Dominare writes "The BBC is reporting that Adobe is releasing new player software which will allow websites that use their Flash video player (such as YouTube) to force viewers to watch ads before the video they selected will play. 'But the big seller for Adobe is the ability to include in Flash movies so-called digital rights management (DRM) — allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts, or restrict copying. "Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it," James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research said.' This seems to have been timed to coincide with Microsoft's release of their own competitor, Silverlight, to Adobe's dominance of online video."

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A blue post on the WoW forums shows that blizzard's official stance on player aversion to the Armory will be addressed by adding a new item, the Tinfoil Hat. "While the Tinfoil Hat provides the wearer with added protection against mind control and other befuddlements, the hat's most interesting and truly unique property is that it completely removes the wearer's character profile from the Armory website and provides enhanced privacy for its wearer!"

Edis Krad writes "An CNN Money article previews the Hot Toys for 2007 from this past week's Toy Fair. The article is a great place to start looking through the hundreds of new products that were on display at the annual industry event. Among those featured in the article, I was particularly impressed with the Video Journal (blogging for kids?), the virtual bicycle (apparently, riding a real bicycle isn't cool enough anymore), and last but not least, the robotic parrot, that oddly reminds me of the replicant owl in Blade Runner. For more details on tech toys at the event, IEEE Spectrum has a rundown on the nerdier toys available. Artificial snow and a pre-assembled Mentos/Coke kit were two of that journalist's favorites. For different perspectives Forbes has a look at the toy business as it stands since last week, and Wired's Luddite column crabs that kids have too many techie toys nowadays. Dagnabit."

Patrick Robib, a blogger who wrote his own blogging engine called Forest Blog recently noticed that none other than the MPAA was using his work, and had completely violated his linkware license by removing all links back to the Forest Blog site, not crediting him in any way. The MPAA blog was using the Forest Blog software, but had completely stripped off his name, and links back to his site. He only found about it accidentally when he happened to visit the MPAA site.