Around the Office is a weekly group blog of what the Kobayashi Online team has found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week.
Iframes and Email Don’t Always Mix
Roberto would never send you an iframe in an email message because iframes don’t consistently work in email. Why does this matter? Whether they know it or not, people use the iframe tag when embedding video from services like YouTube. When you, for instance, copy one of these online videos into an email, you’re not guaranteed that it will display. Roberto recommends sending a link instead.
MP3 Fees Proposed for German DJs
Daveed felt German performance rights organization GEMA went too far when it proposed that DJs in German nightclubs should be charged a 13-cent per track fee for MP3s under five minutes in length and a 20% increase in price for each additional minute. As Techdirt reports, it’s unclear whether GEMA would be assessing this fee for each track played or each track on the hard drive. Either way, it seems in their unflinching desire to protect the rights of artists, GEMA could be running venues into the ground.
You Can’t Always Get the Page You Want
David thought it was funny and appropriate when he found out the Rolling Stones 404 error page (for a missing page) plays the band’s 1969 single “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. While it would be nice if visitors never landed on 404 pages, humour can be a good way of defusing the situation. Of course, there are other great ideas and examples of creative 404 pages. After getting a 404 error, we like pages that help you find the page you were looking for, and if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.