The UpStream (Page 469)

The type of business that Home Depot is in comes with a huge potential for high worker's compensation claims. In fact, several years ago the claims averaged $1 million per year until Michael Powell designed a device that could save countless fingers among other body parts lost and swept under the steel shelves. Powell presented the simple device and the company agreed to test it in 8 stores with incredible success that resulted in lowering claims to $7,000 the next year. Powell was willing to sell them the device for $2,000 a piece but Home Depot decided to thank Powell by giving him the finger, which they were still able to do thanks to his device. When Powell's claim on the invention was brought up at a meeting a Home Depot exec responded with,

F**k Michael Powell. Let him sue us.

Nintendo, makers of every family-friendly mini-game collection ever, has been battling pirates for years. In 2007, they petitioned the Hong Kong High Court to help them stop came copier devices. Apparently this petition didn't do the trick because they have ramped up the process.

This week the filed suit against a company that owns and operates several websites that "sell illegal video game copiers." The company, NXPGAME, has been under investigation by Nintendo for quite some time. The investigation found that the sites were enabling users to download, play and distribute illegal DS and DSi games.

Facebook hackers be aware! A new feature will be implemented on Facebook to prevent hackers from entering your account. Pretty soon users will only be permitted to access their profile from "approved" computers and handheld devices (mobile phones and iTouch.) With over 400 million "Facebooker's" across the world, the site felt that security needed to be heightened a bit.

While we may have spoken of FarmVille in the past, it isn't really popular among the PLuGHiTz Live! staff. It is, however, very popular among Facebook users. While it doesn't cost any money to play, you do have the ability to purchase in-game items with real world money, in the form of Facebook Credits - the only currency that Facebook allows on its network.

Facebook Credits are 30% profit for Facebook and 70% for the vendor who accepts them. While a very lucrative deal for Facebook, Zynga, the creator of FarmVille, wants more of the money. Facebook, on the other hand, has no interest in negotiating.

I bet most of you forgot about Google Docs but the good news is that Google didn't, or did they? Google acquired the company DocVerse in an effort to create a more Microsoft Office like software suite based on cloud computing. Recently, the director of Microsoft's online product management team, Alex Payne made the argument that Google Docs isn't something that should be used to replace or augment Microsoft Office. When you use Google Docs to convert Office files you lose data consistency such as page breaks, charts, SuperArt and more. To prove his point he gave a demonstration that can be watched below. To explain why consistency issues do not arise when copying Office files to Office Web Apps Payne stated,

If you have a document that was created in Office and you upload it to our Office web apps (Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote) the document will look almost identical when you view it in the browser (IE, Firefox and Safari) *and* we maintain the components in the doc even if you don't see them in the Web.

Hit the break for a quote from Google and a video about the service.

A few weeks ago we talked about Apple being hardcore anti-Flash and the unusual relationship forming with Microsoft Silverlight but Adobe isn't going to take it sitting down after Apple stated last month that developers have to use programming tools based on open standards and not proprietary technology such as Flash. Just two weeks prior to this Steve Jobs released a public letter with 6 reasons why Apple chose not to use flash. The main points focus on supposed technical drawbacks and lack of common interests between the 2 companies. Adobe has responded by taking out advertisements in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, among other newspapers and websites. The "Adobe Loves Apple" campaign can be summed up in a single quote by Adobe founders,

In the end, we believe the question is really this: Who controls the World Wide Web? "And we believe the answer is: nobody -- and everybody, but certainly not a single company.