Notes from a wireframe world

As you may well know, Google recently pulled out of the Chinese market, due in no small part to the Chinese’s hacking of Google’s servers.

Flowers for Google

Well since this blog isn’t currently blocked by china I thought I’d reprint China’s rules on Google reporting.

—- Official Chinese reporting rules —–

All chief editors and managers:

Google has officially announced its withdrawal from the China market. This is a high-impact incident. It has triggered netizens’ discussions which are not limited to a commercial level. Therefore please pay strict attention to the following content requirements during this period:”

A. News Section

1. Only use Central Government main media (website) content; do not use content from other sources

2. Reposting must not change title

3. News recommendations should refer to Central government main media websites

4. Do not produce relevant topic pages; do not set discussion sessions; do not conduct related investigative reporting;

5. Online programs with experts and scholars on this matter must apply for permission ahead of time. This type of self-initiated program production is strictly forbidden.

6. Carefully manage the commentary posts under news items.”

B. Forums, blogs and other interactive media sections:

1. It is not permitted to hold discussions or investigations on the Google topic

2. Interactive sections do not recommend this topic, do not place this topic and related comments at the top

3. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which attack the Party, State, government agencies, Internet policies with the excuse of this event.

4. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which support Google, dedicate flowers to Google, ask Google to stay, cheer for Google and others have a different tune from government policy

5. On topics related to Google, carefully manage the information in exchanges, comments and other interactive sessions

6. Chief managers in different regions please assign specific manpower to monitor Google-related information; if there is information about mass incidents, please report it in a timely manner.

We ask the Monitoring and Control Group to immediately follow up monitoring and control actions along the above directions; once any problems are discovered, please communicate with respected sessions in a timely manner.

Additional guidelines:

– Do not participate in and report Google’s information/press releases

– Do not report about Google exerting pressure on our country via people or events

– Related reports need to put [our story/perspective/information] in the centre, do not provide materials for Google to attack relevant policies of our country

– Use talking points about Google withdrawing from China published by relevant departments

—- End of Rules —-

OK so what does this all mean? Well, I think China is concerned about the effect Google’s pull out will have both to their own citizens (i.e. making them more aware of China’s censorship methods) and other companies (i.e. Microsoft). To do this they are controlling the source of the news, This same line of thinking also explains why it is discouraging investigative reporting — a key pillar of journalism in the western world and online media is being strong-armed as well. The key to this point is that websites cannot have any media or stories that “have a different tune from government policy.”

It’s clear that things like the rows of flowers that Chinese citizens put in front of the Google logo sends the wrong message to its citizens, and China’s relying on the media to clean it up and tow the line.

Firstly Happy new year!

Sorry it’s been a while, however I’ve been busy writing code for a new project called TwitterBrite. It’s a twitter client for windows, that similar to applications like hootsuite allows users to post RSS feeds to twitter and search it for useful people to follow, however it solves one of the major drawbacks I see with hootsuite, that of security.

Hootsuite is a purely web based application, if something goes wrong with it (for example it starts re-posting old RSS entries, or spamming your followers with direct messages) their is nothing you can do about it, sure you can login and terminate your account, but as happened to a couple of services last year, what if you can’t login?

Control is I believe one of the biggest stumbling blocks for company wishing to access the power of social media, the what if something goes wrong argument.

Anyway as part of this project, I’ve been working on a .net based DLL that provides an interface for the Bit.ly URL shorten (which TwitterBrite will use) you can download it and a, hopefully useful, read me file from us here.

P.S. The DLL isn’t open source, however if you want the code, drop me a line. If you’re a business and want to keep it close source, I’m willing to sell it, providing I get a free life time upgrade/resell permissions for my products, if you’re interested in making it open source, that fine as well, just as long as you can show your going to move the interface forward.

It’s oh-so enticing: you find a copy of a brand new game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on a pirate site and the temptation to download it is too strong.

Well, that temptation may have cost up to 1 million users of Microsoft’s Xbox Live the ability to use that service. According to a report in InformationWeek, Microsoft has banned as many as a million players from Xbox Live for altering their consoles in order to play pirated versions of games.

This week, Activision’s new Call of Duty was released, and InformationWeek speculated that because pirated versions of the game appeared on various sharing sites in advance of the release, the game’s developer may have exhorted Microsoft to enact the bans.

“Xbox 360 consoles are equipped with digital rights management technologies designed to detect pirated software,” InformationWeek wrote, “but some players have successfully ‘modded,’ or modified, their machines to circumvent DRM protections.”

Even if someone has been banned, their Xbox will still play offline games, InformationWeek said. But it’s not at all clear if the bans are permanent or if Microsoft will allow those who have been booted from Xbox Live to return at some point down the line.

In a statement Microsoft said: its “commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of the Xbox Live community remains a top priority. All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and modifying their Xbox 360 console violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live. We can assure you that if an Xbox Live member follows the Xbox Live terms of use, purchased a retail copy of Modern Warfare 2 and played the game on an unmodified Xbox 360, no action will be taken.”

And on the Xbox support page, Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, has addressed some of the circumstances that could lead to a player’s being banned.

“Players who find their Gamertags banned from Xbox Live have wound up in that situation due to violations of the Xbox Live Terms of Use,” Major Nelson wrote.

“The Xbox Live team monitors players for not just cheating, but also for things like threats, racism, profanity, and just being an all around poor sport and ruining the game for others.

“When a Gamertag comes up as violating our policies for online behavior, the person who owns that Gamertag is punished by being banned from the service. Keep in mind, this isn’t just a ban on a particular game. This is a ban on the Xbox Live service as a whole, so you won’t be able to go online at all during your ban. Initially, you may be banned for a day, a week, or depending on severity, permanently! Kiss that $50 goodbye.”

From CNET

I’ve complained a number of times about the attitude of some web professionals towards throes who are stuck using IE6 (or 7 or for that matter 8). The convert or your a moron attitude, will always fail to win converts, especially when the people your calling morons have no choose about what browsers they are stuck using.

Thankfully people are starting to lesion and start thinking how throes people who are stuck using old out-of-date browsers can still access high performance websites like Google wave.

First their was the “Hay IT” campaign which still used the same bully boy tactics but at least was targeting the right people.

Now Google have released Chrome Frame a plug in for IE 6, 7 or 8 on the PC (If your using Linux or a Mac and are using IE… then maybe you are a moron… as your default browser will be better) that will allow you to experience the power of a standards complaint web browser without having to upgrade yours.

Chrome Frame won’t over write IE and the Chrome engine is only called if a special meta tag is found on the web page, and it’s unknown if throes IT departments who won’t allow users to use a good browser will allow people to install Chrome Frame, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

It started as a joke, Microsoft has been banned from selling word… ha ha ha how we laughed, Word the cornerstone of Microsoft office, which is of courses the cornerstone of Microsoft non OS business, how can Microsoft be banned from selling word.

But it wasn’t a joke, Yesterday a court rules that M$ had just 60 days to stop selling word and pay some small Canadian company $240Million.

It appears Microsoft infringed some patent that this Canadian company had, something about saving documents as XML.

But of course we laughed, this type of thing happens all the time small companys try it on with bigger ones, hoping to cash in on some idea they never got round to doing anything with. Microsoft will appeal and it will all be sorted out.

Microsoft even said so themselves, “We are disappointed by the court’s ruling. We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid. We will appeal the verdict,”

Then the bombshell that stopped us laughing

“We saw [the Canadian companies product] some time ago and met its creators. Word 11 will make it obsolete,” said Martin Sawicki, a member of Microsoft’s XML for Word development team, in an e-mail to a colleague. “It looks great for XP though,”

The product not only existed, and was making money, but Microsoft where aware of it. The e-mail may as well have said, “Don’t worry were Microsoft, we can screw over who we like”. It is not surprising then that the Judge ordered Microsoft to stop selling word (or as is likely to release a patch that will stop the functionality that falls under the patent, from working.)

this could be really disastrous for Microsoft. Do you want to open your .docx or .xlsx file you saved last week? Well sorry you’ll need to install OpenOffice to do so!