Screen Savers

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has tentatively rejected a patent that had given a small La Costa, Calif., company broad rights over any sort of advertising in computer software programs. The decision marks the second time in recent months that the agency has thrown out a broad patent that had drawn widespread protest from the software industry. The earlier decision quashed a patent held by Compton's New Media of Carlsbad, Calif., on multimedia search and retrieval processes.

Executives from major Internet players -- Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. -- are due for a grilling about online privacy in a Senate committee hearing today, but the company likely to get the most scrutiny is a small Silicon Valley start-up called NebuAd Inc.

Online pop-up ads do not violate trademark laws even if they cover up or appear alongside unaffiliated Web sites, including those of rivals, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee also placed some of the responsibility for those ads on computer users, saying they voluntarily agree to them, even if they do so unwittingly. Lee's ruling Friday came in a lawsuit filed last year by U-Haul International Inc. against WhenU.com, a company blamed for some of the pop-ups.

From flea-market finds to bed knobs and broomsticks, no scrap is left unturned for artist Laura VanLandingham's picture frames and mirrors. VanLandingham, who calls herself a third-generation flea-market junkie, crafts eclectic pieces from recycled junk or treasures, depending on your view. A reformed jewelry designer and pack rat, VanLandingham scavenges for materials. She has searched through an old, flooded house on the Russian River and been known to explore friends' backyards.

It seems you can't go to a fast-food restaurant or department store these days without tripping over movie-related merchandise. And it's beginning to be true in the personal computer software market and on the World Wide Web as well. The latest entry is Disney Interactive's "Toy Story Animated Story Book" ($35), which follows earlier CD-ROMs of similar nature tied to "The Lion King" and "Pocahontas."

Hip-hop star Nelly did it. Madonna is doing it. And British rock group Radiohead has plans to do it -- that is, to boost music sales by reaching out to fans through mobile phones. With sales of CDs on a three-year slide, the music industry sees mobile phones as powerful outlets for promoting artists and a new way of distributing music for profit -- something it failed to do in the early days of Internet music-swapping.

There was ample praise to go around Thursday for those who helped to make Los Angeles Baptist Junior/Senior High School's new $1.75-million library and media center a reality, but in the end all the credit went to God. Quoting Psalms 127:1, Principal Gary Smidderks told students, faculty, parents and guests invited for the dedication ceremony that "unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it."