This award goes to Bureau van Dijk for messing up a perfectly workable user interface with flaky Javascript in an attempt to protect their MINT business information system.

Despite the fact that this is an (expensive) paid product, and one can actually export large amounts of information from within the web application, BvD have decided to disable all forms of copy and pasting, and right-clicking anywhere on their company report screens.

This is totally petty and breaks web ussability standards. “View Source” is not the only item on the usual contextual ‘right-click’ menu.

It makes copying small pieces of information, such as addresses or names, nearly impossible. The site employs useful javascript elsewhere, so simply turning it off to circumvent the petty little JavaScript “KeyListener” (yes, I have read your source code despite you trying to protect it) is pointless.

Congratulations BvD, you’ve just lost any respect I had for your system. I’d suggest you remove clunky JavaScript from your already over-clogged pages, and help improve user efficiency and experience.

Then you can concentrate on stabilising your web server.

Maybe I’ve just been unlucky but I’ve suffered a number of Internet outages over the past week.

This site was down for almost a whole day last week due to server problems.

Sites on the Blue Fish Network disappeared for a couple of hours last week due to a server reboot, and they seem to have disappeared again today. Grrr.

Anyone else experiencing problems recently, or is it just me?

Yet another scapegoat for Britain’s lack of physical activity: emails.

Doctors have hit on a cunning plan to transform fatties into slimline wonders: stop sending emails.

Health experts believe millions of hours of vital exercise are being lost every week thanks to the explosion in electronic messaging.

Once we walked to a colleague’s desk to pass on a filthy joke or reveal what the boss and his secretary were doing in the photocopier room for three hours during the office Christmas party. Now it is easier to tap a short note on the computer, hit the send button and the world knows in seconds what has happened. It’s great for gossip: bad for the figure.

Why must we continually target useful tools as somehow bad for our health?

Some internal emails are unnecessary, but perhaps Sport England, who are proposing an ‘Email Free Friday’ this week, would like to tell me how I can walk a message to all 200 head office staff, or send an important document to a colleague?

Emails are a useful tool. Are Sport England really gullible enough to think that stopping emails is going to compensate for people’s lack of exercise?

People should be eating properly and doing more regular exercise. Emails are not the curse or sole cause of this.

Instead of targeting individual activities, why not encourage people to take a holistic view of their lives. Instead of saying ’stop sending emails and walk to your colleagues desks’ why not say ‘take a look at what you eat and do every day, and see how you could make some improvements’.

Yes, it could mean sending less emails, but I doubt it. It would probably mean walking or cycling to work, eating a salad instead of chips, going to the gym 2-3 times a week, using the stairs instead of the lift…

Each individual needs to find their own ways of keeping fit. Blanket demonisation of individual things is plain stupid.

Whoa, shock to the system.

Just surfed on over to Blog Herald to discover the standard template and no articles except the default “Hello World” offering when you first install.

Something went funny?

Reminds me: I must backup my WP databases! Just in case…

I can now reveal the results of the online “Internet traffic experiment” thus far.

Of the 2476 people who visited my site between 1st June and 11th October 2005, as a result of searching for either “Sarah Beeny” or “Kirstie Allsopp” (and including common misspellings), just over three-quarters (1899 people, 77%) were looking for Sarah. The remaining 577 people, 23%, were looking for Kirstie.

This doesn’t include people coming in directly from other web site links, as it’s hard to tell who they were looking for.

So Sarah wins… for now.

Reading this today sickens me. Whatever your take on animal testing for medical purposes, threatening people with only a minor link to any proposed or actual animal testing facility is totally unacceptable.

I would have no problem with an animal rights organisation making such people aware of who they are involved with, but at the end of the day it’s an act of conscience for each individual.

ALF are no better than common terrorists when they actively endorse and encourage physical threats.

It is pathetic and doesn’t further the cause for fair treatment of animals.

Robin Webb, a pathetic spokesman for this terrorist organisation:

Robin Webb, a spokesman for the ALF and other militant animal rights groups, said that targeting these secondary and tertiary groups was a reasonable tactic.

He added: “If they are supplying Oxford University in any way and through that helping the progress of the proposed facility then they can be considered a target.” The Oxford facility, in South Parks Road, is only half constructed because the contractor Montpellier pulled out when its shareholders were targeted.

What will you do Robin? Dig up their dead relatives? Bombing? Shooting? When will your evil little band of thugs stop harrassing human beings?

Maybe we should dig around in your past to ensure that you have never had anything to do with any person or organisation that has ever had an affiliation with any animal testing facility. I doubt you’re totally clean (by your own standards).

Who hosts your website? What car do you drive? Where do you buy your groceries? Who built your house?

Come on, get real. You’re pickiing soft, irrelevant targets because you’re actually more interested in violence than liberation.

You don’t deserve to be listened to.

You should be treated like any other terrorist.

If you’ve ever fancied having your own blog, you now have two chances to get your very own, for free:

Wordpress.com giveaway

Top Dog Blogs is giving one lucky reader the chance to win a brand new Wordpress.com blog – you can’t just pick these little things up at the site – it’s pretty exclusive.

Scott writes:

What’s the catch? It’s easy. Read on…. All you have to do in 50 words or less is leave a comment on this post stating what you would like to blog about on your Wordpress.com blog and why you think you are the most deserving person to receive your very own Wordpress.com blog.

Read more here.

Blue Fish Network blog

Our free domain, web hosting, blog software and promotion competition is still open:

The rules are simple:

• Tell us your idea for a blog that would fit with the domain name you choose.
• Write a sample article, of between 100 and 250 words, that you’d post to the blog (a welcome message doesn’t count).

Find out more here.

Get writing

Why not enter both competitions – they both close on 31st October 2005, so get writing!

Published for Top Dog Blogs and the Blue Fish Network

Something I’ve not seen before is a feedback link next to the “Ads by Google” text that appears at the top or bottom of each AdSense ad block.

Clicking on it takes you to this page which explains what AdSense is, and also invites feedback on the ads to an email address.

I wonder if they are getting feedback, and what if any action they’ll take as a result.

I noticed this on ProBlogger so it might be a trial on sites known to perform well with AdSense. I’ve not noticed it on other sites yet.

I thought my Sarah Beeny / Kirstie Allsopp experiment was running out of steam.

Until last night at about 9pm.

Curiously enough, just after Property Ladder finished airing.

There’s still a fascination for all things Sarah.