August 18, 2007 – StuffWeLike

Blizzard getting sued by Chinese firm

Yes well, thankfully it’s not the Chinese Government that’s going gung-ho this time. Blizzard Entertainment, the famous makers of the StarCraft series, the WarCraft series, and of course, World of Warcraft are getting sued by Chinese IT firm Founder Electronics Co., Ltd. Blizzard is sharing the pain with IT company The9, which handles WoW in China and Qingwentuwen company, which handles it in Beijing.

The offence? Nope, it’s not enslaving half of the Chinese population, but stealing five of the fonts made by Founder Electronics and using them in World of Warcraft. Awesome lawsuit strategy. Founder claims that they lost “One Billion Yuan” because of the whole thing, seeing as WoW itself snowballed into 7.5 million players. If my conversion is correct, that should translate to $131,648,235. Big money, indeed.

If some people are right, this is the largest intellectual property lawsuit in the land of the dragon as far as damages are concerned. It appears that Blizzard is in quite a spot.

[Via Xinhuanet]

Earn Community Respect

Since the dawning of social networking websites, the user has had the ability to design their pages however they wish. This has led to both good and bad designs. In some cases those designs make people runaway from your page! THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING! So I’m here to give you some Web 2.0 advice on how to solve this issue.

YouTube Profile

First choose the background for your page wisely. Usually a solid color is best, but if you want a image as your background be aware that others will be looking at your profile. Do not choose a image that’s overly flashy or distracting in anyway. Even if the image suits your personality, the idea is to get people to read your content – not be blinded by it.

Secondly avoid background music/video that automatically plays! Any sound that comes from a website is an automatic red flag to a user. They will quickly figure out how to turn it off and if they cannot within a couple of seconds they either have to turn off their own speakers or exit your page. If a visitor wants to listen or watch the content that you provide on your webpage allow them to do it manually.

The color and style of text is very important and always has been important since the creation of the Printing Press! Why would you bother to write something that no one can read? If you think it looks cute, the liklihood is that someone else thinks it looks dreadful. The way to avoid this is yet again simplicity. Times New Romain, size 12 = perfect. The color of the font depends on the background which the font is placed. Be aware that white text with a black background is hard to read. Read your profile information over and over and see how long you can stare at it without your eyes going blurry. If you can last at least 10 minutes without having any problems then you’ve chosen a good color.

In the world where anyone can create their own internet shrine, make sure that yours is user friendly. Why would you want to spend hours on something that only you read?