The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Talking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25-year-old dotcom chief executive of the world's most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a "social norm".

"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," he said. "That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."

Zuckerberg said that the rise of social media online reflected changing attitudes among ordinary people, adding that this radical change has happened in just a few years.

"When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was 'why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?'."

"Then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way, and just all these different services that have people sharing all this information."

His statement may not be a surprise, particularly since it helps to justify the company's recent - and highly controversial decision to change the privacy settings of its 350m users.

But it also represents a remarkable shift from where the Californian company originally started out.

Launched in 2004 as an exclusive network for Ivy League students, the site grew in part because allowed people to communicate privately or at least among small groups of friends.

The constant tug of war between public and private information that ensued led to a series of embarrassing incidents where individuals published information online thinking it was private, only to have it reach the public.

These episodes are partly the result of the way people use Facebook, which has changed its service on several occasions in recent years. Each time the site brings more information into the public domain and at each point it faces a series of protests and adverse reactions from users.

Moves included the decision in 2006 to introduce the "news feed" an update of people's activities that is now central to Facebook's service. A year later it launched Beacon, a contentious advertising system that allowed advertisers to track your activities online. That eventually led to the company settling a lawsuit for $9.5m, but it did not prevent it from bringing in new privacy changes in December that one campaign group called "plain ugly".

In his talk, however, Zuckerberg said it was important for companies like his to reflect the changing social norms in order to remain relevant and competitive.

"A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built," he said. "Doing a privacy change for 350m users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do."

"But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."

Not everybody agrees. Marshall Kirkpatrick of the technology industry blog ReadWriteWeb said Zuckerberg's statement was "not a believeable explanation" and pointed to the company's complicity in changing the way people think about online privacy.

Meanwhile, others have rejected the idea that younger people, in particular, are less concerned about privacy. Last month Microsoft researcher and social networking expert Danah Boyd told the Guardian that such assumptions often misunderstood the reasons that people put private information online.

"Kids have always cared about privacy, it's just that their notions of privacy look very different than adult notions," she said.

"As adults, by and large, we think of the home as a very private space for young people it's not a private space. They have no control over who comes in and out of their room, or who comes in and out of their house. As a result the online world feels more private because it feels like it has more control."

We've been trawling the floors here at CES to find out what new technologies will be vying for our attention over the coming year - but it's not just the main exhibition where the action has been taking place.

Spare a thought for Palm boss Jon Rubinstein, who has managed to stir up plenty of trouble for the company with a brief aside at a CES Q&A session that has now taken on a life of its own. In an on-stage discussion at the show, Rubinstein told Kara Swisher from AllThingsD said that he had never used an iPhone:

"We don't pay that much attention to Apple - I know it sounds really strange," he said. "I don't have an iPhone. I've never even used one."

Coming from any other phone maker positioning itself as a rival to Apple, that might seem like hubris. Coming from Rubinstein - who was one of Steve Jobs's closest lieutenants until he left Apple in 2006 - it seems like something else.

Rubinstein, who took a hands-on role in product development when he arrived at Palm, is a private man. He spent years working alongside Jobs and was one of the major architects of the iPod project, which is what really helped Apple overturn its troubles and surge back to success.

So his iPhone comment is strange. Is Rubinstein suggesting that he never saw an iPhone while he worked at Apple? Or is he saying that, in the 18-month downtime, this technology industry veteran of more than 30 years didn't have any interest in Apple's new handset? It's not even like he was working for Palm when the iPhone was launched: famously, he took a long holiday until he was tempted to get back into the race in October 2007.

Or is he just displaying a peculiar version of Not Invented Here syndrome?

Whatever the case, it's hardly a capital offence. But it is the sort of thing that exposes Palm's frailties - and the trouble it is having in drumming up momentum to keep its business alive.

We interviewed Rubinstein at last year's event, when the company emerged as one of the big winners thanks to its launch of the Pre handset. This year, however, the company's announcements have been relatively lacklustre - the new Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus handset (both tweaks to previous models) and the news that the company had made a deal with US network Verizon.

Those don't seem like enough to revive the company's fortunes, and aren't particularly exciting for anybody outside the self-obsessed American bubble. But, once again, it just shows the shadow that Apple has cast over CES without even being here.

After all, the audience who turned up for Rubinstein's talk came to hear about Palm - and they left talking about the iPhone.

Microsoft is developing Project Natal plus new software and content services to prolong the life of the Xbox 360 games console, rather than introduce a new machine

We all know that the games business goes in cycles and that a new generation of consoles always comes along to replace whatever is popular today. In fact, we should now be talking about the Xbox 720, Sony PlayStation 4 and Wii II, or whatever they might be called, because game developers need a couple of years to create new games to exploit the new hardware capabilities that justify the launch of a new generation. But we aren't, and Microsoft doesn't want us to.

"I think it's important to say that the Xbox 360 is the console of the long future for us. There is no need to launch a new console, because we're able to give this console new life either with software upgrades or hardware upgrades like Project Natal," said David Hufford, senior director of Xbox product management in a briefing at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. "The Xbox 360 was designed for a long life, and I don't even know if we're at the midpoint yet."

Rather than release a new console, Microsoft is developing Project Natal to enhance existing systems. At a CES keynote, Xbox boss Robbie Bach said Natal will be released for the 2010 holiday season, ie in the run-up to Christmas. Hufford said the team had demonstrated at E3 that the technology worked, and now "we've asked the development teams to concentrate on making the games."

Hufford said that the Xbox 360 did not need an upgrade to support 3D games -- "Avatar is on Xbox and we have a 3D game, Scrap Metal, in our booth right now" -- and nor would he commit to offering a Blu-ray drive. Indeed, I couldn't even get him to speculate about moving the 360 forward to a more modern chip technology. This would reduce the Xbox's manufacturing cost and also produce a console that generated less heat and cost less to run -- benefits that have already accrued to Sony with the launch of the PS3 Slim. It should also be more reliable.

"We love our prices right now," said Hufford. "I don't want to say that technology stops, but we believe we have a high quality console, and we stand by that quality with an unprecedented warranty, so we think we're in a good place now heading into the Natal era."

Microsoft is clearly working on the software and content parts of the Xbox with the Zune movie service, support for social networking, the Gameroom of classic arcade games, Mediaroom TV services, Project Natal and so on. It's not looking to launch new hardware.

This makes sense because new consoles typically sell at a loss, and the system only becomes really profitable in the later years as manufacturing costs fall and sales of high-priced software mount up. Sony, of course, is in the same position but worse, because it's still selling PlayStation 3 consoles at a loss, and will need several profitable years to get back its huge investment.

So what has changed?

Most console wars result in a big win for one player -- Atari VCS, Nintendo NES, Sega Mega Drive, Sony PlayStation or whatever -- with the others failing. This encourages the failing companies to move to the next generation first to get a competitive edge.

This time around, the three major players have all achieved viable market shares. Perhaps there's no incentive for any of them to start a next-generation console war, and Ken Kutaragi will have been correct in claiming that the PS3 would last a decade.

What do you think? Technology has moved on since 2005, when the Xbox 360 was announced. Will you be happy to have the same system in 2015?

Take a look at some of the gadgets being unveiled at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

In our latest podcast from the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas we hear from Sean Maloney, who is tipped to be the next boss of Intel. He talks to Jack Schofield about its new chips, which use less power than previous incarnations.

Bobbie Johnson is joined by Jack and Leander Kahney from Cult Of Mac to discuss the computing chip industry, plus their highlights from CES so far.

Finally Scott Cawley continues his tour of CES, this time making it to (most) of the central halls, and finds out about a gadget that can charge your devices using the energy from Wi-Fi signals.

Tech Weekly is back on Tuesday with a roundup of the week at CES.

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Bobbie Johnson takes a look at the big and small of North America's largest trade show

Will Apple's iTablet lead media companies out of a wilderness of non-paying customers?

For the video content makers nervously biting their fingernails over how soon filesharing of films and TV is going to wipe out their revenues, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week offered wonderful news TV, like film, is going 3D. And you know what 3D means? Can't be filmed by a camcorder in a cinema and copied endlessly; can't just be grabbed from the set-top box and redistributed on torrent sites. Or if it is, it will look even worse than a fifth-generation VHS copy (remember those?).

And then there was the AR Drone, a mini-helicopter that can be controlled by an iPhone, which is sure to be banging into walls in advertising agencies around London hours after it goes on sale; and an unbreakable mobile phone (you can hammer nails with it).

But the hype, the noise, the lights CES is peculiarly named because although it calls itself a "consumer electronics" show, its keynote opening speech comes from Microsoft which has failed woefully year after year to come up with any consumer electronics people want to buy, apart from two- button mice and, OK, the Xbox (though it's lost pots and pots of money on it).

This year it was Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, who signally failed to set the event, or the world, on fire. Meanwhile, all over the place computer companies were showing off their wares, which will make barely any difference to anyone's lives except those of their desperate makers. Will a laptop with a transparent screen (so you can be distracted by people walking behind it as well as reflections) really transform our experience of work or leisure?

Instead, the susurrus behind CES was about tablet computers large screen, no keyboard, touch interface. Although Ballmer referred to them in his speech, and a number of companies (including Lenovo and HP) showed them off, and the Que e-reader (from a British company) wowed some, the focus was not on them but on Apple which never exhibits at CES. Until last year, Apple had its own show that conflicted directly, and its much-expected tablet is due this month. That expectation was all but confirmed by a story carefully leaked to the Wall Street Journal last Monday, detailing a possible price, and suggesting that "people briefed by Apple also say that the company believes it could redefine the way consumers interact with a variety of content".

It's the latter phrase that has media companies producers of books, newspapers, films, TV, music, and especially, for some reason, newspapers gasping like parched travellers in a desert. They look at the success of the iPhone (which, before its announcement, had mobile phone makers laughing: Apple? A computer company? Make a phone?) and gasp: let the iTablet lead us out of this wilderness of non-paying customers!

This ignores the question of how you'll have to redesign or repurpose your content to fit Apple's as yet unseen device (is it just a big iPhone? Is it also 3D?) a question that has troubled Ben Hammersley of Wired UK, who points out on his blog (http://bit.ly/wiredUK) that present workflows for most magazines simply don't countenance the idea of a hyperlinked, perhaps video- and audio-enabled end product; they're trying to produce something for print. The iTablet (or whatever) will mess that up badly.

So be careful what you wish for from CES. It has given you the DVD, which you've loved. It has given you Blu-ray, which has not quite taken over the world. It has given you high-definition TV, and now it's giving you 3D films and TV. But it never gave you the iPhone, and won't give you the iTablet. Shows are one thing. But the decisions that really change the game are made in the shops and homes.

Even so, one of those iPhone helicopters would be nice. Just saying.

Charles Arthur is the Guardian's technology editor

A YouGov poll has suggested that computer games can damage children's ability to communicate, but Tom Chatfield argues that gaming imparts a range of new, vitally important skills

What does playing computer games do to us? A YouGov poll has stirred up familiar worries about the effects of new media on children's communication skills, saying that one in six children under the age of seven in England has difficulty talking a problem that will have many worried parents looking at games consoles and wondering how far their children's onscreen delights are implicated in this decline.

Anyone who has played video games, or watched their children playing, will know that they are an exceptionally compelling medium. As Jean Gross, the government's new communication champion for children, noted, overbusy parents can spend dangerously little time talking to their children. Far easier to plonk them down in front of a mesmerising screen.

A lack of parental time and engagement is self-evidently a bad thing, as is the excessive use of any one medium. Yet this vision of gaming as a passive, inert activity does little to help struggling parents. For perhaps the most remarkable thing about modern video games is the degree to which they offer not a sullen and silent unreality, but a realm that's thick with difficulties, obligations, judgments and allegiances. If we are to understand the 21st century and the generation who will inherit it, it's crucial that we learn to describe the dynamics of this gaming life: a place that's not so much about escaping the commitments and interactions that make friendships "real" as about a sophisticated set of satisfactions with their own increasingly urgent reality and challenges.

Take the idea of scarcity. In the real world, there isn't enough of everything to go round and people suffer as a result. In the digital world, there is suffusion: anything can be duplicated almost endlessly at negligible cost. We are free to indulge ourselves to the utmost degree. Except, it turns out, people are rather attached to scarcity and to difficulty, and to hard work, and to all those things that the narcissistic digital realm allegedly teaches us to avoid. We are deeply and fundamentally attracted, in fact, to games: those places where efforts and excellence are rewarded, where the challenges and demands are severe, and where success often resembles nothing so much as a distilled version of the worldly virtues of dedicated learning and rigorously co-ordinated effort.

The very first virtual worlds were indeed utopias. Places like The Palace, which opened its doors in 1995, offered users a kind of enchanted chatroom where they could interact with each other within graphical locations ("palaces") that they had themselves created. Within the limitations of the technology, you could have and do anything you liked. It was a utopia, and it was boring. Not only did people prefer virtual worlds in which there were brutally strict limits on available resources, and where vast amounts of effort had to be expended to obtain these resources; they were actually prepared to pay money to spend time in these scarce worlds.

People liked other things, too: banding together to earn greater rewards; the escalating prospect of greater and greater challenges, involving levels of achievement at the top end only attainable by hundreds of hours of effort. Take the processes involved in playing Microsoft's Xbox 360 console in its own online arena, Xbox Live a digital destination that now boasts more than 20 million users. Thanks to the way Xbox Live works, anyone playing on Microsoft's network isn't just trying to beat individual games; they're also working, often very hard, to earn cumulative "achievement" points for meeting particular targets in each and every game on the system, in an effort to lift their individual score ever higher in the global rankings. It's this pattern of effort and reward, validated by a networked community of players, that makes modern games such an awesome engine for engagement.

When considering just how "real" anything that takes place in a virtual environment can be, it is, first of all, worth remembering the degree to which most real-life activities, from work to shopping to dating, demand a degree of self-concealment precisely because of the direct consequences they entail. A virtual world is a tremendous leveller in terms of wealth, age, appearance, ethnicity and such like a crucial fact for anyone who isn't in the optimum social category of being, say, attractive and affluent and aged between 20 and 35. It's also a place where "you" are composed entirely of your words and actions: something that breeds within and around many games an often extraordinarily complex network of conventions and debates that are integral to a community held together only by voluntary bonds.

Visit any website devoted to hosting player discussions of games like World of Warcraft, for instance, and you'll find not hundreds but tens of thousands of comments flying between players who debate every aspect of the game, from weapon-hit percentages to mathematical analyses of the most efficient sequence in which to use a character's abilities. It will range from the sublime to the ridiculous, and will be riddled with private codes, slang, trolls, flames, and everything else the internet so excels at delivering.

What you'll find above all, though, is a love of discussion almost for its own sake; and an immensely broad and well-informed range of critical analyses. It's not unknown for doctors of economics or maths to wade into the fray and find themselves bested by other still more meticulous chains of gamer reasoning.

Perhaps the most sophisticated online game of them all, the epic science fiction universe known as EVE Online, has even seen its player community persuade the company running the game to hold democratic elections for a "council" via which players can voice their concerns directly to developers. Places on this Council of Stellar Management, as it is known, were first competed for in a full election during March 2008, with 66 candidates putting themselves forward for nine positions. Every player of the game was eligible to vote, and the results were announced in May 2008: 24,651 votes were cast out of a pool of 222,422 eligible voters, revealing a turnout of 11%. These days, alongside the council, there is a separate internal affairs division, designed to root out misconduct on the part of both players and developers after some nasty allegations of insider dealing with the valuable engineering schematics.

In an election year for Britain, this kind of grand experiment in community government and participation is given an edge by perhaps the most fundamental traits of every gaming world: fairness, equality and transparency.

Consider one of the most fundamental problems posed by any massively multiplayer online game: the distribution of rewards among a team of people who have collaborated in order to work their way through a vast and rewarding challenge. Nobody is being paid to be there. In fact, all the players involved will be paying exactly the same amount of money for the privilege of playing the game in the first place. Given that most in-game challenges tend to produce only a small amount of very valuable loot in the form of armour or weapons that almost everyone would like to own, the problem created is one that can only be solved satisfactorily by a solution that is self-evidently fair and self-contained.

In 1999 a group of players in the game EverQuest devised the first version of exactly such a system. Dubbed Dragon Kill Points, or DKP the key task that necessitated devising the system was killing two very tough dragons essentially it entailed introducing a private and self-regulated currency between collaborating players. Under a DKP system, every time anyone participated in a group mission they got "paid" a set DKP allocation. These points were tracked independently of the game, on an open website run by the players themselves and accumulated over time until a player decided they wished to spend them on a rare or desirable item found during an in-game mission. At this point an open or closed auction system would allocate each item to the highest bidder.

Once the notion of DKP had been introduced, an increasingly sophisticated series of methods of quantifying the challenges and rewards in the game soon began to develop among players. "Price lists" were developed for in-game items, based on detailed statistical analyses of their properties. As one developer of the DKP system put it to me, "loot handling in online games would probably be a PhD thesis in itself. It was very, very difficult. We had a good time trying to figure out what price things should be, what was the best way to distribute."

In a digital world and a political arena increasingly preoccupied with transparency and accountability, the spontaneous emergence of such a system points towards the gaming world's remarkable power. The DKP system is an entirely self-enforcing mechanism; yet its effectiveness among gamers who adopt it runs at close to 100%. This is because it works; because it is transparent and meticulously fair; and because it has been laboriously calibrated over time to prevent collusive bidding or other kinds of cheating.

Neither playing Warcraft nor building a virtual polling booth in Second Life is likely to win many votes for a British political party in 2010, of course. And spending 24 hours a day in either environment is unlikely to do much for anyone's conversational abilities. But it's high time we began to understand games on their own terms, with all the potentials and dangers that entails: as arguably the most powerful models we have for connecting and motivating, and understanding those vast, disparate groups of people a digital age throws together.

Fun Inc: Why Games are the 21st Century's Most Serious Business (Virgin Books), published this week at 12.99

European trade unions and industry groups call for tighter controls on illegal filesharing and more pressure on ISPs

European trade unions and industry groups from TV, film and radio have joined Bono, Lily Allen and other big-name artists in calling for wider legal crackdowns on internet piracy.

Workers' representatives and trade groups from across Europe have formed a coalition to urge the European Union to formally adopt a strong stance against illegal filesharing and to put more pressure on internet service providers (ISPs) to help curb piracy.

The calls follow headline-grabbing plans from the UK government to curb copyright infringement, including sending warning letters to persistent unlawful filesharers. Under the proposals, if piracy is not reduced by 70%, the government will introduce a series of "technical measures" that could include suspending a pirate's broadband connection. The plans have drawn intense criticism from ISPs and consumer groups but support from musicians, including Allen, who collated the views of various artists in a controversial blog last autumn.

The European Audiovisual Social Dialogue Committee is now calling for "improvements to the legal framework" throughout the EU to encourage producers, broadcasters and content creators to provide more lawful online services.

"The unauthorised filesharing of protected works and performances as well as the need for all right holders to derive tangible benefits from the exploitation of their work are important issues that need to be better recognised by the European commission and other EU institutions," the committee whose members include the Association of Commercial Television in Europe, the International Federation of Film Producers Associations and the European Federation of Journalists said in a joint statement.

The committee wants the internal markets commissioner to "ensure that all member states have the necessary infrastructure to effectively enforce copyright protection laws and ensure all ISPs work to prevent illegal P2P filesharing and other IP infringements through their services."

The commission is also being asked to carry out research into the economic effects of online piracy, including possible job losses and lost revenues, and to consider introducing or reviewing EU legislation to protect copyright holders.

The UK grouping of entertainment industry trade unions, called the Creative Coalition Campaign, backed the Europe-wide calls.

"Although the UK is taking a lead with the proposals outlined in the digital economy bill, unfortunately, other EU countries are lagging behind, putting the whole of the EU's creative sector at serious risk," Christine Payne, general secretary of Equity and chair of the Creative Coalition Campaign, said.

But the demands are likely to face strong opposition from ISPs. The UK plans have already been strongly condemned by TalkTalk as draconian and unlikely to work.

Last week the broadband company, part of Charles Dunstone's Carphone Warehouse business, criticised comments by Bono, the U2 frontman, questioning ISPs' claims that they cannot always know the nature of internet traffic.

Bono cited "America's noble effort to stop child pornography" as proof to the contrary, but Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk's executive director of strategy and regulation, said: "It is outrageous to equate the need to protect minors from the evils of child pornography with the need to protect copyright owners.

"Bono obviously does not understand how simple it is to access copyright-protected content without being detected. P2P filesharing can be spotted (albeit at great cost) but there are dozens of applications and tools out there which allow people to view content for free and no amount of snooping can detect it."

News International has changed its search engine settings to stop NewsNow.co.uk from linking to Times Online content

News International is blocking the news aggregator NewsNow.co.uk from linking to Times Online content.

News International has told the aggregator that it may no longer link to any content on Times Online, and imposed a technical block by altering its robots.txt, the file through which a website can ask search engines not to index its pages.

"News International has for some time been indicating to us that it would like us to refrain from linking to their content," said Struan Bartlett, managing director and chairman of NewsNow, who is sponsoring a campaign called right2link.

"We have been trying to solicit from them their reason for wanting us to stop, but not other search engines. They haven't given us a reason that we understand."

The move seems to be part of Times Online's preparation for moving its content behind a paywall. News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch declared his intention to charge for newspaper content online last August, and the scheme is due to start with the relaunch of Times Online in spring.

Another online cuttings service, Meltwater, is currently taking the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) to a copyright tribunal over whether or not newspapers can control the use of their links. The NLA is owned by eight national newspaper publishers, among them News International and Guardian News & Media, which publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk.

In December 2009, NewsNow decided to pull links to many national newspaper websites from its subscription service following attempts by the NLA to impose a fee structure. But its free news aggregation site, newsnow.co.uk, continued to include the links.

Yesterday the NLA announced that it is suspending invoicing for the new web licences for end users that it brought into effect as of 1 January. "We are confirming that licensing is effective from January 1 2010 and that charges will be incurred from that date but we are suspending invoicing until the tribunal has ruled," Andrew Hughes, its commercial director, said.

News International has yet to comment about any plans it may have to block other aggregators.

Government to seek advice from public on how to spend 1bn to make Britain's broadband better

The government is seeking public advice on how to spend 1bn to ensure that almost all of Britain gets superfast broadband this decade should it hook up rural communities first, or the suburbs?

The Next Generation Access (NGA) fund, which would come from a 50p a month levy on all telephone landlines proposed in the Digital Economy bill, is intended to persuade telecoms companies such as BT and Virgin Media to install fibre-optic cable to rural and suburban households where it might otherwise be unprofitable.

But the key question facing the government is whether it would be more effective to encourage telcos to install fibre-optic cable, capable of carrying two-way video and other high-speed internet links, in the most geographically remote areas or provide funding for installation at locations that are close to those where fibre would be put in anyway without intervention due to market demand.

The two opposing approaches dubbed "outside-in" and "inside-out" are outlined in a consultation published today by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

Charles Dunstone, chief executive of broadband provider TalkTalk, has previously described the proposed levy to produce the fund as "unjust and regressive". He has called for the private sector to be allowed to "drive next-generation broadband as far as it can".

The government has also pledged to ensure every community has access to 2 megabits per second (Mbps) broadband connection by 2012 in time for the Olympic Games. But higher-speed broadband, with the ability to transmit high definition films and carry out live high definition video conservations, has been identified as key to economic growth as more transactions and business is done electronically.

Building the infrastructure that would replace the old copper lines which presently link phone exchanges and houses with fibre-optic cables would also create jobs. The London School of Economics and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation have estimated that a 5bn investment in next-generation broadband would create 280,000 jobs, and that small and medium-sized businesses, or SMEs, would be particular beneficiaries.

Although the government expects that even without intervention companies like BT will deliver fibre to at least 50% and perhaps up to 70% of the population, there are concerns about whether it would ever be profitable for telcos to install fibre to the remainder because of the high capital cost of providing fibre connections to geographically remote locations.

Spending the "next generation fund" will "incentivise the rollout of next generation superfast broadband to at least 90% of UK homes and businesses by 2017", the government said, and should also speed up telecoms companies investment so that two-thirds of the UK population are connected to fibre through market provision.

Launching the consultation, the business secretary Lord Mandelson said: "This investment is about bringing the future of broadband to areas of the country that would otherwise miss out. We cannot underestimate the opportunities this will bring for homes and businesses which is why we are taking action to make sure everyone benefits.

"Already the market is delivering superfast internet speeds of 50Mbps to half the country but we cannot be certain that it will reach the communities that are not currently served, which is why we are putting in an extra 1bn to support the market."

Although many homes could get high-speed broadband through cable services provided by Virgin, BT has been slower to provide fibre to homes. Earlier this week it announced that 63 exchanges will be upgraded with fibre connections to the street cabinets from which homes are connected. Half of those are in the south-east of England or London, the most populous part of the UK. Another 99 exchanges are already being upgraded.

BT has said it will spend 1.5bn upgrading telephone exchanges that serve about 40% of premises in the UK by 2012, and that of the 10m who will be connected to those exchanges about 2.5m will have fibre connections at home capable of 100Mbps connections. Typical copper wire connections today run at about 4Mbps, up to 20Mbps in some places.

Other countries

What are other countries doing to invest in next-generation broadband?

In Finland, the Government is committed to getting fibre within 2km of 99% of homes by 2015. But only the last 4% will need government intervention which will be two-thirds funded by public investment of 133m ( 112m). But it's not clear how the final 2km, for which subscribers are responsible, will be completed. This will cost 55 ( 47) per household, besides the extra cost of connecting homes to the fibre.

By 2014, Germany will deliver 50Mbps to 75% of households, with public sector involvement where the market will not deliver. 180m has been identified for this.

In Greece. 0.7bn ( 0.6bn) of public money will be spent ,with a further 1.4bn ( 1.2bn) of private investment, to deliver fibre all the way to 2 million homes. This will cost 192 ( 160) per household.

The Australian government has announced an A$43bn ( 21bn) fibre-to-the-home project to provide speeds of 100Mbps to 90% of homes over the next eight years. Wireless technology will provide the final 10% of homes with up to 12 Mbps. This will be a joint venture with industry in which the public will own a minimum of 51% of the project. The cost per household is at least A$2,750 ( 1,350), depending on the size of the publicly owned share of the investment.

Fund of up to 200,000 will help developers to create innovative use of 200 datasets in new free data initiative

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, will on Thursday launch a website hosting hundreds of sets of data - including previously unreleased information - about the capital, as part of a new scheme intended to encourage people to create "mashups" of data to boost the city's transparency and accountability.

Channel 4 will also be offering up to 200,000 through its 4ip fund to help develop the most innovative uses of the data.

To announce the site, Johnson will take part in a live linkup on Thursday to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with President Barack Obama's chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra, who has overseen the development of the US government's "data.gov" project, which aims to put all US government data onto the web for others to use.

The London Datastore, as it is called, will be fully open from 29 January. It will be the first such "datastore" for a city in the UK. The government is working on a similar site, called data.gov.uk, which is also expected to be unveiled this month under the auspices of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web. He has been working inside the civil service since summer 2009 to unlock and unify datasets collected inside government: when it launches, data.gov.uk is expected to carry hundreds of datasets for free reuse.

The government took a significant step towards making such datasets easier to use with the announcement by Gordon Brown in November that Ordnance Survey mapping data from 1:10,000 would be free for all use, including commercial applications, from April.

A number of cities in the US have their own datastores, such as DataSF for San Francisco and the Chicago data store. The idea has rapidly gained traction since the introduction of Google Maps in 2005, which allowed people to attach sets of data with geographical information to a map in real time.

Johnson has been a strong advocate of open data, having campaigned in 2008 on the promise that he would introduce crime maps, despite misgivings of some senior police officers. The Metropolitan Police did however quickly implement] crime mapping in London, following the lead that had already been set by a number of other police forces around the country.

In a statement, Johnson said: "The superb new London 'Datastore' will unleash valuable facts and figures that been languishing for far too long in the deepest recesses of City Hall. I firmly believe that access to information should not just be the preserve of institutions and a limited elite. Data belongs to the people particularly that held by the public sector and getting hold of it should not involve a complex routine of jumping through a series of ever decreasing hoops.

"The US has led the way on this idea of setting their data free for anyone - students, campaigners, software developers to use. Now it's time for Britain to get up to speed and I want London, as the greatest city in the UK, to be at the forefront of this revolution, that will not only increase democracy, but also provide a potential money-spinner for the city's hugely important software development sector."

The datasets that will be available include attainment, pupil number and schools data; fire incidents, ambulance rates, crime rates; carbon emissions, floorspace, vacant commercial offices, industrial stock data, abandoned vehicles, recycling rates, waste data, waste re-use centres, fly tipping rates, alcohol indicators, abortion rates, hospital waiting lists and admissions, excess winter deaths - and many dozens more.

The voting has begun for the second annual Shorty Awards which honour the best writers on Twitter

Oh no. Oh yes! And it's serious! Yesterday, the voting for the second annual Shorty Awards honouring the best writers on Twitter began. Categories range from serious topics such as government, health and politics to lighter ones such as music, culture, celebrities and humour.

At March's awards ceremony the winners will be revealed after they have been determined by a combination of popular vote and the members of the Real-Time Academy of shortform arts and sciences including the MIT Media Lab's director Frank Moss, the President and CEO of the Knight Foundation, Alberto Ibarg en, and the Creative Commons, CEO Joi Ito.

Yes, it is serious and not a PR stunt. In fact, the Shorty Awards do a good job to be the Twitter equivalent of the Oscars.

Anyone can nominate people and organisations who have excelled on Twitter over the past year. To nominate, Twitterers can send a tweet which should at least include #shortyawards @username #category and a creative reason for the nomination, or simply use the voting box on the website. There are 26 official categories from journalist to news and tech, food, advertisement, apps or customer service completed by community-created ones.

The rules are simple: to vote or receive votes you need to have a valid, active and public Twitter account. That's it. Campaigning is allowed and I guess necessary to finish among the five users with the highest rank in each official category who become finalists.

Last year's awards received more than 50,000 nominations. Among the winners were Nasa in the science category for tweeting the unmanned Mars Phoenix Lander mission and @PeggyOlson, of Mad Men, in the advertising category.

March's awards ceremony will be held in New York. It is still unknown who will be speaking and presenting gongs.

So get voting, Twitterers. There's a free flight to New York up for grabs for the winners, and of course the glory of holding aloft a Shorty.

Xbox 360; 39.99; cert 16+; THQ

For the uninitiated, Blood Bowl is a pretty strange concept. Based on a 20-year-old Warhammer spinoff board game, it merges the worlds of dice, tape-measures and overpriced metal miniature figurines with the similarly stop-and-start and rule-heavy world of American football.

In fact, the cover of the Xbox 360 game itself tells you pretty much all you really need to know a big orc, with a spiky helmet, bashing some poor bloke holding a pigskin. A sport sim with added violence and hitting people. Fair enough. The thing is, while you may expect Madden with monsters, what Blood Bowl actually offers is simply the original Games Workshop board game, but played on your TV with added animations and graphics. You don't control the players yourself, nothing happens in real-time hell, you even have to roll virtual dice every turn. Think 3D chess, with a ball.

What this means is that while Blood Bowl fanatics will be immensely satisfied (and it seems like there are a fair few out there), for everyone else the game is a bit of a head-scratcher. For starters, it's incredibly complex, and the tutorial offered is pretty woeful. The impenetrable amount of rules, clauses, special bonuses etc may work well on a long afternoon gathered around a gaming table where you have the time and patience to consult huge rule books and sets of cards, special dice, and so on but somehow this doesn't really seem right for the pick-up-and-play nature of console gaming. So difficult is the game to get to grips with for the newcomer it must have originally been made strictly with Blood Bowl aficionados in mind.

The game is, in fact, a version of a PC game released on Steam, the popularity of which convinced THQ to release a console version. Sadly, as these things often seem to be, it's a pretty lazy port. You've got no chance reading the captions on screen if your television is anything less than a 21in. The controls are poor. And the loading times are appalling. You shouldn't have to wait for more than a minute to load a field of small, unimpressively rendered creatures and a few waving fans. Fifa manages twice as much detail in less than half the time.

If you do manage to get the hang of the basic gameplay (something that took me a fair few hours), the game does start to become fairly playable. Scoring your first touchdown after dozens of games, most of which were spent grimly trying to make any sense of what's going on, is genuinely satisfying. Working out successful tactics and strategies is actually be pretty stimulating. There is a reason, after all, that the game in its original form has lasted 20 years.

The presentation, though something of a mixed bag with ugly menu screens and a pretty drably rendered field of play, is quite charming. The commentary is actually pretty funny Mark Lawrenson could learn a thing or two from the ogre pundit, Jim Johnson. Blood Bowl fans will doubtless relish being able to play a game they love without all the faff that the physical game entails. The opportunity for online play is also a big plus having thousands of people willing to play such a niche game at your fingertips must be appealing.

The problem is I'd expect all those aforementioned fans to already have the game on PC why would they want to play an inferior version? Meanwhile, uninitiated gamers could spend hours trying to understand a fiddly and repetitive game that clearly doesn't work all that well on a console. But they could play something more fun, and less obscure instead.

For the dozens of PC-less Blood Bowl fans out there, this game is a must. For the rest of us however, all we can do is wonder how this game ever got released on a console in the first place.

Rating: 2/5

Have you spent the recent weeks fantasising about escaping the cold and the daily grind? Meet the modern-day nomads who have taken the plunge

Read more: the beginner's guide to travel blogging

The diving instructors

It's not unusual for disillusioned graduates to pack a bag and hit the road, but what distinguishes dive enthusiasts Ben Stokes, 30, and Sarah Kemsley, 31, is that they kept going. Since meeting in Malaysia in 2003, the couple have worked as diving instructors in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Egypt, Honduras, Belize and Fiji, clocking up over 5,000 dives between them and leaving their respective studies in advertising and fashion far behind.

The couple, who learned to dive while travelling, now have their own bespoke travel company, Dive Safari Asia, which is based in the UK but can be run from wherever they are in the world. They put together unguided package trips (flights, accommodation, diving) for their clients or, for more remote destinations, step in and act as guides. "Being in Asia for so many months of the year allows us to discover new destinations and really connect with the places," says Ben.

Typically stationing themselves in a location for two to four months, their three essential requirements are internet access, phone signal and "very good-quality diving".

"Communication is generally good in Asia, but bad weather and poor connection can make things incredibly frustrating," admits Ben. "What might take half an hour online in the UK could take two hours in Indonesia."

One of their best experiences so far has been diving in Sumatra, Indonesia, where their boat was circled by a 4m manta ray. They are now in Bali, where they plan to base themselves for 12 months, making various trips around the area. "You couldn't cover this area fully in a lifetime," enthuses Ben.

Ben and Sarah, originally from Bristol and Leamington Spa respectively, can imagine continuing their nomadic lifestyle for another five years and then maybe setting up a more long-term base, perhaps in Asia. "We're not so against the 9-to-5 lifestyle or the UK that we'll never go back," says Ben. "In fact, we could only do this with complete confidence, and enjoyment, knowing that the door is always open to return."

Ben's tip "Start by getting rid of all the possessions that are holding you back from becoming location independent. Sell them, give them away or, if you really have to, put them into storage. You'll be surprised by how little you'll need or want on the road."

The online consultants

Lea and Jonathan Woodward left the UK in February 2007. Since then, the childhood sweethearts, originally from Nottingham, have lived in Panama, Argentina, Grenada, Canada, Hong Kong, Dubai, Italy and South Africa. Last year, they were joined by a new travel companion, their daughter Mali, now four months old. "We're not quite sure where we're headed next possibly somewhere else in Asia," says Lea, 32. "And Costa Rica is definitely on our itinerary for some time in 2010."

The Woodwards' calling came when graphic designer Jonathan, 34, was made redundant for the second time in two years. "We decided to make a go of it on our own and set up our own business together," recalls Lea. "The only problem was we had trouble meeting the same living standard loft apartment, nice car, regular meals out . . . That's when I hit upon the idea of moving somewhere else in the world, where we could enjoy the same standard of living but for far less."

The couple now run a branding and marketing consultancy, Kinetiva , which has clients across the world. They also run an online community, Location Independent, that offers guidance for people looking to adopt a nomadic lifestyle. The couple make money through the site by selling online courses, travel guides and ebooks. "The main aim for our business is not just to cover costs but to make a profit, and living in lower-cost countries enables us to do this even more so than if we were in the UK," says Lea.

The Woodwards live on a typical budget of between 1,000 and 2,000 per month, which gives them a very comfortable standard of living. Travelling with a baby has meant some readjustments, but they are adamant that family life can be compatible with a life on the road. "It's not like we'll go trekking in the wilds of Borneo with a young baby," says Lea, from their current base, a one-bedroom bungalow on the Thai island of Phuket, which costs them 70 per week. "We'll probably stay a bit longer in places now, so it's not too unsettling. We're really just going to see how it goes and adjust our approach as required."

Their advice to any parents considering this lifestyle is to focus on creating the income stream first, even if it takes a year or two. Lea admits that there can be unsettling periods when you feel "insecure, uncertain and out of sorts". But there have certainly been many more high points along the way. "One of my dreams had always been to experience Caribbean life, and the five months we spent in Grenada were fantastic," she recalls. "Being able to swim in the warm, turquoise sea every single day and realising that this was our life is something I will always remember."

Lea's tip "If you're totally new to the concept, read around to understand how it all works, and get a few insights into the realities of it. You can also connect with people who live the lifestyle through blogs, Facebook or Twitter. Many are happy to answer questions."

The DJ

In November 2006, Adam Schofield sold everything he owned including an inherited house and bought a flight to San Francisco. Three years on, the 31-year-old from Bolton has travelled down through the Americas, from Canada to Argentina, and enjoyed a stint in the Caribbean. Having made his funds stretch by DJing along the way and finding free accommodation through couchsurfing.com, he's now taking a "break" in Saigon, Vietnam.

"I totally fell in love with this country," he says of Vietnam, where he plans to stay for a year or two before travelling the rest of Asia. "A local Couchsurfer helped get me a job as a teacher and found me an incredible six-storey house to live in which I rent with three other people. I got myself a motorbike to drive around the city and I'm teaching English for 18 hours a week." In between, he still fits in the occasional DJ set and some freelance writing, as well as getting additional money through sponsors and affiliates on his blog, couchsurfingtheworld.com.

Adam estimates that he has spent 20,000 over the past three years. His current cost of living is around 200 a month, 125 of which is rent, and he earns 620 a month through teaching. He invested in stocks when he sold his house and this bumps up his funds. "I had to sit back and wait for the market to improve, but now I'm making money again," he says.

Adam cites his destination highlights as Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba and Brazil, while the most memorable DJ gigs of his trip have been a full-moon party beside the sea in Oaxaca, Mexico and in a club on the 40th floor of a skyscraper in Bogot , Colombia. "[In Bogot ] I told the boss I would DJ for free as long as Couchsurfers got free entry. He didn't think 260 people would show up!"

Now that he has a temporary base, Adam is hoping his family and friends whom he hasn't seen for three years will finally get a chance to visit. He also insists that his couch will be open to anyone. And although he'd love to make a return visit to the UK making a special pilgrimage to the curry houses in Manchester's Rusholme he's sure he'd soon be ready to move on again. "I love England," he admits, "but it will always be there, and until I've seen the world I still don't have a home as such."

Adam's tip "You have to be good at trusting people. Building and maintaining a new social circle of friends is pivotal to your overall experience of settling into a new place. Also remember that your intended destination may not be everything you imagined, so have a back-up plan."

The home-swappers

In summer 2008, Julie and Martin Gibbons (39 and 42) crossed the "last hurdle to freedom" and removed their 11-year-old son Ruaridh from school. Their line of work a web business that builds psychometric personality applications was already location independent, and now the entire family was, too.

The Gibbons travel by keeping a base, a four-bedroom home in West Lothian, Scotland, and swapping it with other homeowners on a short-term basis (between two weeks and four months) through home-exchange websites. So far, they have stayed in seven locations across France and one in Spain, including an apartment in the centre of French spa town, Aix-les-Bains, a renovated farmhouse in a tiny hamlet near La Rochelle on France's Atlantic coast, and a basic mountain house in Spanish Catalonia.

"Our expenses are the same as when we're at home because we continue to pay bills as normal, with only the travel expenses costing extra," says Julie. "Wherever we are the cost of living is generally less than it is in the UK, and because we are paid a fixed salary from our company, we know exactly where we stand from month to month."

Their company, People Maps , was set up with the goal of geographic independence, and employs up to 11 people at any time. ("Some of whom we haven't even met," explains Julie. "But they're hired on the basis of a psychometric test, a telephone call and a test exercise.") They have permanent staff in Calcutta, and have also hired people in France, Ukraine and the Philippines at various times. As Julie explains: "We all work from home but that 'home' can be anywhere in the world." Meanwhile, Ruaridh appears to be thriving in his new way of life. "At first, he was slightly nervous about spending so much time away from home," says Julie. "But after a year and a half, he's by far and away the best traveller out of all of us. We do home-schooling both of us teach him and also count nearly all experiences as 'educational'. Learning a new language has proven one of the most valuable aspects for him."

The family is currently setting up their house-swap for next summer. "We're planning to move on to Spain, but beyond that, it's all a bit of a mystery. One of the things that's so great about home-swapping is that you can start off with one plan, and end up in places you've never heard of, or considered."

Julie's tip "Don't start out with grand plans to emigrate and leave the country forever. It makes it sound less scary, for you and the people around you if you treat it as a 'trip' even if your 'trip' turns out to be never-ending."

The blogger

"Whenever someone asks about my profession, I simply say that I help people quit their day jobs," says 20-year-old Glen Allsopp, from Newcastle upon Tyne. Two years ago, his online work as a blogger and marketeer caught the eye of a South African company, which recruited him to work as a social media manager for some Fortune 100 clients. Having also spent time working in Hanoi and Bangkok, he became fully freelance in January 2009 and launched a guide to becoming a digital nomad. Although his online income fluctuates a lot, the monthly figure is now typically above 6,000. "For a college dropout, and given the current economic climate, I'm quite proud of my achievements," he says.

Glen is currently based in Amsterdam, where he has rented an apartment 10 minutes' walk from Leidseplein, one of the main squares, and is planning to spend two months in the city, soaking up local life. He says the so-called "passive income" he gains from having already built a portfolio of websites means he works only three to four hours per week.

Of course, such a lifestyle hasn't come without ample groundwork. Glen showed entrepreneurial flare through his teens and developed an expertise in search engine optimisation (getting websites to rank higher in search engines like Google). He now makes his money by setting up successful blogs, which he uses to promote various affiliate products, sells advertising and, in some cases, sells on the entire site. Much of his income also comes from a self-published ebook and series of tutorial videos for those who want to earn an income online.

For Glen, the main appeal of this type of travel is being able to combine leisurely sightseeing with fitting into everyday life and making local friends. He's particularly enjoyed seeing how the festive season is celebrated in Holland, including SinterKlaas, a traditional Dutch festival on 5 December, where good children are left presents in their shoes.

Glen's next step will be to continue his travels through Europe (Prague, Milan, Paris, Stockholm), before "probably moving back to Asia". Although it can be tough living out of a suitcase and constantly having to say goodbyes, the plus points of not having a boss and being able to travel on mean he wouldn't change his lifestyle for anything.

Glen's tip "A lot of people don't believe this kind of lifestyle is possible, so they'll unconsciously try and hold you back. Instead of judging them for it, just accept it and keep moving forward towards your goals."

The steadily growing list of banned websites makes it impossible to predict, let alone stop, your favourite sites being blocked

Most Chinese bloggers, Twitter users and internet-savvy folk are happy about the suing of the Green Dam by Cybersitter LLC, who this week claimed that China's software developers stole 3,000 lines of code directly from them and used it for the controversial Green Dam Youth Escort software.

The reaction from internet supporters in China isn't positive. "It serves them right," Michael Anti, long-time online media guru and outspoken Twitter user, told me. Another internet personality and wanderer around China, "Zola", supports the suing of the Green Dam. He said, "The Green Dam is not something that I support, the people behind it should be punished." But a more concise explanation was offered by a software developer based in Guangzhou, who goes by the name "Lemoned": "First, it's a sign that software developers and users in China have limited awareness of intellectual property rights. Second, those in power and the policymakers have not accrued enough information about computers and new technology. Finally, this is China in the far east that we're talking about. Don't think that it's in the west."

Lemoned is certain about one thing: although the lawsuit is somewhat expected and the software fills a gap, he directs his argument towards the trend that online control has become stricter in China.

For example, the Beijing News recently wrote about the blacklist of websites and that the government intends to create a "white-list" of approved sites taken from all around the world. All foreign sites would need to register with the government before they launched or continued having their site open to visitors within China. No headway has been made since the regulations were announced. As the Beijing News hinted, it might be that the Green Dam is taking a different form.

The end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 saw the attempt to block websites hosted on servers outside of China. The PKU media professor Hu Yong's blog, internet essayist Hecaitou and agony uncle Lian Yue also had their external websites blocked. The fact that these were all prominent internet writers, and that their writings were hosted on external servers, made them the target. The frustration of not knowing what will happen to your website or the website you work for is bad in China. Waking up and finding your favourite download site no longer available isn't easy, especially when certain types of material, such as university learning tools, cannot easily be accessed otherwise. Some of the headaches are minor, such as downloading a TV series that would be deemed as illegal copyright infringement in any country (it's just more rife in China). But when it comes to the seemingly random, but actually calculated, selection of things that are blocked, it's hard to guess what will be next.

The Guardian has been translated into Chinese by a translation group called Yeeyan. Their website, Yeeyan.com, has been down since the beginning of December, but the founders have said that republishing would begin this week, with a closer watch on their material. The demise of a translation community, and the now unclear status of its return, is yet one more indicator that as there is no stopping, and little way of telling, what will happen next.

To save money, emissions and indulge my inner geek, I've tested the Google Powermeter and it has not been an entirely pleasant experience

Not content with dominating the way we send email, find information and navigate the real world, Google now hopes to manage your home's energy use. In the spirit of saving some money, emissions and indulging my inner geek, I signed up to see whether its Powermeter really is the future. For the past two months, the software which arrived in the UK in November has been tracking and broadcasting to a web page how much electricity my early-20th-century, three-bedroom terraced house consumes.

It's not been an entirely pleasant experience. While I had it setup in 10 minutes using a small hub and sensor from British company AlertMe to plug into my web connection seeing my electricity use on an iGoogle page alongside my email, news, RSS and other widgets was sometimes a scary reminder of our profligacy.

Our house typically rests at around 150 watts running a computer, fridge and a couple of lights, but it's not uncommon for that to jump up to more like 3kW (3,000 watts) with the washing machine and dishwasher running simultaneously. In December as a whole, the Powermeter graph reminded my daily, we used a shockingly high 370 kWh but fortunately December's also probably our highest month for energy use, because it's one of the darkest and the one where we're most frequently at home.

Google Powermeter makes looking at your energy consumption almost fun at least in comparison with deciphering cryptic energy bills. While you can download the raw data of your electricity use, a quick look at the baffling spreadsheet showed the importance of a meaningful interface such as Powermeter's graphs.

Interestingly, while I was trialling the service, Google dropped Powermeter's comparison feature where you can see how your use compares with US regional averages because it felt homes varied between regions to the point of making comparisons meanignless. I'm inclined to agree. Usage for our three-bedroom terrace house was regularly described as very good and akin to a one-bedroom apartment, which doesn't tell me much, except how high US domestic energy use is.

I've also been trying British Gas's new EnergySmart tariff, which gives you an energy monitor gadget and makes you submit monthly meter readings. Charles Arthur has reviewed a version of the monitor he was impressed but the most useful part of the tariff for me has been the financial incentive to save money on a month-by-month basis, knowing that each kWh saved will be reflected on that month's bank statement.

Ultimately, the really interesting stuff for this technology will come when all this data gets shared socially and results in the sharing of advice and the application of peer pressure to make people change their habits. While iGoogle and Powermeter doesn't let you publish your energy use direct to Twitter or Facebook, AlertMe offers a personal "Swingometer" to post a basic image of your energy use on Facebook, Twitter or your blog.

Regardless of whether or not Powermeter takes off, we'll all have some sort of standalone energy-monitoring gadget showing electricity usage in our homes by 2020, thanks to the government's smart meters plan.

Meantime, the best way for most people to try an energy monitor without spending 69 plus an ongoing 3 monthly subscription for AlertMe and Powermeter will be to borrow one from their local library. A trial that started in Lewisham has since spread across the country, from libraries in Leicester and Brentwood to Cardiff and York. Not for the first time, old-fashioned institutions of learning could trump new-fangled technology and gadgets.

Troubled startup SpinVox - once a shooting star of the British technology industry - has been bought by an American rival in a deal worth $102m ( 64m).

After a difficult year that saw substantial losses and unrest among its investors, it was today confirmed that the company - which converts customers' voicemails into text messages that they can read more easily - has been acquired by US technology firm Nuance.

In a statement Nuance, which makes the popular voice recognition program Dragon NaturallySpeaking, said it was buying SpinVox to help expand its reach into new countries.

"Around the world, the voice-to-text market has experienced tremendous growth over the last year," said Nuance vice president John Pollard. "With SpinVox's robust infrastructure, language support and operational experience, we will broaden the reach and capabilities of our platform."

The deal marks a heavy loss on the investments made in the Buckinghamshire-based company, which had raised more than $230m ( 145m) in recent years to fund its ambitious expansion plans - and once valued itself at more than $500m.

While it boasted a legion of fans, however, the company had struggled to pay for major expansions around the world, while simultaneously fighting a series of claims that its automated voice-to-text technology actually relied heavily on call centre staff.

Over the summer, it rejected a BBC report suggesting that humans not computers - transcribed large portions of customers' messages and held a demonstration of its system for journalists.

The increased scrutiny exposed a series of fissures inside the company, however. The management team, led by chief executive Christine Domecq, came in for criticism, and in August, recently-appointed director Patrick Russo the former chief executive of telecoms giant Alcatel-Lucent - stepped down.

With losses mounting, the company raised more funding in August largely to service its debts and began paying staff with stock, rather than cash, as a way to save money. But in September one of its backers, Invesco, wrote down its outlay by 90% and confirmed that SpinVox was up for sale.

Rumours of the Nuance deal were reported earlier this month, around the same time that the company was given more time to repay a 30m loan that had placed extra pressure on its finances. However, early suggestions were that the company was closing in on a $150m price tag - significantly more than the $102.5m deal that was eventually struck.

Investors in the company who include Goldman Sachs, Carphone Warehouse chief Charles Dunstone and Peter Wood, the founder of insurance group Directline will receive a total of 42m in cash for the acquisition, with the rest of the money coming in the form of Nuance stock.

Shares in the Massachusetts technology company which had climbed by more than 50% over the past year - were down around 1%, to 15.97, on the news.

This hot hatch is so bright, you've got to wear shades

Why do they always come in white, these hot hatches? Ouch! Even the wheel rims are white. And so white. Whiter not just than snow. Whiter not just than white. But whiter than a soap star's teeth. Normally, a pair of sunglasses are a standard accessory when dealing with a revved-up boy-mobile. But in the case of the ultra-white Honda Civic Type R, they're more a health and safety necessity. Tinted windows don't really do the trick the dazzle from the bonnet on a sunny day could easily laser your eyeballs. A full crack dealer's blackout appears a more sensible option.

Sometimes it does seem as if the highways are jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive. There they are in their Golf GTIs and Ford Focus RSs and Toyota Priuses (OK, just kidding about the last one), full of an aching desire to floor the accelerator and break free from what? Suburban convention? Come on. Is there anything, aside from multiplex cinemas and DIY warehouse centres, more conventionally suburban than a hot hatch?

And now Honda is squeezing in on all those clogged arteries of the urban sprawl with its very own fat slice of road cholesterol. The Honda Civic Type R 2.0 i-VTec lacks the iconic frame of the GTI and the noisy styling of the RS. It also lacks their handling. But, as these sorts of cars go, it's not unattractive. Because, let's face it, ugliness is seen as an aesthetic virtue in this area of the car market, a mark of seriousness and authentic sense of purpose.

The Type R doesn't convince on this front. The rear spoiler hardly spoils the line of the boot. The front spoiler can barely muster a stroppy pout. Nothing really says, "Get out of the way or I'm going to ruin your life and terrorise your family" the way we've come to expect from a hot hatch. But there you go, times change and new fashions emerge, and we shouldn't necessarily assume that psychopathology should be the only suitable visual language for fast-accelerating hatchbacks.

Indeed, I found the brothel-red interior of the Type R almost cosy, as though Cynthia Payne had brought her distinctive eye to the seats and floor carpet. But it's the predominance of the rev counter on the dash that most boldly states the car's, or its notional owner's, true ambitions. It sits centre stage, all but daring the driver to see how far the indicator will swivel round the dial.

To what end, though? Where is it leading, this obsession with ordinary small cars being transformed into monsters of the suburban id? I mean, this town rips the bones from your back. It's a death trap, a suicide rap. We've got to get out while we're young. That said, the Type R is a joyride to drive, if a tad stiff in the suspension.

Netbooks taking off, 2 million people with dongles, an iPhone upgrade in autumn and the demise of Vonage where was I right and wrong about the year just gone?

Now we can get 2009 into perspective, and the hangovers have worn off (less so the credit card bills, perhaps), let's see how my tech predictions for 2009 went. Time to tot up

Prediction 1: At least three companies will withdraw from the PC manufacturing business.

They didn't. Did they? That's 0/1

Matthew Wheeler points out that MPC did. MPC? "Edge PC owned by Micron Tech, then MicronPC, sold to Gores Tech, changed to MPC, sold to Hyperspace of Utah, then Chap.11," he explained. And of course there's Psystar, which thought it could put Mac OS X onto generic boxes, and got told by a judge it couldn't. (These are hardly the big names I was originally thinking of, though.) And Psystar is still offering T-shirts, according to The Register.

In fact, companies didn't withraw from the PC-making business; instead, seeing how desktops and even standard laptops weren't making money, they shifted to netbooks, which saw explosive growth. Lesson: manufacturers like making things. The shift to making netbooks was a sort of evolutionary episode in the punctuated equilibrium of the computer business.

Prediction 2: There will be more "netbooks" aka ultraportables, aka liliputers, like the Asus Eee PC than ever, and their sales growth will far outpace that of the PC market.

Bullseye. PC market growth: 1.3% (or -7%, depending whose numbers you like). Netbook market growth: almost 100% (by revenue). 1/2

Prediction 3: Sun Microsystems won't have a near-death experience, but it's going to keep shrinking.

True. Being the subject of a (wished-for) takeover by Oracle hasn't made it grow. 2/3

Prediction 4: Vonage will die. I'm sorry, guys, but your income statement shows you have debts of $276m, cash of $112m, and are paying "interest" (on the debt) of $5m per quarter, which means losses of $7m per quarter. That's just not sustainable, and debt isn't going to get cheaper to service, either.

Completely wrong. Vonage is still going. I have no idea how. 2/4

Prediction 5: Palm will come close to death, but advance sales of its Pre webphone, plus a little more money from its venture capitalist backers, will save it.

Its latest figures show that it didn't do well, and the Pre hasn't actually been fabulous. But the money from the venture capitalists has certainly helped. 3/5

Prediction 6: Twitter will find a way to charge for its service, from at least some users, and so move towards at least revenue, if not yet profit. Its growth will become explosive.

Tricky, this. Twitter's growth did become explosive, helped along by Oprah, and Iranian election, and so on. Is it charging you or me to use it? No. Is it, however, charging Microsoft and Google to use its database for their "real-time" search engines, putting it squarely into revenue and, arguably, profit? Yes. Can we call Microsoft and Google "Twitter users"? I don't see why not I've previously argued that it should charge for use of its API, and charging those two giants for that is good enough.
So, 4/6

Prediction 7: Many as in thousands of IT jobs will be lost. Lots will go in finance as that industry shrinks; but there's a general trend now where small companies are beginning to rely on cloud services from companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Those don't need a lot of people. (Ever seen a job advert to work on a cloud service?).

(The point about this was that the jobs were being lost in developed countries, of course, rather than in total all over the world.) Has there been a dramatic uptick in the number of IT jobs? Not thinking so. 5/7

Prediction 8: IT will more and more resemble the building business. Either you specialise, or you're coordinating the project, or you're doing simple, low-paid work that someone from another country can and will do for less.

This ties in with the one above. Cloud-based services mean that setting up a business that relies on downloads, for example, is simple. (Twitter caches your pictures on Amazon's S3 service, for example.) Are IT people becoming multi-specialists? Or finding it harder to get general work? We're still hearing that there's a skills shortage in IT but the shortage is at the top end, in the project coordination side, or in getting the services set up. There's less demand for bodies. These days, you either specialise, or get out. Though I realise that this could be described as my biased view, without data. So let's call it a half. (Data either way to prove or disprove very welcome.)
5.5/8

And now we come to that ever-popular subject, Microsoft.
Prediction 9: Windows 7 will be pushed out of the door in time for the end of the year, and particularly for Christmas sales. It won't be perfect, but it will get corporates interested in an upgrade from XP, which Vista didn't.

It certainly was pushed out for the end of the year; October 22 is good enough. While you could argue that it's not perfect, it's considered by lots of people to be very, very good. And it certainly has corporate customers very interested in an upgrade. Come on, that's solid.
6.5/9

Prediction 10: Microsoft will buy chunks of Yahoo (after being forced to overbid by challenges from Google), which will raise yowls of pain from all over the web. And then in six months people will have forgotten all about it.

Microsoft did buy chunks of Yahoo well, sort of. Specifically, it bought the right to put its ads against search, which it would do. Google didn't challenge it at all. Though this one sounds right, when you examine the detail, it's wrong.
6.5/10

Prediction 11: XP will finally be declared dead once Windows 7 is released, because a version of Windows 7 will be made to run on netbooks.

Yes, Windows 7 is made to run on netbooks. XP hasn't formally been declared dead (apart from the fact that it's been declared dead ages ago) but it's vanishing.
7.5/11

Prediction 12: Internet Explorer will continue to lose share to Firefox, Apple's Safari and especially Google's Chrome.

Oh, yes, that did keep happening. Firefox has reached historical highs. And Internet Explorer (all versions, cumulative) keeps slipping.
8.5/12

Prediction 13: No Zune phone, and no Zune in Europe either.

Can I claim two? No? Damn. There was a moment in November where I worried er, hoped no, worried that there might be a Zune in Europe. But it turned out that Microsoft was just using the name, a bit, for its online video marketplace in Europe. Microsoft hasn't launched a Zune Phone (it's doing badly enough with Windows Mobile without trying to make its struggling music player mimic the iPod's transition into the iPhone) and the Zune remains an idea that has yet to make sense in the US, let alone Europe.
9.5/13

Ubiquity

Prediction 14: Dongles will fall in price, and data charges will too as the phone networks realise that it's a great way to tie people to lucrative contracts without having to subsidise them with mobile phones. So they'll become pervasive. Let's put a number on it: 3 million users, PAYG or contract, by the end of the year.

Result: true, and data charges have as well. There are actually about 13 million mobile data users in the UK. How many dongles? At least 3m of them, surely.
10.5/14

Prediction 15: Being able to transfer sound and, increasingly, video around your home between different devices will become more important, and more and more products will appear built around the DLNA standard to assist it.

It's an enduring mystery why this hasn't been more visible. But in fact more and more people are moving video around the home. What do you think the iPlayer is all about? Except, of course, they don't tend to link it to their TV. The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii though are changing this, by offering iPlayer (PS3, Wii) and film (PS3, Xbox) streams. That's not, though, what I'd imagined, which is people actually storing data centrally in their home and shifting it. Though "more" DLNA products have appeared (I loved the LaCie 1TB NAS drive, for example, which has DLNA compatibility). My feeling though is that this hasn't happened.
10.5/15

Prediction 16: Femtocells which improve mobile reception inside homes and businesses by providing a mini-cell, and pushing the data over your broadband connection will struggle because the mobile companies will price them wrong, thinking they should be a niche, and hence expensive, product.

I also said during the year that femtocells weren't going to make it, which brought lots of plangent cries from femtocell companies saying that no, really, 2010 was the year they were aiming at. I was sent a femtocell to try. (Thank you, Vodafone. Afraid I made little progress.) Have you seen a femtocell anywhere? Anywhere at all? (Mobile phone company employees and femtocell manufacturers excluded.) I think this can't be anything but correct.
11.5/16

Prediction 17: Mobile networks will tout phones on the basis that they let you contact your friends on Twitter rather than last year's favourite, Facebook via the data connection. (SMS will remain too expensive for Twitter to use outside the US.)

Facebook remained the powerful force and the reason people wanted to connect: plenty of phones were marketed on the basis that you'd be able to check Facebook; none that I saw on the basis on twittering. (A classic case of early adopter over-optimism about Twitter's penetration on my part though it has completely entered the language, having been used in a scene in Gavin and Stacey.) And Twitter re-introduced SMS updates outside the US. So wrong on both counts.
11.5/17

Linux

Prediction 18: Advocates will declare that 2010 is going to be "the year of desktop Linux" while the bugs are ironed out this year.

This was bound to fail. Linux advocates always say that this year is the one when desktop Linux is going to take off. Ubuntu got plenty of fans, especially for version 9.04 in April.
11.5/18

Prediction 19: But in fact the sales of netbooks running Linux will mean that it's best-selling year for desktop Linux ever.

Then again, this one was bound to succeed. Desktop Linux has had so few avenues for sale that it wasn't going to fail to have its best-ever year once a few machines with it were sold. Of course, I overlooked the popularity of Android, Google's mobile phone operating system, which is Linux. Had I forecast that mobile Linux would have a standout year, that would have been a really worthwhile prediction. Still:
12.5/19

Apple

Prediction 20: Let's start with a banker. No self-replicating worm for Mac OSX or the iPhone's OSX by the end of the year.

Correct. It always is, year after year.
13.5/20

Prediction 21: Snow Leopard will be released for sale in May 2009 this date means it will have been slightly more than the average delay for OSX releases since Leopard's release in October 2007 which leaves time for an announcement and release schedule.

Wrong. Wrongy, wrongy, wrongy wrong wrong. Snow Leopard was released in August 2009.
13.5/21

Prediction 22: Snow Leopard squashes down application sizes, and uses the graphics processing unit (GPU) to help processing. But why would you want to do that? It feels oddly as though Apple is imagining a Flash drive-based machine able to run Snow Leopard, with a comparatively weak processor that uses the GPU to hide the fact. Plus it owns a chip design company. Even so, I don't think it will offer a tablet computer. Or a netbook. Neither fits with its strategy which is all about the iPhone, and pricey computers.

Apple turned up its nose at the idea of a netbook. (Even if I did suggest that it should. Yes, accuse me of wanting it all ways.) It also didn't announce a tablet computer in 2009. (2010, ah, perhaps different.)
14.5/22

Prediction 23: Apple will charge for the Snow Leopard upgrade just as much as it has for previous upgrades.

Yes, it did charge but not as much as for previous upgrades. That's a miss.
14.5/23

Prediction 24: ZFS won't be built into the kernel for Snow Leopard; it'll be an optional install, for server honchos.

In fact, ZFS has disappeared from Apple builds. The cause seems to be intellectual property problems. Ah well. It would have been a nightmare.
15.5/24

Prediction 25: Steve Jobs will remain chief executive through the year. That might sound like an obvious prediction. It isn't.

Hmm technically, he was the chief executive, but he stepped aside to have a liver transplant and recuperate for six months. This prediction was made amid all the rumours of Jobs's illness at the tail-end of 2008. The rumours were that he would have to step down because of the condition (at that time, still a secret). My feeling was that it wasn't such a big thing. Turns out it was a Big Thing. I think this is half-right - no more.
16/25

Prediction 26: The iPhone hardware won't be updated before the autumn.

The iPhone 3GS was released in June, and Stephen Fry reviewed it in the same month. June is not autumn, not even in the southern hemisphere.
16/26

Prediction 27: The iPhone software will be updated to 3.x, which will bring copy-and-paste and photo messaging. About time.

It was, and it did. Finally.
17/27

Environment

Prediction 28: Oil prices are diving, but electricity is still not getting cheaper. Expect more companies even quite big ones to reduce their in-house server usage in favour of outsourced pay-per-process services offered by Microsoft, Google and Amazon.

This is the move to cloud computing, and it's one-way traffic at present. Do you know of anyone who has brought their computing back in-house from the cloud?
18/28

Free Our Data

Prediction 29: The government will take a deep breath and acknowledge that it must make a significant part of Ordnance Survey's data available for free unfettered reuse and will do it.

I was there at 10 Downing Street when Gordon Brown, flanked by Tim Berners-Lee (he invented the web, you know) and Martha Lane-Fox, announced precisely that. Actually, I'd have traded all the other predictions for this one but this one is a great one, a huge year-end bonus to the Free Our Data campaign and to everyone who is going to benefit from it.
19/29

Processing

Prediction 30: In 1992 I wrote a feature based on some analysts' predictions about how in five years we'd all be using speech-to-text input for our computers. We didn't. [but] by the end of the year, we should see programs able to turn the ad-hoc spoken to the written almost faultlessly.

Er, we didn't. From the revelation of the people behind the curtain at Spinvox, to the nearly-good-enough-but-not-perfectness of Dragon Dictate on the iPhone, we're still some way off perfect trasncription. (Believe me, we're always looking for one so we can turn our Tech Weekly podcast back into words for the hard-of-listening.)
19/30

So that's 19/30, or 63%. For comparison, in 2008, my predictions hit 20.5/30, or 68%. Look, what's a mark and a half between friends? Certainly not statistically significant. Basically, what I think we're seeing is that you can rely on me to be wrong about one-third of the time. You can decide whether that's better or worse than a weather forecaster. (The Met Office suggested there was a 1-in-7 chance this would be a cold winter in its long-range forecast.)

And what about the things I missed? The biggest was Google the rise of Android, and the announcement of its Chrome OS for netbooks. That's going to be huge this year, I think so come back for my predictions for 2010 next week. Oh, and tell me what other important events of 2009 I missed.

Everywhere you go these days, there are people with camera-phones many of us record, document, and upload the minutae of our lives. But, ultimately, should we be doing it just because we can?

There are three people standing in front of a glass case in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Each of us is trying to get a good view of the so-called Becket Casket. As you know, it was made in Limoges in the 12th century and depicts one of the most infamous events in English history, the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket. It is is one of the most lovely things you can hope to see on a bleak January morning.

Only one problem. The bloke in the middle is hogging the full-frontal position, clearly the best view to savour Becket's martyrdom. He has been there for five minutes now not, so far as I can judge, appreciating the boldly engraved figures against a brilliant blue background, but meaninglessly, endlessly, exasperatingly snapping the same view. He has that dead-eyed, mouth-gaping, eminently slappable face we all have when we hold our camera phones a foot in front of our faces and click, click, click.

Unable to see the casket properly, I reflect sourly on what the great German philosopher Herbert Marcuse wrote about how instrumental rationality undermines the emancipatory possibilities of technology, reducing it to a tool for our domination. What I think he meant by this was that instead of using technology such as camera phones to make our lives richer, freer and happier, we stand like lumps doing something socially irritating and existentially pointless, thereby ruining the view for everyone else. We have become snappers on autopilot, slaves to our machines, clogging up cyberspace with billions of images that nobody in their right minds not even the person who sent them thinks are worthwhile. Or maybe I'm wrong.

Seven years ago, the camera-phone hardly registered. Indeed, on 17 June 2003, some idiot wrote in the Guardian that the low take-up of those newfangled 3G phones with their built-in cameras, launched two months previously, could be ascribed to the fact that "it's not immediately clear what they're for, and that mystery is not sufficiently seductive to make many of us shell out". The writer all but argued that camera-phones were destined for the technological knacker's yard, like Sinclair C5s, the Securi-Gnome and NiteMates slippers with their built-in headlights (all real products). With the benefit of hindsight, let me admit what a bonehead I was to write that.

These days, the very idea of a mobile without camera or video facility seems absurd. They're more portable than most digital cameras and, more importantly, offer faster connection with the internet, which is a key consideration in this age of virtual presenteeism. So if you're Jonathan Ross and think your Twitter followers would like to see your photos of you playing in the snow with the kids, you can post them online before you've even cleared your desk at the BBC. The seemingly expendable has become the utterly essential. Such, quite often, is the appliance of science.

The latest figures from the Mobile Data Association show that the number of MMS (or video and picture messages) is rising fast: 336m were sent in the UK in 2006, 553m in 2008, and, when the MDA publishes its UK Mobile Trends report next month, another large rise is expected for 2009. True, the number of video and picture messages hardly compares with the number of texts sent (78.9bn text messages were sent in the UK in 2008), but the MDA argues that, "while SMS [texting] is used or conversational activity, MMS is much more 'event' driven." Hence the yuletide and New Year's Eve spikes in picture messaging: on Christmas Day 2008, 4.4m picture messages were sent 3,000 every minute. The safe money says many more were sent over Christmas 2009, and that there will have been another huge surge in UK picture messaging thanks to all the snow.

So what are all these images we are sending? The majority are, frankly, worthless, and often taken in socially unacceptable circumstances. During Peter and the Wolf at London's Royal Festival Hall last week, I watched parents (who had been instructed to turn off their phones before the show began) photograph their kids against a backdrop of the Philharmonia Orchestra and a big screen of the animated film. Why? "Just to prove we're here, to record it for our son when he grows up," said the woman next to me and my daughter on row NN, who was one of the parents taking the pictures.

At a Lily Allen gig, a colleague found she was one of the few in the audience not holding her camera-phone above her head to shoot pictures or make films that could be illicitly uploaded online. Meanwhile, at the London Aquarium, a friend's family excursion was all-but ruined by guppy-like adult snappers blocking the view of slightly less gormless, gaping fish. How many pictures of fish in tanks do we, as a society, really need?

When another friend visited the Taj Mahal recently, he noticed how few people, on arriving, actually looked at the building with their naked eyes. Instead, they would lift their phones immediately to capture an image that everybody in the world has already seen a million times. And a recent letter to the Telegraph complained about how the solemnity of a christening was destroyed by a godmother elbowing the vicar aside to get shots of the baby at the font.

Back in Room 8 of the V&A, one of us cracks. "Will you bloody stop taking pictures!" shouts the woman to the man's right. "You're ruining it for everyone. Let someone else have a look for five seconds, please!" She's wearing a tweed cape, a solidly set hairdo and a forbidding expression that seems to say 'I'm on a day trip from the home counties and I'm not having this'. The man, who may have too little English to reply, skulks off towards Room 9.

Minutes later, I find him in front of the Soissons Diptych, snapping away again, oblivious to the hard stares and tutting from those in less favoured positions. I wander up and say: "That's going to be a rubbish picture, mate." He barely stops photographing to offer me this reply: "Yeah? This is a 10-megapixel Samsung SCH-B600, actually, so the photos are going to be pretty excellent. Thanks very much."

It turns out the man does have good English (he's from Manchester). And lines in sarcasm. He's a fan of gothic art and architecture, and plans to set up a Flickr photo stream as well as beautifying his Facebook page with some of the best shots from his trip. He has already emailed a picture of the Limoges Casket to prove that he was, on 3 January 2010 at 11.15am, standing in front of it. He plans to tweet some shots later, too.

Another great thinker, the Leeds-based sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, wrote in his book Liquid Love that, in a modern world in which those purportedly fixed and durable ties of family, class, religion, marriage have melted away, we look for something else to hold us together. Hence, no doubt, the rise of social networking sites and hence, too, the feverish snapping with camera-phones to take images that can validate our existence to our Twitter followers, our speed-dial intimates, our online "friends". It's a new Cartesian cogito: I photograph, therefore I am (and don't my uploaded images glam up my Facebook profile a treat?). Maybe Marcuse was wrong: we're not so much in thrall to technology, as using it for an unanticipated emancipatory project.

In that context it's not enough to moan, as Telegraph columnist Nigel Farndale did recently, that "photography, once a noble art, has become, thanks to the move to digital, a mental illness" Riffing on the verse of Welsh poet WH Davies, Farndale wrote: "What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare. Click. No time to stand beneath the boughs click, click and stare as long as sheep or cows. Click, click, bloody click."

But moaning isn't enough. We also have to wonder what happens to us when technology increasingly gives us our windows on the world. One thought is that the camera-phone changes our experience of the world for good rather than evil. It can even be a tool against capitalism. Billy Bragg, the politically engaged musician, has been on the receiving ends of the click, click, bloody click of the camera-phone a great deal when playing gigs recently. And, counterintuitively, he loves it.

"I've had to tell bouncers not to stop people taking pictures of me when I'm playing," Bragg tells me. "You have to like it because people who take the photos or make the films with their camera-phones are not thinking you're a pranny. They're doing it because they like you, so there's no point getting upset." It's an interesting corrective to those musicians, such as Boy George, who have tweeted their pleas to audiences to leave their camera-phones at home and watch the show. At last November's 250-gig London jazz festival ushers tried to curb the increasing number of fans using camera-phones to record performances. But, as our jazz critic John Fordham noted at the time, this clampdown stopped his favourite music reaching a wider online audience.

One reason the rise of the camera-phone appeals to Bragg is that it gives him free publicity. It's transgressive technology that helps Bragg and his fans stick it to the Man. "In the past, I've spent thousands of pounds making videos that MTV wouldn't show. Now what happens is that some kid will put a film they've made of me playing live on YouTube and it can have 20,000 or so hits. What is happening is that you're being promoted."

Recently, Bragg was doing a soundcheck in Toronto and decided to have a go at fitting the words of John Cooper Clarke's Evidently Chickentown to the tune of Dylan's Desolation Row. It worked so well he played it at a late-night gig. "Somebody filmed it and now it's on YouTube. I thought that was brilliant."

But clearly there are downsides to camera-phones, too the plague of "upskirting" photos being posted on the web, for example, or Heat magazine encouraging its readers to pap stars in the street and send the photos to the magazine. Aren't these terrible things facilitated by camera-phone technology?

"I'm not sure privacy is all that important an issue when it comes to people who are famous and are seeking attention," says Bragg. Anyway, he argues, camera-phones have more serious uses.

"Thanks in part to camera-phones, we're all reporters now. And that idea is going to have some pretty radical consequences, especially for police officers. Think about it: only an idiot goes to a demonstration without a camera or a camera-phone nowadays." He cites the Guardian investigation into the death of Ian Tomlinson, a passer-by at the G20 protests in London last year, who was shown to have been beaten to the ground by police by means of films made by demonstrators' mobile phones.

Today, grainy camera-phone images or films demonstrate the virile realness of a news event. We expect them to show that a story was so hot it took place before TV crews and the rest of the old media got there. Hence the wannabe Christmas Day pants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutalib was immortalised in blurry phone images taken as the plane descended into Detroit.

Media commentator and professor of interactive journalism Jeff Jarvis writes: "We are in the era of news served raw. Witnesses to any event can now capture and share what they see not just with acquaintances but with the world, and without the filter and delay of news media. And that doesn't mean just cell-phone snapshots of bombings or surreptitious footage of closed events. We also have access to the guts of news original documents, full transcripts, unedited video. Life is on the record."

The truth of this analysis was dramatised by the unauthorised images of Saddam Hussein's execution on 30 December 2006, taken by a security guard on his mobile. His grisly footage of the event spread through the internet, subverting the official version. In her paper, The Global and the Mobile: Camera Phone Witnessing in a Age of Terror, social media expert Dr Anna Reading of London's South Bank University argues that the footage "took away the pretence of civility that some tried to place around the act". Instead, it revealed that he was put to death during an unruly spectacle in which onlookers taunted Hussein by yelling, "Go to hell" and chanting "Muqtada, Muqtadaa, Muqtada" (a reference to Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite Muslim cleric).

Reading also argues that camera phones lets the world into places from which we would hitherto have been excluded. When the white comedian and former Seinfeld star Michael Richards rounded on two black hecklers at a 2006 comedy gig in Los Angeles with racist abuse, his rant was captured by a member of the audience on their camera phone and broadcast on the internet, arguably ruining Richards' career.

Consider one significant contrast between the 9/11 bombings in the US (2001) and the 7/7 bombings in London (2005). Arguably, what connected us most poignantly with the former were the phone calls from the doomed passengers aboard Flight 93 to their loved ones, while four years later, what made us empathise most with the ordinary victims was the self-portrait of Adam Stacey escaping from a bombed tube train on the Piccadilly Line that the civil servant took with his phone. Imagine how different our perception of 9/11 would have been if the soon-to-die had emailed their last camera-phone images from the twin towers.

What interests Reading is how camera-phone technology can link people across borders. "It is not so much what the images capture indexically, but their iconic status in reminding us of our complicity in a war declared against global 'terror', rather than a nation state. Stacey's camera-phone image escaping from the London bombings was everyman with a mobile phone."

Arguably, the camera-phone first took on this raw witnessing role on Boxing Day 2004, when the tsunami struck in the Indian Ocean, killing nearly 230,000 people in 14 countries. Media outlets relied on footage from people on the spot, many of whom were using camera-phones. And last year, they were used to bear witness to government crackdowns in Teheran against those protesting against alleged fraud in June's presidential election.

In itself, the camera-phone changes nothing. The Standard 8mm colour home movie that Abraham Zapruder took in Dallas on 22 November 1963, which represents the most complete film of the murder of President John F Kennedy, is akin to the footage the unnamed security guard took of Saddam's execution. Both are short, grisly films showing the killing of an important public figure that have gone on to have immense political significance. But there are two big differences.

First, the camera phone is tiny, and thus relatively easy to slip into situations where authorities want to stop unofficial images or films of an event being taken. Second, and much more importantly, the images and films we take with them can be spread around the world in seconds. Our experiences can now travel freely across borders. Admittedly, most of them won't be worth sending in the first place, but that doesn't mean they won't get sent.

"It's absurd to argue that technology always changes things for the better," says Billy Bragg. "Clearly it doesn't. But at best the camera-phone is subversive in the way it's being used. We shouldn't be frightened of it. We should welcome it."

This article was amended on 8 January 2009. The original described Ian Tomlinson, who died after being injured at the G20 protests in London lin 2009, as a demonstrator. It also said that a picture picture of the Limoges Caske was taken on 10 January 2010. This has been corrected.

Is Apple planning to show a 3D interface on its much-anticipated tablet later this month? A new patent suggests so

Apple has acquired the patent for a system that could create virtual 3D worlds on the tablet computer that the company is expected to unveil later this month.

The patent, originally filed under the names of three French inventors, is called "Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Manipulating Three-Dimensional Virtual Objects" and describes "a portable electronic device with a touch screen display" which displays what looks to the user like a 3D layout.

The key element here is that it's a multi-touch device - just like the Apple iPhone.

The Baltimore Sun's Gus Sentementes has also done some fabulous detective work to show that the ownership of the patent is entirely in Apple's hands:

"According to documents filed with the USPTO, Apple obtained the rights to this patent application from three French citizens: Fabrice Robinet, Thomas Goossens, and Alexandre Moha. The inventors assigned the patent to Apple on Sept. 29, 2008. It's not clear if those citizens are Apple employees, per se. (Update: Actually, Mr. Moha is a product and engineering manager at Apple, per his LinkedIn profile; Mr. Robinet is a software engineer at Apple, again, per LinkedIn, and Mr. Goossens is an Apple software engineer (thanks to Baltimore's Bill Mill for digging up Goossens!) Regardless, searches under Apple's name in the patents database doesn't retrieve this patent, because the names of the original French inventors are still on it. (I wonder why that is? Hmmm. :-) "

As Sentementes points out, the patent points out that the reason why we all need 3D touch interfaces now is that "...[T]here is a need for electronic devices with touch screen displays that provide more transparent and intuitive user interfaces for navigating in three dimensional virtual spaces and manipulating three dimensional objects in these virtual spaces."

Well, of course. Even if it does look a bit like that 1980s game Battlezone (see below). Two steps forward....

Criticising social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook is as pointless as knocking people who discuss the weather

Here are some suggested things to say if you want to sound like an idiot when you talk about social media:

It's inconsequential most of the verbiage on Twitter, Facebook and the like is banal blather

Yes, it certainly is. The reason for that is that most of it is "social grooming" messages passed between friends and family members as a way of maintaining social cohesion. The meaning of the messages isn't "u look h4wt dude" or "wat up wiv you dawg?" That's merely the form. The meaning is: "I am thinking of you, I care about you, I hope you are well."

I don't call my parents in Canada and recount the latest additions to my daughter's vocabulary because they need to know that the kid can say "elephant" and "potty" now; I call them up to say, "all is well with your son and his family", and "you are in my heart", and "I love you".

Criticizing the "banality" of Facebook conversation is as trite and ignorant as criticising people who talk about the weather. There's a reason we say "Did you sleep well?" at breakfast and "How was your weekend?" when we turn up to the office on Monday (and it's not that we care about the weekend or the rest).

Yes, people sometimes say consequential things on social media. The Twitter tag #whatTwitterdidforme has lots of sterling examples. But these are rare events that are not Twitter's raison d'etre. People don't join Twitter because they hope that someday they'll be sprung from jail, land a job, or reunite with a long-lost friend. These are bonuses.

The real value of Twitter et al is to keep the invisible lines of connection between us alive.

It is ugly MySpace is a graphic designer's worst nightmare

The word you're looking for isn't "ugly", it's "vernacular". Graphic designers are paid to clearly communicate messages (both covert and overt) to strangers on behalf of clients. Kids who bling out their MySpace pages do so because they are exuberant and playful.

These pages are as deliberately ugly as the photocopied punk band-posters that graced every telephone pole and building-site hoarding a generation ago.

The kids who make "ugly" MySpace pages are hardly ignorant of the visual vocabulary of professional design. On the contrary, they have been saturated with professional design since birth, and can recognise a message crafted by a designer on behalf of a client at 100 yards and what's more, they can distinguish it from a page crafted by a peer at the same distance.

These pages are made by people who know to the femtometre exactly how ugly they are. They are supposed to offend your sensibilities. They are intended to make designers weep. Their ugliness is a defence mechanism that protects them from being knocked off by marketing/communications firms, because most designers would rather break their own fingers than commit such an atrocity.

Prediction: in five years, some of these kids will have grown up, graduated from design college, and will be industriously turning out clones that authentically reproduce the exuberant no-design every bit as well as today's high-street shops do Sex Pistols chic.

It is ephemeral Facebook will blow over in a year and something else will be along

Totally correct, but this is a feature, not a bug. The technology that underpins social media is changing fast, and social media companies' bone-deep intuitions about what it should and shouldn't do are made obsolete every 18 months or so. Most of these companies won't be able to adapt. They will die, and be replaced by a new generation of social media companies who have better, more contemporary sensibilities.

Only ancient, clueless dinosaurs like Rupert Murdoch are dumb enough to pay hundreds of millions for social media companies with the belief that they will grow to be immortal giants. Only lazy, fat media execs from firms that endured for decades without having to remake themselves from top to bottom think that a complete turnover in the corporate landscape is a failure.

There are plenty of things to worry about when it comes to social media.

They are Skinner boxes designed to condition us to undervalue our privacy and to disclose personal information. They have opaque governance structures. They are walled gardens that violate the innovative spirit of the internet. But to deride them for being social, experimental and personal is to sound like a total fool.

PURE packs a lot into its promising all-singing touchscreen radio, but it's more than its poor little processor can handle

Last year, digital radio maker PURE began integrating DAB with internet radio with their Flow range. Now they've taken this one step further with the Sensia, bringing internet applications to your radio.

Shipping with two of what PURE says will be many applications, the Sensia's 5.7in capacitive touchscreen allows you to check the weather or update Twitter. Taking a page from the iPhone-inspired mobile phone app stores, PURE plans to open up their radio platform to external developers.

You can see the weather forecast full-screen or watch a slideshow of images stored on your computer while listening to music. PURE's Flowserver software, a modified version of Twonky Media's Universal Plug and Play server software, allows you to stream media from your computer. And the Sensia easily recognised other UPNP software such as Windows Media Player 10 and 11.

The Sensia has a timer and a clock and alarms so is useful in the kitchen or bedroom. It also boasts a light sensor to dim the screen when the lights are off.

As with the other radios in PURE's Flow range, the Sensia is coupled with The Lounge, a website that helps you manage stations, favourites, podcasts as well as add programmes from the BBC's catch-up radio service. When I last checked, The Lounge had 14,354 internet radio stations to choose from, too many to sift through on the radio itself.

It's a good job there is a website, because you wouldn't want to have to rely on the touchscreen. Even after a firmware upgrade, the interface was sluggish. The radio has a lot of features, perhaps too many for its processor.

The Sensia also suffers from the same problems that all DAB radios do. Reception can be poor in metal-framed buildings, unless you put the radio near a window. As DAB providers cram more stations on multiplexes, the lower bandwidth stations suffer poor sound quality. Many of the internet radio stations had higher bandwidth rates than DAB stations and provided better sound. That's not an criticism of the radio, but of DAB.

However, for 249, sound quality on the Sensia could be better. In comparison to a PURE Evoke, the DAB sound lacked the rich bass and supporting mid-range on the Sensia.

The Sensia has a lot of features and a lot of promise. More processing power, to ensure that the touchscreen experience is smooth, and audio that sounded as good on DAB as it does for internet radio would deliver on that promise.

Pros: Multitude of sources including DAB, FM, internet stations and music stored on your computer; easily networked with home music collection.
Cons: The interface is sluggish; it's expensive and, for the price, the sound should be better.
pure.com

In 1985s Vodafone projected it would sell only a million phones
Cheaper tariffs and fashionable phones appealed to consumers

In the early hours of New Year's Day 1985, Michael Harrison phoned his father Sir Ernest to wish him a happy new year. There may appear nothing remarkable in such a private show of filial affection, but Sir Ernest was chairman of Racal Electronics and his son was making the first-ever mobile phone call in the UK, using the network built by its newest investment, a company based round the corner from a curry house in Newbury, Berkshire.

Later that morning, comedian Ernie Wise made a very public mobile phone call from St Katherine's Dock, east London, to announce that the very same network, Vodafone, was now open for business. A few days later, its sole rival, Cellnet, a joint venture between BT and Securicor, was also up and running.

At the time, mobile phones were barely portable, weighing in at almost a kilogram, costing several thousand pounds and, in some cases, with little more than 20 minutes talktime. The networks themselves were small; Vodafone had just a dozen masts covering London and the M4 corridor while Cellnet launched with a single mast, stuck on the BT Tower. Neither company had any inkling of the huge potential of wireless communications and the dramatic impact that mobile phones would have on society over the next quarter century.

"We projected there would only be about a million ever sold and we would get about 35% of the market and BT projected there would be about half a million and they would get about 80% of the market," remembers Sir Christopher Gent, former Vodafone chief executive who was at St Katherine's Dock a quarter of a decade ago as he prepared to take up his post of managing director the following day. "In the first year, we sold about 15,000 to 20,000 phones. The hand portable Motorola was about 3,000 but most of the phones we sold were carphones from the likes of Panasonic and Nokia."

The first generation of handsets quickly became synonymous with the yuppie excesses of Margaret Thatcher's Britain in the mid-1980s, and especially London, where the networks were first installed. But hardly anyone believed there would come a day when mobile phones were so popular that there would be more phones in the UK than there are people.

"Within both BT and Securicor, the view was [mobile communications] were not mass market," according to Mike Short, chief technology officer of Telefonica O2 Europe, Cellnet's successor, and who was with BT when Cellnet was founded. "That was also the view in Racal Vodafone. Some of us who were more active in the day to day business, certainly from 1986 to 1987 onwards, we could see a much bigger potential than that, but we never expected it would be as large as it has become."

For the first decade the predictions that mobile communications would not be mass market seemed correct. "In 1995, 10 years into the history of mobile phones, penetration in the UK was just 7%," according to Professor Nigel Linge, of the University of Salford's Computer Networking and Telecommunications Research Centre. "In 1998 it was about 25%, but by 1999 it was 46%, that was the 'tipping point'. In 1999 one mobile phone was sold in the UK every 4 seconds."

By 2004, there were more mobile phones in the UK than people a penetration level of more than 100%.

The boom was a consequence of increased competition which pushed prices lower and created innovations in the way that mobiles were sold, which helped put them within the reach of the mass market coupled with the switch to digital technology and a fundamental change in the way that the handset manufacturers viewed their products.

In 1986, Vodafone overtook Cellnet, Sir Christopher remembers, and BT was so irate that they did something which was to fundamentally change the way that mobile phones were sold in the UK. "Once we had got market share advantage over Cellnet they were desperate to get it back and they started subsidising handsets, bringing down the price of phones and we were obliged to follow them down that track," he recalls. Ever since then, the mobile phone networks have subsidised the upfront price of a phone, hoping to recoup its cost over the lifetime of a customer's contract. Cellnet also changed its prices, reducing its monthly access charge the equivalent of line rental and relying instead on actual call charges. It also introduced local call tariffs.

But there was still a fundamental block to mobile phones going mass market: not enough capacity.

"Mobile was still a business tool because frankly the analogue frequencies and capacity were not sufficiently big to think in terms of millions. But when digital came along, that really opened up the market," adds Sir Christopher. "I remember having a disagreement with my esteemed leader (Vodafone chief executive Sir Gerald 'Gerry' Whent) because I was thinking in terms of millions and Gerry said 'I am not a price cutter'. I said 'you are going to have to think about this because there is a bigger market out there'."

When the government introduced more competition, companies started cutting prices to attract more customers, leading to some of the cut-throat competition in the market today.

"The future's bright, the future's Orange" campaign, created by Wolff Olins, and the introduction of such novelties as per second and itemised billing helped give Orange a strong position in the market. Meanwhile, Rival One2One suddenly picked up a swathe of customers after a slip-up by Lord Young, chairman of Cable & Wireless, who in answer to a reporter's question said its offer of free off-peak local calls would last for life. It was only supposed to be an 'introductory' offer. When it launched in 1999, Virgin Mobile the world's first "virtual operator" that leased network space from rivals scored a major hit with the idea of pre-pay phones.

The way that handsets themselves were marketed was also changing and it was Finland's Nokia, which had been fighting hard with Motorola and Ericsson for dominance of the market, who made the leap from phones as technology to phones as fashion items with the Nokia 3210 device.

"The Nokia 3210 is iconic because it is the first phone that deliberately did not display any sort of external aerial," explains Linge. "Nokia in the late 1990s cottoned on to the fact that the mobile phone was a fashion item: so it allowed interchangeable covers, you could customise and personalise your handset."

In 1999, the film The Matrix was released, which featured Nokia's 8110 handset prominently. Nokia followed it up with the 7110, which was also the first device to fully exploit the new WAP mobile data service, the fore-runner of the 3G services of today.

Having seen mobile phone penetration soar above 100% in 2004, the industry has spent the later part of the past decade trying to persuade people to do more with their phones than just call and text, culminating in the fight between the iPhone and a succession of touchscreen rivals soon to include Google's Nexus One.

John Cunliffe, chief technology officer at Ericsson in north west Europe, believes the next wave of growth for mobile telephony will come not from persuading more people to get a phone because many already have one but connecting machines to wireless networks. Everything from vehicle fleets and smart electric and water meters to people's fridge freezers will one day be able to communicate.

"What we have at the moment is 4.5 billion devices worldwide, what we at Ericsson see is that going to 50 billion devices by 2020," he reckons. "This is all about machine to machine communication, touching all aspects of our lives."

 To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.
If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

Free but never easy

While I acknowledge that there are spurious requests, having been reading through some requests on whatdotheyknow.com (a wonderful website, allowing you to make FOI requests which can then be published for everyone's benefit), it's quite clear that the [Freedom of Information] Act is essential (Freedom of information: caught in the act, 4 January). It has in some ways replaced one bureaucracy with another, but the new one is far less kafkaesque and more accountable. Giving people the legal right to demand answers from arrogant (which seems to be one of the main reasons for people wanting to withhold information, arrogance) or corrupt organisations was a wonderful step.

zwicky online

It will take more than the FOI act to get the truth out of the government, they will always find a way around releasing anything they don't want in the public domain.

BoredSilly online

Without much harsher penalties for those who seek to delay and prevent people accessing both FOI and data protection rights it remains, largely, a toothless piece of legislation. It fails to cover companies engaged in providing public services; government bodies, such as the police; the foreign office deliberately stalls requests; and it treats members of the public as an annoyance rather than the people who pay for it all.

What would be better would be the mandatory online publishing of pretty much every bit of data by public bodies (after all, everything is already "published" and stored it's just not accessible to make it available online would be very cost effective). Anything that wasn't published would have to apply for an exemption and still be open to FOI requests.

The simple fact is that the public own and pay for every document published by the government and other public bodies, even if they try to obfuscate this by placing crown copyright on everything. Why on earth should we go cap in hand to the authorities to ask for a chance to see what is actually ours?

StivBator online

Phoney prediction

2010 won't be the year of the mobile, just like 2005 wasn't (Richard Sambrook: The world will look different from outside the BBC, 4 January). And 2006 wasn't. And 2007 well, you get the idea. The truth is that 300m smartphones globally in 2012 is actually still not a very high penetration rate, and the infrastructure still isn't in place outside Japan and South Korea to use these smartphones to their full potential.

LondonManc online

The infrastructure isn't there and mobiles are too expensive to use. The networks have this "we're smiling but actually we're conning you" air about them and always have. A typical example is the extortionate coverage charge some of them charge for mobile broadband.

bananaontoast online

The internet gives journalists more opportunity to consider quality not just quantity

Is this article already too long? It's a question to which I'm sure many people already have a strongly affirmative answer, in which case stop reading. But even if you aren't reading I have to carry on writing until the space is full. It's an uncontroversial model, an inevitable consequence of newspaper layout rules. But in a digital world, and one where the cost of journalism is not falling as quickly as the revenues that support it, the opportunity arises to rethink what is "enough" in terms of good reporting, or commentary. In fact, online this article could be less than the 140 characters permitted on Twitter plus a link to the Atlantic Monthly article written by the journalist Michael Kinsley (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/short-writing), which posited that many newspaper readers are put off by most articles being too long and adding nothing to the value of the news.

I could also add links to the Columbia Journalism Review response by Greg Marx http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/is_shorter_really_better.php (and half a dozen others) which queries Kinsley's underlying thrust that quotes which "add authority" to an article often do little but pad it out. But in the unmade world of digital news and comment and analysis, we find ourselves, like the music industry, creating to a format that is much more appropriate for another era, because we are hardwired to do so.

The debates about "what is an article?", or indeed "why make albums?" are philosophically interesting but they also have an impact on the economic model of journalism, or music, or television or any other digitised format. A further twist to the text format will become more obvious to news organisations this year, and that is that even the internet is not formatted for content in the way it used to be.

The idea that the internet looks like a computer screen is long over. It looks increasingly like a mobile phone with a touch screen, or any number of internet-enabled devices. The launch of the Nexus One (which is not as you might think a new eco car or Doctor Who villain but a new Google phone) caused a huge stir in the business and technology world, but also should cause a stir in the media world. Content, journalism, programmes and visual communication will need to be comfortable in a new format, on a smaller screen, where the issue of where you are may also become part of how you are reading or reporting or watching.

This is not the froth of stupid innovation and gadget mania, instead it is a permanent shift in communications consumption. It is ripping the format of journalism and potentially other media so far away from the page-centric world we all grew up reading and writing for that it raises the question of how long it will be before even the concept of a website becomes old hat.

Curiously it does not necessarily mean that all formats will be shorter. The "tweet" length of information will begin to prevail for breaking news, but as web traffic shows time and time again, really strong, well differentiated long form content is as eagerly consumed as the quick soundbite. Several years ago it was something of a surprise to the statistics department that the Guardian website's top story for the month was a piece on Victorian sewers written at length for G2. Its uniqueness and quality inevitably meant it gained wide traffic by virtue of the one-line link, circulated by aggregators and people who enjoyed the read.

What is under most pressure is the 400-word article, and this is where Kinsley's piece is important. It brings a direct challenge from a respected print journalist to examine whether, in a world where context and citation are only a click away, we are imagining ourselves the right journalistic future and doing our bottom lines a disservice in the process.

Emily Bell is the Guardian's director of digital content and this article appears in Monday's media section where Emily has to write 78 lines of text

How does virtual horse racing compare to the real thing?

These are confusing days in betting shops. With so much racing snowed off, many of the "betting opportunities" on offer are of the virtual type computer-generated horse and dog races. The 1.55 from virtual dog track Brushwood is in progress when I arrive with 20 to spend at my local William Hill, followed a minute later by a virtual horse race from Sandy Lanes. "No snow here," says the commentator brightly. "This guy must be on drugs," says the punter next to me.

At this stage, I am playing a waiting game, trying to work out what to back. The runners are chosen by a computer, which also determines the result, taking into account the balance of probabilities reflected in the odds. Supporters argue that because the race is merely a mathematical construct, it is completely transparent. "A 4-1 shot is a 4-1 shot," as the marketing chief of one virtual racing company explains gnomically. Your virtual horse will not be drugged, nor will a dodgy virtual jockey ensure it loses.

It is time to plunge. A colleague tells me three is her lucky number. I put 2.50 each-way on the No 3 horse, Corner, in the 2.33 at Sandy Lanes. I feel it is a certainty. Virtually. The race is over in a flash, with victory going to the favourite Blythswood. I never hear Corner mentioned. Bang goes the fiver. She also tells me navy blue is her favourite colour, so in the 2.49 from Sprint Valley I plump for Von Stuben, whose jockey is wearing navy silks, at 6-1: 5 on the virtual nose.

The upside of virtual races is that they're always off on time; horses never bolt or lose a shoe. The downside is they're stupendously dull. All sport relies on the arbitrary, the improbable. Transparent or not, virtual racing is for gambling addicts only. And I'm not just saying that because the wretched Von Stuben comes second, narrowly beaten by Bullet Speed. I've got another tenner, but I'm not going to spend it at Sandy Lanes or Sprint Valley, Steepledowns or K9Drive. I did feel a flutter of excitement as Von Stuben challenged, and was looking forward to collecting 30. But I also know that I and the other dozen or so flat-capped, workless, middle-aged men in the shop are being manipulated. I'll save the remaining 10 for the darts.

Farewell then, Jonathan Ross. Clearly not enough has been written about the great man in the past 15 months but we at Media Guardian are prepared to right this wrong. As we await the last ever Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, welcome to Monday Morning with Media Monkey.

No one dislikes Ross quite like the Daily Mail, whose sister paper, the Mail on Sunday, broke the Sachsgate story. Since then Paul Dacre's papers have never missed a chance to have a pop at the BBC's controversial 17m man. But they weren't only angry about those unfortunate phone messages and the size of his pay packet. Oh no. They have also taken Ross to task for ... buying a sports car, not spending enough money on his wife's birthday party, buying a marble bath tub, hosting the Baftas, taking a skiing holiday, reading comics, smoking a cigar, watching Sex and the City while he was suspended from the BBC, putting on weight, losing weight, getting locked out of his home in his pyjamas and most controversially of all apparently sparking a police raid on a wildlife sanctuary after making a joke about a dormouse. It's a wonder he survived as long as he did.

Monkey's quote of the day: "The more I read about him, the more I like him." Trevor Nelson, Blackpool, commenting on the Daily Mail website.

Things you may not have known about Ross (1): He once co-owned a comic shop in London with fellow BBC Radio 2 DJ Paul Gambaccini. The same Gambaccini, you may remember, who later said Ross's "exorbitant" contract had made him an "icon of greed in this country". Ross said Gambo was an even bigger comic fan than him. "He knows much more about DC [Comics], I think he might also know more about Marvel." Rumours that Ross is to star in his own comic The Further Adventures of Megabucks Man are wide of the mark.

Those Friday Night with Jonathan Ross highlights in full. To David Cameron: "Did you think of her as a woman? Do you think she might be pin-up material? You didn't want to see her in stockings? Did you or did you not have a wank thinking 'Margaret Thatcher'?" To Nicole Kidman: "I'll be talking ... to Nicole about a Jacuzzi after the show. It's all booked under the name Smith ... See, she wants me already? She's gagging for it ... She sounds a bit of a hard bitch your mother?" To Gwyneth Paltrow: "If you want to have sex I will phone my wife. If she gave permission I would fuck you because you asked so nicely. Clearly you are gagging for it ... Did you enjoy getting back into movies full time?"

Reassuringly for Ross fans, he has promised not to give up Twitter. He may not have as many followers as Stephen Fry 483,432 at the last count but is a much more enthusiastic tweeter, posting nearly 10,000 updates compared with Fry's measly 5,308. It is thanks to Twitter that we know that one of Ross's new year resolutions to stop scowling at paparazzi lasted precisely four days. "Dagnabbit. Just accidentally broke New Year's resolutions. Paparazzi parked outside neighbour's house. I went out neighbourhood-watch style ..." Better luck next year, JR.

Things you may not have known about Ross (2): His first appearance on BBC television was as an extra in the sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum, in 1981, according to the Internet Movie Database. Word has it he played a soldier. He was also the voice of the Ugly Stepsister in the UK version of Shrek 2.

Ross's music choices have occasionally left something to be desired. After being awarded the OBE in 2005, he opened his Radio 2 show with the Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen. Boom boom! And when the BBC broadcast the first of two on-air apologies in the wake of Sachsgate, which it was required to do by Ofcom, Ross began his show with Fun Boy Three's The Lunatics Are Taking Over The Asylum. It led to a whole new round of complaints that Ross and the BBC weren't taking the apology seriously enough. It was, insisted the corporation. Honest.

Things you may not have known about Ross (3): Despite his enormous salary, he has never been able to get a decent haircut.

And what they said about Ross on Twitter. Chris Evans: "Sad to hear about @wossy Inevitable in many ways but he'll be back"; Chris Moyles: "@wossy Hey. Sending wishes and kisses. PS Can I have your parking space please?"