.

The strange thing is, when I sat down to write my blog this-morning and to get some screen grabs to illustrate the problem I found that all the sites that I had a problem with seem fine.

I spotted an interesting news story relating to copyright this week reported by the Open Rights Group. A Doctor Who fan who goes by the screenname Mazzmatazz  is being asked by the BBC's legal department to remove knitting patterns from her web site. The patterns were for making two Doctor Who characters, the Adipose and the Ood

.

It seemed like a bit of an over-reaction to me, and completely at odds with the efforts they are making to encourage creativity with the Dr Who Trailer Maker, featured on this site earlier in the week. The patterns were not being sold, and in fact were made available under a Creative Commons licence. According to the BBC the toys were being sold on eBay and this is what the BBC were attempting to stop by their action.

I had a quick look on eBay, but unfortunately there don't appear to be any on sale, There is however, for anyone interested, a fabulous looking Tom Baker era knitted scarf hand knitted by the seller's mum!

I also had a look on the Blue Peter web site and found instructions on how to make a Sword in the Stone pencil and a Simpsons Sitting Room, neither of which, I suspect, are copyright of the BBC.

Anyway, I'm off to put the Tardis Bird Feeder I made earlier onto eBay. 

I've just received an email update from the National Theatre, advertising The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other. Underneath a large image advertising the show was the following text:

Intrigued by this obscure message I wanted to know more, so I clicked and dragged my mouse to highlight the surrounding text. Having exposed it, I clicked the link to view the email if you can't see the graphics (sadly there wasn't one to click if you couldn't see the text).

-------- We have sent you this email as you opted-in to receive information from the National Theatre when you registered online, booked tickets or took out a membership with us. To change your contact details, or to add/remove yourself from a list or to unsubscribe from this list (or all our lists you are subscribed to) login at this link and update your details. If you can't login and you want to remove your details from our lists, reply to this email with unsubscribe in the subject line. To forward this e-mail to a friend or colleague, visit this link -------- Registered name: The Royal National Theatre Company no: 749504 registered in England Charity no: 224223 Registered office: Upper Ground, London SE1 9Px

 

 As I suspected, the text was white on a black background, and the background was set to black using a style in the HTML header.

There are two lessons to be learned from this example, firstly always test your email in several email clients, not just the one you use, before you broadcast it.

Secondly, don't use styles in the HTML header as several clients, particularly web based ones (in this case Yahoo) will ignore the style.

Two news stories caught my eye this week, firstly the announcement that EMI were planning to cut 2000 jobs and secondly the news that Facebook had been asked to pull Scrabulous.

One of EMI's reasons for the cuts is the loss of sales of CDs due to internet downloads. Maybe if EMI had put more effort into developing new methods of delivery at the start of the decade, rather than going down the costly route of using legal challenges to protect their existing position, they might not be faced with the situation they find themselves in. 

Hopefully for the sake of Hasbro, and the estimated 500,000 or so people who play each day, they will find a way to resolve this without lengthy court battles, and with some form of the Scrabble game remaining on Facebook. If not, I'm sure it won't be long before someone comes up with a new game that's just as addictive, but not copyrighted by Hasbro.