Fire Island Blog

Peter Cashmore at Mashable is reporting that Cooqy has managed to bypass the recent MySpace Flash link blocking fix. Cooqy provides a Flash interface for searching and browsing eBay auctions and it would appear that their MySpace profile carries Flash widgets that (on my PowerBook at least, with Flash Player 9 installed) can successfully open new browser windows.

I’ve taken a quick squizz at the code and it seems that MySpace has not inserted the crucial allowNetworking=internal attribute into Cooqy’s widget embed code. Check it out:

<embed src="http://www.cooqy.com/cooqyMain.lzx?lzt=swf&debug=false&lzr=swf8" quality="high" scale="noscale" salign="lt"  width="500" height="600" bgcolor="#ffffff" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="server=http://www.cooqy.com&title=<i>Cooqy</i>"/>


So what’s different about Cooqy’s code and why has MySpace interpreted it differently? Well for a start they’re using Open Laszlo to power their site and to serve the widgets, just take a look at the src attribute above. Another thing that’s different is the string they’re inserting with the flashvars attribute.

It’s the flashvars line that seems to be causing getURL() actions to work, even when Flash Player 9 is installed. On closer inspection it seems to be the extra italic tags inserted into the flashvars attribute that causes the MySpace code parser to fail and to not insert that crucial allowNetworking=internal attribute. I’ve posted an example on my own MySpace profile and those extra italic tags do the trick. I too have a Flash widget (sort of) that can open new browser windows.

Try it yourself, does it work?

UPDATE:
MySpace have closed this loophole now

Well, this is a bit of a blow for any company building widgets targeted at MySpace users. In order to prevent the spread of Flash based adware worms, MySpace are inserting code into Flash objects that stops external links working. The latest version of Flash Player 9 is required for this ‘fix’ to actually work and you can bet ya life that MySpace are actively encouraging users to upgrade, indeed MySpace’s own video service now requires Flash Player 9.

I’ve just tried it myself and sure enough, Flash objects that have a simple getURL action written into them, which opens a site in new window, now fail to work when they are embedded in a MySpace profile. MySpace are actually inserting an extra parameter into the HTML code that users embed into their profile, namely allowNetworking=internal which prevents the Flash object from any communication with the browser, the chief use of which is usually to open a hyperlink to a third-party website. Now, obviously these techniques can be used for nefarious means and MySpace wouldn’t be doing their job if they didn’t protect their users from malicious attack. But in doing so they have crippled a great many legitimate, honest service providers.

This is potentially pretty catastrophic for any company that is using MySpace as a way to spread the word about their product or service. We hope that Fantasy Festivals will fall into this category in the future, once we have built our Flash posters.

There’s more detail at Techcrunch… MySpace security measure disables viral spread of widgets.

There’s an interesting article in the Guardian Technology supplement today titled What is the 1% rule? which looks at “an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will ‘interact’ with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.”

The article references statistics from YouTube, Wikipedia and Yahoo Groups and suggest that “a site that demands too much interaction and content generation from users will see nine out of 10 people just pass by.” This is clearly something to take into account when designing the new Festival Builder app.

Just read a great post called Outsourcing Choice, over at 37signals’ blog, about how too much choice can lead to “analysis paralysis” and actually prevent people from being productive.

“Options seem like a nice idea. But each one adds up. Once you realize the evil impact they can have, you start to look at them differently.”

Maybe it’s time to look at those Festival Builder screens again and ask ourselves if we really need all those options.

Following on from my last post where I learnt about the ‘Rimpa’ school of Japanese painting, I thought it might be interesting to compare my artwork before and after I had seen the original paintings. Is it any better? You decide… 

Before:

After:

We’re nearly ready to reveal the early-stage private beta of Fantasy Festivals that we’ve been building over the last few months. There’s still a fair way to go before we reach our shared vision of what Fantasy Festivals will become, but we’re getting there. We’ll keep you posted.