A relaxed weekend

A warm and woolly heart
Originally uploaded by sbisson.

I spent a happy weekend knitting and watching ER; I'm particularly pleased with managing to knit this heart cushion as a Valentine present for Simon *while he was in the room as lot of the time*; I also finished picking up stitches around the sleeve of a jumper I've been knitting for over a decade (first arm much too wide and long so I needed to rip back, which is tricky in intarsia - I may finish the sleeves this week and then decide what to do about the collar and if it doesn't need facings and a button band that would be it!). A low-key but lovely Valentine weekend...

Did you want the UK government to implement the Google book settlement all on its own?

Action on Author's Rights points out that to the government, authors wanting to be paid for their work and control their licensing is seen as a 'logjam'.

"The governments of France and Germany sent briefs to the court urging the rejection of the settlement. The government of India made diplomatic representations to the government of the United States.

In recent weeks, the sorry truth has been emerging: in Britain the New Labour government supports the Google Book Settlement, and has done from the start."

If you;re wondering about the point of view of the author - rather than whether it means you can get cheap ebooks - have a read of http://www.gillianspraggs.com/gbs/GBS_survival_aid.html

Windows Phone Series 7 will have single sign in, Windows Phone Series 7 Web site doesn't

What's with the Windows Phone Series 7 marketing ghetto?

Microsoft is pimping a community around Windows Phone 7 Series with forums and the promise of exclusive videos, live chats and swag - but for the first time in a long time, I've had to create a new username and password; I couldn't use Windows Live ID or Facebook Connect or OpenID to sign into this! Er, why? You can still make people set up a profile if you allow sign in via a federated account like Live ID or Facebook or OpenID and you don't make people hate you for giving them another username and password to forget - or to make the same as all their other logins because they can't be bothered. And you get points and status on the site - but there's no bragging rights on other services, unlike Ribbon Hero.

Identity FAIL, Windows Phone team - and viral marketing FAIL

Also, there don't seem to be many Microsoft folk in the discussions yet; there are four pages of comments from people asking whether the platform has multi-tasking, arguing about why you would need it, demanding that it has multi-tasking... there isn't one official reply from Microsoft in there, although someone who describes themself as 'International Partner Account Manager at Microsoft Partner in the Netherlands' (and an iPhone user) says it won't have multi-tasking. Are they an official spokesperson? Their profile doesn't say so. But then neither does the profile of Marshall the moderator - there is no way to tell quickly who's speculating and who's conveying official information.

So engagement FAIL and identity FAIL together...

And my picture over there - which I had to add to my profile by uploading, not by linking to any of my existing networks, has my head cut off because I can't choose how the thumbnail is made. This is very 2007!

That's cool: Win 7 libraries organise Start menu search

Oh, I like that. I just made a new Library in Windows 7 to organise the various folders I have recordings in. I was looking for a folder I wanted to add to the library so I searched for it from the Start menu - and alongside the familiar Documents and Video and OneNote and Explorer headings for my search results was a brand new one; the name of my new library. If I've named a recording file for who I spoke to or where we spoke, I can search for the person or place and see very clearly that some of the results are things I've classed as recordings. I like the feature - and I like that after a solid 14 months playing with Windows 7 I can still find new and delightfully useful features in it.

TechRadar: Adobe still angling for Apple Flash support

There are a lot of myths in the Apple/Adobe arguments about Flash; Adobe is keen to give its side of the story, and make a point about ubiquity.How much of the Web do you get without Flash? Not much, says Adobe somewhat pointedly. Which phones will have Flash? Flash 10.1 and Air will be on smartphones and tablets, on Palm and Android and LiMo – but not on iPad and iPhone...

I covered this for TechRadar today: Adobe believes that Apple is missing a trick by not supporting Flash on either its popular iPhone or its forthcoming iPad, with the company pointing out that 85 per cent of the top 100 sites use the company's technology.