The question of the day seems to be "Are tweets subject to copyright?" There have been a number of posts around the blogosphere grappling with this concept and no clear consensus has emerged. You might well ask "does it matter?" I mean can you really write anything in 140 characters that someone else would even want to plagiarize? I think it becomes more significant when these seemingly off-the-cuff remarks get published beyond the confines of twitter. For instance, Stephen Fry may, or may not, now be regretting his tweet that Jade Goody was like "a kind of Princess Di from the wrong side of the tracks" but once that sort of comment is out there it is very difficult to control. And don't be surprised if you see more and more of this sort of lazy journalism. And what about Facebook updates? Are these private mesages between friends where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, or are they public broadcasts that can be freely repeated in the media?

Another area of law that is about to embrace twitter is that of libel after Courtney Love allegedly posted messages accusing her former fashion designer, Dawn Simorangkir, of being a "nasty, lying, hosebag thief"; having "a history of dealing cocaine"; having "lost all custody of her child"; and, being guilty of "assault and burglary". Not surprisingly Simorangkir has lodged a libel claim in the Los Angeles Superior Court seeking punitive damages, arguing that the comments have destroyed her reputation and her business. Court papers laying out the claim state: "Whether caused by drug-induced psychosis, a warped understanding of reality, or the belief that money and fame allow her to disregard the law, Love has embarked on what is nothing short of an obsessive and delusional crusade to destroy Simorangkir's reputation and her livelihood."

I think the one thing we can all be sure of is that this wont be the last time that twittering ends up in a court case.

For those of you who have downloaded the new Internet Explorer 8, you may have seen the many accerlators and plugins available to enhance your website browsing experience. I particularly like the CoolIris plugin for viewing image sets, whether that be on google, facebook, flickr or any other image library. Try it here...

http://www.ieaddons.com/gb/photos-videos/

To kick off the 'Every day can be a stir fry day' campaign a page dedicated specifically to Stir Fry has just launched on the Blue Dragon website.  The aim is to educate and inspire consumers to stir fry any day of the week, supporting offline DM and on-pack sales promotion activity.  The page includes daily recipe suggestions, videos, tips and a competition.

For more information, click here 

Metaplace.com more than just a virtual world.  You can build a world on Metaplace.com and you can build a world on your web page or blog, but best of all its drag and drop, you can build your own games etc etc.  Still in beta and so you have to apply to get access to it which can take weeks ... from what I hear it is well worth it.

 And here is a explaination of how it works from the founder Ralph ...

This week Google has invested in a Silicon Valley startup company called Pixazza, who have developed a system for embedding online ads into pictures that appear when a users mouse hovers over them. Pixazza's CEO Bob Lisbonne says that the system "hopes to do for images what Google’s AdSense did for web pages." The system looks a little like this:

Interestingly, rather than using a complex and highly secretive alogorithm to analyse the pictures in order to display relevant ads, it uses "a distributed workforce of product experts" - otherwise known as people.

CTO and founder James Everingham, said "Pixazza’s unique technical advantage is its crowdsourcing platform. No computer algorithm can identify a black pair of Jimmy Choo boots from the 2009 fall collection as well as a person. Rather than rely on computer algorithms, our platform enlists product experts to drive the process."

Surely it can't be long before Google starts to use this to embed ads into StreetView?

You can read more about Pixazza in an interview with Bob Lisbonne here.