I don't know if you caught it but Aaron (Greasemonkey) and I had a pretty good conversation the other day about his application which led to some pretty wise words (mostly from him). But back to the point, it generalizes to this: in a highly digital marketplace, there is no longer any practical downside to stealing. In meatspace, duplicated cassettes or CDs aren't as good as the real ones, and don't come with the liner notes. Outright stealing is risky and can lead to arrest. Borrowing means that you eventually have to return. These downsides evaporate online. MP3s are just as good no matter how many copies you make, you can get the liner notes (better ones) at allmusic.com (without looking at ads with a handy greasemonkey script), and it's virtually impossible to get caught. And more... On the other hand, this will only go so far, and I think that businesses will have to invent value-adds over raw data that will justify watching an advertisement or paying a subscription fee, such as really good UIs or prizes interspersed in the ads. Lastly, I think there will probably be laws very soon that make it illegal in a black and white way to scrape content off a site, or scrape away its ads. People who do it, or distribute devices to do it will get in serious trouble. Note that I don't think GM qualifies because it was not created for this purpose. This is similar to betamax not being created to enable illegal copies, but that simply being one of it's many potential uses. All very wise words and in more ways than one I agree entirely. The thing is with the move to digital sometimes the rip-off is actually "better" than the original. For example, an illegal MP3 doesn't contain crippling DRM but is free to use on any device you own. To get the same level of flexibility from legal music downloads you need to pay for the file and then go through the hassle of cracking the DRM, making the whole concept of "legal download" fall apart... This reminded me of my recent UK trip when our business partner Andy and I decided to watch the newly released "The Incredibles" DVD (which I had earlier seen in the plane) -- as always with Disney the thing was filled with a good 3 minutes of unskippable (on most players anyway) ads for other movies. Now I like watching trailers to 20 year old re-re-released films as well as low quality knock-offs as much as the other guy but do you think that the guy that buys the DVD for $2 in a Cairo side-street will need to endure that? I also doubt that pirated DVDs try to scare the crap out of you with those nice little FBI warnings. -- So let me get this straight, I buy the thing full price, have to watch ads AND you're threatening me? No wonder I'm your client...

Poor Sony, first they get fined $90 million and now it has come out that their PSPs are just not selling as well as planned. It could pick up but it doesn't seem like this thing is going to become as ubiquitous as the PS2 any time soon. Caught that on Slashdot via Gametab.

I love The Simpsons because in between all the slapsticks and d'ohs you get some of the most unpredictable and informed jokes ever to come out of a regular series. Still, I was completely amazed to find out that in the latest episode Mobile Homer this phrase pops-up, "Bring back our children, you Cyprus-splitting jerks!" -- This is going to make the news here. UPDATE: And it has made the news! -- Government Spokesman Kypros Chrysostomides yesterday told the Cyprus Mail that Homer’s comments “do not alter the relations between Turkey and Cyprus”. Classic!

BetaNews has just announced some of the specs for the strangely named Photoshop CS 2 (I'll still call it Photoshop 9). Over the years, I have found that every new version of Photoshop has come with features which I felt were less and less valuable to me. The Magic Wand, Export for Web and Palette Dock are some of the few "newer" features I use regularily. I still remember (Photoshop 4?) the first time I got to play with multiple undos, now that was a big new feature. So while Photoshop has become consistently better it hasn't excited me all that much with any must-have feature. That is, until I read this: Users will also be able to scale images with less quality loss than previous Photoshop versions. Scaling, while very competent, has always been a bit of a hit and miss affair especially when working with tricky things such as rasterized vectors. I might look into this one closer then.

There are quite a few established design link portals around but I thought I should mention Newstoday as it's one that visit most regularily. I enjoy the community involvement and the fact that they allow readers to post straight to the front-page. Surprisingly, it's all very civilized, I guess designers know how to behave. I also enjoy the straight "linkage" provided by the likes of LinkdUp or Moluv -- no fluff just quality links. I plan (once I have moved to my own server) to have a simple link list (not a blogroll but something far more ephemeral) somewhere on the right as I come across quite a few links which are great but just don't require a write-up. I also post to the great ProjectNeo which brings me great pleasure but also face to face with some pretty strange submissions. I have been a bit slack lately, time to rectify that...

If you particularily hate this site and would like to waste a few minutes then visit the very silly yet totally brilliant NetDisaster for some quick relief. Depressingly it also clearly reminds me of how poor the Flash plug-in performance is in Firefox, give us version 8 now!

As all ego-centric bloggers like myself regularily do I checked my stats today to see whether my three readers were up to. While the numbers are completely uninteresting (and to be quite honest, unimpressive) the browser stats were quite an eye opener: over 50% of people reading my ramblings are doing so with Firefox. Admitedly, people coming here are usually internet/computer "professionals" so the higher than average Firefox adoption is to be expected but over half? Now that's good news. Funnily enough, my spelling of "hitchiker" (missing H) from a previous post does get a me a few Google hits -- won't be fixing that then.

In a previous post I mentioned how Greasemonkey could make things a bit akward for site reliant on advertising and today I find that you can add a small script that will disable Greasemonkey for your site. From the ever so talented Dean Edwards comes a nifty little script. Insert that little script in your page and GreaseMonkey is no more. The downside is of course, advertisers can do this too… Downside? Yeah maybe for some but I like the idea of site owners being able to control the way their code displays... UPDATE: from Aaron Boodman (Greasemonkey project lead) -- This way to prevent greasemonkey is caused by a bug in greasemonkey which will be fixed soon. -- Site owners would best avoid wasting the effort. There is no non-legal way to control the way your content is rendered. Thanks for the update Aaron, but what do you mean by "non-legal way"? MORE UPDATE: When you create an HTML webpage, you cede any claim on it's presentation *technically*. I can't speak for legally, which is why I said 'no non-legal way'. More in the comments if you're interested.

AFP (Agence France Presse) is now officially the first news agency to spoil the party by suing Google over its Google News service. Ars Technica's Hannibal thinks this is quite possibly the "dumb thing to do": Think about it. AFP sells subscriptions to its content, so when you click through to AFP's site from Google News you're hit with a sign-up page. So Google News is sending tons of potential subscribers to AFP, and they're doing it for free. Quite true, and being in the news business you'd think that AFP would be used to everyone ripping off their content. Many small papers consitently rewrite newswires without having to pay any fee so why the big deal about Google? I thought AFP made most of its money from licensing to newspapers, like Reuters... Anyway, Hannbial continues: If I were Google, I'd drop AFP content from the news aggregator, regardless of whether or not they have a legal case. In fact, I'd drop anyone's content from Google News if they requested it. If they don't want high-value referrals sent their way for free, then so be it. Fewer content providers means that those of us who appreciate the referrals have a better chance of getting prominent links on Google News' front page. I think that Google could easily afford to remove all news sites that don't want to play ball. It's going to be interesting to see how this story unfolds.

Ooh, this is awfully good. More video player than website but still one of the most exciting campaigns I've seen in a while. Some of the gear is pretty cool too. Kudos to the motion designers on this one, truly excellent work.