On 2 July, a US district judge, Louis L Stanton, lobbed a grenade into the cosy world of social networking, user-generated content and so-called 'cloud' computing. He ordered Google to turn over to Viacom all of its logs relating to viewing of YouTube video clips since the search engine giant acquired the video hosting site in November 2006.

That amounts to 12 terabytes (or more than 12 million megabytes) of data: each log entry records the user name and IP (machine) address of the user who viewed the video, plus a timestamp and a code identifying the clip. What the judgment means is that if you have watched a YouTube clip at any time since November 2006, a record of that will be passed to Viacom's lawyers.

On the face of it, this looks like a massive breach of user privacy. Indeed, it makes the lapses of HM Revenue and Customs in this regard seem positively amateurish. The result is widespread alarm all round the world. There are a lot of sensitivities surrounding YouTube videos - and not just in Islamic countries. So everyone involved in the Google-Viacom case has been making soothing noises. Viacom told the judge that 'the login ID is an anonymous pseudonym that users create for themselves when they sign up with YouTube' which 'cannot identify specific individuals'. Stanton noted this assertion - and also the fact that Google did not refute it. He went on to quote a blog posted by a Google employee, Alma Whitten, saying that 'in most cases, an IP address without additional information cannot [identify a particular user]' - as if this supported the Viacom assertion.

But in fact, Whitten pointed out, the situation is more complicated. IP addresses contain personal information which in some cases allows personal identification and in others does not. And several expert commentators have pointed out that the assertion that login names do not reveal personal identities is also questionable.

So it looks as though the judge made his decision on grounds that are less secure than he had supposed. The truth is that, given sufficient resources and a legal justification, it's often possible to link an IP address to a named individual. Indeed, that is the basis under which Virgin Media, a UK ISP, is acceding to the demands of the BPI (formerly known as the British Phonographic Industry) to disconnect subscribers suspected of sharing copyrighted music online.

Viacom is clearly alarmed by the hornet's nest that its lawyers have disturbed and is dispensing reassurance. Jeremy Zweig, the company's vice-president for media and editorial, declared last week that it is interested merely in patterns of YouTube viewing, not in the online behaviour of individual users. 'Viacom is not looking to identify any particular end-user, let alone discover what he may be watching,' he wrote in a blog post. 'The logs will be subject to an extraordinarily high security and confidentiality threshold, and the raw data won't be accessible to Viacom,'

I believe him but - given the aggressive behaviour of copyright owners - thousands of other people won't.

Whatever happens in the Google-Viacom case, this has been a wake-up call for internet users. It is, as Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (Epic), put it, one of those 'I told you so' moments. We are moving inexorably into a world dominated by 'cloud computing' in which most of us get services such as email, word-processing, data storage and hosting from huge server farms operated by companies like Google, Amazon, Yahoo! and Microsoft.

As a result, colossal amounts of private data are now held on these companies' computers. But the implication of Stanton's decision is that all that information can, at the stroke of a judicial pen, be handed over to third parties.

Or, as the BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones put it, the Google-Viacom case shows that we have no real control over our data once it is lodged on a corporate server: 'Every detail of my viewing activities over the years - the times I've watched videos in the office, the clips of colleagues making idiots of themselves, the unauthorised clip of goals from a Premier League game - is contained in those YouTube logs ... I may protest that I am a British citizen and that the judge has no business giving some foreign company a window on my world. No use - my data is in California, and it belongs to Google, not me.'

To date, Cellan-Jones continues, he has never worried too much about the threat to his privacy. 'I'm relaxed about appearing on CCTV, happy enough for my data to be used for marketing purposes, as long as I've ticked a box, and never really cared that Google knows about every search I've done for the past 18 months. But suddenly I'm feeling a little less confident. How about you?'

Well, dear reader, how about you?

john.naughton@observer.co.uk

Hoteliers, restaurateurs and artists have known the tension for years. They unveil their work and then stand back to await an avalanche of either praise or derision from the public, the critics and, more recently, an army of bloggers.

Now the nation's doctors are about to be exposed to the same sometimes arbitrary process of internet democracy. A website launching today, iwantgreatcare.org, will let patients rate and review every medic who has treated them. Doctors are still one of the most respected groups of professionals, but for how much longer?

Leaders of Britain's medical profession are furious about the site, which they claim will expose them to abuse, libel and even personal attack. It will carry everything from praise to vitriol about every one of the country's 40,000 general practitioners and 120,000 hospital doctors.

The doctor behind the site claims that letting the public give medics individual reviews and rate their performance - as they already do routinely with restaurants, West End shows and books bought through Amazon.com - will help to bring about higher standards of care.

But the British Medical Association, the doctors' trade union, claims it will leave their members exposed to malicious vendettas and lead to libel actions over critical comments, which the website admits it will not vet before they are published.

Iwantgreatcare has been set up by Dr Neil Bacon, a hospital doctor for 18 years, until recently as a renal specialist at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. He previously created doctors.net.uk, which is by far the most popular social networking site for Britain's clinicians. The website, which restricts access to its 155,000 members, has already been used by doctors to post a stream of comments attacking Bacon's latest project.

But he has hit back, arguing that the threat of negative feedback on his new website will force doctors to listen more to patients, explain themselves better and improve the treatment they provide. It would help the public to choose which doctor to go to when they are ill by seeing if previous patients were satisfied with their experience, added Bacon. He said he had held talks with the Department of Health, medical royal colleges, patient groups and the General Medical Council (GMC), the doctors' regulatory body, while planning the site.

It asks patients to answer three questions, by giving ratings from one to 100, about a doctor who has treated them or a relative: 'Do you trust them?', 'Did they listen to you?' and 'Would you recommend them?' They can then post a 'review' of the doctor. Only reviews which use swear words will not be put online. 'There will be no editing or censorship of any reviews unless they are profane, libellous or scandalous,' said Bacon.

'It's a bit like Amazon reviews. Patients will use us to rate clinicians. We are producing a credible, independent forum for that discussion.

Dr Richard Vautrey, vice-chairman of the BMA's GPs committee, said he was very concerned. 'There's a significant possibility of it being used in a malicious way, leading to doctors finding themselves under incredible stress and worry, and leaving them open to potential abuse from individuals with a vendetta. It would be of great concern if any doctor was put in jeopardy through a malicious campaign, maybe through viral email, to attack or undermine a doctor at a hospital or GP's practice, which could easily happen.'

Patients who have suffered a major trauma such as a bereavement can be impossible to placate and sometimes look for a doctor to blame, said Vautrey. 'It's very difficult to find yourself in the firing line through no fault of your own,' he said. 'It is unfair that patients posting comments are anonymous and that the information is subjective, with no evidence to support particular statements.'

Doctors.net is not the only chatboard buzzing with opposition. 'It does open up the possibility of anonymous hounding and persecution of doctors by malicious or mad patients, with no possibility of redress, and is deeply worrying,' wrote one critic at the ferretfancier blogspot.

But patients' representatives and some doctors welcomed the website. 'This information is long overdue. Why shouldn't patients, taxpayers who fund the NHS, have this information, just as they would do research before buying a washing machine?', said Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association. 'It's going to cause uproar because doctors want to feel protected. They like to think they're the best, whether they are or not.'

Four hospitals, including a major London treatment centre, and around 600 doctors have agreed to use the comments posted on the site as a way of monitoring patients' views about themselves and their colleagues, said Bacon.

Professor Chris Bulstrode, of Oxford University, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and member of the GMC, said: 'This website is a great idea and will put the cat among the pigeons with the medical profession, which is just what's needed. Doctors will feel threatened, and rightly, as one or two will find their trousers round their ankles.'

Dr Sam Everington, a GP in east London, said: 'Feedback from patients, both positive and negative, is helpful. But I fear this website is going to go too far and scientifically it's full of holes. The self-selecting nature of the comments and those making them makes it very arbitrary, open to bias and not truly representative, in the way that a Mori poll about the Prime Minister would be credible.'

Dan Tench, a libel lawyer with Olswang solicitors in London, said that iwantgreatcare was taking a risk in publishing potentially defamatory claims against doctors. 'The site is sailing a bit close to the wind,' said Tench. 'A patient could write, "This doctor killed my mother through his incompetence" and the website would then have the agonising choice of whether to publish it or not.' Doctors have shown themselves ready to launch libel actions to protect their reputation, he said. 'The people running this website should be cautious and ensure that their procedures for taking down a comment that's been complained about work well.'

The Department of Health declined to comment, but Health Minister Lord Darzi, the architect of recent radical reforms of the NHS, is understood to believe the website will prompt doctors to provide better care.

I have some photos on an old Samsung E350 mobile that I want to upload to my PC - but the software doesn't recognise that the handset is connected. It doesn't have Bluetooth capability. Can you help?

If the information you want is locked in your old sim card, then all you'll need is a card reader. This inexpensive gizmo (about £15) plugs into your USB port and should let you pull your data straight on to your PC. However, lots of people with this model phone have reported similar problems without many answers. You could try downloading a newer version from the support pages at uk.samsungmobile.com, or buy a cable and software pack from a website such as datakits.co.uk (£6). In the end, though, your best bet may be sending the pictures as a multi-media message to somebody else and asking them to download them.

I have an Ion USB turntable that lets me download my vinyl records as files. Can I use it as an ordinary deck to play LPs and hear them through the speakers on my mini hi-fi?

The Ion has RCA outputs - that means you should be able to plug it into a hi-fi's AUX port using ordinary phono cables, although many mini stereo systems can't take external outputs.

Car names can be pretty stupid, can't they? I mean, take this one. Agila means eagle, I believe. And yet this nippy little city car is about as uneagle-like as it's possible for a car to be. Vauxhall Sparrow would have been better. Perhaps it is named after the Visigothic King of Hispania who ruled the Iberian Peninsula in the middle of the sixth century. I doubt it, though - unless King Agila was a small and frugal man, smart but hardly regal. Or maybe it's meant to sound like agile (is the g soft?). To make things even more complicated, the Agila is almost exactly the same as a Suzuki Splash, presumably so called because you have to splash out a bit more on it.

Anyway, name aside, the new Agila is very nice. It's certainly a big improvement on the old Agila, which should have been called the Vauxhall Box. Perhaps it doesn't have the character of the new Fiat Panda, but I can still see owners giving theirs names. I would call mine Christina. Christina Agila.

I can also imagine the kind of driver an Agila would attract: a confidently stylish, professional woman, possibly in PR, nipping cheekily through the traffic. Look, here she is, in fact, in the Vauxhall brochure. Judging by this, and the other pictures, it's certainly women they've got their eye on. I think I need to get the opinion of one ...

Oh. My so-called girlfriend's gone backpacking in bloody Bolivia, and she's the only one I know. Knew. Well, there is my mum, I suppose - she's not exactly in PR, but she is a woman, she'll have to do. I go round to see my mum, to introduce her to Christina.

Mum thinks I could have done a bit better. The seats - which are blue - are quite hard, she says, not as comfy as the ones in my brother's ancient Volvo. And the noise of the indicators annoys her. I think she's being harsh on the seats, but she's certainly got a point about the indicators, which emit a mournful wheezing sound, as if to say, "This corner is my last, before I die."

We don't have any PR meetings to drive to, and neither of us wants to go to the gym, which is somewhere else I can imagine an Agila going. So we head instead to a garden centre. I want to get a fuchsia, so we can put it behind us and say we're driving back to the fuchsia, but Mum doesn't want a fuchsia. So we get a nice bushy cistus instead. So bushy it doesn't fit in the boot. There's just about room for a laptop back there, and your gym kit. And, if you believe the pictures in the brochure, a buggy - though this isn't really a car to put kids into. Or shrubs. The cistus has to go on the back seat.

On the road, it's exactly as you'd imagine - nippy, agile, without being exciting. You wouldn't want to throw it into corners, and not just because of the cistus on the back seat. This car is for the city, not the racetrack. My only criticism, apart from the indicators, is that I'm too tall to read the rev meter that pops out of the top of the dashboard like an afterthought, or a frog's eye. But then this is a lady's car, and ladies are less tall, on the whole. And actually it's superfluous because ladies are, on the whole, less interested in revs. Mum doesn't even know what they are, apart from the ones you find in churches.

Price: £9,959
Top speed 109mph
Acceleration 0-62 in 12.3 seconds
Average consumption 51.4mpg
CO2 emissions 131g/km
Eco rating 8/10
At the wheel Bridget Jones
In a word Uneagle-like

Over recent years, it has become a staple image of the technology industry: hundreds of gadget fans queueing all night to get their hands on the latest trendy gizmo from Apple. But eager devotees across Britain were left angry and frustrated yesterday after a series of problems hit the launch of the Californian company's latest product, the iPhone 3G.

The latest version of Apple's mobile phone - a faster model than the original iPhone released last November - was unveiled at shops around the world with much fanfare yesterday morning.

Instead of getting their new toy, however, thousands of British customers were delayed as a glitch hit the computerised credit checking system belonging to the mobile network operator O2.

"We can confirm that Apple stores are having technical issues connecting to the O2 systems," a spokesman said at the height of the problems. "We are working to get the systems back up to full speed as quickly as possible." Hundreds of customers arrived early at shops around the country for the launch at 8.02am - even the time itself chosen to squeeze out a little extra publicity for the launch. Minutes later, however, queues began to back up and new purchases failed to register.

"I was in the queue from 7am and didn't get served until 11.30am as their systems went down," said one disgruntled customer on the Guardian website. "It took around 40 minutes for each customer's credit decision to be made and at the end of all that they only had four 16 gigabyte models in stock - and this was the flagship Manchester store." Some dedicated customers took several hours to get their hands on an iPhone, while others simply gave up. "It's not ideal, but that's life," said 26-year-old Chris Moorby, who had queued outside the flagship Apple shop in Regent Street, London. "I'm leaving now because I've got to go to work."

Last night the problems were being blamed on the sudden influx of customers, which crashed the system and forced staff to run manual checks on all new accounts. However, it remains unclear why O2 did not anticipate the surge in demand. Carphone Warehouse, another chain selling the handset, had already announced that interest in the iPhone 3G was up to 10 times greater than its predecessor, and last week O2's website collapsed under the weight of traffic when it opened for orders.

But it was not only O2 which was struggling. A customer from Stafford, who had ordered his iPhone 3G online through Carphone Warehouse, said he had received a guarantee on Thursday evening that it would be delivered the next day. "I stayed at home for the delivery, but it never arrived," he said. "I finally got through to them on the phone and they said nobody would be receiving their orders until after the weekend. I've now cancelled my order."

Observers largely blamed the crash on onerous new sign-up procedures to try to reduce so-called "unlockers". These customers - who fail to sign up to a contract and use their iPhones on a different mobile network - are now forced to sign on the spot, and must provide photographic ID and detailed personal information.

Apple is desperate to make an impact on the enormous mobile phone market. The iPhone 3G boasts faster internet connection, satellite navigation and access to an online shop full of downloadable programs.

O2 has an exclusive contract to provide service to iPhones in Britain, and could come under pressure from the US technology giant if such problems continue.

Ian Fogg, a mobile industry analyst with Jupiter Research, said that all would be forgotten if O2 managed to get its systems working smoothly - but customers could still find it hard to get hold of an iPhone 3G if the gadget proved as popular as it appears. "Really these day one teething problems are just that," he said. "One of the big challenges for hit products is making sure that you've got enough to meet demand."

1978, Blantyre, Malawi. Beneath a bough of bougainvillea, a 10 year old is talking about a revolution. Crouched by a wire fence, I'm using a large spoon and my mother's Grundig Music Boy to liaise with President Nyerere's troops across the border in Tanzania. Our joint mission: to overthrow the dictatorship of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the Malawian leader.

Soon after, I'm in serious trouble, having snapped the Grundig's telescopic antenna. Of this I am certain: had I had my father's much larger Eddystone Marine short-wave set, with its own wire aerial that drapes from tree to tree, President Nyerere would have replied.

1980, Tarbert, Kerry. At the back of the stables, a big Bakelite radio is unearthed. It works! I wheel the creaking dial back through Helsinki, Luxembourg, Athlone ... I decide I'm going to dismantle it, in order to make a transmitter. I remove valves from their sockets, lift the cable from tuning wheel, unwind transformers. In the midst of it all, wax is discovered, slathering chunky capacitors, covering insect-like resistors. Nothing comes of the dissection. No transmission is ever heard again, never mind sent.

It is fantasy. These radios are just receivers. When in the depot of my boarding school's army cadet corps, I glimpse from under my beret a big British Army wireless (complete with microphone and headset), I set my heart on genuine transmission. Seeing the vast array of equipment of a blind great-uncle who is a radio amateur whets my appetite further.

1982, Malvern, Worcestershire. Beginning with a Radio Shack breadboard, I assemble according to instructions a morse code transmitter. It makes dots and dashes appear on nearby television screens. Later, I graduate to an illegal CB radio set, complete with whippy aerial. I stash the transceiver in my study bedroom, running coaxial cable up to a roof parapet where the antenna can stand.

I achieve some success with my "one four for a copy" bids for contact. For a brief period, CB becomes a means of meeting girls in town. And there they end, my radio days. The desperate need to communicate is diverted into relationships - and that other world of joy and pain, writing.

As the years go by, CB goes legit. Mobile phones arrive, the internet comes on stream. On a vast scale, the desperate need is fulfilled; yet at the same time, curiously, it's denied all the more. Meanwhile the radio amateur, like his shed-bound confrère the practical engineer, is edged further to the fringes of society.

What use, then, the Motorola Tlkr T5s, a pair of stylish two-way radios (£59.99, from amazon.co.uk, or Currys stores nationwide)? They're certainly not much cop in the city - obstructions affect the range of transmission - but the baby monitor function is useful. The T5s come into their own during outdoor adventures. I achieved good results testing ours on Exmoor, in a spot where mobile phone reception was not available. There are five call tones, so a number of T5s could effectively be used as a mini phone net. After mobiles, it's hard getting used to the stop-start effect of send and receive.

My Motorolas come under the PMR 446 (Personal Mobile Radio, 446 Mhz) licence exemption of the European Union. This exemption is for consumer-grade walkie-talkies to be used anywhere in Europe. PMRs give an average range of four miles, depending on terrain.

But radio waves can do strange things. The long-distance record for PMR 446 is more than 300 miles, from Blyth in Northumberland to Almere in the Netherlands. There are eight standard channels and any PMR 446 radio from any brand should be compatible with any other PMR 446 radio. The Motorolas also have 121 subchannels, which gets round the problem of too many other people using them. Then again, I didn't hear another soul apart from my young son squawking "over, over". His radio days are just beginning.

They may involve these kinds of radios; all over Europe, people are using a combination of the internet and PMRs to set up outfits such as the Free Radio Network (freeradionetwork.nl) as a way of sidestepping mobile phone operators. So the revolution continues.

Executives from Activision and Vivendi Games are celebrating the completion of their $19bn (£9.7bn) merger today, after shareholders approved the deal.

The new company - to be known as Activision Blizzard - brings together two of the expanding interactive entertainment industry's largest players, which between them are responsible for some of its most successful titles.

Activision, headquartered in Santa Monica, is most famous for games such as Guitar Hero and the Spider-Man franchise, while Vivendi Games is best known for its flagship studio Blizzard - creators of the hugely popular World of Warcraft online game, which has more than 10 million paying subscribers.

Activision Blizzard is set to be the single most profitable video games company in the world, with one analyst suggesting that annual profits in its first year are likely to exceed $1bn (£511m).

It also allows the new organisation to challenge the dominance of Electronic Arts, maker of popular games such as The Sims and the Fifa football series, and surpass it with combined annual revenues in excess of £2bn.

"Activision is a leader in the console business, and Vivendi is a leader in the online PC games industry," said Jean-Bernard Levy, chief executive of parent company Vivendi. "I think this combination makes us a very powerful leader in the industry."

Although Vivendi will own a 52% stake in the new group, executives decided to ditch the French parent company's brand in favour of its better-known subsidiary.

Robert Kotick, the chief executive of the new company, said that he aimed to build on recent successes in Asia, adding that Blizzard had "a level of awareness among consumers in Asian countries that is much higher than usual for a western company".

"They've also invested hundreds of millions in infrastructure around the world which we can use," he said. "Plus we get the association with Vivendi and the opportunities that brings - the chance to work more closely with Universal Music in our Guitar Hero games, for example, is an affiliation which is bound to be helpful."

Despite concerns that an economic downturn could lead to a drop in consumer spending, Levy said he was confident that the new company could survive a downturn.

He told the Guardian that he expected the price of the recent generation of games consoles - including Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3 - to continue falling, without consumers cutting back on the amount they spend on games.

"We are a very cheap way to get entertained in terms of cost per hour," he said. "If and when people tighten their belts in terms of entertainment - which won't happen as quickly as with travel costs, for example - it's quite likely that we won't suffer too much."

The UK is moving rapidly towards digital switchover, with the number of analogue-only homes falling 34% in the year to the end of March, according to the latest figures from Ofcom, the communications regulator.

Ofcom's latest quarterly Digital Progress Report, released today, suggests the number of households without any digital TV dropped to 3.3m in the first quarter of 2008 - 1.7m fewer than the same period in 2007.

The total number of UK households with digital TV is now 22.2m, or 87.2% of homes, the research suggests.

Ofcom has changed its research system since the last report in March and this would have been 88.2% under the old methodology.

In the first quarter of this year there was a net growth of 190,000 homes with multichannel TV, with two-thirds of the new adopters taking free services - Freeview or free satellite.

The upsurge in digital TV takeup is mainly propelled by the growth of Freeview, with a further 1.3m homes adopting the free digital terrestrial television service for their main sets in the 12 months ending March 31, 2008.

Another 14m households now have Freeview on their second TV set, bringing the total number of DTT sets to 23m.

Meanwhile, the number of homes with pay TV digital services reached 12.2m by the end of the first quarter of 2008.

Digital satellite, including Sky and Freesat, is the second most popular way of receiving digital TV in British homes after Freeview.

There are now 9.3m homes using digital satellite for their main TV set, a 37% share and a rise of 230,000 since the first quarter of 2007.

Meanwhile, 3.2m homes are using cable TV as their primary multichannel service, the research suggests. Of these, about 30,000 are still using analogue cable TV.

Virgin Media has 3.5m subscribers and the Ofcom report suggests the discrepancy could be partly due to non-residential subscriptions and some overlap with homes that have both satellite and cable.

· To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 7278 2332.

· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

The UK is moving rapidly towards digital switchover, with the number of analogue-only homes falling 34% in the year to the end of March, according to the latest figures from Ofcom, the communications regulator.

Ofcom's latest quarterly Digital Progress Report, released today, suggests the number of households without any digital TV dropped to 3.3m in the first quarter of 2008 - 1.7m fewer than the same period in 2007.

The total number of UK households with digital TV is now 22.2m, or 87.2% of homes, the research suggests.

Ofcom has changed its research system since the last report in March and this would have been 88.2% under the old methodology.

In the first quarter of this year there was a net growth of 190,000 homes with multichannel TV, with two-thirds of the new adopters taking free services - Freeview or free satellite.

The upsurge in digital TV takeup is mainly propelled by the growth of Freeview, with a further 1.3m homes adopting the free digital terrestrial television service in the 12 months ending March 31, 2008.

Another 14m households adopted Freeview on their second TV set, bringing the total number of DTT sets to 23m.

Meanwhile, the number of homes with pay TV digital services reached 12.2m by the end of the first quarter of 2008.

Digital satellite, including Sky and Freesat, is the second most popular way of receiving digital TV in British homes after Freeview.

There are now 9.3m homes using digital satellite for their main TV set, a 37% share and a rise of 230,000 since the first quarter of 2007.

Meanwhile, 3.2m homes are using cable TV, mostly pay services with Virgin Media but including some free cable, as their primary multichannel service, the research suggests. Of these, about 30,000 are still using analogue cable TV.

Virgin Media has 3.5m subscribers and the Ofcom report suggests the discrepancy could be partly due to non-residential subscriptions and some overlap with homes that have both satellite and cable.

· To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 7278 2332.

· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

So, finally, the third-party iPhone and iPod Touch apps are here. It's only taken Apple, what, a month or two short of seven years to turn the iPod from something that people laughed at and dismissed into a fully-fledged platform on which other people build applications. (I've written previously about how important these third-party iPhone and iPod applications are to Apple.) For the phone itself, only about 18 months.

And what do we find are the fruits of that labour? Courtesy of John Gruber, who's been watching what people downloaded on the first day, we discover that the most popular paid-for application was Sega's Super Monkey Ball, with 10,955 downloads (at $9.99 each) in the first 24 hours. He calculates that to be $109,440 in total, about $76,000 for Sega and $33,000 for Apple under the 70-30 revenue deal.

He also notes that when people have a choice of free vs paid apps, they split (at least to begin with) about 50-1 in favour of free. That 2% "conversion rate" is certainly interesting (though of course once people have been using the phone for longer, the figure will probably rise).

But if you thought that the first appearance of the iPhone's third-party apps would be marked by people producing fantastically clever applications that would let you calculate your carbon footprint and amortise the price of a gallon of petrol while controlling your washing machine, you'll be disappointed. And if you thought too that Apple's reputation for producing products with great engineering and user interfaces would somehow be transmitted over to third-party builders, prepare to be doubly disappointed. People have such strange ideas of what makes a good interface.

For example, have a look at the Sudoku game (with sound effects!) on the linked video. Now ask yourself: is that as legible as it could possibly be? Is it as simple to use as it could be? Why, for example, have a dark star background? Why not white? And when you're entering a number in a square, why not have the list of possible numbers come up in the square? (I'll admit to a slight Sudoku addiction - though obviously I could give it up any time - and use Sudoku Susser on my computer, which while having a quite horrendous user interface away from the grid, does at least start with a clean, black-on-white grid. Honest.)

There's also plenty of criticism of iPhone interface design: Gruber and commenters pretty much flayed the work of a company that wrote a "trip-meter" called TripLog1040 to measure your distance travelled. At first glance you might think it was acceptable. On the iPhone, though, millimetres matter. It may be the first screen where that's the case. (Other people tried redesigns: here's one, and another.

But such elementary mistakes in design are the sorts of things that you have to expect from a nascent platform. After all, what do we all remember from our first unfettered experiences of using Microsoft's Windows? Yup, discovering the games - solitaire and Minesweeper, which were designed to train people not used to using the mouse, while they thought they were just bunking off.

It's like the evolution of a rainforest: you can't have the soaring canopy of trees and the rich wildlife below without first having all the compost at the bottom. Some of the free apps are probably of negative value, inasmuch as they take up storage space you could use for something else: anyone for Yes/No (iTunes-only URL)? This app will make those hard decisions for you without your having to toss one of those expensive "coins". Or Hold On, in which you "compete to see how long you can hold the button"?

Yeah, well, don't worry. The trivia won't necessarily get washed away; it'll exist, somewhere in cyberspace. But in time we'll start to get the really useful products. Indeed, some of them may already be there. Fraser Speirs's Exposure, a Flickr client, has the fascinating "Near Me" button: click it and any geotagged photos on Flickr that were taken near your current location will be shown - because the new iPhone has GPS, of course. That's just the start. The rainforest is growing. Don't worry about all the compost on the ground. It's all just getting started.

Nicolas S has 17 online friends, among them the glamorous Rachida D and debonair Bernard K. His religion is listed as "all of them - as long as they love me," and favourite quotes include "How much is that Rolex?" and "Can I borrow your yacht?"

Facebook fans have no fear: President Sarkozy has not decided to bare all on the ever-growing social networking site. But he has fallen victim to the latest internet craze in France: a satirical website that harnesses the collective clout of the internet and takes aim at the political elite.

The brainchild of two students who wanted to create an irreverent portrait of the country's leaders and their opponents, Failbook is a spoof networking site which allows members of the public to create politicians' profiles.

Although still in its early days - the site only launched last week - thousands of visitors are already logging on and delighting in the opportunity to poke fun at their chosen target.

For its creators, who want to remain anonymous, the similarity between forensic media coverage and obsessive social networking was too tempting to ignore.

"We live in a world where the slightest development is covered in the media, and, at the same time, we have Facebook, where people have killed off their private lives and build up reputations by putting everything up in public," said one. "We wanted to use this analogy for a lighter treatment of politics. We're so used to seeing the same analyses day in, day out that we wanted to dramatise it a bit - and send it up."

Yesterday on Failbook the understated prime minister, Francois Fillon, joined a group called: "I don't like Carla Bruni's new album and I don't mind admitting it." Marine LP (Le Pen) writes excitedly on her father's wall about a film she has just seen portraying an all-white Paris "with no Arabs and no blacks".

The spoof of Jean Sarkozy - the president's son, who himself was recently elected to political office, describes his religion as "ambition", while Justice Minister Rachida Dati's interests are listed succinctly as: "Dior tailoring, Chanel shirts and Stalinist authoritarianism."

According to Pierre Brechon, professor at the prestigious Sciences Po university in Grenoble, the younger generation in France is less idealistic and more critical of its political leaders than those before it. That tendency, combined with the new platform of the internet, has led to new forms of parody, he said.

"French satire has always existed, long before the web did, and it has often been extremely ferocious," he said. "Nowadays, through the web, it can reach a public which is much larger and much more varied than before."

Excitement over the launch of the iPhone 3G turned to chaos today as computer problems meant customers could not buy the new gadget.

Around 150 fans were waiting at the Apple store in Regent Street, London, for the launch of the new phone but had to wait several hours to be connected.

Problems with the O2 network, Apple's exclusive partner in the UK, meant hundreds of customers in the store were unable to register their details or process payments. Staff said the large volume of customers trying to register their new phones on the O2 server appeared to have caused the problem.

A spokesman for O2 said Apple stores were having "technical issues" connecting to the telecoms company's online systems.

"Customer interest in iPhone has been phenomenal this morning," he said.

"We can confirm that Apple stores are having technical issues connecting to O2 systems. The systems are currently working but quite slowly. We are working to get the systems back up to full speed as quickly as possible."

Both O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores nationwide have reportedly been affected by the server problems.

The new iPhone 3G combines a mobile phone with the capabilities of an iPod to play music and videos, plus an improved web browser with a high-speed internet connection and GPS satellite positioning.

Excitement over the launch of Apple's latest offering spread world-wide as some fans queued for up to 60 hours to be among the first to buy one.

In London, David Suen, a 27-year-old economics student from Australia, was the first outside the Apple store at 6.30am. He had bought his place in the queue on eBay "for less than £50" from another man who had been waiting since 11am on Thursday.

He said he was not blaming Apple for the delay in buying the new phone. "It's fine. It's O2's server that has the fault. It's not really Apple's problem," he said.

Second-in-line Antonio Guerra, 19, a London fashion student, said he had been waiting for 19 hours but was happy to wait "a few more".

Yesterday O2 warned customers that they did not have enough phones to keep up with demand.

A message on O2's website said each of its stores would have just "a few dozen" iPhones to sell today. It said supply issues meant numbers would be limited for weeks but all customers who wanted one would have it "by the end of this summer".

Both O2 and Carphone Warehouse had to suspend online orders for the iPhone earlier this week, citing "incredible demand".

The new phone costs less than its £269 predecessor, but is still only available in the UK from O2, Carphone Warehouse and Apple stores. O2 and the Carphone Warehouse are giving away the 8Gb version of the iPhone to customers who sign up for tariffs costing £45 or £75 a month.

The phone will cost between £59 and £159 for customers on other tariffs.

Gadget fans across the globe queued through the night in a bid to be some of the first to pick up the new iPhone 3G as it goes on sale today.

At the Apple store in Regent Street, around 150 people were waiting for the launch of the new phone at 8am, while crowds of cheering people in Hong Kong - some of whom had queued for days - greeted the launch of the hotly anticipated phone.

By 9.45am, customers in the London store were still unable to buy the phone as the online registration system was unable to register details or process payments. Staff said the large volume of customers trying to register their new phones on the O2 network appeared to have caused the problem.

A 22-year-old student from New Zealand is believed to be the first in the world to own the new iPhone. Jonny Gladwell reportedly queued for 60 hours to claim the title and his new phone.

The new iPhone combines a mobile phone with the capabilities of an iPod to play music and videos, plus an improved web browser with a high-speed internet connection and GPS satellite positioning.

In London, David Suen, a 27-year-old economics student from Australia, was the first outside the Apple store at 6.30am. He had bought his place in the queue on eBay "for less than £50" from another man who had been waiting since 11am on Thursday.

"I've been waiting for this since the last iPhone because of 3G. It's very exciting," he said.

The iPhone is only available on the O2 network, Apple's exclusive partner, but yesterday the communications company warned customers they did not have enough phones to keep up with demand.

It said that each of its stores would have on just "a few dozen" iPhones to sell today. It said supply issues meant numbers would be limited for weeks but customers would have one "by the end of this summer".

A message on 02's website said: "We are experiencing unprecedented demand for the device and, whilst we are confident that all customers who want iPhone 3G will get one by the end of this summer, initial supply is limited and will be for some weeks."

Both O2 and the Carphone Warehouse had to suspend online orders for the iPhone earlier this week, citing "incredible demand".

The new phone costs less than its £269 predecessor, but is still only available in the UK from O2, Carphone Warehouse and Apple stores. O2 and the Carphone Warehouse are giving away the 8Gb version of the iPhone to customers who sign up to tariffs costing £45 or £75 a month.

The gadgets will cost between £59 and £159 for customers on other tariffs.

Apple's new iPhone 3G went on sale this morning, as the Californian company's latest attempt to capture the public imagination.

The first UK iPhone 3G was sold at 8.02am, in a stunt designed to promote the O2 network, which has an exclusive deal to provide iPhone service in the UK.

Around 150 people lined up outside the Apple store on London's Regent Street for the chance to get their hands on the new gadget. First in the queue was David Suen, a 27-year-old student at the London School of Economics, who said he had bought his place in the line for "less than £50" from a man who had arrived at 11am yesterday.

"I've been waiting for this since the last iPhone because of 3G," he said. "It's very exciting."

Suen is not alone in holding off buying the gizmo because of its previous lack of higher-speed 3G connectivity. That had been a common complaint among European consumers, who are used to subsidised handsets with faster connections than those in America.

Both Apple and O2 hope that the new, faster model - which also incorporates satellite navigation - can drive up sales. The network and Carphone Warehouse, the only independent retailer that will stock the phone in the UK, have both reported greater consumer interest in the new device than its previous model, which went on sale in Britain last November.

Not all customers will be able to buy a handset, however, with O2 warning last night that it only had limited stock.

"On average, we will only have a few dozen iPhone 3Gs per store (some stores more, some stores less, dependant upon store size so we expect to sell out quickly)," the company warned on its website.

The new iPhone also has access to a new online shop, which sells downloadable applications including games, web tools and even full copies of the Bible.

The store launched yesterday amid much confusion, with customers around the world able to buy applications but not to download them, because the new version of the iPhone software had not yet been made available.

What's your favourite piece of technology?
Predictably, my iPhone. I wasn't sure it was all that incredible at first, but realised that the more I use it and the longer I have it, the more useful and impressive it is. I like the way it makes itself better from time to time. It'd be good if all technology could do that.

How has it improved your life?
Well, "improved" is a strong word. It's still a phone, first and foremost, and at the moment it's just a much slicker and cooler BlackBerry, but I'm confident that in the next couple of years you'll be able to ask me that question again, and I'll be able to answer …

When was the last time you used it, and what for?
To type the words you're reading now, and in a moment I'll use it to send it to the man who asked me to do so. I'm walking down Upper Street in Islington right now, trying not to bump into bins as I type.

What additional features would you add if you could?
A torch and a shrill mugging alarm.

Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time?
Of course. It will be laughable. But we'll still be telling our children: "It was actually very impressive back then." And they'll mock us, and ask us what steam trains were like.

What one tip would you give to non-iPhone users?
Buy an iPhone. Or come up with a decent argument against them, that does not involve the word "camera".

Do you consider yourself to be a Luddite or a nerd?
A bit of a nerd. I wear glasses for a start, so I am fundamentally halfway there, but I love new gadgets. Someone sent me a toaster that both toasts your bread and poaches your eggs the other day. It's only worth about 30 quid, but I was ridiculously happy.

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
When I was a student I stupidly spent all my savings on a home cinema centre with 10 speakers. I only had a 10-inch TV and a room the size of a table. The entire place was just a bed and speakers.

Mac or PC?
Mac. Let us finally put this debate to rest.

What song is at the top of your iPod's top 25 most played?
At the moment, it's Vampire Weekend, Oxford Comma.

Will robots rule the world?
Yes. I actually asked a leading roboticist this. He said they will definitely rise up against us. At the moment the only idea to stop them doing this is keeping their batteries within easy reach.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
I think a really decent projector. I have a dream of a house in France, the side of a barn, a huge projector, a bunch of mates, an open fire, a crate of beers, and Wii golf …

Danny Wallace's new book, Friends Like These, is out now

BT is in talks to buy Silicon Valley internet-phone software developer Ribbit as it looks to create a one-number web-based communications platform to take on the likes of Google and Skype in the burgeoning online telecoms market.

Ribbit, founded two years ago and based near Google's headquarters in Mountain View, claims to be "Silicon Valley's first phone company". It has created software that allows programmers to design applications that tie together mobile phones, fixed-line phones and even social networking sites into a single online communications hub.

Ribbit allows any software developer to use its technology to create applications, in the same way as Google has opened up its soon to launch mobile phone operating system android and Apple has allowed other people to develop software for the iPhone.

There are a number of communications tools such as Evernote - which allows forgetful iPhone users to access their "to do" lists from their phone or computer - which are designed to integrate the mobile phone with internet-based services.

Bringing together the information stored on the web with mobile phones, a trend known as unified communications, has been mooted for many years. But the take-up of broadband and the creation of fast mobile phone networks has made it easier to achieve. Last year Google snapped up another Californian company involved in this area, called GrandCentral, for about $50m.

BT is understood to have offered as much as $55m (£28m) for Ribbit, although a deal has not yet been signed. BT refused to comment yesterday.

Ribbit's technology has already been used by a number of third party application developers. American business communications group Salesforce.com has a Ribbit-based application that lets the company's sales people keep track of all their calls and contacts through a single web page.

Ribbit is also testing a consumer platform called amphibian, which looks like a social networking site with a phone attached. It allows users to convert voicemail messages left on their mobile into text which can be read online, so users can search for keywords. Calls can be patched through from a mobile to a computer; not only will the caller's number be displayed but amphibian can pull up their profile and latest postings from sites such as Flickr, LinkedIn and Twitter. Calls from other web-based telephone services such as GoogleTalk and Skype can also be accessed.

David Caminer, who has died aged 92, was one of the leaders of the postwar computer revolution. When the modern electronic computer was invented in the last years of the second world war, it was seen as a technology that could help in scientific and technical computations - the first American electronic computer, Eniac, was designed specifically to help the military with the calculation of the trajectories of shells.

At that time, David was a soldier in the Green Howards, serving in north Africa. He was wounded at Mareth in Tunisia in 1943, losing a leg, and returned to civilian life by going back to his prewar job with J Lyons & Co, of teashop and Swiss roll fame. He had joined in 1936 as a management trainee. On his return, he was appointed manager of the influential systems analysis office under the direction of John Simmons.

In 1947 Simmons sent two colleagues, TR Thompson and Oliver Standingford, to study office innovations in the US. They came across the new electronic computers and realised that they could be used to solve the problems of keeping track of and accounting for Lyons' multiple activities in the catering and food processing world. Astonishingly, the idea was accepted by Simmons and the Lyons board.

A new venture, the Leo (Lyons electronic office), was started under the direction of Thompson: its task was to build and bring into use in Lyons offices the world's first business computer, based on the Cambridge University Edsac. David joined this band of pioneers and saw immediately that the computer could do more than copy what was being done in offices by clerks with conventional business machines. With proper design, the computer could be used to support management activities and improve the way the company was run. As a result, many of the systems designed by David and his team were as advanced in concept as any are today. For a brief period, the work at Lyons led the world in the application of computers to business problems.

As one of his team, John Aris, later suggested, David invented what we now call systems engineering. By 1953 the team, under David's detailed and imaginative guidance, were turning out a succession of business applications for Lyons and other companies, and in the following year the Lyons weekly payroll for nearly 1,700 bakery workers was automated, along with a stock system for the 250 teashops. The systems analysis office learned that successful systems depend on a complete under-standing of the business processes being examined and the need to work with the people who operate them.

For those of us who worked for him, there was constant excitement as new ground was being broken. At the same time David's fierce and rigorous enforcement of meticulous standards could become a source of misery. He frequently drove his team to achieve the unattainable. By the time a piece of documentation had been returned to its author half a dozen times to correct the content, language and style, frustration might have set in. But the lessons were learned. Working with David proved to be the most important period in our lives.

In the 1970s, with the merger of the various branches of the UK computer industry into ICL, David was entrusted with the management of one of the largest projects attempted at that time, for the European Community. For completing that project on time and budget, David received his OBE (for services to British commercial interests overseas) in 1980 and, in 2006, he received an honorary doctorate from Middlesex University. In his later years, he could not understand the prevalence of failed computer projects. Would the methods he devised in the early years, combined with his vision, have saved many of the failed or failing projects?

David retired in 1980, then set up the Leo Foundation and spearheaded the 2001 conference at the London Guildhall to celebrate the running of the world's first business application on a computer 50 years earlier at the Cadby Hall headquarters of Lyons. He was the principal author of Leo: The Incredible Story of the World's First Business Computer (1998).

Born in Hackney, east London, David went to Sloane school, Fulham, and was a keen rugby player in his earlier years. He never lost his love for cricket - he was a member of the MCC - football (Chelsea) and rugby union. He was also an opera lover. He and his wife Jackie were still going to concerts, plays and sporting events until his final illness. Though not a man of strong religious beliefs, he had a high regard for the traditions of the Jewish community, to which he was highly committed.

He took an active part in the battles against Oswald Mosley in the 1930s and 40s, culminating with his appearance as a platform speaker at a rally in Trafalgar Square rally in 1943. He continued to have a lively and trenchant view of politics. In later years, he took an active role in his local Labour party and spearheaded the Anti-Apartheid Movement, personally welcoming Archbishop Desmond Tutu to his borough of Richmond upon Thames in support of the campaign.

He is survived by his wife, two daughters, a son and five grandchildren.

· David Tresman Caminer, business computer engineer, born June 26 1915; died June 19 2008