UKFast is making a short series of podcasts from the festival and it’s a real eye opener talking to a lot of the musicians. In a niche genre like Jazz there are a lot of bands making their name solely through live performance, as opposed to album sales. Many of these talents are not shall we say of the Internet generation.

Despite this, they are becoming better known through a collection of websites that bring them to a wider audience. North West Jazz Works and the Manchester Jazz Festival are two resources that are allowing a wider audience to discover musicians and talents that may not have leapt online if left to their own promotion.

If you’re in Manchester this week, I can strongly recommend the free events. Have a look at the calendar to see what’s on when and maybe I’ll see you there.

The anti-virus companies are of course riding high on the reports. Symantec has teamed up with Yahoo to reach more users with its Norton software and Kaspersky labs is adding heat by warning us that malware is getting more sophisticated.

I think it is great that the government sees better technology education as a step to avoiding Internet crimes but I am often dubious when reports come out that are generated by the firms gaining the most from our heightened concerns. Often with no firm statistical evidence we are asked to accept that we are in more danger than ever before.

A quick search shows that we may be moving in this direction - the US Department of Justice is currently creating an extensive Cyber Crime survey to assess the impact on US businesses. It would be nice to see the UK government taking similar steps for the 1,500,000 businesses online in this country, not to mention the millions of home users.

These searches are bound to still have Google spit a lot of the old rubbish back at me, but nowadays the blogging explosion means that quite a lot of information on the web is now back to being produced by real, living, breathing people. Amidst the auto-generated pap, I’ll typically be able to read someone slagging off the latest USB powered keyboard warmer (and saying that Apple are about to come out with one that’ll revolutionise PC interface heating), and a few reviews of Brian Blessed’s astonishing performance on Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes.

The web is being repopulated by real content, now that it’s finally possible for totally non-technical types and geeks alike to get involved. As of this week, India can get involved too - now that the Indian government has lifted its recent blogging ban, that’s another billion people to contribute some real content to our web. Now, considering I was lying in the last paragraph and can find hardly anything about Brian Blessed’s astonishing performance on Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes, I’m hoping at least a few of the billion can get writing about this important matter. Real content! Let’s go!

Voice over IP, or VOIP, is quickly gaining popularity. I have my ridiculous Captain Scarlet-style headset waiting at home, in order to talk to people half the world away about our respective brands of reality TV and chocolate bars, and it seems that millions of other people are sailing with me in this good ship that we know as ‘HMS Free Internet Phone Calls’.

As the technology develops, it’s fairly certain a lot of telecommunication bods will be running a bit scared, or at least trying to hop onto the Skype bandwagon. I’m not worried about that - they’ll be fine, modern life is all about telecommunication, these VOIP systems still use the same sets of wires and all that, and hey the people working at massive telecomms companies can probably look after themselves.

What does bother me about this, and sometimes about internet technology in general, is the inexorable increase of complexity that advances tend to entail. Where art is frequently driven by the pursuit of new levels of simplicity and elemental forces, technological advance piles on complexity after complexity. Put simply, we now have phones that can crash and leave us shouting into a useless black box, and I can’t see the rise of VOIP making phonecalls any simpler.

It’s the old trade-off, stability and simplicity versus extra features and the wow factor. Ultimately I always believe in progress, but I think I’ll always feel unsettled that my phone conversation isn’t just passing through a couple of phone company exchanges, but through tens, maybe hundreds of computers. Pass the paper cups and string!

Julia Hobsbawn had just been talking about how new media has changed the landscape in terms of reporting news and the rise of the columnist within newspapers.

The question was ‘We know journalists can’t do without PR, but can PR now do without journalists?’

I agree with Julia’s answer, which was that we will need journalists as they are still a quality gauge and as such consumers have built a level of trust with them that the Internet is still some way off reaching.

Even when a business press release appears almost unchanged in a paper, it is much more credible for the public, because it has been chosen to appear on the pages of the publication than if it were on the company’s website.

Trust is still the most important commodity in terms of reaching an audience, but I wonder how long will it be before the Internet and globalisation make this less important and if they do, what might the world’s most important commodities become for reaching consumers in our global marketplace?

The new media in this case is the myriad of ways that we can use the Internet to reach all our stakeholders and customers and every single session included at least a passing glance to how we must change our thinking to incorporate the Net.

I was there producing a podcast for the conference, which I have been editing over the last few days. It will be online by tomorrow and I’ll include a link to it as soon as possible. It gives a flavour of the event and you’ll see just how prominent blogging and the Internet are.

In particular, the keynote speakers looked at the effect of social networking and the globalisation of information and stories.

More news on this soon…

Rank outsider sues Google over zero score
Music industry to sue Yahoo China
UK lawsuit proceeds against Russian MP3 site
Image-based spam on the rise

Yesterday, I promoted the opportunity for people to tell ICANN, the Internet’s ‘ruling body’ what they think ICANN should stand for and should be championing on behalf of the online world.

Probably one of the biggest issues is that of bringing into line with each nation an industry that connects us. Internet Law has to be one of the most difficult areas but most important to clarify.

As businesses, we know that loopholes in the law can often bring opportunities and increased wealth. The Internet seems full of loopholes that we are only just beginning to discover - or at least, official bodies are only just beginning to try and close.

Is there a way to create Internet Law and maintain it as a global community? Or are we going to see content restricted to specific geographical areas (as we already have in China).

When I bought a few cassettes from a Turkish market back in 1991, they were a fraction of the price they would be in the UK and yet there was no outcry or talk of the courts. The global reach of sites like allofmp3.com will be addressed in the British courts and beyond and then we will see the movie industry going through much of what the music industry has, unless Internet Laws are established and agreed upon.

But can you see this happening? And should the same competitive environment exist online that countries experience offline?

Both ICANN and the NTIA - an arm of the US government’s department of commerce are illiciting the world’s thoughts. Have a look at what people are saying and post up yourself at the ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee site.

Or alternatively, you can email the NTIA with your thoughts - but hurry, you only have until this Friday (7th July).

When you think about it - podcasting is a perfect form for this kind of information exchange. The organisers will not want to reveal everything from the event - as it devalues the experience for the delegates. At the same time they want to create a flavour of the day to raise the profile of the event, entice professionals in the sphere along to future conferences and promote their remit as a resource for the latest information on PR.

I’ll be plugging in to the mixing desk as well as catching up with the keynote speakers for more relaxed chats in order to put together an overview of one of the most important events in the PR calendar.

If you’d like to get hold of a ticket then try Don’t Panic, the event organisers and I’m sure they’ll be able to help you out.

Perhaps I’ll see you there and get a short interview out of you for the podcast?

IPTV will almost certainly be the way to watch TV programmes on your computer - or TV through a hard drive box before too long. But there’s a conflict thus far between the programme makers and the ISPs/telcos because one can’t do it well without the other and this kind of bandwidth doesn’t come cheap.

The paper talks about the need to offer better alternatives to piracy and the difficulties facing the big companies in trying to achieve this. One possible solution put by the writer Alexander Cameron is Google Ad Words and the personalisation of advertising.

However, it takes for granted that we do not mind Google discovering all about us in order to present us with the most relevant adverts. What with Google talking about listening to our TVs through our computers, how many consumers actually want this kind of intrusion?

One company that looks to be finding alternatives is Murdoch’s News Corporation the parent company of the UK’s BSkyB. In the last year he has made a series of interesting moves. As a content provider he needs to have a foothold in the Internet infrastructure, which explains the purchase of EasyNet an ISP. The other interesting purchase is MySpace which gives him influence over one of the largest online communities on the planet. So he is reaching the audience and finding ways to provide the content.

But is this a direction that other content providers can afford?

Users can create a lens, which is a simple web page that discusses one particular topic. And we all know that there are potentially millions of topics. It is being advertised as a marketing opportunity for individuals and businesses to promote information about a topic and then drive traffic to their own site. And there are signs that it is working

Behind the site is Seth Godin American marketer and writer of All Marketers are Liars. Seth promotes the feel good factor of marketing as well as an authentic approach to communication and he combines both in Squidoo.

The site allows you to post links to appropriate products on etail sites such as Amazon, eBay and Cafe Press and you can raise revenue from this either for yourself or charity. Each page is also sandwiched by Google Ads top and bottom. So the money raising potential is there and as each page concentrates on a particular topic, Google has an easy job to make the ads relevant to the audience.

On the downside, this kind of set-up seems open to abuse from people whose sole aim is to increase their links on the web. I believe it will have to be carefully administrated to make sure that the potency of the information is not diluted, because if that happens the community’s appeal may wane.

I am thinking of my own lens though…

Because outside the software-displaying boundaries of the computer screen is the computer itself. What does it consist of? Typically a screen, a keyboard, a mouse and a box of tricks with a medusa-head of wires popping out the back. Tech types will tend to view the box of tricks under the desk as the computer itself, and its attendant attachments merely tools plugged into the computer. Non-technical types will often refer to the screen as being the computer - after all, that’s where everything happens.

Well I think the whole caboodle needs to be present before you call it a personal computer, and it strikes me that this bitty existence is a bit strange, a bit… underdeveloped. OK, so you have immense power through the ability to get a fancy mouse or a massive screen, but as personal computers continue to move into being consumer items, for heaven’s sake the last thing consumers need is complexity. A bit of choice is good, yeah, but if people are going to buy a PC and not change anything, why have a separate monitor and keyboard and mouse and all that?

I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of those Apple style combo-computers, where the monitor and main box become as one - and not just because Apple set fashion and are thus copied left right and center. Once those linking wires are got rid of, perhaps we could have some kind of holographic keyboards, and control the pointer by just wiggling our fingers on the desk? Look, we’re already partway there.

The Opera team has quietly built a name for itself and the new browser Opera 9 is now available to download. Savvy Internet users have given Firefox a go and the majority of those that start using it tend to carry on. Very few of us in contrast are downloading Opera.

Ross Shannon offers a review of the big browsers on HTMLSource. It is heavily weighted against IE, but gives some insight into the strengths of Firefox and Opera.

What’s interesting about Opera is its focus on a niche market that has the potential to grow into the mainstream. I refer to its collaboration with BitTorrent. And as we all know, the future of the web is content and many of the web’s pioneers are discussing the best ways to share that content, whether it be text, audio, image or video. So Opera looks set to grow in line with some of the web’s most exciting trends.

Funny she should mention Wikipediasts (is that term going to catch on? I thought it was Wikipedians - although Wikipedophiles has a certain ring), because yesterday I noticed that The Register has recently indulged in a bit of one of its favourite sports - pouncing on anything that makes Wikipedia look a bit silly: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been telling students not to refer to it. “For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia” cries the head ‘pediast.

Well, Prof Brown and you teachers faced with another cut-and-paste job from Wale’s baby, you shouldn’t waste any time worrying that the kids are nicking huge sections of online content and slapping them into their essays. Instead please recognise that, via new technology, information is becoming as plentiful and easy to obtain as air - and then realise the pointlessness of getting a whole class of students to write the same essays again, or forcing people who swim in a sea of information to sit on artificial dry land in an exam environment.

We shouldn’t be patching up out-dated assessment methods and telling kids off for rigging them to their advantage, instead we need to develop new ones to teach them more about how to process and filter information - like, should they really trust an encyclopaedia that begins its own page about itself with the line ‘no soup for you’?

That’s why Proctor & Gamble’s announcing of the Internet as an emerging platform for brand building (outside of the regular banner ads and seo) is most welcome.

For those who don’t know, the web and email are now crucial for spreading your company message and so ad agencies like Proctor and Gamble are looking to offer freebies and coupons to encourage consumers to recommend their clients through these ‘new channels’.

I think this will mark an interesting shift in marketing that brings together strategies to incorporate the Web, rather than tagging it on as an extra. But they still seem to shy from the viral potential of the medium.

At Christmas last year UKFast experimented with a festive viral game, a play on the classic Space Invaders. We sent it out to about 10 sources and let them do the work and within 3 days hits to the UKFast site were up 1000% and visitors were flocking in from all over the world. The game opened up markets that UKFast had never targeted before.

Our experiment was not product driven, but it shows the potential for building brand and product awareness. With a little more imagination you can turn a coupon in to a real awareness campaign.

I have recently spoken to a number of sources including a top high street chain that are already producing viral campaigns for the web and I think the mainstream is finally catching on.

I can see Netscape appealing heavily to those who are not web savvy enough to download a comprehensive aggregator and choose their own RSS feeds.

But RSS is a bigger issue here than some might think. If user trends continue towards personalisation on the web then more people will be interested in using emerging platforms such as Windows Live and Google’s personalisation system than a site that makes you work to find the content.

Will Netscape therefore go down the Ajax route in order to compete directly with the big players? If not, then the success of the new site will depend very much on the quality of commentary its editors provide on the existing stories that web users can easily access themselves.

I hope the site works for AOL/Netscape though, as it would be good to see them competing again with the Internet giants that have left them behind in recent years.

This kind of regeneration or enhanced recycling is something that we can be doing in business all the time. Every morning I generate business stories based around what our visitors are interested in reading. These in turn create themes and topics that I can discuss with clients and build into podcasting features, which may turn up interesting comment and opinion that can be acted upon and turned into Press Releases and even in some cases, new policy or product for the business.

This cycle of regeneration and development helps to build business in many different ways and reaches out to a global audience just as quickly as a local one.

And by blogging about it, I can create an extra layer within the cycle. How are you making sure you maximise on your information and expertise?

But all that stuff is secondary in my mind to Google’s towering achievement (and let’s sweep under the carpet the fact that they actually acquired most of the software by buying up the original company behind it), probably the single best piece of computer software since Super Mario World… I speak, of course, of The Almighty Google Earth.

I hardly need to explain it here, it’s the world on your desktop and you can zoom in almost far enough to check if you’re actually developing a bald spot, or spin around the world in corky 3d-o-vision like you’re presenting a child-depressing Newsround report on the plight of Malaysian duckbilled penguins. You can even get it to map out a route to drive somewhere if you like that sort of thing… or go and look at the Big Brother house. If you like that sort of thing.

In short, Google Earth is amazing and literally makes me feel like I’m living in the future, and I’ve finally had an reason to talk about it because there’s a new version out. Look, you can even see UKFast towers on there!*

^{* OK so my links here aren’t to Google Earth but its flatter cousin, Google Maps… sadly we’re not allowed to use the beast in the office, given its habit of trying to download the whole planet and the attendant bandwidth-eating that ensues…}

And in one sense this is true - any ISP can pull out a few cables and disconnect people from the Internet, or do a few lines of code and block a network of people from seeing a range of websites.

Today questions abound about who controls the Internet. Google has only just been reinstated in China after a couple of weeks of conflict with the Government and the Net Neutrality bill has taken a step backwards in the U.S.

What will happen if companies are allowed to create tiers of performance on the Net? Why is the U.S. debating this issue without involving the whole Net community? Should Google and other Internet giants retreat from China or submit to sensorship issues?

I think the global industry is beginning to face its widest challenges to date. Where does the real power lie - is it with the Internet corporates, the ISP’s, the governments or somewhere else entirely? And how do we bring all these sectors together to bring an outcome that is most beneficial to the user in front of their computer/mobile/blackberry/satelite TV?

Reasonably easily, as it turned out. In fact for a while I got used to being netless, just like the protagonist of Sandi Thom’s chart smash ‘I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker’, who wants to live in a time when ‘the super info highway was still drifting out in space’. Admittedly I was still getting my fix of netiness at work, but this was tempered by the fact that I was, well, at work, and it seemed wise to get on with my job instead of spending all day emailing people - plus, holiday and financial planning went out of the window for a month. Having a good excuse to put these things off was quite relaxing.

But then friends started complaining that I wasn’t around online anymore. My Flickr and 43things accounts were languishing. With my PC gathering dust, a backlog of songs I wanted to buy started amassing in my head. As frustration started to build, I finally got around to sorting out my connection. On the day it was switched back on, my router resolutely refused to work. By the time Daz managed to get me fully online-ified via some router-voodoo, I was starting to get desperate. Getting back into the web world felt like coming home.

Sandi Thom, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind your song, (it’s likeable and a little unusual, although hardly Imogen Heap) but you, and anyone else with this myopic, nostalgic view of ’simpler days’, well you can all keep your rosy made-up version of the past. The net is amazing and the past is rubbish, we all know it - especially those of us who bring our songs about how great the 70s were to worldwide attention via the suspiciously modern medium of webcasts and huge PR budgets…

Clare Johnson of Digital Marketing specialists Adoofa, spoke first and gave marketers a great overview of SEO and PPC with emphasis on tried and tested techniques and avoidance of the ‘Dark Arts.’ The message, to work with the Search Engines and you will be rewarded.

Lawrence Jones of UKFast concurred with Clare and added a couple more levels. He spoke on the importance of infrastructure: the need for speed and reliability, likening success in the industry to the ancient Parable of the Sower. “If you throw seed on stony ground it will not grow. If you place it on fertile ground it will flourish.” In this way, he highlighted the need to take your hosting solutions very seriously and used examples to show how good hosting alone can boost profitability online.

Lawrence also went into detail about putting your website at the heart of your business and backing up the promises you make with a customer experience on and offline that your competitors cannot match.

You can find out more about Lawrence’s talk on his blog today.

Lawrence was followed by Heather Hopkins of Hitwise. Heather’s data analysis gave the audience food for thought on keywords and the importance of marrying up your online and offline strategies. She also showed graphs that proved men only search for gambling when they are not searching for football and vice versa!!

Peter Cobley of Yahoo Search Marketing was the final speaker and he brought an insight into the Pay Per Click business across all the engines. Naturally, the emphasis was on Yahoo, but he also impressed the need to work with Google.

The Q+A was also a lively affair, a discussion about pushing the boundaries with the engines took centre stage. The subject brought a variety of opinions and so I have chosen to take it on in the UKFast Podcast over the next week or so. I’ll blog again and link to it when it is available.

All in all, the message was fairly clear - your online presence has never been more important and in the global market you face stiff competition. But by working with the search engines and giving your site a strong grounding, you have every chance of competing at the top level.

The big question everyone was left with was; What exactly do the search engines want?

As part of our campaign to boost the online presence of Manchester businesses, UKFast conducts a serious of focus groups. If you are interested in getting involved and sharing your online marketing experience with a network of other businesses, learning from others mistakes and successes, then please email me and I will add you to our list.

It’s going to be a hugely informative evening and having heard snippets of Lawrence’s talk, a lot of the information is very specific and could make a real difference. It’s a rare opportunity to hear from people in positions in the Internet industry that allow them a lot of niche knowledge.

I am not sure whether there are any tickets left, but if you are interested in trying to get one, email Nicky Wake at Don’t Panic Projects and she might be able to squeeze you in.

I’ll post again about the event afterwards for those who are unable to make it.

This weekend I heard the news that Fold.com was ironically folding. The Ajax based homepage that began in beta just 3 months ago has most likely been beaten out by similar sites that allow you to create your own individual homepage such as Netvibes.

There’s no doubt that personalisation on the web is set to be a major part of the future as it allows us to assert our own individualism but another area that has allowed people to do this and make a living from it is the blogosphere.

Just as Fold.com was closing its doors I discovered Dooce. The amount of comments on each post shows the popularity of this blog. You only need to read for a few minutes to realise that you’ve been drawn in by the originality of the voice. And she openly admits that since introducing ads to the site in Oct 2005, she and her family are well supported.

Is it possible that individuality in others interests the majority of people more than the opportunity to present individuality themselves?

Good thing one: Loading speed. Back in the old days, I had to wait for about ten years to load up Paradroid on my Commodore 64. Now everything loads up super quick, and there’s no time to make a cup of tea whilst your PC boots up and loads everything you need. Which is good, because I hate tea. On the other hand, I’m not really allowed to play Paradroid at work. So it goes: for every reaction, an equal and opposite reaction.

Good thing two: Optical mouses. Yes, the plural of computer mouse is computer mouses. At least I think it is… to be honest I don’t want to check that, because then I’ll know what an idiot I sounded like every time I referred to mouses. Optical mouses are great because you never have to pop out the ball and clean off all the dirt from the rollers, and because they make a cool-looking red glow and at a push can be used to temporarily blind unexpected assailants.

Good thing three: Flat screens. When oh when will Daz learn that cathode ray tubes belong back in the fifties with all the black and white people? Flat screens are great because they provide extra space on your desk, which you can utilise to store your Fruit Corners, plastic meerkats and Etch-a-Sketch pens.

Good thing four: Internetification. This has got to be the best thing. Now that broadband means that we no longer need to endure ‘loading Paradroid on your Commodore 64′ style delays in accessing the web, we can look up anything just like that. In fact, asking non-work-related questions of your colleagues is almost obsolete. Soon we won’t have to talk to each other at all, we’ll just glare and shine the light from our mouses in each other’s eyes. Progress!

So as RSS becomes more widespread, what does this mean for search engines? If you use Google News or Yahoo News this morning, the story is picked up from all the sources above and more, but through a general web search none of the above appear in the top ten pages of results.

Is this an indication of the ‘invisible rules’ of search engine optimisation? Or is it a deliberate attempt by the search giants to delineate information into sections. Either way, my prefered way to receive news is through RSS, so what will happen to the engines if this becomes the mainstream method of receiving news and subsequently other types of information?

Even more astonishing is that ransomware was brought to my attention by the Manchester Evening News today. My daily browse of BBC Online, The Register and ZDNet.com did not bring anything to light and yet, the front page of the local paper delivered a story of International importance about cybercrime through the tale of a local woman.

The first entry Google does offer is the Wikipedia definition which is worth a read.

It’s hugely important to keep informed about new emerging threats to our online security. But I have to admit I’m a little surprised by the source of the breaking news.

It shows that while the Internet has found ways to deliver the national and international news faster than ever before, it still has a little to learn when it comes to local news.

One to the MEN!

And that, my friends, apart from showing off my extensive knowledge of the art world, is all a bit like Web 2.0. Nobody seems to know what it means, and all the real innovators and cutting edge folk on the web seem to be shunning the label. No wonder - the phrase itself sounds incredibly smug, mainly because of the ‘point oh’ bit. It is scientifically impossible to say ‘Web 2.0′ aloud without sounding like a punchable buffoon - try it.

What’s more, it’s kind of innaccurate: the ‘version number’ format of the name implies a completely new version of the WWW, where instead, on the sites sited as being part of this exclusive club, all we find is more of a ‘Web 1.25′ - a web with a few bells and whistles on top. Ben Ramsey has been talking about the need for a new term, now that O’Reilly Media have claimed Web 2.0 as their own - but I’m thinking perhaps the whole buzzword needs to be binned, or at least saved until the web really is revolutionised.

Which is all well and good for those of us who have Derren Brown style mental powers - but as June pointed out, what happens when you’ve got a less-than-perfect memory? I think I can dredge up quite a few important numbers purely from memory, but I also remember fraught times at cashpoints when all the digits got mixed up and I ended up freezing my card, or setting off house alarms. Numbers - they’re just so abstract and hard to remember.

Of course there is an alternative, which we see all the time using computers - passwords. Every so often you hear statistics about the majority of passwords being ’secret’ or ‘password’. As is often the case with this blog, I’m starting to wonder what people’s passwords say about them. Sadly I can’t really conduct a poll of the office, all I can analyse are my own passwords. My policy is to go for phrases, words and collections of numbers completely unrelated in anything but the most tenuous way to myself and my interests…

… which kind of makes them abstract and hard to remember. Perhaps I should swallow my Orwellian terror of ID cards and biometric scanning and just relax in the knowledge that soon my fingerprints will get me into my house OK. Unless, of course, a Terminator turns up and steals my fingers.

There are still many businesses using the Internet only because they feel they should be a part of it. But efficient online contact with potential clients in this category is reliant on their embracing the forms that we associate with Web 2.0 and becoming a part of our online circles.

Well, Winelog is a new wiki site set to draw a whole new audience into the arena. It’s almost an irresistible destination for any true wine lover and with a prominent blog, the chance to share each other’s favourites and a firm guiding hand the site will educate many in the potentials of online communication tools without them even realising it.

Coming soon on the site is the opportunity to have your own RSS feed direct from your personal winelog.

While the traditional networking circles are still alive and well, online arenas are opening up everywhere and it’s important now for businesses to make sure they are integrating into them.

For many, the semantic web is the real Web 2.0. I’d recommend a read of a BBC report that discusses the developments. For many web businesses the wait is now on to see how ’semantic’ search changes the way they are found and therefore, the way they have to programme and populate their sites.

There’s a semantic search engine already on the web. Why not get a head start and have a look at Swoogle.

The real-time nature of BB, and the fact that it generates those ‘water-cooler’ conversations (you know, the sort all the media journalists were going on about a few years ago), well it makes me think. There’s all this buzz online about iTunes selling episodes of Lost (another of our favourites, especially now the plot seems to revolve around people sitting in a room doing inexplicable things with computers) and the new plan to sell 24 (yeah, we love Bauer too) on myspace.

But this narrowcasting approach, treating TV shows like music, seems a little foolish - TV is completely different, and nowhere near the solitary experience the naysayers wibble on about. In fact, I think it’s the most social of modern media. Discussion of last night’s crop of big shows is a vital office bonding experience… Daz got quite annoyed with me because I missed Lost the other week, and fair enough, I was a bit miffed myself. Not because I missed it, but because we all need a bit of fuel for talking outside of the world of SQL queries and web form design. OK, and because I missed it.

Hey, if you can’t gossip openly about your colleagues, at least you can gossip openly about the people on TV - and to do that you need to be tuning in as it happens, in synch. Now where’s my copy of Heat?

At one time it was the producer who held all the cards. High Street shops would buy perishable goods from farms and would sell based on what they could get. Nowadays, supermarkets have overturned that power, dictating what they want provided by whom, riding down prices and driving up quality. A good thing for the customer. A good thing for the supplier?

When you add the Internet into the equation you introduce further layers of reliance. The companies that house the world’s Internet sites are reliant on a multitude of suppliers, in the same way that Bill Gates needs computer makers and computer makers need chip suppliers.

Reliance is something that makes life a challenge but can also make it very frustrating. I wonder if you can think of any businesses that do not rely on outside forces of one kind or another?

This made me think about names. We routinely talk a load of old rubbish in IT, forced to do so by the strange names of the programs we use. Let’s have a look at some of the big names:

Internet Explorer - good, solid, boring name. Does what it says on the tin. My only issue would be that it really only explores the web, not the whole net. And using its initials makes you sound like you’ve just been stabbed with a protractor. Iiieeeee!

Firefox - much more romantic, mythical sounding. Foxs are… kind of quick. Fire is… sort of fast. OK, so it sounds like a rebranding of the word hotdog, and has nothing to do with the web. Still it does sound cool.

Flash - a great name, as with Firefox it tries to intimate speed, plus the technology is all about adding flashy stuff to websites. Makes me think of the Queen song and the film, which can’t be a bad thing. Perhaps a slight hint of self-exposure is in there, but it’s well hidden.

Dreamweaver - hilariously unconnected to what it does. A great program (and this is coming from an avowed hand-coder), but sitting there with your tables and CSS palettes does not feel particularly dreamlike. Also makes me think of spoof horror writer Garth Marenghi, who describes himself as ‘Author, Dreamweaver, Visionary’.

Photoshop - it is, basically, the modern version of a photoshop. Sounds definitive, and is.

The Gimp - everything I feel about this program is summed up in that name. Except I’m more inclined to leave it sleeping than ever decide to ‘bring out the gimp’

I’ve been trying this morning to contact Telnic about this and find out more. There are details on their website and ICANN also has an explanation (albeit less straight forward) on their site but I’d like to find out the things they don’t tell us.

In the UKFast Podcast, I discussed tld’s a few weeks ago and this new development feels worth a little extra feature. If you look at the FAQ’s on the Telnic site, you’ll find information about new software needed and the solution is to get the newly developed software from Telnic themselves. Suddenly the reason for the new tld starts to make more commercial sense.

The board at ICANN must realise this, as one of the members Susan Crawford has questioned ICANN’s role in choosing sponsors after this decision. It suggests to me that the commercial gains often outweigh the actual necessity for the domain to come into fruition.

I keep an open mind however and await a return call…

The sector has been very interesting to watch online and I wonder if we are now experiencing the fight back that has been muted for some time. The Internet has changed the model of how we book holidays and in some way what we expect from a holiday, but the holiday experience, the senses and feelings, that traditional travel agents have for years used to lure us into the holiday of a lifetime, are finding their way online. Video streaming is just one of the techniques that Thomson is employing to deliver the desire and it seems to be working.

In every sector now, the next big web challenge is to provide the consumer with a sensory experience in one form or another. So, does it stand to reason that those who are practised offline, will now take the lead online?

A good deal of this terrible stress is brought upon us IT types by the dreaded Users. As someone said in the poll - ‘I spend most of my day fielding calls from people who don’t even have a basic knowledge of computers and printers. It is amazing the amount of time I spend teaching people where the on-off button is.’ Well whenever I hear this kind of thing, I’m on the user’s side, because computers are the most ridiculously designed things in the world (aside from that new rendering of Barbie’s eyebrows, of course).

I used to work in a public library and had to help people who’d never used PCs get on the internet. Why do you have to double click those icons to start ‘the internet’, then only single click everything else? What recycled products does the recycle bin churn out? Why can’t I turn it on and off as I please, instead of waiting for all sorts of odd stuff to happen? Who is that paperclip and what does he want from me?

Us lot have been using these interfaces that are completely unrelated to real life for years, but most normal people haven’t, and are not interested in tinkering and learning about them like we are. We shouldn’t moan about them, we should moan about the design of these systems in the first place. I should be able to talk to this thing as if I was Captain Picard by now, instead of tapping away like someone in a typing pool in the thirties.

Computer, end blog!

The most common question was - “Where’s the money in it?” After I explained the value of reaching out in a more personal way a lot of them would agree that the return on investment, while not directly about revenue could actually be of very great value to them.

It strikes me that business on the Internet has thrown a great many into a face value environment, in which they feel they do not need to reveal their genuine personality. Some have thrived by creating a compelling facade, with great products and website functionality. I have a feeling that this is going to change now though.

An astonishing amount of people took a great interest in blogging and podcasting and also appreciated the theories behind their use - namely that they allow users to get to know a business better and build a stronger sense of trust.

With trade on the Net becoming so competitive, a vast number of consumers are likely to start choosing their favourites based on their relationship with them and sites that continue without true substance will definitely suffer.

This is what my experience suggests. I’d be really interested to know other people’s thoughts.

Last night iTunes suddenly decided to delete half my carefully downloaded album artwork. At first I was quite irate, because I’d spent ages finding it all so it would show up on my ipod. But after some thought, it started to feel like iTunes was trying to enlighten me. I still buy CDs, even though I just rip them straight onto iTunes and stack them up in the corner. It feels somehow more like I’ve got a handle on the music if I physically own it, and getting the artwork onto iTunes felt like a link to this physical medium.

Well shame on me for trying to cling to the old ways! Shame on bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers for moaning about people downloading their music, instead of embracing the new ways! When we get fixated on album art, sleevenotes and so on we’re just not getting it - CDs and record sleeves aren’t music, music is music and it’s something that only ever really exists in the air and in the mind. That’s why the abstraction of going digital is so appropriate - it frees the music.

So maybe next time I get the urge to download more album art and lyrics for my collection, I’ll just stop and listen to the music itself.

Now (and forgive me for dipping into a bit of UKFast promotion here) I’ve been working on our new Client Area for a couple of weeks now, and it’s struck me that the best bit of working on the web is the changeability of it all. Whilst there’s always got to be a deadline, things are never set in stone. Nothing’s ever perfect, but working in this fluid medium means that, if an improvement occurs to me, I can make it - now, or in the future.

Say you’re a novelist, and you’ve just noticed you’ve used the word… I don’t know… ‘wow’ far too many times, so many times that it looks ridiculous, hey, you used it five times on page 57 alone… well, you’ve just had that book published and now you look silly, you wow-obsessed fool. You can only beg the readers ‘be kind to my mistakes’. If I on the other hand suddenly notice I’ve got far too many… I don’t know… mysql_query commands going on in a script, hey, I used it five times on line 57 alone… well, I can fix it just like that - either now, or in the future when somebody goes ‘Oi Chris, you mysql_query obsessed fool’.

Of course there are times when you could have done with some burning bridges, and you really really don’t want to see X Y or Z script again. But on the whole, it’s a satisfying plus-side to this beast we call development.

This phenomenon of online-ifying your personal life is really gathering speed, and I find myself worrying a little about the persistence of this information. Whilst I’m getting sick to death of myspace related stories, this one highlights the issue nicely. For a while back there it looked like El Murdocho owned your info for ever if you posted anything up - seems this has been resolved to something more satisfactory, but the fact of the matter is that information on the web stays there.

Myspace may crumble and take all those ridiculous abuses of CSS with it, lastfm may forget how many times I’ve listened to Dumb Dumb Dumb by Teenage Fanclub - and yet for years, perhaps for ever, archives will remain. Stuff on the web is publicly available information, and people like the Internet Archive (and Google’s infamous cache) are filing it all away. Yes, future employers may be able to see those pictures on Flickr of you getting drunk and that rant about authority you posted on your blog. Even I (yes, even I) am a little worried that, if, say, I post a link to chucknorrisfacts.com - sometime in the future someone will be searching for me and, not being aware that Chris in tech told me to post it, might think I’m the sort of joker who spends all day on chucknorrisfacts.com. And I’m not.

My advice? Get up while you can and delete yourself! OK, so I’ve had no success in implementing this noble aim myself - because those sites are just too cool. Maybe that’s the problem - cool vs privacy, fun in the present vs paying for it in the future. God, thinking like that, seems like I’m getting old.

Delivering the New PR brings together expertise from Europe and America to discuss the importance of Internet Technologies within any company’s communications strategy.

The one day conference presents theory, strategy and practice that demonstrate in compelling ways; how new forms of communication are changing the way we work and how we can harness them.

The full day event is being held on Friday May 12, at the Marriott Hotel Regents Park in London and is organised by Don’t Panic Projects. There may be a few places left. You can try and book online or contact Nicky Wake.

Maybe I’ll see some of you there.

Project Entropia is blurring the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds by creating a cash card allowing its gamers to do just this.

But they don’t get something for nothing. In December 2004, one gamer spent £13,700 buying an island on the games virtual planet Calypso. Within a year, he had made his money back by renting land and taxing miners and hunters! He can now withdraw the cash as his island continues to bring him revenue, yet his customers will never see anything real or tangible for their money.

More recently his purchase has been overshadowed by Jon Jacobs who spent £56,200 on a space resort that he plans to turn into a virtual night club selling music and video downloads.

These virtual entrepreneurs are a new breed of businessmen. But virtual profit translating into real money concerns me in some ways. What benefit is this new global economy having on our real economies?

Project Entropia alone made $165million in 2005 and plans to double this in 2006. Is this where the leisure industry is heading and is it a good thing?

The New York Times has published an article discussing just how potentially serious this battleground is and it is being debated all over the net.

Microsoft’s concerns centre around Google’s potential to become a kind of operating system of the Internet in the same way that Windows is the dominant operating system of personal computing.

And Microsoft has announced that it is boosting its spending by $2billion, which comes shortly after Google’s talk about increasing theirs by $1.5billion.

Nicholas Carr poses an interesting question. Was it money that pressed the change from Amazon - if so how much did it cost Microsoft and could this be part of a bigger deal?

While the world is talking about it, the companies involved are not showing their hands, so who will make the next move?

When I’m reading something on the web I compulsively select and deselect text with the mouse. I’ll click and drag to highlight from the bottom of a paragraph, all the way up to the top. Then I’ll click elsewhere to clear the selection, click and drag from the top of the paragraph to the bottom, lather, rinse, and repeat about fifty times.

The select-itis does not stop there. Give me a windows desktop and a slightly distracted mind and I’ll easily spend ten minutes clicking and dragging to bring up that little lasso, making the little icons go all blue and then back to normal. My poor iconic fools, behold the selectifying power of my mighty mouse and weep!

I can’t stop. I’ve been doing it whilst writing this. Is it ny hands trying to keep themselves occupied when they’re not flying over the keys? Is it some deep psychological need to make everything… turn… blue? Is it something that always annoys Daz when he’s looking at my screen? (yes to that last one). I don’t know if anyone else has select-itis, or any similar afflictions, but whilst I’m waiting to find out I’m off back to my PHP code for a bit more click, drag, click… click, drag, click…

Behind Winston’s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.

Fair play to Mr Orwell, he was pretty much spot on with the old telescreen concept. Good job he wrote 1984 - whilst there’s precious little reason for me to quote his other books about pot plants and being a tramp, it’s de rigeur for every person writing about tech to mention the original Big Bro at some point.

So telescreens are one step closer - and it’s Apple, who have famously flirted with a bit of 1984 imagery, who are developing it. The screen that watches you as you watch it - it’ll make video chats a lot more natural, and it’s undoubtedly exciting tech - but whereas you can turn off a webcam or even cover it up to make sure nobody catches you picking your nose or plotting the downfall of the government, how will we ever be sure that our screen isn’t sneaking a peek at us?

There are going to be some incredible stands and key note speakers there. UKFast will be making our presence known, not only in the arena, but on the stage as well. We have elected to talk about the opportunities presented to businesses by the Internet’s many new forms of communication. And of course, we are concentrating particularly on blogging and podcasting.

On that note, keep an eye out on ukfastblog over the next few weeks for our new Community section, which we are opening with an ambitious project entitled ‘Word From the Street.’

The new blog and podcast aims to harness the incredible energy of 5 time Olympic Gold medallist, turned social broker Geoff Thompson. Geoff’s campaign to inspire our country’s youth to excel at sport by receiving the social infrastructure they need, began in the suburbs of Manchester and has taken him all over the world. He is currently working towards the 2012 Olympics and is a man worth listening to.

We’re very excited about bringing him to a wider audience. He’s the kind of person podcasting was made for. Look out for him on our blogging community within the week.

Under 2,000 units have been bought as opposed to 35m packages with media player. Microsoft’s lawyers argued; “The failure to offer a product that nobody wants cannot be an abuse.”

Surely these figures show a much deeper situation that is conveniently ignored and relates to working practices and public perception.

When buying a PC, 90% of people are offered the Window’s operating system. Since January, have they all been given the option of Edition N? Moreover we don’t know whether sales people see it as a product worth promoting. Why offer the reduced version rather than the one with ‘extras.’

For those a little more computer savvy it still comes down to an attitude to technology. If Window’s Media Player has worked for you, why change it. Internet culture is based on convenience and efficiency and the maxim ‘better the devil’ often applies. Human nature means we get comfortable with one way of doing things and wont change unless it’s very easy or is forced upon us.

While Microsoft fights this case, it doesn’t have to reveal any source code - the same code that will make it easier for competitiors to develop media players as easy to use in Window’s as Microsoft’s own. In the meantime, users will continue to take the easiest option.

Window’s is not just software, it’s routine, it’s convenience and it’s such a part of daily life that it requires a massive shift in user habit to imagine it as a less dominant part of the computer experience. This is why the sales figures shouldn’t surprise and why they are unreliable in Microsoft’s defence.

A Times Online article cites a concern that Google has turned aggressive and is wielding it’s pocket full of cash in a dangerous way, buying and developing technologies that bring competition to each of the others on various levels, from GoogleTalk, to Google Calendar.

There is a sophisticated undercurrent here as each squares off against the next. There is no confirmation from eBay as to whether these alliances are official - they are actually playing the whole scenario down - but then, in real terms they have to.

Of the four companies, eBay is the only one that relies on the others for a large percentage of its revenue - as all three are the drivers of traffic to the auction site. In the UK Google is the favoured search engine for 75% of web users, while MSN and Yahoo! take less than 10% each according to recent figures.

Whether eBay are forging alliances or not - when you consider the market share, a story like this one in The Times suggests a case of ‘biting the hand that feeds,’ which is definitely bad news for the auction site.

But of course, it’s not new technology at all. Like a lot of the Internet (with the youthful WWW a notable exception), email’s been around since the 60s. I think it’s starting to show its age. Last night I was watching (I confess with some amusement) Rich trying to send a set of hefty images to a client - as often seems to be the case this was quite a painful, slow process. Have you ever had to receive a large file like that? Of course you have, we’re all technical wizards here, right? You know what a pain it is - and it’s no surprise given that this is a technology originally designed to send plain text messages between studious scientific types.

Nowadays email’s mainstream enough to have been comprehensively hijacked by spammers. The big boys of the email world tell us it’s alright, they’ll make stronger filters, they’ll add anti-phishing systems. Now I have to put up with Thunderbird telling me half my mail is a scam even when it comes direct from tech support (scandalous, those magic beans I’m getting from Paul are totally kosher). The truth is, we have all the resources we need to develop a new email system from scratch, but it’s become so important and crucial to the way the world works that we’re stuck building on top of an out-dated system.

I hope we can work it out, because I’m a little worried that half of the Queen’s 17,000 mails were of the viagra-selling flavour - and that’s no way to talk to royalty.

EBay has just announced that it has a community of 200m. MySpace also has a huge following, Yahoo! of course is one of the superpowers as is MSN. So should disputes online be dealt with by these communities or by our more earthly communities?

EBay is in the news today for allowing people to sell .eu domains that perhaps should not belong to them. Nestle and Disney are both considering suing the website for providing a marketplace for rowntrees.eu and euroDisneyParis.eu respectively.

However, the rules of the Internet allowed people to purchase the domain names without being affiliated to the companies in question - so shouldn’t eBay be allowed to act as a provider in this way?

I suspect that in the end it may buckle in the same way that it did about Live8 tickets last year - but we shall see.