Good Week
It’s a wonderful time to be a lobbyist or lawyer, but then when isn’t it? The Office Open XML (OOXML) versus Open Document Format (ODF) struggle that was updated this week with more legal shenanigans, has now gone on longer than the fictional case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce in Dickens’ Bleak House. All of this flubber is meat and drink to the armies of fact-finders, letter writers, points-of-interest collectors, debate starters and other carrion that circle such a rich feast. The number of billable hours must be heading to stratospheric numbers as all of the above take their fees. Interested parties will doubtless be keen for this drip, drip, drip death by water torture to go on for a lot longer yet. Perhaps they will wake us when it’s over.

Bad Week
Dark days for players of Scrabulous, the game some say is the true power behind Facebook’s rise to world dominance. The social networking giant has been asked to pull the game by Hasbro and Mattel, maker of the rather-similar-now-you-come-to-mention-it board game of Scrabble. Created by Indian developers, and not under the instructions of Facebook apparently, Scrabulous is played by about half a million of us every day, while about two million have joined up for the game. Defenders say that some Scrabulous players go on to buy the card and tiles version, but they would say that, wouldn’t they? Any killing of Scrabulous would, in Scrabble parlance, leave Facebook holding a ‘Q’ with no ‘U’. Surely, if it has any sense at all, Facebook will attempt to cut a deal that suits all parties.

Word of the Week
Air. As in Apple MacBook Air or Adobe AIR. Innocent, fresh, absolutely necessary and now, seemingly, free to air.