Israel is flaunting its "moral victory" in this week's uneven prisoners-for-bodies swap with an Arabic-language clip on YouTube that condemns Hizbullah as a terrorist organisation that sees a "child murderer" as a hero.

Ofer Gendelman, an Arabic-speaking spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, scorned scenes in Beirut that saw the freed Samir Qantar embraced not only by Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbullah leader, but also by the Lebanese president, prime minister and other dignitaries .

"This is a child-killer whom Hizbullah welcomes with praise, cheers and parades," Gendelman said. "This is a savage murderer whom you extremists see as a hero. "

Using YouTube is new for the Israeli government, which released Qantar and four other Lebanese prisoners, and 200 bodies, to secure the release of two soldiers captured in 2006, though it knew they were almost certainly dead.

Hizbullah did not produce any significant new information about Ron Arad, an air force navigator who was shot down over Lebanon in 1986.

Israel was also accused of hacking into Lebanon's phone network to issue threats. Hizbullah's television station, al-Manar, reported that Israel had sent hundreds of voice messages to phones in Lebanon, threatening retaliation for any new attack.

Lebanon's telecommunications minister, Jubran Basil, ordered his staff to take all necessary steps to stop such a "flagrant violation" of his country's sovereignty. Voice and SMS messages were used as part of Israeli psychological warfare operations during the 2006 fighting.

Remember Skoda jokes? Why do Skodas have heated rear windows? What do you call a Skoda with twin exhaust pipes? How do you double the value of your Skoda? And so on. They were never funny. And they haven't worked for a long time, not since Skodas effectively became Volkswagens and stopped breaking down. The last one still just about works (answer: fill the tank), albeit as a reflection on the price of oil rather than the crapness of Skodas. Credit crunch humour, ha ha ha. And, actually, this is a frugal Skoda Fabia GreenLine Estate, so I'm assuming it runs on fresh air and the scent of summer flowers.

I'm not sure about GreenLine as a name for a car. It's not just that upper-case L in the middle, which is clearly a crime against the English language. More importantly, Green Line is a bus, isn't it? I've seen them on the motorways - Green Line coaches. You can't name a car after a bus. What next? A Skoda National Express? A Bendy Skoda - banned in London because the mayor doesn't like them?

Actually, I don't think Boris Johnson would like any Skoda. As someone who lives in the past, he probably thinks the jokes still apply. Skodas are transport for poor people, the next (small) step up from a bus. Let them drive Range Rovers.

I like this car, though. It's not beautiful or glamorous. It's workmanlike. If it were a worker, it would be an immigrant worker - from eastern Europe. Which is precisely what it is, so it's not surprising. That's not to say eastern Europeans aren't beautiful or glamorous (careful, Boris). They are, just not this one. This one works well, and it's not too expensive, and you're better off with it than you would be with a British one or a French one.

Inside it's functional, rather than plush. You would never say you were cocooned in your Skoda: you're just in it, innit? And with its 1.4-litre diesel engine, don't go looking across at anyone boy-racerishly at the lights, unless you're doing so ironically (a better Skoda joke).

They've made this GreenLine (urrggh) model more thrifty by lowering it, and putting a panel underneath, and removing the spare wheel. Lord knows what happens if you get a puncture - I guess you have to push, while the heated rear window keeps your hands warm (the answer to the first "joke"). It has only one exhaust pipe, so you can't do the wheelbarrow thing (the second). But it all means emissions are just 109g/km and you can do 69mpg, which is pretty good for an estate. There's even a meter on the dashboard that tells you how many miles you're getting to the gallon, something I became obsessed with. 60, 65... go on, 70! Maybe mpg could be the new mph. Jeremy? Boris? Or, better still, you should be able to key in the day's price for a litre of diesel and it would display a price per km - that would make people drive more responsibly (ie, less).

This car is not a pulling car. It's not a pushing car, either. It's just a car that goes from A to B. But because of the mean and lean way it does so, A can be as far as 689 miles from B, and you still won't have to stop to fill up. Which is lucky really, because if you do double the value of a Skoda by filling up, then a tank of diesel is going to cost you £12,145. Which sounds about right at the moment.

Skoda Fabia GreenLine Estate 1.4 TDI

Price: £12,145
Top speed 105mph
Acceleration 0-62 in 13.7 seconds
Average consumption 68.9mpg
CO2 emissions 109g/km
Eco rating 9/10
At the wheel Ken Livingstone
Bound for B, from A
In a word Steady

I have been looking at ways of cutting my electricity usage. In my garden is a large pond with a waterfall, which has a pump running all the time. Are there any solar-powered pond pumps on the market that might work as well?

These gizmos are coming on to the market: the £45 Oxygenator Plus from Smart Solar (smartsolar.com) is suitable for some ponds, but is probably not big enough for yours. Take a look at the Sunjet 900 (about £210, also from smartsolar.com), which has a flow rate of 900 litres an hour. Don't forget that your panel will need to be placed in direct sunlight.

I'm trying to buy a webcam for my Mac, but they seem to be Windows-only.

Apple users remain cut adrift in terms of extras for their computers, and webcams are particularly difficult: not only does every new Mac now come with a built-in webcam, but Apple was forced to stop selling its own iSight camera because it was environmentally unfriendly. Your best bet isn't a special model, but a piece of software that enables you to use these ordinary, inexpensive cameras. Visit icanhaz.com/webcam for more information.

· Email your problems to gadget.clinic@guardian.co.uk

For about 20 years I've written up to 200,000 words each year on an Amstrad. I've loved it dearly and won't have a word said against it, though the world mocks and ridicules. I have two, each a PCW 9512, in London and in our Lakeland home. Two Amstrads, that's me. Beat that, Two Jags.

It does everything I want. I can delete, move stuff around, as long as it's not too much at one time. There are no fancy extras, no email or internet. With books, I send the manuscript to the publisher and they have to key it into their computer. With journalism, I print out a copy, then fax it.

I'd never get away with this if I were starting from scratch, but it's been accepted and worked brilliantly - till now. The problem is faxing. I continually have to ring up to check they've received it. More and more often they can't find it. The fax machine is in a dusty corner, out of paper, broken, no one uses it. I scream and shout, and have to fax it again, sitting on the phone till it starts spewing out at the other end. The death of the fax means, alas, I'll have to dump my Amstrad.

For several years now my children have been telling me I'd love Google. It is true that in the last year I've regularly rung my older daughter, Caitlin, and said, er, could you just look up the 1938 Cup Final score? Is Muriel Spark still alive? Was Donald McGill Scottish? I'm astounded that, in seconds, while talking to me, she's found the answer.

I took soundings and was advised that the best thing for me, simple and efficient, was an Apple laptop, something called a MacBook. It arrived two weeks ago and I must admit it is beautiful - pure white, so clean, so sleek. How can so many marvels be contained in so small a place? It has a built-in camera, so I can have video chat with anyone in the world, as long as they have a similar Apple. Very handy when I ring the Apple experts for help - which, alas, I do almost every day.

I feel so stupid, incompetent, halfwitted. It has made me so depressed, kept me awake at night. It's partly that I've never used a computer before, so I can't direct the cursor, the thing with the arrow. I have to press a pad to operate it, but it rushes off, out of control, hides in the corner, down the back of the sofa.

The keyboard is flat, with so many small, confusing keys. My arthritic hands are used to a raised keyboard, with few, but big, simple buttons. I keep touching the wrong thing and the screen goes wild and I froth at the mouth, roar and shout, but can't get out of it or understand the language. On my Amstrad, I have a key marked Exit. Easy, huh? On the MacBook I have to press a key marked CMD, plus Q. It's all gibberish.

I hate Word, so complicated, with up to 15 stages before I can send copy. Why can't I just write something, then press send? My Amstrad is so simple: one button and it gets printed. And it has a lovely empty screen to work on.

With Word, the screen is so cluttered. At the top and bottom are stupid symbols, like a fruit machine, offering facilities I don't want, which I press by mistake and end up shouting. There's a compass, which when you press says Safari. You what? I pressed an illustration of what looked like a glass of water and the word Trash appeared. I asked for an instruction manual and was told you'll get all that on the screen - but I can't get into the screen. So it's catch-22 as well.

What am I going to do? Calm down, says my adviser. I have to be patient. Just play on it, till it feels second nature. On the Amstrad, I didn't have to think. I just wrote. My Apple is a little gem, a miracle. Not its fault. It's now looking at me reproachfully. Because yes, I've done this on my trusty Amstrad. What a coward. But for the last time. I am going to stick in at the Apple. I can't give up, not again. Life has moved on. As I have to...

· Stephen Fry returns next week.

HMV is extending to its high-street stores a controversial VAT-avoidance scheme that it currently operates solely through the group's website, which is based offshore. The move will offer shoppers discounts and free delivery on out-of-stock titles, at the expense of Treasury coffers.

The retailer is planning to install instore "HMV Delivers" kiosks in its 250 stores. Customers will be able to place orders for CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs and console games and avoid the 17.5% VAT charged on conventional instore purchases.

The terminals bring a ballooning offshore tax ploy, already exploited by major music and DVD websites including HMV.com, to Britain's high streets. The ploy is a fundamental challenge to the government's direct taxation regime. If copied by other high-street chains and supermarkets, it could divert hundreds of millions of pounds from the Treasury. Woolworths is also testing similar terminals in three stores.

HMV's new terminals offer "free home delivery" not from the group's London distribution centre, but from its base on the Channel Islands tax haven of Guernsey. The extra expense of postage is paid for many times over by avoiding VAT.

HMV initially refused to answer questions on its Guernsey operations, telling the Guardian that VAT-free transactions were blocked on all store terminals. But sample purchases at a number of stores showed this was not the case. HMV then said that after trials of various pricing strategies in a few stores, it planned to restrict VAT-free purchases on terminals to products the customer is unable to find on shelves because they are out of stock. This will "remain a convenient, but very marginal channel for customers and sales," a spokesman said. He added the main function of the terminals in the future would be to offer digital downloads.

The tax ploy, which is not unlawful, works by exploiting a VAT exemption on goods priced below £18 that are imported by individuals into the UK from outside the European Union. Known as "low value consignment relief", it has been enshrined in European law for 15 years. But the arrival of online retailing has seen the relief, originally designed to ease the administrative burden on marginal trade, exploited on a scale that was never anticipated.

Initially, HMV was slow to exploit the VAT ploy on the web, seeing cut-price internet retailers as a threat to its stores. In recent years, however, the group has been catching up fast with the pioneers of the VAT relief scheme, such as Jersey-based Play.com. HMV.com gets 1m hits a week.

In March 2007, new chief executive Simon Fox put HMV Guernsey at the heart of his strategy to turn around the struggling retailer. He pledged to expand online sales through the group's Channel Islands base from 6% of HMV's UK sales, to 20% by 2010, and promised to double spending on marketing the website.

HMV told the Guardian its VAT-free sales for the last financial year amounted to about £50m. The loss to the Treasury in unpaid VAT was £8.75m.

HMV's parent company, HMV Group, incurred a total UK corporation tax bill for the same 12 months of £11.4m. More than £8 in every £10 of sales from HMV.com for the last financial year related to VAT-free purchases. Of the 200 bestselling CDs and DVDs available on HMV.com, 196 titles qualify for VAT exemption.

Analysts at Lehman Brothers, the group's corporate broker, have suggested HMV will have to grow web sales to more than £200m by 2010 if Fox is to meet his target of generating 20% of earnings online. The Guardian estimates HMV's Guernsey website may be costing the Treasury more than £30m a year in lost revenue in two years' time.

The British government has put pressure on authorities in Jersey, who have taken actions against a small number of operations deemed to have set up in the island purely for the purposes of exploiting the relief. Officially, ministers and the tax authorities have for years had VAT relief operations under "close review" and have said they will consider cutting the £18 threshold or removing exemption from CDs and DVDs.

Last month, the Treasury's financial secretary, Jane Kennedy, was asked in parliament to clarify the scale of low value consignment relief not just on CDs and DVDs, but on health food supplements, contact lenses, flower deliveries and all product categories. She pointed to official estimates in 2006 of around £90m a year in unpaid VAT - a figure tax campaigners believe is out of date, and too low.

Nevertheless, home delivery exports to the UK have become a major industry in the Channel Islands. Retailers are struggling to find staff and warehouse space on the islands to meet demand. Of the seven CD-selling websites most visited on the internet in the UK, as defined by web traffic monitoring firm Hitwise, all exploit import VAT relief.

Better offshore

HMV does not advertise the difference between many of their store prices and those available in VAT-free, home-delivery web deals. Here are examples:

Desperate Housewives
Series three DVD: instore, £27. HMV.com, £17.99. (All HMV.com prices include home delivery).

Prime Suspect
10 DVD boxed set: instore, £25. HMV.com, £17.99.

Brothers and Sisters
Series one on DVD: instore, £30. HMV.com, £17.99.

There Will Be Blood
DVD: instore, £14.99. HMV.com, £12.99.

Harry Potter: Years 1-5
10 DVDs. Instore, £25. HMV.com, £17.99.

Coldplay: Viva la Vida
CD: instore, £10.99. HMV.com, £8.99.

Duffy: Rockferry
Instore, £10.99. HMV.com, £8.99.

Paul Weller: 22 Dreams
Instore, £9.99. HMV.com, £8.99.

eMusic, one of Apple's most aggressive rivals in online music retail, will launch a radically overhauled website on Tuesday, July 22, combining content and features from the web's most popular social networks and media sharing sites.

As part of a strategy to focus on discovering new music, profiles from Wikipedia, photos from Flickr and videos from YouTube will sit alongside recommendation and sharing tools for artists and bands featured on the new look eMusic site.

The US firm, which claims to be "a strong number two" to Apple, said its new offering "tears down the walls" of the music retail world by opening up its site content to users and encouraging them to bring in content from the rest of the web.

eMusic's users will be able to access social networking site Facebook, bookmarking services Delicious, Magnolia and Reddit, recommendation system Digg and the social news site Newsvine, among others.

Aggregated content will sit alongside reviews and profiles by eMusic's 250 music writers, including Newsday jazz specialist Kevin Whitehead and blues writer John Morthland, a former associate editor of Rolling Stone.

"We have an ethos here of trying to innovate constantly - you really can't stand still," said the eMusic chief executive, David Pakman.

"You have to look at what happens in the behaviour of digital consumers, and think 'what does digital music look like in 2010 or 2011?'," Pakman added.

He said consumers find most of their music through blogs, word of mouth, social networks or online retail, and that radio and TV have little influence on people discovering new artists.

eMusic does not have deals with the major music companies - EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner - but focuses on independent labels, offering a set number of DRM-free MP3 downloads for a fee each month, from £10 for 30 songs to £14.99 for 75 songs.

The US company generates 80% of its revenues from the domestic American market, but said its UK business was growing more quickly.

Pakman said the site sells between 7m and 8m songs globally each month, adding that global revenues and subscriptions would rise by 40-50% this year.

eMusic will also launch an extensive music recommendation system with "unprecedented accuracy" in late September, a "visual breadcrumbs" navigation feature and improved search.

· 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".

I'm remembering the scene in Shrek. Princess Fiona awakes, and expects a delightful Prince Charming scene, all birds and flowers. Instead she is grabbed roughly by Shrek, who heads at top speed for the castle's exit with her under his arm. As things get worse and she realises they're being chased by something large and fire-breathing, the penny drops.

"Wait," she says, "YOU DIDN'T KILL THE DRAGON?"

"It's on my to-do list," Shrek growls back.

What's got me thinking about that? Principally, the fire-breathing dragons on Apple's to-do list for the iPhone. There's so much that isn't yet done, and which don't show many immediate signs of getting done.

Does it matter? Hell yes. Because as the developer Fraser Speirs noted the other day, demographics is destiny: "[The] iPhone OS is Apple's mainstream platform for 2012 and beyond. It's a bold prediction, but the numbers seem fairly clear.

"There are 28m Mac OS X machines in the field. There are already at least 7m iPhones (25% of the total number of Macs), and Apple continues to hold to its aim of selling 10m iPhones by end 2008."

He adds quickly - and it's also a point worth making - that this doesn't mean of necessity that Mac OS X, the one that runs on notebook and desktop computers, is going away, nor that Apple is about to stop making computers. Its ferocious legal assault on the clone-making company Psystar, which it only accuses of copyright infringement, induced copyright infringement, breach of contract, trademark infringement, trade dress infringement and unfair competition (why not throw in "not looking both ways before crossing the road" too, for what it's worth?) shows that it's still defending its hardware business aggressively.

Psystar has been quoted - and is quoted in the court document - saying that it has sold "thousands" of its cloned-up machines, which have a PC chassis but run Mac OS X. Even though Apple is selling millions of machines every quarter (with the latest forecast to be 2.5m for the just-gone quarter), that's still a dangerous infiltration.

Because, of course, hardware is still Apple's principal business. Whether it's iPhones or Macs, that's where its money really comes from.

Certainly you wouldn't want the iPhone to become the principal platform for Apple's software development just yet. That's because it's got so many bugs and omissions. For instance, apps can't run in the background (very unlike Mac OS X, which liberated Apple users from the days when they could only do one thing, such as burn a CD, at a time). So you can't switch in midstream from doing something like reading a newsfeed item to seeing its associated website and come back. Which annoys at least one developer, who found his iPhone would freeze "to the point where you can't even scroll for a while, and then [it] stutters along as if in agony".

And he knows who's at fault: "Which I blame squarely on Apple's decision to avoid doing proper multitasking and take us all back to the pre-MultiFinder days. App developers have little choice but to take the mini-browser shortcut instead of saving their state, invoking Safari and reverting to the point you were at when returning to the app - because, after all, the user would have to exit Safari, find their app icon again and launch it, which would be a pain."

Similarly iPhone 2.0 still can't do copy-and-paste. You can't synchronise notes you've made on it to your computer. You can't store draft text messages. It still can't do MMS (that's picture messaging). And there have been plenty of complaints about shorter battery life - which may be due to people not knowing how to turn off the battery-chewing GPS, or might just be some more of that, um, to-do list stuff. Then, of course, there's the not-actually "push" (more like shove) aspect to the (terribly-named) MobileMe service, which Apple has told its sales force not to describe as "Exchange for the rest of us" because it doesn't actually push changes to the data such as emails and calendars out to connected devices; you have to shove it around by choosing to synchronise.

That's some to-do list.

Possibly the iPhone team do feel that they're now heading for the exit - marked "10 million iPhones sold" - while holding their beautiful, GPS-enabled princess under their arm. But the dragon isn't going away, and the product's success is only making the fire that some are ready to breathe on it hotter. Eventually, Apple, you have to kill the dragon - or at least find some way to bind it up so that it's not going to bother you any more. On your to-do list? Better find a way to get it off it.

The BBC has hired an expert on virtual worlds as part of its efforts to bring its TV and internet output closer together.

Roo Reynolds, who is currently a metaverse evangelist at IBM, will join the corporation as portfolio executive for social media, with a role across BBC Vision.

His role will include coordinating the BBC's social networking strategy and overseeing cross-platform projects - such as BBC3's much-vaunted revamp.

30-year-old Reynolds, who has been working at IBM's research laboratories in Hursley Park, Hampshire, for much of the past 10 years, has been employed in a number of different technical and research roles across the company.

Most recently he has specialised in the company's use of virtual worlds, and in particular has championed IBM's use of Second Life.

"I've worked with some great people and on some great projects, and it's good to be leaving on a high," said Reynolds in an announcement on his blog. "I don't regret anything about my time at IBM, and I'm only going because it's time for me to have even more fun elsewhere."

The announcement comes on the same day that the corporation confirmed that Erik Huggers, a former Microsoft executive, would be taking over as the head of the BBC's overall digital efforts.

Huggers will assume the title of director of future media and technology - one of the top jobs at the BBC - when current incumbent Ashley Highfield leaves on August 1.

Erik Huggers has been confirmed by the BBC as its new director of future media and technology, replacing Ashley Highfield.

Huggers, who MediaGuardian.co.uk revealed would get the job on Tuesday, will step into the new role on August 1.

Currently the group controller of FM&T, Huggers has been groomed for the new role since joining the corporation from Microsoft last year.

As director for the department, he takes responsibility for all the corporation's output across the web, mobile, interactive TV and new platforms as well as strategy and management for enterprise and broadcast technologies. He controls an annual budget of around £400m.

Huggers will also be responsible for the performance and development of iPlayer, the BBC's popular broadband TV catch-up service.

"He has shown tremendous commitment championing the iPlayer amongst many other projects. I look forward to him bringing his drive and determination to this new role, helping ensure the BBC is fit for the digital future," the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, said.

Huggers said he would help to ensure the corporation "responds to audience demands in providing exciting and innovative new ways of delivering the BBC's content across a range of media".

A Dutch national, Huggers was at Microsoft for nine years in various business roles before joining the BBC. He also spent just over a year in a business development role at the TV production firm Endemol.

Huggers' ascension to replace Highfield as FM&T director was seen by many staff as inevitable and he was give the role ahead of several long-serving BBC executives.

Following recent strong criticism by the BBC Trust over "insufficiently strong" management in the FM&T division, the BBC is also understood to be recruiting a head of editorial strategy to work alongside Huggers.

Highfield left the corporation at the end of last month to become chief executive of Project Kangaroo, the joint-venture web TV service being developed by BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4.

The Kangaroo project is currently being scrutinised by the Competition Commission.

· 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".

What's your favourite piece of technology?
Well, the first thought I had was maybe, like, the wheel? If you think about it, we use the wheel all the time, so I use that more than any other piece of technology. But probably functionally, I use the Wacom Cintiq tablet, which is an input device for Macintosh or PC, for Photoshop. [As an animator] I do a lot of drawings in the computer, and I can input them directly.

How has it improved your life?
Well, it gets the drawings into the computer faster, and that is huge. As far as how the wheel has improved my life, it gets me to a lot of places a lot faster than the alternative.

What additional features would you add if you could?
I think, actually, the additional features and the things that it needs [it] already has. I have an older version of the Cintiq, [but] the new one is fabulous. As far as the wheel goes, I would definitely have spikes - just in case you were nearby other cars that were dangerous.

When was the last time you used the Cintiq, and what for?
Probably about a week ago, and it was to do some storyboards for a future project. The last time I used the wheel? Yesterday - I was in a taxi.

Do you think the Cintiq will be obsolete in 10 years' time?
Well, the one I have will be obsolete, but no, I think that it's only going to get better. And certainly, the wheel's going to be around for a while.

What one tip would you give to non-Cintiq users?
I would get one, if you draw at all. It takes a long time to get used to the input device of it, and drawing on the piece of plastic. But once you get over that hump, it's really a terrific piece of work.

Do you consider yourself to be a Luddite or a nerd?
I'm kind of a "nerdite" in the sense that I have cutting-edge technology, but it's always a little bit old. I have the same Nokia phone I've had for years. It doesn't do anything except for make phone calls. So I'll get maybe an iPhone two years from now or something. I'm always right behind the times, but I'm not unwilling to try new technology.

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
It would have to be my car - the Volvo 850 T5 from 1997, which is the best automobile that Volvo ever made. It has a computer, so I think it still counts as technology - the computer tells you what the temperature is outside and what kind of crappy gas mileage you're getting.

Mac or PC?
Mac. As an artist, there's really no debate. I think the Mac has always produced a superior-looking product and I'm happy that the operating system now matches.

What song is at the top of your iPod's top 25 most played?
Probably Roscoe by Midlake. Or Now by Mates of State.

Will robots rule the world?
I don't know. I think this is a bigger issue in the UK. Apparently, the Dalek Cult of Skaro tried to take over one time by bringing the Genesis Arc and creating a whole host of new Daleks to take over all of London. But then I think that they reversed the Time Lords' Genesis Arc so that it sucked them all back in. And then there was that Cyberman thing. But I think a bigger thing to worry about is dragons.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
I think a new CD player for my Volvo. They're kind of expensive, and mine broke, and I feel kind of stupid buying a new CD player on eBay for it. But it says "don't steal me" - it's gigantic, and it fits right in there, and there really is no other use for it.

WALL-E is released in UK cinemas today to rave reviews. The Guardian's Xan Brooks likes it too. Sort of.

Out of every £1 spent by British shoppers 17p is now going to online retailers, as consumers switch away from traditional shops in favour of picking and paying at their home computer.

A new survey shows £26.5bn was spent on the internet in the first six months of this year - up 38% on 2007. The online total is roughly equivalent to half the UK's supermarket spending.

The IMRG-Capgemini online sales index suggests online retail is proving far more resilient to the economic downturn than the high street, where cash-strapped consumers are hitting the shops less often, staying local rather than venturing to out-of-town malls, and trading down to cheaper goods.

Figures from several leading retailers underline that trend. While John Lewis's department stores have been hit by the downturn its online operation has continued to grow rapidly. Online fashion store Asos has produced impressive sales figures, and Ocado, which delivers Waitrose groceries, is seeing sales up 25% on a year ago.

Yesterday Mothercare highlighted a 28% jump in internet sales as one of the big drivers behind its 21% increase in group sales in the 15 weeks to July 11.

The survey suggests online retailers at the bottom and top of the market are performing best. Visits to the Primark and Harrods websites, for instance, are up 12% and 14% respectively on a year ago, while visits to midmarket sites are down 6%.

Online shopping is not immune from the credit crunch - a normal June dip in sales was more pronounced this year and sales of electrical goods are up only 20% this year compared with the 63% growth seen in the same period in 2007.

But the index predicts online growth will remain strong this year as a result of tight household budgets, the cost of petrol and "a general desire to shift to more sustainable shopping patterns". According to IMRG 56% of people think buying online is more environmentally friendly than high street shopping.

Hundreds of websites across Europe offering "free" or "cheap" mobile phone services such as ringtones and wallpaper are conning young people into taking out expensive contracts, the European commission warned yesterday.

The websites, including 39 in Britain, face enforcement action, including substantial fines and closure, after being suspected of breaching EU consumer rules, the EC said.

"Far too many people are falling victim to costly surprises from mysterious charges, fees and ringtone subscriptions they learn about for the first time when they see their mobile bill," said Meglena Kuneva, EU consumer commissioner.

She was giving the results of a unique EU-wide "sweep" last month by national regulators of 558 websites in the 27-nation bloc and Norway and Iceland.

Around 80% or 446 - half of which target young people with devices such as cartoon or TV characters - are to be further investigated. In the UK, 39 out of 43 sites covered by the sweep are suspected of giving misleading information.

Kuneva's warning of EU-wide enforcement action to track down each of the suspected traders comes just days after the EU telecoms commissioner, Viviane Reding, proposed wide-ranging cuts in the cost of sending mobile text messages when travelling within Europe.

Their actions, plus measures to make it easier for customers to switch bank accounts and enjoy lower charges, are part of an EC drive to make the EU more popular as a consumer champion when it has fallen out of favour with its 500m citizens.

Ringtones make up 29% of the European "mobile content" market and, growing at 10% a year, saw sales rise to €691m (£548m) in 2007. More than 495m mobile phones are owned by Europeans.

PhonepayPlus, the UK regulator, said the UK market for mobile content was worth £460m and complaints rose to 4,500 in the first three months of this year.

Its chief executive, George Kidd, told the BBC: "There is a clear lack of trust among many consumers about mobile premium services and this is small wonder when you consider the kind of harm that is being done to them by some providers."

The EU sweep found almost half the websites offered missing or hidden information about the offer's price, with the customer only finding out via their bill. More than 70% lacked basic information on how to contact the trader and more than 60% had misleading information, including widespread use of the word "free". Kuneva cited the case of a consumer's nine-year-old daughter who ordered a "free" ringtone but found this led to expensive membership. The operator paid back €125 in unwanted messages but has retained €273.

A daily ritual: get in the car, plug your destination's address into the satnav and follow the directions delivered in that (slightly grating) automated voice. And the entire cheap and easy process is a hymn to the benefits of free data, because the satnav systems work out where drivers are, using American satellites for free. It is one example Guardian journalists use in their battle to have a similar level of access to official British information. Begun just over two years ago, the Free Our Data campaign is based on a simple argument: taxpayers pay large amounts for the data collected on them - why should they pay extra to see it? Instead, they argue, the government should relinquish copyright on essential national data and let anyone access it for free. That would spur innovation and creativity; not just the campaigners' argument, but that made by independent advisers to the Treasury. Businesses and others could use the data to map cheaply where crimes happen, or how much traffic is on the roads. Enthusiasts for cliff-climbing could share tidal forecasts. Those against argue that the Ordnance Survey's work is not entirely paid for by taxpayers, or warn that it could lead to the privatisation of all data collection. These are serious points, and they should be taken into account. But the momentum is in favour of freeing up data; Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson boasts that he wakes up and immediately thinks "How can I free another dataset?" One hopes that is not literally true, but the sentiment is appreciated.

Shortly before meeting Martha Lane Fox, her publicity people call to postpone the photographer. Lane Fox, who walks with a black polished stick, had fallen over and was sporting a scab on her nose, something that has happened all too often since a horrific car accident in Morocco four years ago.

Lane Fox, a co-founder of Lastminute.com and one of the best-known faces of the internet boom in the late 1990s, has endured 23 operations since the crash, which happened after she had quit the online travel firm and finally found the time to do some exploring herself. Her forearm is criss-crossed with faint scars that could be mistaken for creases. "My friends all tease me, because I have now got a new epithet of brave Martha or tragic Martha, having gone through dotcom Martha. I can't stand it."

Lane Fox works from a small office in fashionable Fitzrovia in London's West End, next door to a new contemporary art gallery. She is gradually building her interests back up, both in business and in a handful of charitable projects.

She is the chair of Lucky Voice, a Tokyo-inspired karaoke club that allows groups of friends to hire small rooms, which she started with her own cash three years ago. There are two clubs - in London and Manchester - and she hopes to develop it into a chain. "The ambition has grown," she says. "I like businesses where you feel as though there are bigger macro issues going on - all this Pop Idol and X Factor stuff."

She is a director of Channel 4 and Marks & Spencer - "I either wear incredibly expensive designer clothes or I wear M&S, accessorised brutally" - and is also on the board of MyDeco, an interiors website begun by Brent Hoberman, her Lastminute co-founder. Hoberman also invested in Lucky Voice.

"It would be an awful, terrible thing if Brent wasn't deeply integrated into my working life," she says. "It could have gone either way - some people could have had the most awful bust-up."

Anti-authoritarian

Her charitable interests are centred on her own foundation, Antigone, which focuses on criminal justice, health and education. Lane Fox studied ancient and modern history at Oxford but for those less familiar with ancient Greece, Antigone - often seen as an anti-authoritarian heroine - was a fearless woman who fought to get her brother, a traitor to the state, a decent burial.

She frets at sounding like a parody when discussing her charities but she wants to promote TalkTalk Innovation in the Community Awards, which hands out £60,000 in grants to community groups looking to extend their work through technology. "I kind of regret saying once I was as technical as a peanut, that is not quite true." In fact, she remains a web evangelist, especially for non-commercial applications.

She is "dismayed" by the state of politics in Britain but thinks technology is empowering people outside the system. Antigone works with online social networks, including one for prisoners' families and patientopinion.org, which enables people to provide feedback on the NHS. "I think that with [web] 2.0, 3.0 or whatever point-0 we are on now, different business models are being created and it is just as exciting now as it was in 1997."

Lane Fox has a soft voice and seems gentler than one might have supposed for someone running a public company in her 20s, although she says that when there was firing to be done at Lastminute, Hoberman would be the one shuffling uncomfortably and suggesting that they just move the person to another part of the business.

The accident in Morocco shattered her body and for a while it was "touch and go". After she recovered, she gave a number of quite graphic interviews. Was that cathartic? "For a long time I felt like I didn't want to talk about it and it was boring and then I thought, it is part of me and if in some way it can make someone else feel that it is worth it, to keep on fighting if they are in a difficult medical situation ... I don't want to sound holier than thou but it is unusual to have gone through that experience."

She still has physiotherapy every day but says she is now much better. "I don't think it ever ends ... It's a kind of balance between accepting the things in my body that have changed and battling for the things that can still get better. I'll still have to have operations in the future but my life doesn't have to fit around them, they have to fit around my life."

She had worked with Hoberman at a media consultancy before they set up Lastminute from a sitting room, drew up a list of possible travel firms and hotels and got on the phones. During the boom, she became a poster child for the internet generation - it didn't hurt that mostly male editors liked printing pictures of a good-looking young businesswoman. Did that annoy her? "Yes and no. We used them, and they used me as well and I think that it was a bit of a quid pro quo. I was probably naive and I am not sure I would do it in the same way now but we got help there and we got all that free advertising.

"I was unprepared for the backlash when the shares collapsed. I got really vicious hate email, really nasty stuff, and I got thousands of them. Combined with the Daily Express and Daily Mail headlines saying 'biggest bitch' or whatever, that was much harder than some of the more objectifying stuff."

The Lastminute flotation was one of the most anticipated of 2000. The night before, Hoberman and Lane Fox had been at Morgan Stanley until 3am and were back in the office at 6am. They were millionaires, but she says, there was no celebration. "I remember walking around the corner and seeing all these cameras and TV crews and journalists and thinking God, I totally underestimated the outside interest. I was so exhausted after the roadshow, and it was stupid stuff, I was thinking to myself, 'I wish I had washed my hair'.

"But that was a surreal day," she says. "Everybody was expecting us to be absolutely elated but we really weren't. We were a bit frightened, I think, about what was to come."

She quit Lastminute in 2003, after the business had moved into profit and the share price was almost back at its peak, hoping to prove she could do something else and could thrive out of Hoberman's shadow. She made £13m when Lastminute was later sold. Before the accident, she was about to accept a job at Selfridges. Would she want a full-time job again? "No, I don't think so - who knows, in 20 years' time I might be wanting to do another full-time job."

She laughs. "I'm 35 and I sound like I could be 65; I've got this weird sort of portfolio of stuff, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a bit strange," she says.

She once described herself as "furiously ambitious". Is she still? "It's a terrible public-school girl thing to say: furiously ambitious. It is the same, but it is not furiously ambitious to run a FTSE-100 business, it is with myself.

"I do feel like: I'm still here, that's been a big stroke of luck, and I've got the chance to use some of the things that Lastminute.com gave me, to try and do some different things - and I want to be good at them, but not in a ruthless monstrous way."

The CV

Born 1973 in Oxford

Education Oxford University, ancient and modern history

Career
1994-97: Spectrum Strategy, associate
1997-98: Carlton Communications, business development manager
1998-2003: Lastminute.com, managing director
Since 2004: Lucky Voice, chair
Since 2005: Channel 4, non-executive director
Since 2007: Marks & Spencer, non-executive director

Interests Trustee of Reprieve, a prison reform charity; patron of education pressure group Camfed, and set up her own grant-making charity, Antigone

An ancient waterway in the southern highlands of Mars breaks through the wall of a giant crater, flooding a huge lake with water and clay minerals.

The spread of deposits across the base of the 25-mile-wide Jezero crater shows that extensive water must have persisted in the lakebed for thousands of years, suggesting the planet was once host to vast lakes and flowing rivers that could perhaps have supported life. "The big surprise from these new results is how pervasive and long-lasting Mars' water was," said Scott Murchie at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

The image, published in Nature and Nature Geosciences, is among several taken recently by a camera on Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The maps will help Nasa officials decide on landing sites for future missions, including the Mars Science Laboratory, due to launch late next year. "If life ever existed in this region, there's a chance of its chemistry being preserved in the delta," said Bethany Ehlmann at Brown Univeristy in Rhode Island.

The clay-like minerals preserve a record of between 4.6bn and 3.8bn years ago, the earliest years of the solar system, when the Earth and Mars sustained a cosmic bombardment by comets and asteroids. "In a few locations a great deal of water must have flushed though the rocks and soil," said John Mustard, a co-author at Brown University. "We're finding dozens of sites where future missions can land to understand if Mars was ever habitable and if so, to look for signs of past life."

What the colours mean

Scientists say this proves water flowed freely on Mars between 4.6bn to 3bn years ago. The colours come from an instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite looking for water: the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. CRISM takes a picture of all kinds of light, from visible to infrared and ultraviolet. The images (taken in strips 10,800 metres wide) allow scientists to work out what the surface of Mars is made of.

A computer technician charged with launching a cyber-coup against the city of San Francisco was expected to plead not guilty late yesterday to four charges of computer tampering.

Terry Childs, an employee of the San Francisco city government, is accused of blocking access to the city's computer system to everyone but himself. He is being held in jail in lieu of $5m bail.

Childs, who was arrested on Sunday, had been suspended from his $127,735-a-year job with the city for alleged insubordination. Apparently irked by the decision, he allegedly created a password to the city's computer system giving him exclusive access. He initially gave police a bogus password before refusing to reveal the correct code, it is alleged.

San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsom, did his best to calm fears that the city was being held to ransom.

"There's nothing to be alarmed about, save the inability to get into the system and tweak the system," he said. "Nothing dramatic has changed in terms of our ability to govern the city."

The city was expected to place Childs on unpaid leave at yesterday's hearing. He is still being paid his salary as he sits in prison.

Childs' court-appointed lawyer - also a city employee - called the bail "crazy".

"I don't think he's a threat," said Mark Jacobs. "He didn't kill anybody, and murderers usually get a $1m bail. Someone out there is really scared of something, and I don't know what that is."

Childs, 43, has been employed by San Francisco for five years and was involved in designing the city's network that records officials' emails, payroll files, police documents and prison inmates' booking records.

The Russian president has warned that government officials who cannot use a computer could soon be out of a job.

"They either should learn or, as they say, goodbye," Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday in a meeting with officials in Petrozavodsk, north-west Russia. "We don't hire people who can't read and write. Computer literacy today is the same."

Since taking office in May, the 42-year-old has made it his mission to modernise Russia and fight pervasive corruption. He said yesterday that if the government carried out more of its work online, it would increase transparency and make corruption more difficult to hide.

He added that there had been no real progress towards putting documents, government purchase orders or the results of government-funded research online, despite years of talk about establishing an "electronic government". He blamed the foot-dragging on poor computer skills.

"Civil servants who don't have elementary computer skills cannot work effectively," Medvedev said. "Computer literacy should be part of job evaluations."

The government should help increase internet access, he added. Internet penetration in Russia is among the lowest in Europe, with only 12% of people aged 15 or older regularly online, according to a study by the internet research firm comScore. But it also has the fastest-growing number of internet users.

The Russian leader has often pointed to his use of the internet. He told Itogi magazine in March that he was fond of watching the television news online.
Associated Press in Moscow

American stocks completed their best two-day percentage gain since 2002 today but Wall Street's fragile good cheer subsided after the bell as earnings from Google and Microsoft failed to live up to investors' expectations.

A fall of more than $5 in the price of oil sent shares soaring on hopes that the cost of crude may have passed its peak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average leapt by 207 points to 11,446 bringing its two-day gain to more than 400 points.

But after the close of trading, Google released earnings which showed weakness in the number of "paid clicks" as internet users choose advertising links.

Although Google's profits were up by 35% to $1.25bn, the figures did not deliver the blowaway gains which investors have grown accustomed to seeing at the internet search company.

"It's hard to love the numbers," said Colin Gillis, an analyst at Canaccord Adams.

"There's the initial shock of this being the best company in the space and it just fell short."

Google insists that it can weather the economic storm crossing the US on the grounds that key advertisers in areas such as household consumer goods tend to maintain spending on promotions even in tough circumstances.

Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said: "Traffic and revenue have held up well despite uncertain economic conditions."

The company boasted of making more than 100 improvements in search quality over the last three months, including work on cross-language searches which bring up results from foreign on-line documents.

In unofficial after-hours trading, Google's shares dropped by 7.7% to $492.50.

The software empire Microsoft took a similar beating, falling by 6.2% to $25.81 in response to its first earnings report since founder Bill Gates retired from day-to-day management.

Microsoft's profits surged by 42% to $4.3bn on strong sales of Office and Windows packages but the company sounded a cautious note on challenging conditions.

"It won't hurt us significantly," said chief financial officer Chris Liddell. "It's what I would described as a tough environment. It's clear other companies around us are suffering."

In an evening of mixed news for the technology industry, IBM proved a bright glimmer by beating earnings forecasts with decent business in hardware and services.

But the US chipmaker Intel learned that it faces new accusations from the European Commission over allegedly anti-competitive practices against rival Advanced Micro Devices.

A statement of objections from the Commission alleged that Intel had paid computer retailers not to sell computers containing chips made by AMD, in addition to previous accusations that it behaved unlawfully in the wholesale market.

The EU's executive body said all the different types of misbehaviour "reinforce each other and are part of a single overall anti-competitive strategy aimed at excluding AMD or limiting its access to the market".

Facebook and ITV.com were the only major websites other than YouTube to significantly increase their share of the UK's web video market over the past year, as the Google-owned site's domination of the sector continues to grow.

Both Facebook and ITV.com launched new video offerings over the year to the end of May, growing their market share from a very low base to create a monthly audience of almost 2 million users each, according to new data from metrics firm comScore.

Facebook, which launched a video-sharing feature with its developer application platform in May 2007, saw a 1,324% increase in video clips watched in the following 12 months.

User numbers for video increased from just 174,000 in May 2007 to 1.8 million in the same month this year.

The growth of ITV.com, which saw the number of videos it serves increase by 1,102% year on year, was driven by the relaunch of its website with an expanded video offering and catch-up service.

Jeff Henry, the managing director of ITV consumer, said the broadcaster had seen increased video traffic across the ITV and ITV Local websites.

"The growth in consumer demand for video was anticipated and stimulated by the relaunch of our sites last year, which provide a fantastic, rich user experience in a world-class environment with exciting and unique content," Henry added.

"We are now seeing our audience telling us their linked experience is incredibly attractive and we will continue to build on this with new developments in the months to come.

"Our turnaround plan sets out our ambition to significantly grow our online assets and these numbers reaffirm our belief in the potential of this area."

Google and its subsidiary YouTube accounted for almost half the 3.6bn videos watched online during May - an increase of more than 56% from May 2007.

Despite the rapid growth in the volume of video content watched online, the overall number of UK web users watching video increased modestly by 4% to an estimated 27.4 million unique users during May this year.

This indicates that individual web users have increased the number of videos they watch online, but the overall online audience for video content has not increased significantly over the past year.

Google's networks of websites, including YouTube, dominate the UK web video market and have seen their market share increase from 33.9% last May to 44.9% in the same month this year, according to comScore.

The US web giant grew its online video audience year on year from 16.9 million monthly unique users a year ago to 20.53 million in May. The number of videos watched across the Google network increased from 771.5m to 1.6bn - a rise of 107%.

The BBC had the second-biggest UK online video audience after Google in May, with 6.5 million users and 55.8m videos.

But even the BBC, which has enjoyed great success with its iPlayer broadband TV catch-up service this year, trailed far behind Google - with just 1.6% of the UK market in May.

But there was bad news in the latest comScore figures for beleaguered web giant Yahoo, currently the focus of an aggressive takeover battle between Microsoft and dissident investor Carl Icahn.

Yahoo's UK users watched 53% less video in May compared with the same month last year, falling to 25.1m clips. Unique user numbers for video content on the Yahoo UK site also fell, from 4.3 million to 3.8 million.

Microsoft's sites, including the MSN content network, saw minimal growth of just 1.5%, in video traffic between May 2007 and the same month this year. The Microsoft network served an estimated 5.91m videos in May.

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The government plans to become the first in the world to make all of its computers carbon neutral.

In a speech at the Science Museum today, Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson is to announce 18 measures that will change the habits of civil servants throughout Whitehall.

The proposals, including desktop computers that switch themselves off if they are inactive for too long, are aimed at making energy consumption from all of Whitehall's information and communication technology carbon neutral by 2012.

Watson hopes that by 2020 government technology will be carbon neutral throughout its lifetime, including manufacture and disposal. "We won't just do this by offsetting but by making serious changes to the way we do business," Watson will say.

The government is the largest buyer of information and communications technology in the UK and its IT equipment is responsible for up to a fifth of the government's carbon emissions - 460,000 tonnes a year. Watson will say: "Worldwide, computers are responsible for the same quantity of carbon emissions as the airline industry."

His proposals follow claims that the government has been falling short of its declarations that it will lead by example by reducing its carbon emissions.

This month a cross-party group of MPs said the government was "lagging far behind" in this area. In March the annual report of the government's independent watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission, said more than half of Whitehall departments were failing to reduce their carbon emissions by enough to meet their targets.

"Turning off every desktop PC in central government for the 16 hours that fall outside the standard working day could save up to 117,500 tonnes of CO2 per year," a Cabinet Office briefing document says.

A government source told the Guardian that a centralised system would switch off computers detected as inactive.

Watson will also ask departments to remove active screensavers, which use the same amount of energy as a screen in full use. Civil servants will also be urged to ensure re-use of PCs which are discarded but are still serviceable.

John Higgins, director general of technology sector organisation Intellect, welcomed Watson's initiative. He said: "These 'quick wins' - rationalising servers and data centres - are a credible series of first steps."

The Sustainable Development Commission's report said that apart from the Ministry of Defence, which significantly reduced its emissions in 2005-06, government departments emit 22% more CO2 than they did in 1999.

Fancy yourself as a tasty videogamer? Then you might soon want to pursue a career in the army. Joypad dexterity, that most 21st-century of skills, is poised to assume a key role on the battlegrounds of Afghanistan and Iraq, now that defence contractor Raytheon has announced plans to use videogame technology in its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones.

Currently, the larger, armed British and American UAV drones buzzing around Afghanistan and Iraq are operated from a base in Arizona, using aircraft-style joysticks and visual data from on-board videocameras. Raytheon claims to have built a system based on the Xbox 360 processor which generates a videogame-like view using accurately mapped terrain, and will replace the joysticks, which become unwieldy over the course of eight-hour shifts, with lower-input controllers. Indeed, many of the smaller, unarmed, hand-launched UAVs already use controllers similar to those of the Xbox 360.

Of the 40 drones lost by the US military and air force in the past five years, 67% went down due to operator error, so at £5m each, the move could save a lot of money. And if the technology is adopted, operators could simply be trained to the requisite level of proficiency on £200-£300 Xbox 360s or PlayStation 3s, rather than costly simulators.

The key to the adoption of videogame technology in war is the sheer number-crunching power of the latest consoles. Anyone who has played Call of Duty 4, for example, will testify to the startling realism of modern war videogames. And videogames have already insinuated themselves into military life, the most famous example being America's Army, which was commissioned by the US army and launched in 2002 as a recruitment tool - it has since become one of the world's most popular games online. Future wars, it seems, could be won by the side with the most agile thumbs.

Small niche internet service providers and BT - and their customers - will be the early beneficiaries of the telecoms giant's announcement on Tuesday that it will spend £1.5bn to install new fibre-optic cables to reach the streets, and in a small number of cases the walls, of 10m homes.

The new systems, to be installed over the next five years, should be capable of speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps), though more usually up to 40Mbps. That compares with current speeds which top out at 24Mbps on standard copper-based phone lines. Virgin Media, the UK's only cable provider - following the aggregation of dozens of cable companies in the 1980s and 1990s - provides speeds of up to 20Mbps.

Ian Fogg, telecoms analyst with the research company Jupiter, called the move "a game changer for the UK broadband market" - but warned that the rivals that have pursued local loop unbundling (LLU) such as Sky, Carphone Warehouse (though its TalkTalk subsidiary), Be, O2 and Tiscali "suddenly face the prospect of their copper [phone line-based] services becoming obsolete in a few years".

Paul Lee, telecoms director at the analyst Deloitte, notes that people will want different speeds: "While some web users will be happy with low broadband speeds, sufficient for email and a spot of online shopping, power users may want to consume video over the web and thus need the highest speeds." But that creates a problem: "The underlying costs of fibre deployment are substantially the same, regardless of speed. So the industry needs to ascertain how to charge customers who are migrated from copper to fibre yet just want the speed they had on copper."

Niche ISPs have struggled to stay in business as everyone has had access to virtually the same line speeds - up to 8Mbps) or in the case of Be, up to 24Mbps, depending on distance from the exchange. In fact, though, most people see download speeds of around 3Mbps with the ADSL broadband now in use. BT has begun upgrading that to ADSL2+ (BT's plan for quicker connection, April 17), which has a maximum 24Mbps speed on lines that previously ran at up to 8Mbps; most people will see a near-doubling of line speeds as a result.

However it is not clear whether BT will seek to charge customers more to pay for the investment in the systems. Its calls for a "regulatory holiday" over the investment have been favourably received by Ofcom - though exact pricing structures will be key in Ofcom's future reaction.

BT will fund the work by cutting £500m from other network investment, abandoning a £700m share buyback, and putting in £300m of new spending.

DNS fix zoned out

After reading articles about the net's latest security problem, I made sure I installed the Microsoft update. Result: I could not access any web pages until I rolled my computer back, at which point everything was fine.
Jane Knight

JS: The bulk of this week's mailbox came from Zone Alarm users who lost their internet access following last week's Windows Update. The update was part of a netwide security effort led by Microsoft, Cisco and Sun to deal with a fundamental design flaw in the Domain Name System (DNS) discovered by Dan Kaminsky. The DNS translates memorable names (eg, doxpara.com) into the numbers used to route traffic (eg, 66.240.226.139). Anyone who can control that can send visitors to almost any site they like. Basically, hackers could take over the web.

The project involved patching or upgrading many of the net's DNS servers and routers as well as server and PC operating systems, and it went astonishingly well. Zone Alarm seems to have been the only major failure, and the company quickly produced a patch. If you don't have that, a workaround is to set Zone Alarm Internet Security to "medium".

However, Zone Alarm users should uninstall Windows Update KB951748 from Windows XP, restart their PC, apply the Zone Alarm patch from
download.zonealarm.com then reinstall the update. KB951748 can be uninstalled using the Add or Remove Programs applet after ticking the box at the top that says "Show updates".

The problem could affect products from more than 80 vendors and potentially all operating systems. Kaminsky has put a DNS checker on his website so that people can find out if their DNS server is vulnerable.

Replacing Zone Alarm

I'm concerned that Zone Alarm had all these problems while other firewalls seemed to cope OK. Are there any other free personal firewalls you can recommend?
Sally Taylor

JS: The DNS fix randomises the source port used for DNS queries: it seems the Zone Alarm firewall assumed they'd come from only one port. That may well be a one-off problem, and if you're otherwise happy with the product, you may not gain anything by switching. This is particularly true if you have the paid-for version rather than the cut-down free version.

However, I prefer the Sunbelt-Kerio Personal Firewall for Windows XP. This starts as the full product but turns off its advanced features after 30 days, and nags you unless you pay for it. Comodo and Jetico also offer decent free firewalls. The final choice is partly a matter of taste.

Printer quest

I am looking for a very light portable printer to replace an old Canon BJC80 for conferences and fieldwork. Is there anything new out there cheaper than the new Canon Pixma iP100?
Dan Rigby

JS: Not that I know of. Sadly, all the Canon BJC ultraportable printers seem to be unavailable, and the Canon Pixma iP90v and iP100 look like the best alternatives. They're about the same size as the BJC but heavier - it weighs 4lbs instead of 3lbs. HP has rivals such as the OfficeJet H470 Mobile Printer but at similar prices. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Corporate iPhone?

I'd like to get an iPhone to access my work emails. Unfortunately the IT department only supports BlackBerrys.
Richard Hickson

JS: Try asking if they support anything besides BlackBerrys. If they support Microsoft Exchange "push email" and synchronisation features, then these work with devices that have ActiveSync This includes some Windows Mobile, Nokia and Palm Treo phones, and the new iPhone 3G. If they support non-BlackBerry devices via BlackBerry Connect, this works with some Windows Mobile, Nokia and other phones, but not the iPhone, at the moment. However, IT departments generally like to eliminate variations, because standardisation simplifies support and therefore saves money. If they only support BlackBerrys, it might not make financial sense to change to the system to support a single iPhone.

Backchat

· Jane McNicol wanted to move her iPod libraries to a new PC. On the Ask Jack blog (blogs.guardian.co.uk/askjack), Doctor reminded her that "if you do not intend to use your old PC, remember to de-authorise that machine as Apple will only allow you to have five machines authorised at any one time". He also mentioned Xilisoft's iPod Rip, "a brilliant piece of software that will transfer all your files from your iPod into your iTunes library" (xilisoft.com/ipod-rip.html).

Get your queries answered by Jack Schofield, our computer editor at jack.schofield@guardian.co.uk