Week in review: Go-go Google

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lure video publishers as well as designers to the Flash format.

But what if you built a Web site in Flash and no one could find it? That's the anxiety that attracted more than 100 Flash authors to a workshop during the conference. The main question on everyone's mind: whether Google indexes pages written in Flash as well as it does "static" Web pages, such as those written in HTML, SHTML, ASP and PHP.

The chief hazard is a site written entirely in Flash. Workshop leader Gregory Cox said that Google will treat that site as a single file. As a result, the site will lose out in important Google indexing metrics, like the ratio certain keywords make up within a page. On a 100 percent Flash site, Google will calculate that ratio based on the total word count of the site.

Flash developers also got an earful from copyright reformer Lawrence Lessig about how their platform of choice is perceived in the free-software world.

"Flash is the enemy," said Lessig, a Stanford University professor and board member of the Free Software Foundation, as he described the opinions of leading free- and open-source-software advocates. These advocates "hate Flash. They think that by participating in the Flash community, you are feeding the devil."

He argued that the digital age has created new demands for the sharing of content that old-media copyright law cannot meet. As a result, he said, outdated copyright law is casting a pall over creative expression and education.

Don't touch that dial
The public got its first view of the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin, who said he will continue favoring deregulation to foster change in the telecommunications industry. During an onstage interview at a cable industry convention in San Francisco, Martin also sounded off on the hot-button issue of TV indecency.

Kevin Martin
chairman, FCC

Martin is expected to put a higher priority on media indecency than his predecessor. Although Martin has not confronted this issue yet, he said the growing tide of complaints makes him take the issue seriously.

Meanwhile, executives from leading media companies who gathered at the conference, which was sponsored by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, said the government's Dec. 31, 2006, deadline for the transition to digital television is unrealistic.

"It's realistic if you're comfortable with chaos," one executive chided. "It's a probable disaster."

On a related note, the long-running icy relationship between high-tech and the cable industries may be thawing. A panel at the conference that included Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen sounded off on ways cable and Silicon Valley can collaborate.

Cable companies are now the nation's largest broadband Internet providers, giving the industry considerable power in dictating what consumers can get over their pipes. But both sides believe current trends could push the two together.

Allen, who owns a controlling stake in cable company Charter Communications, views the concept as a question of how to bring broadband to more devices in the living room. He added that compatibility between the cable network and a variety of devices, be they cell phones or set-top boxes, is essential for the industry to evolve.

Also of note
Canada's long-standing practice of barring news organizations from disclosing what's happening in certain court proceedings is being tested by Internet bloggers...Sony sold more than 500,000 PlayStation Portables during the handheld game player's first two days on the market in North America...Microsoft has urged businesses running Windows XP to upgrade their machines to take advantage of added security features, but only a quarter of corporate XP machines have been upgraded to Service Pack 2.