Nervous investors dumped shares in Apple last night on concerns over weakening profit margins and persistent rumours about the health of the technology company's founder, Steve Jobs.

Apple's quarterly profits soared 31% to $1.07bn as customers snapped up record numbers of Mac computers, iPods and iPhones. But the California company provided cautious guidance to Wall Street on its prospects for the rest of the year and offered little to quell speculation surrounding Jobs, whose gaunt appearance drew comment at a recent industry conference.

When asked about Jobs' health during a call with analysts last night, Apple's chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, said: "Steve loves Apple. He serves as CEO at the pleasure of Apple's board and has no plans to leave Apple. Steve's health is a private matter."

In unofficial trading after the close of the stockmarket, Apple's shares slumped 11% to $148.

Jobs, 53, is considered the driving force behind the company's consistent innovation. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer five years ago but has recovered.

When Jobs' apparent weight loss was noted last month, Apple said he was taking antibiotics for a minor "bug". The New York Post revived the issue yesterday by quoting unnamed industry and financial sources expressing concern.

Investors have long been worried about the lack of an obvious succession plan at Apple. The issue surfaced last year when Jobs' position was briefly threatened by a scandal over improper pricing of executive share options.

Questions about the entrepreneur proved a distraction from second-quarter figures which revealed Mac sales had rocketed 41% year on year to 2.5m computers, and iPod sales were 12% higher to 11m globally.

Apple sold 717,000 of its touch-screen iPhones during the three months to June. But the company said margins were likely to weaken because of a series of factors including a "back to school" promotion and an unspecified product launch which is being kept strictly under wraps.

The technology company opened 16 Apple stores during the period and this week unveiled its first outlet in Beijing.

I don't believe in the idea of independent thinking robots. Artificial intelligence is about making machines that can appear intelligent to humans, but they are not self-aware. I've been working in artificial intelligence for 30 years, and there is no glimmer of that.

I have a robot called eMo, which can recreate human expressions, but I look at WALL-E with envy. Its whole face consists of nothing more than two camera bodies, but the animators have used them to create the whole range of human expressiveness. I would love to have created that. Eve, the more futuristic robot that WALL-E falls in love with, was just as expressive, but I was distracted by its ability to float. I didn't understand it at all as a machine, so that rather ruined the plausibility.

WALL-E, on the other hand, was very plausible. Don't forget this is a story set 800 years in the future; a robot that can collect and compact garbage doesn't seem all that unlikely. But why give it a personality, goals and desires? The implication was that WALL-E had developed its character over time, but how? Even if it was programmed as a learning robot, it had no one to learn from. It was abandoned for 700 years, the last inhabitant of a deserted earth. If you left a human alone for that long, they would go completely crazy.

There is nothing remotely like WALL-E in robotics, not yet, but the expressive robot is the direction we are heading towards. There's a whole field called HRI - Human Robotic Interaction. The film takes us several steps further and suggests a terminally lazy society completely controlled by service robots. Unfortunately, this really is the direction we are taking. There are robots caring for the elderly in Japan now. I don't want that sort of life. I don't want to be lifted and carried by robots. I wouldn't mind having one in the kitchen, though.

· Noel Sharkey is a professor of robotics and artificial intelligence at Sheffield University. WALL-E is on general release.

Sometimes a book spine just isn't long enough - especially when its list of authors runs to 90,000. Due to hit the shelves in September, a published encyclopedia of German Wikipedia entries, the first of its kind, will list in a single volume the 50,000 most commonly searched terms on the German Wikipedia website over the past two years.

That means France's first lady, Carla Bruni, Playstation3 or trivia about the US television series House, starring British actor Hugh Laurie, have earned their place among more typical encyclopedia fodder such as politics and geography.

The Wikipedia Lexikon has turned into something of "a document of the zeitgeist", said Beate Varnhorn, a director at its publisher Bertelsmann Lexicon.

All entries, which include high-profile events such as the 2007 G8 summit in Heiligendamm, have been shortened and checked factually. Dotted with images and photographs, its creators aim to reach people who do not use Wikipedia online.

Each Wikipedia entry has a number of contributors, who tweak and add to the information left by other site users, which means an unprecedented list of authors, Varnhorn said. The extensive list of contributors, compressed and separated by commas, will stretch over 30 pages of the 1,000-page tome.

With a price tag of €19.95 (£16), €1 from every Wikipedia Lexikon sold will be given to the German chapter of Wikimedia, the non-profit group behind Wikipedia, for the use of its name.

The publication reverses the industry trend towards the internet and away from traditional print. Earlier this year, Brockhaus Encyclopedia, the German equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica, announced plans to make its 30-volume leather-bound set accessible online.

Publishers of the Wikipedia Lexikon insist it is too soon to say farewell to the book format.

"Unlike Brockhaus, we think the market for print reference books remains positive," said Varnhorn. "The book is highly flexible, I can use it on the sofa while watching television, at the desk, in the garden or in bed, without having to turn on the computer."

German Wikipedia, Germany's sixth-most-visited website, is the second largest in size after its English-version equivalent. It has been estimated it would take at least 750 thick volumes to print all the articles in the English-language version.

The sheer size of the articles on the German Wikipedia site proved too daunting for a publisher who planned to convert it into print a few years ago.

"It turned out that even on very thin paper, the German Wikipedia would fill an [Ikea] shelving unit," said Arne Klempert, the director of Wikipedia Germany. "In the end it didn't happen."

He said the launch of the Lexikon would be closely watched and might inspire similar tomes in other languages - with similarly lengthy lists of authors.

The struggling internet company Yahoo has struck a pact with its billionaire critic Carl Icahn by giving the hedge fund activist a minority presence on its board to avoid a potentially tempestuous showdown at a shareholder meeting next month.

Facing crumbling support among Yahoo investors, Icahn yesterday abandoned his efforts to overthrow the leadership of the embattled Silicon Valley company and force its sale to Microsoft.

Instead, the 72-year-old Icahn & Co hedge fund manager is settling for an offer of three seats on Yahoo's board. One director will stand down and the board will expand from nine to 11 members. Wall Street analysts greeted it as a qualified victory for Yahoo's founder, Jerry Yang, who has pressed hard to maintain its independence and who waged an energetic campaign to discredit Icahn.

Roy Bostock, Yahoo chairman, was "gratified" to reach a deal. "We look forward to working productively with Carl and new members of the board on continuing to improve the company's performance and enhancing stockholder value."

The pact ends a vitriolic two months in which Yahoo and Icahn have traded stinging accusations. The showdown arose after Yahoo turned down a $47.5bn (£23.8bn) takeover offer from Microsoft, angering investors who have grown impatient with its failure to keep up with Google as a leader in lucrative online searches.

Lobbying shareholders for support last week, Yahoo characterised Icahn as a short-term corporate agitator who was merely interested in a quick profit. It dug up remarks from the billionaire last year in which he described technology companies as "hard to understand" and admitted he had rarely focused on them. In turn, Icahn compared Yahoo directors to Alice in Wonderland. He won over high-profile backers, including the oil tycoon T Boone Pickens and star fund manager John Paulson, renowned for making billions by predicting the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

As Yahoo's annual meeting on August 1 approached, the prospect of a hastily compiled slate of Icahn's friends running the company appears to have been too much for institutional shareholders. The balance tipped on Friday when Yahoo's second-biggest investor, the fund management firm Legg Mason, decided to support the existing leadership.

Scott Kessler, an equities analyst at Standard & Poor's in New York, said the upshot amounted to a defeat for Icahn. "The writing's not only on the wall but on an agreement for all to see," he said. In spite of the deal, Kessler said, there would be pressure for a shake-up in recognition of discontent among a sizeable minority of investors. "Jerry Yang's been back in place for a year and a lot of people think he is not the right person for the job. It wouldn't surprise me if there were some management changes to come," said Kessler.

Icahn will take one of the board seats handed to his group under the deal, which is subject to approval by investors. In a statement, the New York-based financier said a sale of the firm or of its core search business should be given "full consideration". But striking a conciliatory note, he continued: "I believe this is a good outcome and that we will have a strong working relationship going forward."

By mid-session on the Nasdaq exchange, Yahoo shares had slid 63 cents to $21.82. Microsoft was willing to pay $33 a share and Yahoo has shunned several attempts by it to reignite talks, opting for a controversial tie-up with Google, in which the two pool resources for some online searches and share the ad revenue. This infuriated the advertising industry, which sees it as anti-competitive.

Backstory

The billionaire hedge fund manager who has been niggling away at Yahoo doesn't own a personal computer. Carl Icahn, 72, whose fortune is estimated at $14bn (£7bn), made his name by seizing control of the airline TWA in 1985. His targets have included Texaco, Time Warner, Nabisco, Motorola and Blockbuster. Brought up in Queens, New York, he runs his Icahn & Co hedge fund from offices overlooking Central Park. He is ruthless, once remarking that there was no place for sentiment in business: "If you want a friend, get a dog."

Blogging looked like fulfilling Andy Warhol's prophecy that everyone would get their 15 minutes of fame. Xiaxue, however, has been famous for five years, and has turned into a full-time professional blogger, attracting around 300,000 visitors per month. Singapore's National Library Board has added her to its electronic archives. She may have passed her peak - marked by her Best Asian Weblog award in the 2005 Bloggies - but there's no sign of this lippy former student/waitress going away.

Xiaxue ("snowing") has described herself as "just a normal girl who got rather lucky". Her real name is Zheng Yan Yan, aka Wendy Cheng, and she's now 24. She started blogging in April 2003, and could easily have sunk without trace. Instead, she became, briefly, a celebrity blogger for The Straits Times newspaper, a Maxim columnist, and co-starred in a sort of reality TV series, Girls Out Loud. She now does a fortnightly series, Xiaxue's Guide To Life, which runs on Munkysuperstar's web-based TV channel, clicknetwork.tv. There are quite a few on YouTube.

If you want to know about blinging your long nails with crystals, getting a tongue piercing, losing weight, cooking live crabs, shopping for slutty clothes or fitting out your totally pink Princess Room on the cheap, Xiaxue is your girl. She'd be an ideal Big Brother contestant.

Part of Xiaxue's appeal is that she's offensive, by Singapore standards. "Singaporean (Chinese) guys," she wrote, "like girls who keep quiet and nods in agreement to everything they say, rather than a girl who speaks up for her own opinions. They like girls who are weak, diminutive and vulnerable, not girls who are strong and can protect themselves." They must also dress modestly and be virgins.

Xiaxue - perhaps corrupted by reading California-based Sweet Valley High books - is the opposite of this Singaporean ideal. She's bitchy, swears, wears "chio" (pretty but provocative) clothes, writes in intimate detail about things like panty liners, and flaunts her American boyfriend, Mike. It provokes hundreds of comments.

She also generates controversy by attacking other bloggers. One famous post dealt with the Top Seven Most Disgusting Bloggers in Singapore, including Xiaxue. She attacked herself for being a fake, short, fat and ugly. "She is so hao lian [arrogant] of her stupid angmoh [caucasian monkey] boyfriend," she wrote. "SPG!" Sarong Party Girl: the ultimate insult.

Some of Xiaxue's posts are labelled as advertorials: she's paid to write about products, review restaurants etc, and she also got a free "nose job". Since she's always writing about the things she does and the products she buys, these aren't much different from her usual slang-packed, heavily illustrated (and skilfully photoshopped) posts. You can take it or leave it.

As you'd expect, most of Xiaxue's readers - around 70% - live in Singapore or Malaysia. For the rest of us, she's a virtual tourist spot, providing an uncensored, unmediated and somewhat voyeuristic peek into a different society. Every nation should have its own Xiaxue, and perhaps they do. We just don't know about them.

The head of a German social networking site has strongly defended his firm against a lawsuit brought by US giant Facebook which claims it has ripped off the design of the site.

In a statement issued over the weekend, StudiVZ chief executive Marcus Riecke dismissed Facebook as "arrogantly laying claim to an international monopoly" and denied that his site had received any official legal complaint from Facebook.

Lawyers for Facebook filed an intellectual property lawsuit in a court in California on Friday.

"We believe that our success thus far has been directly related to the unique look and feel of both the site and user interface, and are very disappointed that StudiVZ has unfairly used our creativity, innovation and effort by building a 'clone' site to compete directly against us," said deputy general counsel Mark Howitson.

"Ultimately, we are supporters of innovation, not imitation."

Riecke said Facebook's action was down to its struggle to build market share in Germany.

"Their strategy appears to be: If you can't beat them, sue them," he said.

"Facebook was not the first [social network] and certainly isn't the only one. By attempting to harm StudiVZ through a meritless California lawsuit, Facebook is arrogantly laying claim to an international monopoly over social networking sites that the facts show it does not deserve."

StudiVZ's lawyers applied to a Stuttgart district court late on Friday to declare the Facebook claims to be without merit.

Targeted at students, the network of three StudiVZ sites has built a core following in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, claiming 10 million unique users each month.

Last year it was bought by the publishing firm Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck for €70.5 (£56.1m).

Facebook launched its German-language version on March 3 as part of wider international expansion.

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Dissident investor Carl Icahn has forced his way onto the Yahoo board, along with two of his alternative slate of directors, after agreeing to drop his proxy battle to oust the internet company's existing board.

Icahn, who owns a 4.98% stake in Yahoo, had proposed an alternative slate of directors in a bid to reignite a potential deal with Microsoft under a new management structure.

But today under the terms of the settlement agreement, eight members of Yahoo's current board, including chief executive Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock, will stand for re-election at the company's 2008 annual meeting.

Icahn has agreed to vote in favour of the nominees.

Following the annual meeting the board will expand to 11 members. This will include Icahn and two candidates from "a list of nine candidates recommended by Mr Icahn," Yahoo said in a statement today.

Icahn's lineup includes Mark Cuban, who made a fortune selling webcasting start-up Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999, former Viacom boss Frank Biondi and the former head of the New Line Cinema film studios, Robert Shaye.

Jonathan Miller, the former chairman and chief executive of AOL, has been added to the list of nominees.

"While I continue to believe that the sale of the whole company or the sale of the search business is the right transaction and must be given full consideration, I share the view that Yahoo's valuable collection of assets positions it well to continue expanding its online leadership and enhancing returns to stockholders," said Icahn.

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A prominent Yahoo shareholder has proposed that a composite board from current management and rebel shareholder nominees should take over the company.

Ahead of a showdown at the company's annual general meeting on August 1, hedge fund founder Eric Jackson wants shareholders to vote to keep five of the current board and bring in only four new executives from the slate of nine proposed by Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor trying to take over the firm.

Jackson, who leads the Yahoo Plan B shareholder group of 150 individual investors, said in a statement that "it has become clear over the last two weeks that many shareholders are reluctant to support the entire list of Icahn nominees".

He added that Jerry Yang, Yahoo's co-founder and chief executive, should be replaced but remain on the board, arguing that the company would need continuity in its management to see through a deal with Microsoft. Icahn wants to sack Yang.

Icahn recently entered talks with Microsoft over a new deal to take over Yahoo. Previous talks between the two firms directly ground to a halt in May when they could not agree a price.

"We are confident this new hybrid Yahoo board can effectively conclude a deal with [Microsoft]," said Jackson, who wants to encourage voters to opt for HotJobs investor Adam Dell, Harvard professor Lucian Bebchuk and two advertising executives, John Chapple and Edward Meyer.

These four, as put forward by Icahn two months ago, would sit alongside five current Yahoo directors.

Icahn's bid was dented on Friday when major investor Bill Miller of Legg Mason, who represents Yahoo's fourth largest investor, said he would vote to support the current board which includes Yang.

Miller, who controls 4% of Yahoo's stock, was the first fund manager to speak out about the takeover.

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The BBC iPlayer service on Virgin Media recorded more than 10m viewings in June, according to the first figures released by the cable TV company.

Virgin Media, the first TV service to make the BBC iPlayer catch-up service available, managed to attract half as many viewings as the BBC website in the first full month it was made available to cable TV customers.

The iPlayer, which is open to all UK internet users and has been running fully since Christmas, managed 20.4m requests to view programmes in June with an average of 1.5 million weekly users.

Virgin Media has a pool of around 3.5 million cable TV subscribers who can access its version of the BBC iPlayer to catch up on more than 350 hours of the corporation's programming.

The top 10 programmes on the BBC iPlayer on Virgin Media last month included EastEnders, Doctor Who and children's show In the Night Garden.

Malcolm Wall, the chief executive of content at Virgin Media, said that the figures underlined the "continued success of our on-demand offering".

Virgin Media launched the TV version of the iPlayer in May, making it available only via its red button interactive service, with just 1.4 million views of BBC programmes during the month.

The surge in usage has been fuelled by Virgin Media making the BBC iPlayer accessible through its cable TV electronic programming guide from June 1.

Rahul Chakkara, the BBC controller, TV platforms, said: "The initial success on Virgin Media underlines the multiplatform appeal of the BBC iPlayer proposition."

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The internet search engine Google has been named as Britain's top "superbrand", after it beat Microsoft for the premier spot, according to a YouGov survey published today.

The search engine, which came third in the same consumer poll last year, took pole position in a list of 500 brands available in the UK, beating Mercedes-Benz, the BBC, British Airways and Royal Doulton.

Since Google was founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, then students at Stanford University, it has become one of Britain's most familiar names, launching Google Earth and acquiring YouTube, the popular video sharing site, in 2006.

According to Hitwise, which compiles a list of the top four leading UK search engines by volume of searches, Google.co.uk had a 73% share of users in May, significantly ahead of its rival Yahoo! which made it to number 75 in the YouGov poll.

Microsoft, despite its fall to second place, still looms over rival Apple, which despite its high-profile launch of the iPod and iPhone, narrowly missed a place in the top 10.

In the poll Sony took 10th place, beaten by BMW at seven, Bosch at eight, and Nike at nine.

Surprising omissions from the top 100 include Tesco, which only managed 300th position, showing a fall of 230 places from last year, and Sainsbury's, which fell 194 places to 232nd position. Fastfood retailers such as McDonald's and Burger King also showed significant falls on last year.Stephen Cheliotis, chairman of the Superbrands Council, a brand valuation consultancy that commissioned the poll, said: "Lifestyle brands, particularly those in the technology sector, have considerably more sway with the public than everyday staples such as the supermarkets, which now seem further than ever from the affections of the British people.

"As the spectre of rising food costs continues, they are likely to come under further scrutiny.

"The results are a further sign that Google is continuing its dominance. It is clear Google is the brand that people value at work and in their personal lives."

Marks & Spencer, which has experienced a rollercoaster ride, recently issuing a serious profits warning that sent shares plummeting to their lowest level in seven years, still holds sway with the public and makes the top 20, at number 17.

The Royal Albert Hall, at number 26, tops the list of cultural destinations, followed by the Tate galleries at number 46. The Eden Project in Cornwall is at number 50.

The Guardian and Observer appear on the list of superbrands at number 229, 184 places ahead of the Independent and 60 ahead of the Daily Telegraph, but behind the Times/Sunday Times titles which are placed at 122nd.

An alternative list of "coolest brands", to be published in Dazed & Confused magazine in September, lists five fashion brands in the top eight, including Levi's.

The future of energy may lie somewhere in the sun, the skies and the moon. Solar and wind power use established technology but both have their problems: Britain is too cloudy, and wind schemes, although necessary, are unpopular and unpredictable. Could the pale moon, and the tides it causes on earth, help? No country is better placed than Britain to draw energy from the seas. The tidal range here is among the greatest on the planet, and the islands and river mouths of the north and west coasts offer tempting sites where each day vast volumes of water move back and forth on cue (with the Pentland Firth, off Orkney, being described hopefully as "the Saudi Arabia of tidal power").

The potential has been obvious for years. The obstacle has been part financial, part technical. Tidal energy schemes are easy to design but very difficult and expensive to make work in practice. That is changing. In May, tidal electricity, from a small experimental scheme in Scotland entered the national grid for the first time; last week a larger underwater turbine in Northern Ireland also began generating power. That second scheme is important: producing 150kw, still a tiny amount, it aims to expand to 1.2MW once completed. That is not much compared to the eight big nuclear plants that Gordon Brown wants to see built, each producing 1,200MW (or even a single good wind turbine, at 2-3MW) - but nor does it come with such a cost as nuclear. Last week the bill for the clean-up of existing nuclear sites rose by £10bn to £83bn.

One attraction is that much of the technology - unlike for wind energy - is being developed in this country. A small firm in Hull, for instance, is heading the design of a big tidal scheme planned for South Korea. But a bigger appeal is that tidal schemes, unlike wind, produce electricity reliably, reducing the need to keep replacement sources on tap. They are also much less visibly intrusive than wind farms. That does not mean they are harmless: the biggest tidal scheme of all, if ever built, the Seven barrage, would have a huge ecological impact, and even smaller underwater turbine sites may harm marine life. But they could be installed with little public protest.

The first commercial schemes are now being developed. This month the French energy firm EDF announced it would build 3-6 turbines off the French coast; others are being planned off west Wales. The technology is still not certain: there are advocates of all sorts of variants of floating and fixed turbines, oscillating columns, even osmosis. But it will work, will be affordable and Britain is the best place in the world in which to use it.

Miley Cyrus, Angelina, Israel vs Palestine, iPhone, 9/11 conspiracy, Facebook, MySpace, and Britney Spears nude. And not forgetting Second Life, Paris Hilton, YouTube, Lindsay Lohan, World of Warcraft, The Dark Knight, Radiohead and Barack Obama. Oh, and great big naked tits. In 3D.

Let me explain. Last week, I wrote a piece on 9/11 conspiracy theories which virtually broke the Guardian website as thousands of "truthers" (painfully earnest online types who sincerely believe 9/11 was an inside job) poured through the walls to unfurl their two pence worth. Some outlined alternative "theories". Some mistakenly equated dismissing the conspiracy theories with endorsing the Bush administration. Some simply wailed, occasionally in CAPITALS. Others, correctly, identified me as a paid-off establishment shill acting under instructions from the CIA.

Now to sit here and painstakingly rebut everything the truthers said would take three months and several hundred pages, and would be a massive waste of the world's time, because ultimately I'm right and they're wrong - well-meaning, but wrong. What's more, I've woken up with an alarming fever and am sweating like a miner as I type these words. On the cusp of hallucinating. Consequently my brain isn't working properly; it feels like it's been marinaded in petrol, then wrapped in a warm towel. So I'm hardly at my sharpest. Actually, sod it: you win, truthers. I give up. You're 100% correct. Inside job, clearly.

Whatever. Now pass the paracetamol.

Anyway, because it contained the words "9/11 conspiracy", the article generated loads of traffic for the Guardian site, which in turn means loads of advertising revenue. And in this day and age, what with the credit crunch and the death of print journalism and everything, the use of attention-grabbing keywords is becoming standard practice. "Search engine optimisation", it's known as, and it's the journalistic equivalent of a classified ad that starts with the word "SEX!" in large lettering, and "Now that we've got your attention . . ." printed below it in smaller type.

For instance, according to the latest Private Eye, journalists writing articles for the Telegraph website are being actively encouraged to include oft-searched-for phrases in their copy. So an article about shoe sales among young women would open: "Young women - such as Britney Spears - are buying more shoes than ever."

On the one hand, you could argue this is nothing new; after all, for years newspapers have routinely jazzed up dull print articles with photographs of attractive female stars (you know the sort of thing: a giant snap of Keira Knightley doing her Atonement wet-T-shirt routine to illustrate a report about the state of Britain's fountain manufacturers). But at least in those instances the actual text of the article itself survived unscathed. There's something uniquely demented about slotting specific words and phrases into a piece simply to con people into reading it. Why bother writing a news article at all? Why not just scan in a few naked photos and have done with it?

And if you do persevere with search-engine-optimised news reports, where do you draw the line? Next time a bomb goes off, are we going to read "Terror outrage: BRITNEY, ANGELINA and OBAMA all unaffected as hundreds die in SEXY agony"?

And wait, it gets worse. These phrases don't just get lobbed in willy-nilly. No. A lot of care and attention goes into their placement. Apparently the average reader quickly scans each page in an "F-pattern": reading along the top first, then glancing halfway along the line below, before skimming their eye downward along the left-hand side. If there's nothing of interest within that golden "F" zone, he or she will quickly clear off elsewhere.

Which means your modern journalist is expected not only to shoehorn all manner of hot phraseology into their copy, but to try and position it all in precisely the right place. That's an alarming quantity of unnecessary shit to hold in your head while trying to write a piece about the unions. Sorry, SEXUAL unions. Mainly, though, it's just plain undignified: turning the journalist into the equivalent of a reality TV wannabe who turns up to the auditions in a gaudy fluorescent thong in a desperate bid to be noticed.

And for the consumer, it's just one more layer of distracting crud - the bane of the 21st century. Distracting crud comes in countless forms - from the onscreen clutter of 24-hour news stations to the winking, blinking ads on every other web page. These days, each separate square inch of everything is simultaneously vying for your attention, and the overall effect is to leave you feeling bewildered, distanced, feverish and slightly insane. Or maybe that's just me, today.

Actually, it's definitely just me. Like I say, I'm ill, my brain's not working. Which is why opening this piece with a slew of hot search terms probably wasn't a brilliant wheeze.

Perhaps if I close with a selection of the LEAST searched-for terms ever, I can redress the balance. Worth a shot. Um . . .

JOHN SELWYN GUMMER . . . PATRICK KIELTY NUDE . . . UNDERWHELMING KNITTING PATTERNS . . . FULLY CLOTHED BABES.

Yup. That should do it.

· This week Charlie somehow managed to get this column finished: "Despite mistyping every other word and having to break off every five minutes to lie on his bed clutching his brow, whimpering. He will almost certainly have died by the time you read it."

Nothing says "recession" like a bit of a dip in the rate of growth of Google's profits, which is what we saw this week. The search engine company has built up such a mythical presence in the minds of the old media, most spend their evenings behind the sofa shivering with primal fear, waiting to be disaggregated by the jolly primary coloured beast. But there are a couple of things to remember - Google's results this quarter represented a slowing in the rate of growth rather than a full-throttle reversal of fortune, and it were slightly impaired by the effect of interest payments on its purchase of DoubleClick's online advertising business. At more or less the same time as spotty youths on Wall Street were signalling sell on Google, Microsoft (which also took a bit of a market battering last week) was waving the worried flag over Google's potential dominance of a search advertising market. The irony of the situation is acute.

And if proof were needed that Google is not in trouble, it came last Friday when the US research company Efficient Frontier put out a report saying that Google took 77.4% of all search ad spending in the second quarter (April-June). In fact Efficient Frontier did the maths and came to the conclusion that Google actually now takes $1.10 for every dollar spent in search advertising. This is not some wonky Sats marking, it means that both Microsoft and Yahoo! were losing search advertising money in that quarter - to Google.

Online advertising is projected to grow overall by something like 6% for the financial year - although this doesn't reflect the explosive growth in some very new areas of activity, such as the mobile internet and online video, or the fact that search advertising is going up by about 14%.

In the UK alone there were 3.6bn videos watched over the internet in May 2008 - more than a 56% increase on the previous year. The online market for video advertising was recently estimated by eMarketer as being worth around £700m a year. And the fact is that while the recession lasts, online media, because of its lower distribution and fixed costs, will continue to be some of the cheapest advertising. One of the areas that is likely to be hit by a steeper drop will be online display advertising - which, of course, is where most companies with more "traditional" web products are most exposed (the idea of a traditional web product is akin to the idea of an innovative wheel).

It doesn't mean, however, that a genuine recession will claim only old media casualties. There is still a really significant number of new media companies that are barely breaking even and still seeking investment, and one has to worry for some of them given the gathering advertising storm. But it is much easier to keep an online media brand going than an offline one because it is much more scaleable - no trucks have to take it to the four corners of the country and no transmitter bills have to be paid. Studios do not have to be kept open and no dead airtime has to be filled.

Where the recession could have a sharper impact is where there is very rapidly declining advertising revenue in an offline part of a business that can't absorb falling revenues in digital at the same time. Under this category one would have to worry about elements of the regional press, radio, the national press that might not have prioritised digital quickly or completely enough, and broadcasters who are similarly exposed. Just about everybody really.

Apart perhaps from Google. Search guru John Battelle was noting on his blog on Friday that the game was up: "If I were at Google, I'd be more than a bit worried. Why? Because once you've vanquished your competition then what?" Back behind the sofa then.

Instant Messenger isn't just the favoured mode of communication for depressed teenagers avoiding homework; it can be invaluable for those urgent work questions that need an answer sharpish, too. Unfortunately it's unlikely that all your friends and colleagues have the decency to choose the same messenging client - some will use Yahoo, others can dabble in Google Talk or AIM. So what do you do to prevent your desktop becoming cluttered with buddy lists from all your different IM accounts?

The best option is to either download a multiprotocol IM client or sign up for a similar web-based IM service. Multiprotocol IM clients are desktop applications which allow you to load up all of your contacts from various accounts within a single client - merging your address books and enabling you to chat with friends whether they're on iChat, MSN or any other IM. These multiprotocol IM clients are usually platform specific, with Mac users tending to go for Adium (adiumx.com) while PC users opt for either Pidgin (pidgin.im) or Trillian (ceruleanstudios.com).

If you're not always using the same computer, a web-based service like Meebo (meebo.com) is best. Like its desktop-based counterparts, registering for a Meebo account allows you to sign in to multiple IM accounts at once, so you can chat to all your contacts from within the same Meebo interface.

Tens of thousands of Britons are being covertly tracked without their consent in a technology experiment which has installed scanners at secret locations in offices, campuses, streets and pubs to pinpoint people's whereabouts.

The scanners, the first 10 of which were installed in Bath three years ago, are capturing Bluetooth radio signals transmitted from devices such as mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras, and using the data to follow unwitting targets without their permission.

The data is being used in a project called Cityware to study how people move around cities. But pedestrians are not being told that the devices they carry around in their pockets and handbags could be providing a permanent record of their journeys, which is then stored on a central database.

The Bath University researchers behind the project claim their scanners do not have access to the identity of the people tracked.

Eamonn O'Neill, Cityware's director, said: "The objective is not to track individuals, whether by Bluetooth or any other means. We are interested in the aggregate behaviour of city dwellers as a whole. The notion that any agency would seriously consider Bluetooth scanning as a surveillance technique is ludicrous."

But privacy experts disagree, pointing out that Bluetooth signals are assigned code names that can, to varying degrees, indicate a person's identity.

Many people use pseudonyms, nicknames, initials, or abbreviations to identify their Bluetooth signals. Cityware's scanners are also picking up signals that are listed using people's full name, email address and telephone numbers.

Contacted about the Cityware project, the office of the information commissioner said in a statement that the public should "think carefully" before switching on their Bluetooth signals. A spokesman said the government watchdog would "monitor" the experiment.

"This is yet another example of moronic use of technology," said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, an independent campaigning group defending personal privacy. "For Bath University to assert that there aren't privacy implications demonstrates an astonishing disregard for consumer rights. If the technology is as safe as they claim, then all the technical specifications should be published and people should be informed when they are being tracked."

He added: "This technology could well become the CCTV of the mobile industry. It would not take much adjustment to make this system a ubiquitous surveillance infrastructure over which we have no control."

Although initially confined to Bath, Cityware has spread across the planet after the software was made freely available on the internet sites Facebook and Second Life. Thousands of people downloaded the software to equip their home and office computers with Cityware scanners.

More than 1,000 scanners across the world at any time detect passing Bluetooth signals and send the data to Cityware's central database. Those with access to the database admit they do not know precisely how many scanners have been created, but there are known to be scanners in San Diego, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, Toronto and Berlin.

In Bath alone scanners are tracking as many as 3,000 Bluetooth devices every weekend. One recent study used the scanners to monitor the movements of 10,000 people in the city.

About 250,000 owners of Bluetooth devices, mostly mobile phones, have been spotted by Cityware scanners worldwide.

O'Neill, who described his project as "public observation" rather than surveillance, said the data would improve scientific understanding of the privacy and security threats posed by Bluetooth technology. A "potentially immensely valuable side-effect", he added, was that data about people's movements could help research into the spread of biological epidemics.

"Just as we continue to research forms of defence against other more traditional threats, we must research forms of defence against new digital threats," he said, adding that the database eventually would be destroyed.

However Vassilis Kostakos, a former member of Cityware who now does Bluetooth experiments on buses in Portugal for the University of Madeira, accepted such tracking was a problem.

"We are actually trying to fix this," Kostakos said. "If a person's phone is talking to a scanner, then they should be told about it. Any technology can have good and bad consequences. In many ways, I think the role of a scientist is to point out both. I agree this is complex and I agree there are harmful scenarios."

The technique has echoes of the thriller Enemy of the State in which the character played by Will Smith is followed by satellite surveillance.

Kostakos said he could foresee complex ways in which criminals could exploit the technology, adding: "I recently tried to look at people's travel patterns across the world, and we [saw] how a unique device which showed up in San Francisco turned up in Caracas and then Paris."

Bluetooth tracking technology is already being used to aim advertisements at people, for example as they walk past shops or billboards.

Bluetoothtracking.org, a website based in the Netherlands, is using the same technology to publish live data about people's movements across the town of Apeldoorn. The facility allows people to search the whereabouts of friends and associates without them knowing about it.

Some scientists using the technology describe a future scenario in which homes and cars adapt services to suit their owners, automatically dimming lights, preparing food and selecting preferred television channels.

At precisely 13:05:27 yesterday Big Pun arrived at an east London cafe. As the Big Pun name flashed up on a mobile screen, his unique code was automatically sent to a central database. There the code was made available for checking against his other movements, providing a detailed map of his whereabouts over time. In the cafe a man with a moustache had walked in at precisely the same time and ordered a cappuccino - so that, presumably, was Big Pun.

This citizen was not alone. Among those tucking into a late Turkish brunch at the same cafe - oblivious of being watched - were Sci_BLUETOOTH, Nokia 6233 Johnnyo, SGH-600, Ed Laptop, W810i, MiSDH and a woman called Linda.

The scanner that captured Big Pun's location was one of at least 1,000 scanners scouring for Bluetooth signals across the world yesterday under the Cityware programme.

When scientists at Bath University devised a way to analyse how people move around cities three years ago, they were not interested in identifying who was going where, but in looking at people's movements overall. They planted prototype scanners that could be downloaded on to any computer around the city to track the Bluetooth signals emitted by people's mobile phones and laptops.

A Bluetooth connection functions like an invisible cable, joining two separate devices, such as a phone and hands-free earpiece. The signal sent out can be detected if it is within a 10-metre radius of a Cityware scanner.

The database could trace, for example, how someone went off to a pub at 10pm and returned home at 9am.

Now available over the internet, the software means thousands of journeys are being recorded daily - including the man known as Big Pun, who left the cafe, cappuccino in hand, exactly six minutes and 52 seconds after he was first detected.

In the annals of business acumen, no single act of commercial chutzpah can surpass the company manoeuvres carried out by Rupert Murdoch over the period 2010 to 2014.

To assess just how revolutionary, how completely beyond the reach of what any human individual had yet achieved in more than 30 millenniums of civilisation his actions were, it is useful to note that prior to the year 2010 the figure of Rupert Murdoch was one respected but never adored by people of influence who considered themselves his peers. True, he was the world's most successful and influential publisher.

Now in his mid-70s, he showed no sign of loosening the reins of power he held so firmly in his two gnarled hands. But there was talk. What would happen when his mental powers started to fade? Why had he not planned any orderly succession, whether to someone in his family or to a trusted colleague?

And how sure was his touch, now that the print media as well as film and television were fast looking obsolete against the rise of the digital citizenship. In short, was he beginning to think he was both infallible and immortal?

And so, when Rupert Murdoch called a meeting of his entire executive committee on 12 January 2014, many were expecting something momentous.

At the very least, the demand forming among the mass of executives and expensively shirted dogsbodies shortly before the great man entered the room was that, unless he laid before them a very clear pattern of succession, they would resign en masse and thus, surely, cause a collapse in his parent company. In one way at least, he met their demands.

The man, the figure, the legend, entered the room and asked for the lights to be dimmed. He began his powerpoint presentation, flashing a quick succession of slides and charts before this, his most important viewing audience. Corporate declarations tumbled out of him. 'I have purchased a 59 per cent stake in Sun Microsystems'; 'News Corp has consolidated its share position on the boards of 14 South Asian cellphone networks'; 'I have merged Transmutual Holdings with our southern American division to form a new parent group for all terrestrial entertainment networks.'

On and on they spurted. '... taking all the European subsidiary companies and merging them with a new North African web presence ...' No one knew where this was heading, but neither had anyone seen Murdoch so energised since his last marriage. '... promoting the chairman of Digital Investment to the new post of vice-president Corporate Sustenance ...'

And the phrases became stranger, introducing concepts and references that few in the room had heard before. '... executive director of the Mother-Board...'; '... a billion-dollar investment in skin and infrastructure ...'; '... company cells multiply exponentially ...'

And in the end it came: the announcement that would transform the world.

'And so, ladies and gentlemen, I have thrown into action a complicated sequence of company mergers and buy-outs, and a logarithmically positioned series of investments, that now mean all my main subsidiary companies form a unique pattern across the globe. It's a pattern so complex that no other sequence of values come close to it, save for the integers of DNA.

'And that is no accident. For I have arranged my companies in the one precise global sequence that will set the conditions right for the birth of life itself. My company is now so complex, so intelligent, so diverse and yet so intricately controlled that it has acquired all the first properties of a living organism. My company has become a life-form!

'Primitive at first, it will need nurturing from a top team of hand-picked executives, but within a year it will think for itself, feed itself, learn, defend and, if necessary, attack. Behold, I have created a living company. I have created Child International!'

At this, the magnificent man raised his left arm and the curtains behind him parted. On a large screen dominating the chamber could be seen a complex web of numbers, flickering and scrolling across the plasma. As the audience stared up at the figures, the pattern of digits seemed to alter slightly, as if winking back.

'That,' said Murdoch 'is Child International recognising your presence and, within the space of a microsecond, calculating the amount of shares it needs to buy and sell on Nasdaq in order to make it look as if it's blinking.'

The men and women in the room gasped in surprise and a little fear. 'What were the consequences of that action?' asked one middle-aged executive known for his good personnel skills.

'Our share value went down by 0.04 per cent and we had to lay off 1,500 workers in China.' The people groaned. Immediately, the screen flickered and the numbers on it formed the shape of a smile. A package arrived at the door to the room and, when it was opened, a small cube leapt out making the noise: 'Only joking!'

'You needn't worry,' said Murdoch. 'Child International was able, in a nano-instant, to pour just the right amount of financial investment into technological development that it was able, within 12 seconds of its last action, to launch on to the market a new electronic one-inch cube that can make more than 13,000 entertaining remarks. The Chirpy-Blok has already made us $4bn.'

There was silence in the room. The numbers on the screen stared accusingly at the people round the table, who each knew in their hearts what had to be done. One by one, the executives tendered their resignation, knowing that Murdoch had indeed appointed his successor and it wasn't going to be human.

So the living company, Child International, carried on trading successfully on its own for the next 24 years until, in 2038, it was bought by the Chinese and, two days later, committed suicide.

If, while walking your dog, you see a black Opel Vectra with a top-heavy pole sticking out of its roof, do not be alarmed. It is not a UFO or a van checking for TV licence-fee dodgers, but a Googlecam. As it proceeds, the eight cameras mounted on the top of the pole take an endless succession of digital pictures of the road and its environs. Each image is tagged with its precise location using GPS.

When the car returns to base, all the images and their GPS data are uploaded to Google, which then overlays them on Google Maps. The idea is that you type in a location and - Bingo! - you can see what you'd see if you were driving in that neighbourhood. In fact I've just taken a virtual drive round Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, something of a holy place for us ageing hippies.

Welcome to Google's Street View, which is currently available in some US cities and probably due in a lot more soon. The prospect that it might be coming to Britain has got the Daily Mail into a lather. This sinister technology, it raves, 'could be a privacy-invading nightmare'. Google's cars 'will photograph EVERY door in Britain'. The service 'will allow anyone in the world to type in a UK address or post code and instantly see a 360-degree picture of the street. It will include close-ups of buildings, cars and people. Critics say the site is a 'burglar's charter' that makes it easy for criminals to check out potential victims.'

Given that the Mail has been gung-ho about Britain's addiction to CCTV cameras, its newfound worry about privacy is laudable, but the grounds for its concern are puzzling. After all, Google Maps and Google Earth already provide invaluable information for burglars; they show who has swimming pools and unprotected back gardens, for example. So it's difficult to see what the larcenous value-added is from Street View, other than it may reveal which houses have burglar alarms and which do not.

The multiple sightings of the Googlecam in the UK - which have been cleverly overlaid on Google Maps by the online journal, The Register (see tinyurl.com/6lag7m) - suggest that the company has embarked on a large-scale UK trial of the technology. But it's not clear that the service would be legal here, or indeed in Europe generally, because our data-protection and privacy rules are more stringent those than those in America.

In Europe, litigation could be triggered by, say, images of an ageing rock star entering a rehab clinic, or by even more 'sensitive' pictures: the chap who's 'off sick' out shopping or the adulterer tending her lover's roses.

And it doesn't matter that the pictures were taken in a public place. 'If you are caught on camera and complain to Google,' says Struan Robertson of lawyers Pinsent Masons, 'Google will remove the pics. But that may not be enough for Europe's courts. Our data protection regime lets us take holiday snaps, even of strangers, provided we're doing so for private purposes. But if we're taking snaps for commercial use, where individuals are identifiable, there is no such exemption. We need to notify the subjects, and that's hard for Google to do. Even a loudspeaker on top of the camera cars ["Hi, it's Google here, say cheese everybody!"] might not suffice.'

Quite. But in a way the issue is not whether this Google innovation is permitted or not, but the general direction we're headed and the role Google might play in our collective future. Last week I wrote about the legal ruling which compelled Google to hand over to Viacom its computer logs of every single viewing of a YouTube video, including those by UK residents. The privacy implications of that ruling have since been mitigated by agreement that the data can be 'anonymised' by Google before handover. But, again, the direction is towards a world in which everything we do is monitored and logged - mostly by one company.

Google's mission, according to its corporate website, is 'to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful'. What we perhaps haven't fully realised is that these guys really mean it. Their ambition is at least as megalomaniacal as Bill Gates's vision of a computer on every desk running Microsoft software. So it's time we started thinking about what a world dominated by Google would be like. As it happens, some people have - and they've been publishing the results on YouTube. Then pour yourself a stiff drink.

john.naughton@observer.co.uk

You can suffer more than culture shock when holidaying abroad: there is a risk of electric shock too if you take your home-bought gadgets with you or are using foreign electrical goods bought from back-street stores.

Most travellers know that plugging in a hairdryer in Helsinki or an iPod charger in India requires an adaptor, but that is not the only consideration, says the Electrical Safety Council charity (ESC). Some adapters are not up to the job, especially for appliances that need an earth connection, such as hairdryers and steam irons. If you are packing electrical items this summer, look for the safety standard BS5733 on any adapter and always buy from a reputable source, preferably in the UK.

The perils of buying electrical equipment in foreign countries from uncertain sources were highlighted by the case of seven-year-old Connor O'Keefe, who was electrocuted on a family holiday to Thailand in December 2006. He was playing with his Game Boy, which was plugged into a faulty charger bought in Thailand.

Haidee Ryan, campaign manager at the ESC, says: 'Travellers should check ahead and also be vigilant at their destination, especially in Third World countries. Make sure there are no bare wires or light fittings without bulbs and report anything unusual like equipment that is giving off a buzzing sound or a burning smell. '

If the country you are visiting has a different voltage (this can vary from 100 to 240 volts; in the UK it's 230 volts), you might need a voltage transformer or converter, unless the appliance or its power supply has dual voltage rates.

If the frequency (the speed of the current) differs from the UK's 50Hz, as it does in the US and Mexico, where it is 60Hz, your appliance might not work properly. According to the ESC, a 50Hz clock may run faster in these countries. Holidaymakers unsure of a country's voltage could look at a lightbulb, where the voltage is usually printed.

Electrical retailer Currys reports an increase in the number of customers with second homes abroad who are seeking advice on technical problems because they have kitted out their foreign property with equipment bought in the UK. The company says differing radio frequencies, manufacturer programming and unpredictable electrical power can render this equipment useless. Radios, DVD players and TVs can cause particular frustrations.

John Wright, electrical engineer for Currys, says: 'While with many household products it's just a matter of swapping the plugs, others may only offer limited use, or in some cases will not work at all. People who are purchasing products to take abroad should always check with the manufacturer or store so they are not left disappointed.' Homeowners are also advised that adapters are for temporary use only. 'If you are living abroad you should make longer-term arrangements.'

Currys warns shoppers that digital radios may let them down abroad: just 20 per cent of stations in France and Spain and 5 per cent in Italy transmit at the required frequency. Televisions more than five years old are unlikely to work, and even the newer models will offer limited access to digital services.

The hazards of using incompatible electrical equipment also face visitors to the UK. The ESC says fire services report a rise in the number of incidents caused by visitors using the wrong plugs, particularly eastern Europeans using two-pin plugs in three-pin sockets and jamming a screwdriver into the third hole.

Phil Buckle, director of the ESC, says: 'While two-pin plugs are safe to use in their countries of origin, they are not designed for direct use with UK electrical installations.' He said eastern Europeans could easily convert their appliances for safe use in the UK with a three-pin conversion plug.

Time-wasting is not just an irritating habit. It is an affliction that ruins millions of lives and often requires therapy and other treatment for sufferers, psychologists have warned.

According to new research, one person in five now suffers from the problem so badly that their careers, relationships and health are threatened. Many researchers blame computers and mobile phones for providing too many distractions for people.

'The subject is seen as joke,' said Professor Joseph Ferrari of DePaul University in Chicago. 'But the social and economic implications are huge. These people need therapy. They need to change the way they act and think.'

Ferrari says that chronic procrastination is now so serious a condition it needs to be recognised by clinicians. In a study to be published later this year, he estimates that 15 to 20 per cent of people are chronic procrastinators. 'We now have data on 4,000 people, and it doesn't seem to matter what age you are, or your sex or background.'

He has devised a questionnaire to help diagnose the condition, which he says is 'much more common than depression or common phobias'. Procrastination also has knock-on effects - it encourages depression, lowers self-esteem, causes insomnia, and indirectly affects health by discouraging visits to the dentist or doctor. Sufferers are also more likely to have accidents at home involving unmended appliances.

Cognitive psychologist Professor John Maule, of Leeds University's business school, agreed that a significant proportion of the population were prone to procrastination, and argued that mood changes - particularly depression - might be to blame.

Research by Professor Piers Steel from Calgary University indicates that the incidence of chronic procrastination has risen dramatically in recent decades, from one person in 20 to one in four, as new technology has come to dominate our lives. Even the beeps notifying the arrival of email are said to be causing a 0.5 per cent drop in gross domestic product in the United States, costing the economy $70bn a year.

Ferrari, however, is less convinced that new technology is to blame for time-wasting. 'People have wasted time for centuries,' he said. 'Lots of people, particularly people who often have to work under time constraints, put work off because they kid themselves that they work best when under pressure, when there's a deadline.

'Studies have shown this isn't true. They're conveniently forgetting the times when it all went horribly wrong - and selectively remembering the odd occasion when things went well under severe time pressure.'

Once, humans probably did have stronger excuses for delaying chores that didn't need immediate attention, say brain scientists such as Alan Sanfey at Arizona University, whose work has shed light on the evolutionary origins of procrastination.

It appears that the brain is divided into two parts. One triggers 'automatic responses' which take precedence over everything else - such as fleeing sabre-toothed tigers. The other governs 'deliberate responses' - writing that report due next week or booking a visit to the optician. Evolution has dictated that the former take precedence. Today there aren't any sabre-toothed tigers, but we still put things off.

Almost a million UK households could access websites known to host images of child sex abuse despite a government pledge made two years ago to stop access to paedophile sites.

Last night a coalition of leading children's charities, including Barnardo's, the NSPCC and National Children's Homes, described the situation as 'completely unacceptable'. They have written to the Home Office minister in charge of crime reduction, Vernon Coaker, urging him to take immediate steps to ensure all telecom companies offering internet access block customers from being able to see images that in some cases show children as young as a year old being sexually abused.

Around 5 per cent of consumer broadband connections can access the images because their internet service providers (ISPs) chose not to subscribe to a scheme introduced by the Internet Watch Foundation to bar known paedophile websites.

The list is available to all ISPs and companies such as BT and Vodafone have signed up to take it. Updated twice daily, it contains between 800 and 1,200 live child-abuse websites at any one time. But the revelation that some internet companies are refusing to sign up to the list undermines a key government pledge to tackle paedophile material on the internet.

In May 2006, Coaker said he hoped all internet companies would sign up to the scheme and that, if there was not 100 per cent take-up by the end of last year, the government would look to compel the industry to 'face up to its responsibilities'.

In their letter to Coaker, the children's charities said it was now time for the government 'to draw a line under this issue' by getting 100 per cent compliance from the industry.

Volvo S80

£20,304

Miles per gallon: 49.6

Seats: 5

Good for: born agains

Bad for: porn barons

There are many thoughts that could flit across the mind of the owner of a forecourt-fresh motor: the smell of the leather, the glint of the polished bonnet, the lure of the long road ahead, the carpets still free of fromage frais and breadsticks. But few will be thinking of the disposal of their new car at the end of its life. And yet we should. An EC report has stated that by 2015 all cars should be 85 per cent recyclable and reusable. From material selection in the manufacturing and low-emission motoring, to its final journey to the knacker's yard, carmakers are being forced to consider a vehicle's entire life impact.

Over at Volvo, they didn't feel the need to wait another seven years to meet these targets. Like the class swot who hands in his homework days before it's due, Volvo made these grades in 2002. It's all part of the marque's 'clean inside and out' programme. This year its factories in Sweden and Belgium switched to green electricity in the form of hydropower; the steel, iron and aluminium used in construction is all from recycled sources, wherever possible - the plastic battery covers of old Volvos become the wheel-arch liners on new models for instance.

Now, the brand's top executive saloon is going green from cradle to grave. The comfy and classy S80 was 'refreshed' last year, and has now taken possession of a super-efficient 2-litre diesel engine, enabling it to do almost 50mpg, compared with the piffling 23.7mpg of the top-of-the-range, all-wheel drive

V8 version. A pair of constipated Friesians would produce more effluvium than this eco-conscious executive runaround.

The focus on cleanliness takes its toll on performance - the S80 is so unengaging it makes eating a bowl of noodles with your dentures out seem like an adrenaline sport. But if arriving safely at your destination - perhaps enjoying a lower-back massage and the benefits of a cool-ventilated seat - take priority, then the S80 can't be beat.

Safety is a mantra for Volvo and the cars take a zero-tolerance approach to danger. The Blind Spot Information System uses warning lights in the A-pillars to alert you when an overtaking vehicle is in your blind spot; Adaptive Cruise Control keeps you at a safe distance from the car in front, and a Personal Car Communicator has a transponder with a heartbeat sensor to let you know if someone is still in your Volvo after the alarm has been activated. The alternative being that it is a pulse-less zombie who has stolen it.

Volvo has also announced plans to introduce a City Safety system, which at speeds of under 19mph uses laser-sensor technology to detect vehicles up to 10 metres in front. If the gap between you and the car in front closes and you remain inactive, the car applies the brakes automatically. (Surveys show three-quarters of all collisions take place at speeds of under 18mph, and in half of them there is evidence the driver has not braked at all before.) It's all part of Volvo's plan to keep you - and its cars - out of that graveyard, no matter how eco-friendly it may be.

martin.love@observer.co.uk

It seemed an ordinary day at Google's offices in Tel Aviv, Israel. Until an alarming discrepancy glued eyes to computer screens. Google Hot Trends is a feature intended to give 'a snapshot of what's on the public's collective mind', according to the internet giant, by displaying the fastest-rising search terms on the web. Top of the list was not Batman, iPhone or sex. It was not a word at all. It was a swastika.

Somehow, the icon appropriated by Nazi Germany, not readily found on computer keyboards, had caught all-powerful Google napping. The company was forced to issue an apology over the failure of its automated system to 'identify and remove inappropriate or offensive material', leaving its engineers to manually take down the symbol after two hours.

How did the swastika get there? Why did so many people search for it at the same time? It was a demonstration of how peculiar fads, jokes or videos can come out of nowhere and run riot across the web. Such phenomena are known as 'memes' - cultural fragments that catch someone's eye, get forwarded to friends and spread like a virus.

The invisible hand behind many memes, apparently including the googled swastika, is a website called 4chan. From semi-literate cats to the 'ironic' comeback of singer Rick Astley, this online community is building a reputation as a nursery of all that is weird and wacky and likely to be landing in your inbox tomorrow.

Suddenly, 4chan's elusive creator found himself the subject of articles in two of America's heavyweight publications: Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal, which named him as Christopher Poole, a New Yorker who was only 15 when, with the help of his mother's credit card, he launched 4chan from his bedroom five years ago. Time hailed him as the 'Master Of Memes' and described 4chan as 'the wellspring from which a lot of internet culture, and hence popular culture, bubbles'.

But how does it work? 4chan began as a simple message board with pictures and text. Anyone could contribute on any subject, posting a photograph of their pet, sounding off about a politician, debating the merits of a player. Sometimes other users will reply and begin a strand of conversation. The images and comments now appear under 44 topic headings ranging from fashion, sports and video games to weapons, the paranormal and 'sexy beautiful women' - the most popular by a long way is 'Random'. Inspired by a forum in Japan, the site has an unpolished retro look, as rough and ready as a scrapbook. It is an online community at its purest and rawest, the antithesis of polished networks such as Facebook: 4chan is like a brick wall where people can daub graffiti without fear of a comeback.

Child pornography is banned, but otherwise there are few rules. Some posts are gloriously childish and nonsensical. Others can be racist, homophobic and misogynistic and peppered with four-letter words. Unlike most social networks, no one has to register a name or sign in. Consequently, the community has been described as a lawless Wild West of the web, a place of uninhibited bawdiness and verbal violence. A teenager in Texas posted a photograph of hoax pipe bombs and a threat to blow up his school on the anniversary of 9/11, but another user contacted police and the teenager was arrested.

However, the free-for-all has also been liberating, turning 4chan into an ideas laboratory and unleashing a ferocious creative force. Though most of what appears soon vanishes and is forgotten, the stuff that survives can easily jump to the wider web community and 'go viral', passing from person to person across the world. It is an ability envied by advertising agencies, which have long sought to drum up publicity by word of mouth or now through viral videos of their own, relying on users to do the work for them. But 4chan just does it for fun with the help of a big army of users: 8.5 million page views a day and 3.3 million visitors a month. The swastika was one such stunt. It appears that a post on 4chan instructed people to Google '...#21328;'. When thousands did, they discovered that it was a piece of code which, when processed by a web browser, translates into a swastika. Their collective curiosity unwittingly sent the symbol soaring to the top of Google's Hot Trends.

One of 4chan's biggest hits is a prank known as 'bait-and-switch'. You receive a link to an 'amazing website'. But when you click, it is in fact a link to a music video for Rick Astley's 1987 hit single 'Never Gonna Give You Up'. It is estimated that more than 10 million people have been 'rickrolled'. The first such joke on 4chan was 'duckrolling', in which a link to a popular celebrity or news item would instead lead to a photomontage of a duck with wheels.

In another parade of silliness, 4chan users began a Saturday ritual of posting pictures of cats, for no particular reason except that they could. This soon became known as 'Caturday', with humorous phrases posted beside the so-called 'LOLcats' - now the subject of LOLcat T-shirts, buttons and fridge magnets. When a plump grey cat appeared with the caption 'I can has cheezburger?', it caught the imagination of a man in Hawaii and became the subject of his blog, icanhascheezburger.com. The blog was sold for about $2m (£1m).

Last week 4chan was at it again. The site rallied users to search for 'Scientology is a cult' and, written upside down, the words 'fuck you Google'. Again, both leapt to the top of Google Hot Trends before being removed. 4chan users were also accused of attacking Habbo, a virtual world for children, by flooding it with avatars made to look like black men wearing Armani suits. In a previous raid, they lined up avatars to form the shape of a swastika.

Poole had never revealed his identity until Time and the Wall Street Journal came calling. When contacted by The Observer through email, he replied: 'I am extremely busy this week and will not have time to conduct a phone interview.' He suggested questions by email but did not respond to them. His message was signed 'moot', a code name he uses on 4chan for reasons no one has yet fathomed. 'My personal private life is very separate from my internet life,' he told Time. 'There's a firewall in between.'

Poole set up 4chan because he wanted to share his passion for Japanese comics and TV rather than as a moneyspinner, which is just as well. Although the site is popular, its scurrilous reputation makes it difficult to sell advertising space. Poole said: 'That's been an uphill battle for me personally. My biggest time spent has been convincing companies in marketing potential in 4chan but no one sees eye to eye.'

For now he will have to be content with shaping western culture as the most influential web entrepreneur you've never heard of. 'Coarse as it is, 4chan has no rival as a hothouse for memes; they're bred and refined, and then they can escape and run amuck through the culture at large,' Time enthused. 'For better or for worse, this is what the counterculture looks like today: raw, sarcastic, bare of any social or political agenda but frequently funny as hell.'