Whistleblowing website says it cannot continue without public donations and has appealed for cash

The whistleblowing website Wikileaks has temporarily shut down because of a lack of funds.

The site, which has been a major irritant to governments and big businesses since it launched in 2007, says it cannot keep going without more public donations.

Wikileaks' organisers announced the suspension in a statement on its site. "To concentrate on raising the funds necessary to keep us alive into 2010, we have reluctantly suspended all other operations, but will be back soon," it says.

Pleading for more cash, it explained that publishing hundreds of thousands of previously secret documents each year costs money.

"If staff are paid, our yearly budget is $600,000 [ 372,000]," it said.

The site, which is part of the not-for-profit group Sunshine Press, adds: "We have raised just over $130,000 for this year but cannot meaningfully continue operations until costs are covered. These amount to just under $200,000pa."

Wikileaks refuses to accept corporate or government funding for fear of compromising its integrity.

Described by the Guardian as the "brown paper envelope for the digital age", it rose to prominence last year by hosting the Minton report on the activities of the oil trader Trafigura while the firm's lawyers were trying to prevent the press from revealing its contents.

Last year it also published a membership list of the British National party and it told the unfolding secret story of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon by releasing 500,000 intercepted pager messages.

Wikileaks's appeal for cash has prompted widespread support on the web. A Facebook group called Save Wikileaks has been formed and there are numerous supportive messages on Twitter.

Blogging for the Spectator Martin Bright, the former political editor of the New Statesman, wrote: "I know money is tight, but I urge anyone who cares about liberty to visit the site and donate."

There are now dozens of websites to help budding authors to publish their novels, poems and pictures and, perhaps, even make a profit from it

If you want to realise a dream by publishing your own book, there are lots of companies willing to extract upwards of $500 from you for the privilege. At the other end of the spectrum is Amazon's digital text platform, which allows you to upload your pre-prepared files to its Kindle reader and then set your own price.

The catch? Amazon takes 65% of the income from sales. Ouch. Fortunately, there are lots of other options of which more later for budding authors. What you get out of them is subject only to the limits of your imagination.

It doesn't have to be an embryonic bestseller because self-publishing is best suited to limited editions. Anything over 1,000 copies and you would be better off going to a traditional printer to take advantage of economies of scale. I know a lot people who are self-publishing a record of their own lives together with memories of their parents and grandparents as a bit of family history. That's not vanity publishing, just a great way to preserve memories for future generations and add to the archive of local history. Self-publishing is ideal for that.

Others publish their blogs or photo albums. Every year I try to put the best photos of the past 12 months from a photo site (Flickr.com in my case) so we have the equivalent of the traditional photo album which will last longer than my Flickr subscription and my hard disk. You could equally download an out-of-copyright book from the not-for-profit Gutenberg archive or from the millions of books Google has scanned (maybe for your book club) or extracts from the Wikipedia and it's all legal.

For years I have written poems as a relaxing pastime rather like other people collect stamps. I couldn't face the prospect of collecting rejection notes from agents and publishers so decided to self publish. The first book I did by paying for 1,000 copies to be printed in the traditional way (because it was only a little bit more expensive than printing 500). Expensive mistake.

By the time a second book was ready new technology came to the rescue. I used Lulu.com, which enables you to upload files and cover designs for nothing, and launched it in the virtual world Second Life (at no extra cost to a member). For marketing, I experimented with "product placement" by attaching poems to photos or paintings on Flickr and other sites thereby generating discussions that you wouldn't get with traditional publishing where the author is remote from the reader.

Through a chance meeting on Facebook, the Glasgow indie group A Band Called Quinn is recording a number of the poems for a CD, including Truth which can be experienced here on YouTube. My new book I hope to publish on Lulu and an iPhone app, if I can find a decent one. The point about all this is that new technology offers new and cheap ways both to publish and promote your books and we are only at the start of the learning curve.

Which self-publishing site to choose? There has been a lot of change recently. This is partly because of Amazon entering the market (and now Apple as well) but also because the process is becoming simpler and the operation more vertically integrated. Amazon has bought Createspace and Lulu has purchased We Read, a social book club with a presence on Facebook and other social sites with a claimed 3 million readers. This could help it towards reaching the nirvana of self-publishing: to become the iTunes of books.

I've had mixed feelings about Lulu in recent years. In principle, it is a breath of fresh air being an open source site that claims to put the interests of authors above all else (unlike the increasingly proprietary Amazon). In practice, there have been problems not least ludicrously high postage costs (sometimes more than the cost of the book) delays of weeks before delivery and issues about payments which readers have told me about.

They seem to be through these problems, however, and now print in the UK so delivery takes days rather than weeks and postage is down to more reasonable levels. The proof of my latest book arrived while writing this column, five days after pressing the final button.

If you use their template, publishing is remarkably easy you upload your manuscript in PDF form, drag photos across for the front and back covers. It could all be over in 20 minutes (if you don't make silly mistakes as I tend to). It doesn't cost you anything until the first purchase and Lulu lets you keep 80% of the proceeds (after deduction of the printing cost of each book). Lulu expanded by 20% last year and publishes over 400,000 titles a year which it claims is "almost twice as many as by America's entire traditional publishing industry".

Lulu is my favourite for text-driven books, but if you are more interested in picture-driven publications then Blurb.com is the one to choose. It is easy to use if you stick to the easy templates and you can easily import photos directly from Flickr other photo sites. The standard of reproduction is impressive (as long as the original resolution is good) and they helpfully flag up photos that they don't think make the grade in terms of quality. Lulu and Blurb aren't the only fruit and, if you have time, it is worth trawling through some of the dozens if not hundreds of minnows that keep popping up while being on guard lest they are trying to take a quick buck from you. There are various lists of top 10s on the web, or just try your luck with something like Fastpencil which looks easy to use though I haven't followed it through to publication or CompletelyNovel which is based in the UK.

The digital revolution has turned the music industry upside down but it is moving at a more leisurely pace in books where self-publishing hasn't yet taken off in a really big way.

The question this week is whether, once again, Apple will change the game by providing an easy way to publish and generate a conversation. There is still a vast market out there for the taking.

twitter.com/vickeegan

Technology Guardian's Dr Aleks Krotoski turns TV presenter tomorrow night for a new BBC series that examines the impact of the world wide web

You may have noticed the absence from these parts particularly on the Games blog of our colleague Aleks Krotoski in recent months. That's because she's been busy travelling the world for a new BBC series about the history of the world wide web and finishing her PhD, of course.

The first part of the fruits of her labours, The Virtual Revolution, airs Saturday at 8.30pm on BBC2. Travelling with a team of BBC documentary makers, and accompanied on part of the journey by web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Aleks journeys across four continents and six countries and speaks to more than 50 people who have made the web what it is today including some rather famous names, such as Bill Gates, Al Gore, Stephen Fry, Jimmy Wales, Arianna Huffington, Mark Zuckerberg, Chad Hurley, Stewart Brand, Jeff Bezos and the President of Estonia.

For Dr Aleks (as she now insists we call her), the making of the series was a very personal journey: "It was an amazing opportunity to meet the people who have helped to create exactly the things I've been writing about and studying for the past decade," she says. "I managed to meet most of the people I referenced in my PhD thesis, and was able to ask them all of the difficult questions I had been thinking about in my research.

"It really was an extraordinary adventure that allowed me to test a few theories, challenge some of my long-held ideas and to dream up a few more along the way."

You can find out more about The Virtual Revolution at this article by Dr Aleks in the Observer, or by listening to the Tech Weekly podcast.

And after watching the first episode on Saturday night, please pop back here and give us your thoughts in the comments

Top Disney animator Andreas Deja is overwhelmed by the clarity of his new high-definition TV system

What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?
That's an easy answer it is my 65in screen and high-definition setup. I am an absolute nut when it comes to high definition and Blu-ray; it has absolutely improved my life. When I saw it in my house for the first time, it felt like somebody had opened a window. The image is so overwhelming it's pure joy.

When was the last time you used it, and what for?
Just before I went on a trip a week and a half ago, I set my TiVo for the series Legend of the Seeker. It's extremely well done, I love it, so I didn't want to miss an episode while I was away.

What additional features would you add if you could?
More storage in my TiVo box. I get frustrated when I have to delete things that I haven't been able to watch. I'm a big nut for nature programmes.

Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years time?
I hope it will still be around but I think we will be downloading these things in the future. I like my current setup so much I know I will still like it in 10 years.

What always frustrates you about technology in general?
Passwords that you need to create for all sorts of accounts. I keep forgetting them, and it drives me kind of crazy. We are living in an age of passwords.

Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated?
I have had bad luck with cordless phones and fax machines. I keep buying them and they keep breaking on me. They last for eight or nine months then I have to get a new one.

If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?
I would say if you like high definition as much as I do, and if you like Blu-ray, get the PS3 player because it has the most capacity and plays Blu-rays the best.

Do you consider yourself to be a Luddite or a nerd?
I'm a little bit of a Luddite I need to have things explained to me. I hate manuals, so I have to have a friend who knows the technology to explain it for me. But I can be a little bit nerdy, too.

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
I bought my first high-definition setup about 10 years ago when the technology was brand new and very expensive. It was a 60in screen and speaker system. It was ridiculously expensive, but I didn't regret it at all.

Mac or PC, and why?
Mac, because I hardly ever get any junk mail or viruses on the Mac. Once I switched I didn't want to look back, so I'm kind of sold on Mac.

Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download? What was your last purchase?
I still buy CDs and DVDs. My last purchase was on Oxford Street, London I bought the BBC series Life, and even though my Blu-ray player does not play this region.

Robot butlers a good idea or not?
I don't think so, because eventually you have to get your butt off the couch and move and do something. I think robot butlers will make us very lazy.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
I'm waiting for the completely electric car. I have a hybrid myself, but that's half and half. I'm waiting for the time when cars do not need gasoline any more.

Andreas Deja is a supervising animator on the new Disney film The Princess & The Frog, out today in London and 5 February across the UK.

We've had the iPhone, and now we've got the iPad. But that won't stop the fans inventing fresh products or services that theyr'e sure Apple has hidden in the cupboard

OK, so people have drooled endlessly over the iPad. Yes, we've seen it. But it's time to lift our eyes a little higher and ask: how many unicorns does Apple have left in the cupboard?

The unicorns in question being the unreleased but much-rumoured products or services we are always told Apple is "just about" to announce. Unlike many companies, it has a devoted following, who revere the products that it does release so highly that they then go on and make up their own that they'd like it to release in turn.

In some cases, that's based on reality. For years, there were rumours that Apple, whose computers used processors from Motorola and whose software was thus incompatible with processors made by Intel, which dominates the field was secretly producing Intel-compatible versions of its products. The whispers said the project was called "Marklar". In March 2000 Wifredo Sanchez, an Apple software developer, posted a little note on the Apple Darwin bulletin board saying: "Wednesday the whole thing compiled for the first time for both PowerPC and Intel."

And then in 2005 Steve Jobs announced that Apple was abandoning Motorola the chips were falling behind Moore's Law and shifting to Intel.

Even before then, I'd been in press conferences where Steve Jobs had been asked what "iPhone" was. (The first time was probably 2003.) Jobs crinkled up his face in disdain. "Iphone?" he said. "What's that?"

In 2007, Apple announced the iPhone.

For slightly longer than the iPhone rumour there has also been the "Apple tablet" rumour especially after Bill Gates introduced the format at Comdex in November 2001. When's Apple going to release the tablet, people have asked each other. (No point asking Apple. It never comments on rumours, future product releases, or pretty much anything that isn't on its website with a price tag attached.) Others have put together mockups, Photoshop jobs, and done pretty much everything to imagine how an Apple tablet might look.

What none has managed is to imagine how it would actually work which is of course the really important thing about any piece of technology, and one that Steve Jobs emphasises again and again. Design, he points out to journalists who don't seem to get the message, isn't about how something looks; it's not something you put onto the outside of an already-built product. It's how you build the product, from the inside out.

Now, though, we've had the iPhone, we've got the iPad (as we must call it), and Intel. What's left for the Apple rumour cupboard? You'd think that the last of that triumvirate, which have served us well over the last decade, and spawned all sorts of wild goose chases, would signal the end.

Not at all. The rumours have simply moved to a new place: the cloud.

There are, you can be sure, people who are disappointed by what was announced on Wednesday night. (There always are after any Apple launch.) Possibly we can count the programmer and blogger Dave Winer among them, who the day before the announcement offered his list of what he expected (with the caveat that it was "not in any way based on actual information"): Apple would drop AT&T; there would be intuitive gestures besides the virtual keyboard; there would be a new "Apple cloud" to connect devices together, because the tablet would only cache data; there would be a radically new iPod and iPhone; the new "iTouch" software would run on the iPhone and also the Mac; Google would be on stage for the announcement to proclaim its support, and Apple and Google would proclaim mutual support; publishers would do the same; there wouldn't be USB on the new device.

Well, score 2 of 9: no USB port, and some leading (mostly games) publishers. He'd have done better to crowdsource it.

That's not particularly to pick on Winer, who throws out ideas at a furious rate; he's just indicative of the remarkable output of the rumour mill. A tablet that you can watch and read stuff on? That's been predicted already! We've got to go further and predict an Apple cloud!

Not that Apple has been making the sort of massive investments that would allow it to build serious cloud systems. Much has been made of its recent purchases of streaming music site Lala.com, and of the mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless. And even though those purchases were only confirmed (and completed) this month, of course Apple should have rolled them into new products and services that would be announced three weeks later.

That's the thing about Apple. Ten years ago it was a hobbling company that was struggling to pull in $1bn of sales in the Christmas quarter, on which it lost $195m. Miserable fans would start rumours because they hoped that if they imagined something wonderful, something they would buy, that Apple might make it, make humungous profits, and everything would be good.

Nine months a gestation after that press release, Apple released the iPod. And things improved slowly, and then dramatically, and now it's a rocket. But that's not enough; people still set it the most ambitious targets (iTouch software that will run on both the iPhone and the Mac? Really?) because they think it can and they still want to buy it.

So Apple will never run out of rumoured products to release. But many, many, many of those unicorns will forever remain in the forest. The question for Apple now, in fact, is quite how to tie together the pieces that it is carefully building. Nick Carr, who has remarked perceptively on how the cloud is taking over, observes that "The transformation in the nature of computing has turned the old-style PC into a dinosaur" and that "Today, Jobs's ambitions are grander than ever. His overriding goal is to establish his company as the major conduit, and toll collector, between the media cloud and the networked computer. Jobs doesn't just want to produce glamorous gizmos. He wants to be the impresario of all media."

As the people in the record industry, bruised from seeing Apple transform from a company that they indulged by granting it a licence to sell downloaded music into one that is the biggest seller of music in the US, and the people in the mobile networks, who have been browbeaten into offering iPhone users truly unlimited bandwidth (where they can supply it), could tell you, it's quite enough dealing with the products Apple actually does release without worrying about the unicorns still in its cupboard.

So despite all the years that book, magazine and newspaper publishers have been wishing for a system where they could get paid for producing content over the internet, it might be best not to embrace it too tightly. These unicorns that Apple turns out to be wild horses for their riders; and people get trampled once they're running.

District judge backs newspaper over unauthorised use of images from 'urban exploration' website

Now here's a photo copyright tangle.

In August, Thames Valley police pointed journalists at the Reading Post towards photographs on an "urban exploration" website that showed people inside some of the city's derelict buildings. (The reports so far are cagey about which website; I'm making some calls and will update if I find out more.) The police said they wanted to trace those involved to investigate whether criminal damage had been committed. And the paper, obligingly, reproduced seven images.

One of the photographers, however, was reading the paper, and unsurprisingly wasn't happy. He invoiced them 495 for the use of his work, and then took them to court.

A judge at Swindon county court has now dismissed the claim, on the grounds that the photographer was "promoting and encouraging" illegal and potentially dangerous activity. (The judge had case law on his side, according to the Newspaper Society report.)

Good news for the Reading Post (and by extension for us: the Post is part of Guardian Media Group, which publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk). Good news, in general, for hard-pressed local papers that rely on pick-up pictures and a positive relationship with the local police. Bad news, potentially, for people who hope to post pictures on the internet and retain control over them although the circumstances are so peculiar that the consequences may not be very widespread.

(Sources: Hold the Front Page, Newspaper Society)

UK cloud computing strategy could save up to 3.2bn a year, says Cabinet Office

The government has unveiled a sweeping strategy to create its own internal "cloud computing" system such as that used by Google, Microsoft and Amazon as part of a radical plan that it claims could save up to 3.2bn a year from an annual bill of at least 16bn.

The key part of the new strategy, outlined by the Cabinet Office minister Angela Smith, will be the concentration of government computing power into a series of about a dozen highly secure data centres, each costing up to 250m to build, which will replace more than 500 presently used by central government, police forces and local authorities.

The government will also push for "open source" software to be used more widely among central and local government's 4m desktop computers. That poses an immediate threat to Microsoft, whose Windows operating system and Office applications suite is at present firmly embedded as the standard on PCs in government, such as the NHS, which is one of the largest users in Europe.

But John Suffolk, the government's chief information officer, pointed out that cost savings of just 100 per machine would total 400m across government. Unlike Windows, open source operating systems such as Linux have no licensing costs and can be used on as many machines as required.

By 2015, the strategy suggests, 80% of central government desktops could be supplied through a "shared utility service" essentially a cloud service resembling Google Docs, which lets people create documents online for free.

The move to a "government cloud" mirrors the system used by Google and other large companies, which put cheap "server" computers into huge data centres to provide computing power on demand which is delivered where it is needed via the internet. That would be provided to government departments and local government, replacing the ageing and inefficient systems used in many of the hundreds of data centres presently used and frequently run at far below their capacity because they are dedicated to one department.

Suffolk said that "as a rule", UK citizens' personal data will not be transported overseas although he could not rule it out. But security of data, and the data centres, would be a high priority, he said. He did not rule out using Google's or Microsoft's new cloud services: "We will see if they fit our business requirements and personal data requirements," he said.

Similarly the new "cloud" system will not include the security services such as MI5 or MI6, which have their own, separate systems.

Estimates prepared for the government suggest the "cloud" system could save 900m in their first five years, and 300m annually after that compared to the present structure.

The government also wants to build its own "app store" of software to solve frequently-seen problems, by re-using programs that have been written elsewhere and can be re-applied. "In government I've seen innovations where we have cracked hideously tough problems, but other parts of government are looking for the same solution and don't know it's there," said Suffolk.

Moving to a cloud-based infrastructure could cut costs of government computing significantly and also satisfy its drive for a "green" agenda by reducing power usage. The Inland Revenue, for example, is presently seeing huge demand for its online tax return system but that peaks every January, and then drops substantially. A cloud-based system shared among departments could deal with such sudden loads while using less power, said Kate Craig-Wood, managing director of the hosting company Memset, who has been working with the government on the strategy.

"The good thing here is that the government has tried hard to involve small businesses," Craig-Wood said. She said that the new open source approach will benefit small businesses that want to bid for government contracts, and that it should lessen the number of big IT projects that are at risk of cost overruns: "The ability to take advantage of the cloud means you can build those projects up iteratively, which is how industry does it."

Smith admitted that the government had not always been quick to embrace new technology. "Back in 1885, the civil service bought its first-ever typewriter, despite stiff resistance from in-house calligraphers. About 20 years later the government took another leap into the unknown when it invested in its first telephone, a mere three decades after the technology was first demonstrated."

But telephones too could be revolutionised. The new scheme aims to replace many of the government's physical phone lines with internet-connected "voice over internet" (VoIP) systems by 2017.

Guardian.co.uk breaks record for UK newspaper website for the second month in a row

Guardian.co.uk achieved its second record-breaking month in a row with nearly 37 million unique users for December, a record for a UK newspaper website.

This surpassed its November record by 3.32%, according to figures released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic.

Mail Online took second spot with the highest month-on-month increase of 5.10%, followed by Telegraph Online.

The Guardian News & Media director of digital content, Emily Bell, said: "Our thorough coverage of the Copenhagen climate change conference resulted in EnvironmentGuardian.co.uk seeing a 15% month-on-month increase in visits, and a 10% increase in average daily uniques. This also resulted in a large influx of traffic from the US up 18% since November."

Guardian News & Media's website network, which includes content from the Observer and MediaGuardian.co.uk, attracted 36,980,637 unique users, up 3.32% from November and an increase of 62% year on year.

At Mail Online, Daily Mail & General Trust's website network, traffic grew strongly by 67% year on year and 5.1% on November to 32,843,958 global unique users last month.

Holding steady in third spot in December, Telegraph.co.uk was down slightly by 0.33% on November to 30,711,261 unique users. This represented a 46% year-on-year increase.

Sun Online, which includes News of the World content and page3.com, had 20,907,012 unique users, increasing 3.50% month on month and 10% over a year. Its stablemate Times Online recorded 19,854,510 unique users in December, a fall of 5.14% month on month and a rise of 4% year on year.

Mirror Group Digital's network of sites, which includes Mirror.co.uk, recorded 9,702,760 unique users last month, a fall of 8.73% month on month. However, the network showed the strongest increase year on year at 82%.

Independent.co.uk increased slightly in December with its unique users up by 7% year-on-year to 9,347,658 a 4.71% month-on-month increase.

The Guardian was the biggest UK newspaper website in terms of UK unique users, with 12,559,419 last month. Mail Online weighed in second with 11,423,381 UK unique users. Telegraph.co.uk ranked third with 10,150,039, Sun Online fourth with 8,090,634, Times Online fifth with 6,882,004, Mirror Group sixth with 5,123,378 and Independent.co.uk seventh with 3,806,862.

The ABCe figures show that all UK newspaper websites saw a fall of domestic readers from November to December, but they compensated by winning new readers abroad. Overall traffic for all sites rose year on year, with the Mirror Group Digital up the most by 82%, and Times Online the least by 3.86%.

The Daily Mail site had the most daily unique users, which indicate how many people use a site frequently, as opposed to the total monthly figure. Mail Online had an average of 1,899,272 daily unique users, a slight increase of 0.63%. Guardian News & Media's website in comparison had an average of 1,888,446 unique users each day, a decrease of 1.98%.

In the third spot with 1,534,775 daily unique users was the Telegraph.co.uk. Fourth most popular newspaper website with a slight decrease of 1.76% was Sun Online with 1,213,961 daily unique users, while its stablemate Times Online was fifth with 1,040,711. Mirror Group had 448,628 daily unique users and the Independent 407,471.

Among the daily unique users, Mirror Group Online lost the most daily unique users with 10.77%, followed by the Times Online with 8.40 %, and Telegraph.co.uk with 5.61%.

 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.

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Britain used to produce some of the most entertaining and idiosyncratic videogames in the world. Then the eighties ended. But are the glory days returning?

PlayStation killed Britsoft. We didn't realise it at the time, but it took a cold, technological scythe to the British development community. And Lara Croft, that gloating figurehead of the PlayStation Generation, once viewed as a symbol of this region's success and creativity, should now been read as a harbinger of doom. Because, nothing was ever the same again.

Of course, PlayStation didn't destroy the whole business of developing major videogames in the UK that's still happening, though largely for foreign paymasters. But the era of expensive team-based 3D game production ushered in by Sony's original machine effectively ended the peculiarly British scene of the eighties. This was the halcyon period in which lone coders like Jeff Minter, Mike Singleton and Matthew Smith plied their trade, unfettered by neurotic marketing departments. It was the era of hobbyist fanatics like the Oliver Twins, and multimedia revolutionaries like Mel Croucher, whose prescient masterpiece of adult-orientated audiovisual entertainment, Deus Ex Machina, was probably bought by less people than now make up a current-gen development team.

Later came the dominant bad boys of the Amiga era - Sensible Software and the Bitmap Brothers - with their hyper-polished, subtly anarchic 2D masterpieces. These emergent cult superstars fought for economic life in a bizarre, haphazard marketplace rife with cottage-sized publishing houses nefarious independent distributors and vibrant fanboy magazines. Those days are gone.

Except, they're not. Britsoft, it seems, didn't die; it was just sleeping...

Fuelled by vibrant online development communities, indie gaming festivals, and new distribution channels, it is waking up. The likes of Ubisoft, EA and Activision will hardly be quaking in their boots, but it was never about them. It's about us.

Robert Fearon got into games when his parent bought him a Spectrum in 1984. He could have started coding them back then, joining the ranks of Minter, Tony Crowther and co, but he didn't. "I thought, do I stay in my room or do I go out there, chase bands about the country in the back of a van and do all those wonderful things that you look back on now going, 'man, I can't believe I coated the entire room in my own sick and ended up in hospital'" But then he hit his mid-twenties, got into a relationship, settled down and became quietly disillusioned with mainstream media. "I stumbled upon the lovely community of folks who remade old games for the PC. So I entered a competition with an awful version of the old Speccy game Kokotoni Wilf, and met some good people who encouraged me no end. I did a few more remakes before embarking on my own path. I'm 35 this year, only just getting started and still loving what those guys are doing "

Fearon is now part of a growing UK indie development scene, creating brilliant, idiosyncratic shooters like War Twat and Squid and Let Die and distributing them largely through his own website, Bag Full of Wrong. As the titles suggest, his games have the irreverent, impertinent feel of the early eighties Britsoft classics, the likes of Jet Set Willy and Skool Daze, which came loaded with prurient humour and wacky tangential concepts. Similarly, there's Charlie Knight, whose frantic blast'-em-ups Space Phallus and Scoregasm, mock the mindless machismo of the shooter genre, while betraying an admiration - and indepth working knowledge - of genre classics like Bangai-O.

For his part, Fearon accepts the comparison with 8bit trailblazers, but doesn't want this to be entirely about nostalgia. "It'd be easy for me to trot out the obligatory 'well, there's Minter, he's brilliant. Jarvis, he's brilliant, Croucher, he's brilliant.' But really, it's not that simple.

"I take my inspiration and influence from pretty much every game I've ever set eyes on, even the shit ones, and I try and weave that into what I write. I'm also incredibly reactionary. I wrote War Twat after getting fed up of the frustrations of Everyday Shooter. SYNSO came after a forum comment on my second web home, Way Of The Rodent, SYNSO2 came about partly for Indiecade and partly influenced by what Matt James and Bizarre Creations are doing with the neo-retro thing. And er, the next game I'm writing has parts written by Kevin Toms of Football Manager fame, which is an honour. I wasted so much life with that and Software Star as a kid it's great to be able to say a very public thank you."

Matt James, name-checked by Fearon, is another rising star of the neo-Britsoft scene. His beautiful, weirdly poignant shooter Leave Home is available on Xbox 360 thanks to Xbox Live Indie Games, a section of the console's online service where coders can upload their projects, then get a decent percentage of the download revenues. Leave Home looks like a retro-tinged 2D shoot-'em-up, an eye-scorching audio visual assault, requiring the twitch reflexes of a caffeine-wired meerkat, but it's also a metaphorical tale about, yes, leaving home or as James puts it, "a coming of age story told as an algorithmic fixed length horizontal shmup." In this game, the end-of-level bosses represent your parents, while your struggle to save the universe is effectively a struggle for personal freedom. Activision games don't really tend to do this, do they?

Like Fearon, James has a gaming history going back to those early eighties glory days. "I started when I was about eight on the ZX spectrum 128k coding cacky adventure games in Basic. I then moved on to an Amiga and AMOS and then C which is when I really started enjoying programming, staying up all night to do it, etc. I was really into making electronic music when I was a teenager, though, and just did the games programming every now and again. It wasn't until I was at uni that I realised I was a pretty crap musician but had become not too bad at making games. So then I started working seriously on the Net Yaroze and turning out some games that were decent-ish."

Ah yes, Net Yaroze this is where Sony redeemed itself. Released in 1997, the programmable PlayStation was available with a cut-down software development kit and a range of graphics libraries. Suddenly, home programmers had a chance to fiddle with a modern 3D games console, and the competitions and community elements Sony oversaw represented an important attempt to engage with the bedroom coding scene. It was surely also an influence on the whole Xbox Live Indie Games endeavour. That's why Sony isn't really the bad guy of this piece.

But in some ways, the provision of restricted development toys by the major players isn't the point. The point is, in the modern era of cheap powerful computers, freely available open source software and various online distribution channels, 'The Man' needn't be involved at all. Indie game development is currently going though its own punk era; talent or lack of it needn't be a restraining factor. The important thing is to just start playing. "We're in a sort of golden age where anyone who wants to make a game can, and if anyone's reading this and thinking 'I'd like to make a game' now's the time to get started," says Fearon. "You don't need thousands of pounds. You don't need a computer that goes like shit off a shovel. You just need a bit of free time and an idea. It doesn't even have to be a good idea. Better out than in, right?"

Fearon is a defiant example of the fact that you don't need to be a programmer anymore, you don't even have to understand the coding process. This isn't about tech geeks programming machine code for weeks on end. It's about raw and dirty creativity. "I've got a reasonably top-end PC, but I'm more reliant on software that enables me to get stuff down as fast as possible," admits Fearon. "So, I use Pro Motion for banging together pixels, GroBoto for 3d stuff, Photoshop because it may be cumbersome and has the worlds worst installer, etc, but for sheer brain-to-page it can't be topped. And I write my games in Game Maker because I can't code for love nor money. Best 15 quid I ever spent, that."

Game Maker is to the current indie gaming generation what the "here are three chords, now form a band" ethos was to punk music. Originally developed by Dutch computer scientist and games academic Dr Mark Overmars, it's now distributed and regularly updated by UK-based indie site YoYo Games, co-founded by Sandy Duncan, who once headed up the Xbox's European business. The software works around drag-and-drop principles allowing users to easily draw and place game elements. The basic edition is free, but a Pro version, available for $25, adds dozens of more advanced features. The software has apparently been downloaded over three million times since YoYo began operations in 2007, and the 'games created' counter on the home page is showing 77432. Quite a community.

The interesting thing about Game Maker, though, is the way in which it facilitates people who may be more interested in making artistic or literary statements, rather than bashing out a quick platform game. Polish developer Kaworu Nagisa used to organise manga festivals and write plays before moving to Scotland two years ago he now has his own game site, Sadmoons, and releases weird, experimental projects, like interactive short story Clouds of Melancholy and the uncategorisable World of Black and White, a strange analysis of Taoism both of which were written using Game Maker. To him, games are like songs or stories, a means of emotional expression when I point out to him how sanguine these titles are, he replies, "That's how I feel. The things that inspire me most are music and animation. These media have already found their ways to be emotional. That's what I want to be doing with everything I try now. Games are everything that other media can do plus interactivity "

There's a danger perhaps as there always is when writing about 'scenes' of aligning these developers and their games too closely. Nagisa took a couple of weeks to create World of Black and White, but it took Matt James over a year to code the more technically orthodox Leave Home, using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio. These are very different projects.

Charlie Knight, meanwhile, is perhaps the closest in approach to an old school games coder, mixing and matching his programming applications and varying techniques for different projects. "I'm programming in Blitzmax at the moment, which is a sort of Object Orientated BASIC/C++ hybrid. It's fast, concise and allows me to compile on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux with the bare minimum of extra work. Hardware-wise, I use an old Pentium 4 PC, an even older iMac G5 and a monstrously slow laptop.

"In terms of how long it takes to make a game, it really depends. It took me about a year and a half to make Bullet Candy; Space Phallus took about two months; Scoregasm has taken 9 months so far. The high concept of Irukandji was Deep Blue (the David Attenborough documentary) vs lasers. Not dreadfully complex, and as such the game didn't take long to make."

What unites these developers though is a sort of creative integrity, a determination to explore and satisfy their own visions. Matt James is happy to admit that he effectively codes his games for himself: "I was pretty crap at making games to begin with; I was mostly trying to go down that Nintendo route of 'fun' games that pander to the player in every regard - you focus test the game constantly and then revise everything to suit the average player. I've definitely moved away from that. I like the nobly bits, the small mistakes, and if I want to totally piss the player off I will. Now when I'm making a game, the player is always me "

Of course, not everything works as well as Leave Home, and this solipsistic approach can lead to self-indulgent unplayable tosh let's be honest, there's plenty of that out there. But this is also the only way to force a pure unsullied vision into streams of game code. Even now, some of the most amazing mainstream games are coming from studios dominated by one or two creative masterminds: Keita Takahashi, Peter Molyneux at Lionhead, Hideki Kamiya and Atsushi Inaba at PlatinumGames, Fumito Ueda at Team Ico for example.

But for lone indie coders, there are no development meetings, no team idea pitches just explosions of development that intersect messily with everyday life. "I tend to go weeks, sometimes months unable to do anything but tinker and sketch down different concepts, game ideas, whatever," says Fearon. "Then when inspiration hits, I'll become the house tramp whilst I get most of the work done in a flurry of late nights and fluffy dressing gowns, trying to ignore what everyone else is doing around me."

"I can wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and just go into the next room and sit in my pants coding it up immediately," agrees James. "This happened with the idea for the final boss stage in Leave Home. The bosses, who can be interpreted as the players' parents, have behaviours that mean something as well as working as a gameplay mechanic. The idea took a long time to solidify in my brain into something that worked. Eventually I had something at about 2am one night and I got up and had it coded by the morning."

Another vital aspect, however, is the growing sense that something is really happening here and not just in the UK. There's a massive global community of talented, unorthodox developers who are presenting an alternative idea about what games can achieve in the 21st century, far way from the polished, franchised and so often sanitised entertainment on offer in your local Game shop. Almost all of the developers I spoke to cited Braid as a huge influence this complex and gripping platform/puzzle game, developed by US indie coder Jonathan Blow, became a crossover hit when it was released on Xbox Live in 2008. It is the Sex, Lies and Videotape of indie gaming, a potent symbol for the saleable potential of non-mainstream productions.

Publishers are starting to take notice. Just as the big movie studios began sending agents to Sundance in the hope of snagging the next Soderbergh or Tarantino, the likes of EA, Activision and Sony are now scoping the indie festivals for promising developers and projects. And there are plenty around. The Independent Games Festival takes place annually as part of the enormously important Game Developers Conference, offering a major development competition for indie talent. I'm on the judging panel this year and there have been some staggeringly good titles, including Joe Danger from British start-up, Hello Games and Tyler Glaiel's awesome, Closure.

There's also the inspiring international roadshow event, Indiecade, as well as dozens of 'rapid game prototyping' or Game Jam get-togethers throughout the world, where coders meet for a weekend of intensive development. Right here in the UK we have the brilliant Dare to be Digital competition, a student game development challenge organised by the University of Abertay. Similarly, this spring will see the Microsoft XNA student GameCamp hitting Birmingham City University (19-20 February) and University of Huddersfield (19-20 March) students will be challenged to create working games in just 48 hours based on a theme disclosed moments before they start. We also have Nottingham's GameCity festival and Eurogamer's Expo both of which have strong indie elements.

This is it. Just like punk, just like independent moviemaking, there is a scene that inspires and supports. There is community. "Rolling up to the Indie Arcade at the Eurogamer Expo last year and getting to meet some of the people who put this stuff together was fab and it's amazing the talent we have," enthuses Fearon. "When you've got folks like Dan and Ben of Zombie Cow taking on Lucasarts at their own game and shaming Telltale in the new adventure game department, Hello Games out-exciting Excite Bike, Rudolf Kremers and Alex May making the strategy equivalent of a Brian Eno wet dream, the crazed claymation Metal-Slug-a-tron of Cletus Clay being developed in Sheffield . Plus, Matt James is absolutely way ahead of the game on his shooters. And that's without taking into account Introversion or Minter still throwing stuff out there, or less media-dahling folks like Charlie Knight plugging away at ace stuff.

"There's a terrible tendency to do down what we have over here but in so many ways we're so out there and brilliant it's hard not to think 'yeah, actually, we're doing bloody good stuff' when you take stock, and so much of it is distinctly Anglo-centric that it couldn't come from anywhere else in the world. We should be proud of that rather than getting bogged down in pathetic arguments over tax relief or whatever shock tactics Rockstar are employing this week "

Fortunately, indie game development is becoming easier to follow. While the eighties stars figured regularly in passionate games magazines of the time the likes of Crash, Computer & Videogames and later, Amiga Power now we have equally committed indie game news sources like Jay Is Games, The Independent Gaming Source and The Indie Games Weblog.

And through crossover smashes like Braid, World of Goo, and N, Charlie Knight reckons the message is getting out there to the wider gaming population. "I think people are starting to notice that games are capable of something more than headshots and prostitutes, and that they don't necessarily need to be fun or addictive in order to be good. With indie games there's scope for hugely personal, emotionally provocative interactive stories and experiences that aren't necessarily games in the traditional sense, and I think this recent trend is a sign of something truly interesting and unique to the medium just over the horizon "

Britsoft is back, and like all the best scenes it is happening without anyone's permission, and it is linking arms with development communities the world over. This isn't about nostalgia for a bygone age anymore it is about the future. And with original mainstream development becoming increasingly scarce in Britain, it might be the only real future we have.

Next Monday: how to become an indie developer in eight easy steps!

Xbox 360/PC; 49.99, cert 18+; Bioware/EA

The original Mass Effect was a near-classic. The narrative and gripping combat of this sci-fi role-playing game (RPG) only let down by technical glitches. Mass Effect 2 fixes this and is a title that will appeal to a wide range of gamers, especially those who enjoy in-game conversation as much as combat.

Continuing where the original left off, Mass Effect 2 sees you guiding your Commander through a twisting plot and some great set pieces. This is very much an RPG though, with plenty of stats and text. But action is key, with combat crucial to the game. The combat has been made more transparent and more reliant on skill than stats. Gears of War fans should feel right at home with the cover mechanics and controls. Thankfully, there is still a huge emphasis on tactics and RPG stats Modern Warfare 3 this is most definitely not.

The narrative and characters are what really drive Mass Effect 2. Idle chit-chat with the numerous crew members and bystanders soon draws out motives, feelings and possibly romance. The excellent facial animations and acting help too, giving a surprising emotional pull to proceedings. One of the nice touches is the ability to import your character from the first game. Players that do so are rewarded with money and other goodies. But the real benefit is the continuation of the story with decisions you made in the first game which characters were killed off, for example having implications in the sequel.

Mass Effect 2 is a looker, too. The influences are pure retro sci-fi. So think the minimalist look of Star Wars and Space Odyssey. Blade Runner and X-Files are hinted at as well. The soundtrack mirrors this with swooping Vangelis-style pads providing a suitably synthetic mood. The universe feels more alive this time round. Planetary exploration is vastly improved from the original game. Now going off piste is truly rewarding with numerous side-missions to beef up the coffers and the characters.

Downsides? The loading times are still noticeably intrusive albeit improved on the original game. The graphics are occasionally glitchy, but more importantly the font is tiny, even on an HD screen. For a game that involves more reading than most this a major issue. Playing on a non-HD screen is very uncomfortable indeed. Nevertheless, the gripping and engaging action overcomes these issues. It may only be January, but Mass Effect 2 is already a serious contender for game of the year.

Rating: 5/5

The UK video games industry is threatened by international competition, and is seeking the same kind of support as the film industry

The great and good from the games industry Ian Livingstone from Eidos, Chris Deering from Codemasters, David Braben of Elite fame gathered in Whitehall, London, today for the Westminster eForum, to discuss what the games industry wants the government to include in its pre-budget report next week.

And while some MPs turned up including former defence minister Tom Watson, and shadow minister for the creative industries Ed Vaizey the star turn was a no-show. Keith Vaz MP, widely known for his anti-gaming views, had to be unavoidably elsewhere. Reporters looking for an attention-grabbing headline and a bit of Vaz-bashing (or not, depending on what he said) were disappointed.

The games industry is undoubtedly important to the UK economy, and several speakers at the eForum said it was bigger than the film industry. The problem is that it is in relative decline. Indeed, it looks as though the UK currently the world's third-largest producer of computer and video games will be overtaken by Canada and France, both of which provide tax breaks to games developers. It could sink to sixth.

TIGA, the independent game developers' association, has been asking for similar tax credits to be offered in the UK. Our developers can compete with the best in the world when the playing field is fair, claimed TIGA chief executive Richard Wilson, but it isn't fair. "The creative industries need the chance to flourish and grow," he said. "A tax break against production costs could create an extra 3,500 jobs, and generate an additional 400m for the Treasury over five years."

Wilson pointed out that the film industry in the UK gets 100m a year in tax credits.

There are also two other areas where the games industry wants government to act. First, there are problems with the higher education system. Second, the UK is falling behind in terms of broadband provision, and online gaming is today's growth area.

Elite developer David Braben, founder of Frontier Developments, complained that "we are getting far fewer people with computer science skills: we're having to recruit people from abroad". He blamed this partly on ICT being a dull subject in schools, leading to a decline in applications for computer science degrees. "Games courses that are just studies of games are no use to us," he said.

Ian Livingstone said "the problem with universities is that they're paid on a bums-on-seats basis", which led to a "dumbing down". There should be incentives to promote the study of "hard" topics such as maths and computer science.

Keith Ramsdale, Electronic Arts' vice president for Northern Europe, said "the UK punches above its weight in Europe", but we needed action on taxes and skills to keep the UK attractive as a place for development. He pointed out that the movie industry had a unified voice in the government-backed UK Film Council, which also got lottery funding. Again, there wasn't a level playing field.

Ramsdale said that, on an optimistic prediction, the online games business could be close to the packaged games business in revenues this year, and that broadband speeds were important. "Getting 2Mbps by 2012 is not quite ambitious enough," he said. "The broadband pipe needs to be a whole lot thicker and faster."

Vaizey, who quipped that "every MP needs a Wii", said the focus of the next government would be reducing the deficit "if we're lucky enough to be elected" so tax breaks would not be easy to introduce. He also wondered if the UK Film Council could "extend its remit" to include games, though "to be frank with you, I don't know whether that would work".

A member of the audience pointed out that it had taken years to get games ratings out of the hands of a film body (the BBFC) that "doesn't understand games at all". Livingstone replied that in terms of moving images they were similar, so "it has to be looked at, even if it doesn't work out."

You could, of course, say the same about the rest of the debate. Everybody recognises that the UK games industry is not doing as well as it could be, and isn't the publishing powerhouse it used to be; that the universities are not producing enough computer scientists; that slow broadband could limit the development of online gaming.

The government will recognise that all these things have to be looked at, but there seems to be relatively little chance of them coming up with something that works out.

Premier League clash will be first 3D broadcast of live sports event to public audience, claims Sky

BSkyB is aiming to do for sports broadcasting what James Cameron did for cinema with special effects blockbuster Avatar, with the move to air this weekend's Premier League clash between Arsenal and Manchester United in 3D.

The satellite broadcaster, which is showing the special 3D feed of this Sunday's Premier League clash in a handful of pubs across the country, claims it will be the first transmission of a live 3D TV sports event to a public audience.

Sunday's test broadcast comes ahead of a plan to roll out the 3D TV service to hundreds of the tens of thousands of UK pubs that subscribe to Sky TV from April.

BSkyB then has the ambitious plan to bring 3D to the living room by the end of the year. The 3D channel will initially be made available at no extra cost to the million-plus Sky high definition TV subscribers who also pay for its premium sports and movies services.

This weekend's test, a chance for BSkyB to "kick the tyres" of the service, will see nine pubs kitted out with a number of 3D-ready TV sets.

BSkyB will not name the pubs, for fear of overcrowding, but has said football fans at four London establishments, two in Manchester and one each in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Dublin will find they have the option of watching the game on a 3D screen.

The company estimates that between 450 and 700 viewers will get to see the match in 3D and is confident they will not balk at having to don 3D spectacles to watch the game.

"We have done consumer testing and people forget pretty quickly that they are wearing them and if a large group is doing it people don't really worry about it. I've seen people wear far sillier things in the pub [than 3D specs]," said Brian Lenz, the director of product design at BSkyB.

"People will get a sense that they are looking through a window right into the game, a portal into the Emirates [Arsenal stadium] with the best seats in the house. It is going to become a must-have, a must-want," Lenz added.

He said TV manufacturers such as Sony and Samsung intend to make sure that up to 40% of their ranges will be 3D ready in the next couple of years.

"The programming has to be top quality, we view 3D TV as an 'appointment-to-view' proposition, we don't intend to try and fill the whole schedule with 3D programming," he added.

BSkyB plans to make the Sunday 4pm match it airs every week the special 3D broadcast.

Earlier this month mobile operator O2 said that it intended to screen two of England's rugby matches in this year's Six Nations tournament in 3D in 40 Odeon and Cineworld cinemas.

In 2008 the BBC broadcast one of the world's first live matches in 3D when it beamed back the Six Nations match between Scotland and England to a cinema in London.

 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.

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Panel hears how Google's competitors are looking at different ways of searching the internet

The front of the pack isn't always the best place to be. In a panel of search engine representatives at the Munich DLD conference, Google's Ben Gomes was the most reluctant to give anything away. Alsio on the panel were Conrad Wolfram, of WolframAlpha, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the architect of Microsoft Visual Earth, and Ilya Segalovich, of Yandex Russia's largest search engine.

Questions from the panel host, Jochen Wegner, the editor of Focus Online, kept on coming. Is it possible to compete with Google in non-English-speaking markets as the successful Yandex does? "We have done very respectably in almost all markets we are in," was Gomes's answer. Is Google failing in giving the right answers, especially when a topic becomes very popular? "We have recently launched 500 changes. Overall, search gets better day after day after day." Are you reacting to Bing? "I don't believe we are reacting to Bing in any way. We are really focused on the user."

There is no doubting that Google is still top dog among search engines. However, the spontaneous applause of an impressed audience here at DLD wasn't for Google, but for WolframAlpha and Bing.

WolframAlpha's approach to making the world's knowledge computable clearly found fans, and showed that the search engine market is less and less about search, but more and more about giving answers and providing decisions, as Wegner put it.

WolframAlpha can tell you the weather on the day David Cameron was born. "Everything I show you with Wolfram Alpha is done in the cloud and sent back live," explained Wolfram. Yes, WolframAlpha is not a search engine anymore. It is a knowledge engine which provides you with possible answers.

If you type in "Microsoft v Google", you will get the latest trading information as well as the fundamental statistics and finances. If you type in "egg and bacon" you will be told how much running you have to do today to get rid of the calories you just ate.

"WolframAlpha is about high power computation and knowledge that meet at an exciting time when computation gets democratised," explains Wolfram.

Bing also has a new search approach, trying to organise the search results in a different way and Bing continues to grow its market share. In fact, it is becoming an incredible user-oriented search engine which made a deal with Wolfram Alpha last year to provide search results in select areas across nutrition, health and advanced mathematics.

Microsoft's search engines results rely more and more on structural data a term that Aguera y Arcas is fond of using.

In addition, there is the new map project which Aguera y Arcas presented to a stunned audience. Its three-dimensional view of New York shows clearly that Bing Maps will provide stern competition for Google maps. It is built in Microsoft Silverlight, and provides an amazing real view of the streets.

"We envision space as a canvas;" says Aguera y Arcas. His team is building different features for the map. Recently for example, they came up with a geolocation of the front pages of all the world newspapers. The new beta mapping site was just launched.

The clash of the search engines has definitely started.

Computer experts in the US can now identify people from personal information, leading to concerns over security and confidentiality

Computer scientists in the US have discovered ways to "re-identify" the names of people included in supposedly anonymous datasets.

In one example, a movie rental company released an anonymous list of film-ratings taken from its 500,000 subscribers. Using a statistical "de-anonymisation" technique, the academics were able to identify individuals and their film preferences.

The discovery raises concerns about how safe it is to release personal information such as medical records or mobile phone data even if details such as names or national insurance numbers have been removed. There are fears the information could be accessed by criminals.

The discovery has led British researchers to raise the issue in a report they are writing for the European commission. Dr Ian Brown, of the Oxford Internet Institute and a co-author, said the example of the film list was relatively trivial. "But this raises concerns for more sensitive data such as medical records. Epidemiologists say they could do interesting research if they had access to more anonymous data. This shows it is difficult to do that in a way that can't be reversed."

One concern is that criminals could identify individuals through mobile phone data and use the information to track people's movements and find out when they are away from home. "That is one worry. Other people who you might worry about accessing that information include employers, insurers or the government. There are a whole range of potential users," Brown said.

Experts say the discovery that lists can be "de-anonymised" needs to be included in the debate about how information is released and where to draw the line. But they also highlight the benefits of letting researchers and others access large datasets.

Last week Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, launched a new website data.gov.uk on which members of the public will be able to access information on crime rates, exam results, house prices and more.

"They are talking about non-personal data," said Brown. "But another thing they are looking at releasing is crime reports down to street level. You have to think about how people might be able to link that back to individuals."

William Heath, founder of Ctrl-Shift, which specialises in how personal data are used, said: "If you take it in the light of Friday's news about data.gov.uk, the government has clearly done something really good to make public data available. Now they need a more enlightened approach to personal data, but you can't simply say anonymised data can be safely made public because it is clear how hard it is truly to anonymise data."

Before our digital lives disappear too far into 'the cloud', we must wrest it from corporate and governmental control

The internet, our relationship with it, and our culture are about to undergo a change as profound and unsettling as the development of web 2.0 in the last decade, which made social media and search Google and YouTube, Facebook and Twitter mass, global phenomena. The rise of "cloud computing" will trigger a battle for control over a digital landscape that is only just coming into view.

The internet we have grown up with is a decentralised network of separate computers, with their own software and data. Cloud computing may look like an extension of this network-centric logic but, in fact, it is quite different.

As cloud computing comes of age, our links to one another will be increasingly routed through a vast shared "cloud" of data and software. These clouds, supported by huge server farms all over the world, will allow us to access data from many devices, not just computers; to use programs only when we need them and to share expensive resources such as servers more efficiently. Instead of linking to one another through a dumb, decentralised network, we will all be linking to and through shared clouds.

Which raises the question: whose clouds will these be?

Cloud computing is bringing with it "cloud capitalism". Companies will make money from organising these clouds for us. Apple already is, with its iTunes cloud of music and its cloud of thousands of third-party apps to run on the iPhone. Cloud computing will also bring a kind of cloud culture: increasingly, we will express ourselves through these clouds of films, videos, pictures, books, stories and music.

But cloud capitalism and cloud culture will not always be in harmony. The best way to understand the coming conflicts over the cloud is to look at the issues already being raised by some of the earliest applications. China, where Google is belatedly standing up for the principles of a cloud free from government interference, is the most immediate example.

But Google also has a more pragmatic, commercial motive. Gmail is a cloud service. Users do not store their messages on their own computers but in a remote cloud run by Google. (The Guardian newspaper recently junked its own, costly email service in favour of Google's enterprise-level Gmail offering.) If Google cannot maintain the integrity of the Gmail cloud, it does not have a secure service to sell. There will be many battles of this kind in years to come where corporations, citizens and governments struggle for control of the cloud.

An equally significant battle involving Google's influence over the cloud is being played out in a nondescript courtroom in New York, where the company has been defending its plans, devised with several university libraries, to create a cloud of more than 10m digital books. The question is: on what terms will Google make these available to readers and recompense their authors and publishers?

This shared cultural cloud will come at a price that is difficult to calculate. Google will acquire considerable power over the future of publishing and books which books to include in the cloud and which not.

The French and German governments warned the court that the company's plans would create an "uncontrolled, autocratic concentration of power in a single corporate entity" that would threaten a fundamental human right: the free flow of ideas through literature. Google's peers are also opposed. The Open Book Alliance, which includes Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo, wants to create its own cloud of digitised books.

This dispute is a template for many others to come. Governments will also have their own views about these clouds, seeing in them threats to national culture (the French response); threats to security (the Chinese response) or threats to competition (the response of the US department of justice).

Thus, just as it is emerging, open cloud culture is threatened on all sides by vested interests of traditional media companies, hungry new monopolists and governments that are intent of reasserting control over the unruly web. The "netizen" beneficiaries of open cloud culture are far less well funded and organised than its opponents. That is why before cloud capitalism becomes entrenched, there should a clear statement of principles to defend the public, open cloud against the encroachments of both corporations and governments.

I propose five main points towards that manifesto, an Open Cloud Declaration:

The first main threat to open cloud culture is homogeneity: we do not want a digital sky dominated by standardised clouds branded Google and Apple. The first principle should be variety: we need public clouds, such as the World Digital Library being created by a set of leading museums around the world and open, social clouds such as Wikipedia.

The second threat to open cloud culture is corporate control. To counter that, we need new approaches to regulate these commercial clouds, to limit their power and to expose them to competition, ensuring people have a diversity of potential suppliers of cloud-based services. Personal information stored in clouds needs to be safe and clearly to belong to the person rather than the cloud. The emergence of cloud capitalism will need to be matched by new forms of media regulation.

The third threat is the rearguard action being fought by industrial-era media companies to prevent clouds forming. At the heart of this is copyright. Cloud culture will breed creativity only if people can easily collaborate, share and create. New forms of licensing are required, building on open access and creative commons, which are designed to allow sharing but also to channel rewards to creative artists.

The fourth threat comes from attempted government control of the cloud on grounds of state security, public decency or economic necessity. These threats do not just come from authoritarian regimes in the east, but also from western liberal democracies where governments lack the courage to stand up for the open web. To counter that we need to find ways to support online activists in authoritarian regimes with ways around firewalls and to connect them with potential supporters outside.

The fifth, and most significant challenge to a truly open, public web is inequality. When people from the poorest countries arrive in the digital world, as many million will in this decade through the mobile web, they will find people in the rich countries a long way ahead. For cloud culture genuinely to promote global cultural relations, we should focus on: open source development of tools that develop capabilities outside the dominant regions; creating more initiatives like Wikipedia that are public, but diverse and global in reach; promoting more global exchanges such as Kiva which allow resources and skills in one place to be matched with need in another.

The potential for a more cosmopolitan, open cloud, which can connect hundreds of millions of people all over the world in shared endeavours, will only be realised if we tackle these threats. We are entering a new, exciting and yet dangerous phase in the web's development. Huge untold opportunities will exist for anyone connected to the web and by the end of this decade that will be several billion people to draw on shared culture resources and add to them through their own creative expression.

Yet if we are not vigilant, we will find our culture will belong to corporations and governments, rather than us. That is why we need an Open Cloud Declaration, a set of principles for a global campaign to keep open a large, public, diverse space for clouds in all possible shapes and sizes.

This is an edited version of a pamphlet written for Counterpoint, the independent thinktank of the British Council. "Cloud Culture: The Future of Global Cultural Relations" by Charles Leadbeater, will be published on 8 February.

Microsoft founder plays down Beijing's attempts to stifle dissent on the internet as 'very limited'

After pouring billions of dollars into the global fight against malaria and rebranding Microsoft in a more cuddly, human way, Bill Gates had just about shaken off accusations that he represented all that was unappealing about aggressive American capitalism.

But today his reinvention suffered something of a setback when he played down China's attempts to stifle dissent on the internet as "very limited".

Less than two weeks after Google said it planned to uncensor its Chinese search engine in protest at attempts to break into the email accounts of human rights activists, Gates criticised his rival's decision and insisted that agreeing to Beijing's demands was just part of doing business in the country. "You've got to decide: do you want to obey the laws of the countries you're in or not? If not, you may not end up doing business there," he told ABC's Good Morning America programme.

He also brushed aside accusations that Microsoft has been complicit in helping filter the web by saying that it was not an issue because any censorship could be circumvented with technical knowledge. "Chinese efforts to censor the internet have been very limited," he said. "It's easy to go around it, so I think keeping the internet thriving there is very important."

Gates's comments echo those last week by Microsoft chief executive, Steve Ballmer, who took a swipe at Google by suggesting that the company had over-reacted in China. "People are always trying to break into other people's data," he said on Friday. "There's always somebody trying to break into Microsoft."

Ballmer also likened Microsoft's complicity in actively filtering internet content to the oil industry's decision to import oil from Saudi Arabia, despite the censorship that takes place there. "If the Chinese government gives us proper legal notice, we'll take that piece of information out of the Bing search engine," adding that even countries with "extreme" free speech laws, such as the US, exercised some censorship.

The comments of both men come despite the fact that efforts to censor the internet in China a project known as the Golden Shield are among the most extensive in the world. The country's estimated 300 million internet users are almost all affected by the various blocks and filters, which include direct censorship of anti-government protesters, members of the Falun Gong religious group, Tibetan independence campaigners and the Taiwanese media. At various points, Beijing has also blocked access to international news websites including the BBC and the Guardian, and around 50 Chinese bloggers are in prison as a result of their postings.

Google's stance has drawn widespread support from the human rights community and freedom of speech campaigners, but the Chinese authorities have repeatedly denied any link to the hacking.

Today the government made its most direct response to the issue yet rejecting suggestions that it turned a blind eye to the activities of some hackers, and defending its right to punish those who challenge its rule.

"Any accusation that the Chinese government participated in cyber attacks, either in an explicit or indirect way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China. We are firmly opposed to that," a government spokesman told the state news agency, Xinhua, adding that China was itself the victim of numerous internet-based attacks.

Internet service provider criticised by human rights watchdog for plans to analyse online activity of customers

Plans for Virgin Media to monitor customers' internet use for possible copyright infringement have come under fire by a human rights watchdog. The group Privacy International has expressed concern over Virgin Media's use of Cview, a software programme that would allow the internet service provider to analyse the online activity of customers. This would potentially include those who are sharing music online through unauthorised peer-to-peer sites.

This latest move comes less than a year after Virgin Media announced that it was in talks with Universal Music to create a subscription service that offered unlimited downloads for a monthly fee. It is thought that the implementation of software which would allow Virgin Media to scrutinise what customers are doing online is a result of their ongoing discussions with the record industry.

Alexander Hanff, head of ethical networks at Privacy International, told the BBC: "Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) intercepting communications is a criminal offence regardless of what you do with the data." Privacy International has asked the European Commission to investigate the use of Cview.

However, Virgin Media claims use of the software will not violate the privacy of its customers and will not be used to identify individuals. "CView works at a core-network level, and simply analyses, entirely anonymously, the percentage of data that flows across the network that is copyrighted and being shared unlawfully," said Virgin Media spokeswoman Emma Hutchinson. She said that "at no point will we collect or share customer data as part of this trial".

The proposal for the use of Cview software suggests that 40% of the activity on Virgin Media's network would be analysed in a trial study. Hutchinson confirmed that it would initially concentrate on traffic to three major P2P websites with links to unauthorised filesharing: Gnutella, eDonkey and BitTorrent. However, the trial is still in the planning stages and it is not clear exactly when Cview will be up and running.

Copyright may not be perfect, but when applied with common sense, it's the best system we've got

On 5 January, the Independent's website ran a photo uploaded to the Flickr image-sharing site by user Peter Zabulis. Zabulis flagged his photo of a snowed-over field as "all rights reserved," and he took exception to the Independent's use of the image without permission, and he wrote to them to tell them so.

Exception turned to outrage as a terse note from the Independent claimed that by posting the photo to Flickr, Zabulis had not asserted his copyright (whatever that means) and thus copyright had not been breached. The ensuing debate including a public pillorying of the Independent for failing to grasp the nature of Flickr, copyright and photographer's rights generated a lot of heat, but not much light (one bright spot: the Independent paid Zabulis and apologised to him).

Debates about copyright fall apart when they're pitched in terms of absolutes: "Copyright prohibits all copying", or "Non-commercial copying is always legal". Copyright started life as an industrial regulation that set out the rules governing the relationship between different actors in the supply-chain of the "creative industries" (originally just publishing, later music, film, software and many other industries).

Much of copyright was created by simply enshrining existing business practices into law for better or for worse. Many artists have pointed out that copyright, even at its best, can present a playing field tilted in favour of the companies that shepherded its passage into law.

Theoretically, copyright also bound the activities of non-industrial actors fans, audiences, readers, people who were whistling in the shower. But practically speaking, the average person would virtually never interact with copyright: first, because the personal means of interacting with copyrighted works (reading books, listening to records) did not involve making copies, and second, because when copies were made, they were invisible to the copyright industries' radar. No one was going to come by your office to look for photocopied Garfield cartoons stuck on your cubicle.

Which isn't to say that there weren't a myriad of rules, formal and informal, governing the use of creative works by individuals. Certain songs could be sung at the pub, but not in front of a nursery school.

Recounting the plot of last night's TV show to a mate was permissible, but spoiling the ending wasn't. Tracing a library book illustration for a science project was OK: cutting up the book was not. Pretending to have made up a ghost story that you read in a Poe collection was plagiarism, not culture.

Now, thanks to the internet (which runs by copying things, and which makes all those copies visible with a simple search) copyright has been stretched to cover both industrial and non-industrial uses of creative works, and what's more, the definition of industrial and non-industrial has become a lot fuzzier.

We're trying to retrofit the rules that governed multi-stage rocket ships (huge publishing conglomerates) to cover the activity of pedestrians (people who post quotes from books on their personal blogs). And the pedestrians aren't buying it: they hear that they need a law degree to safely quote from their favourite TV show and they assume that the system is irredeemably broken and not worth attending to at all.

It's an impossible situation. As an author, I depend on there being some rules of the road when I negotiate with my publishers, and it's in every commercial creator's interest to try to find a moderate, coherent copyright rule that avoid dumb absolutes in favour of nuance and fairness. I don't pretend that I have all the answers, but here's some of the principles that I think a good copyright system must embrace if is to succeed. Many of these principles are already in various nations' copyright rules as part of "fair dealing" or "fair use," but these user-rights in copyright are complex and difficult to navigate and vary from country to country.

As we on the internet create the norms that will be enshrined in future copyright, here's what I think we should keep in mind: "All rights reserved" doesn't cover commentary or reportage. If the Independent had been commenting on Zabulis's photo ("Witness the interplay of lights and darks" or "Area man sneaks into snowy field, takes photo for proof") then reproducing as much of Zabulis's photo as they needed to in order to report thoroughly on the subject should be fair game. Likewise, Zabulis was in the right to reproduce a screenshot from the Independent's website in order to show people how his image had been taken without permission.

Commercial and non-commercial are different. While there's a lot of grey area between "commercial" and "non-commercial", there are also some bright lines. Newspapers should have to pay photographers for stock images; kids working on school reports (and other non-commercial users) should be able to clip images and use them for without negotiating a rights agreement with a copyright holder.

Incidental use isn't infringement. If Zabulis's photo had included a blowing piece of trash bearing a copyrighted work (say, a copy of the Independent), he should still be allowed to sell and publish his photo without the Independent's permission. Incidental copying includes (for example), Google copying every page on the web in order to create an index of the words on those pages.

Some commercial copying is OK. For example, when a giant movie studio sits down to create a movie (whose copyright they will eventually defend with the atavistic savagery of a maddened grizzly), the designers for the film will create a series of "mood books" filled with clipped, scanned and copied text, images, even video clips, to help the design team agree on the look and feel of the movie. The studio doesn't and shouldn't need permission to make these uses, though they are commercial and involve copying. There are many other cases like this, from pasting articles into an email you send to your boss to photocopying an inspirational text and tacking it up in the break room. They share one common trait: they don't displace any revenue for the rightsholder.

When copyright cartels endanger a new medium, their copyrights should be converted into economic rights or thrown out. This principle is as old as sound recordings: when the sheet-music publishers refused to license their work for records, the state intervened and forced them to sell at a fixed rate. Today, many copyrights are relegated to economic rights: a performer has the right to be compensated for the playback of his CD in a shop, but not to stop the shop from playing the music. Copyright's purpose is to promote participation in culture: where refuseniks subvert that goal, their copyrights should be limited.

This is just a partial list, and it may strike you as radical. But before you dismiss it, consider this: most copyright systems are supposed to work this way in theory. But between corporate bullies who like to assert that "all rights reserved" means that no one is allowed to do anything without permission, and personal theories of what copyright means based on half-remembered lectures from the company lawyer, we treat copyright as absolute. And when we do, we turn a system with a real purpose (providing a framework for participants in creative businesses) into a caricature of itself, one that no one can respect.

Firefox isn't supporting the H.264 video standard because it's patented and the patent owners want fees: it's not free. But if Google and YouTube make it ubiquitous, will users have a real choice? Should they care?

YouTube has recently announced an experimental HTML5 player that uses the H.264 codec for video instead of a format based on Adobe Flash. You might think that would be applauded as a move towards open standards, but as I noted briefly last week, the new system works with Google Chrome and Apple Safari browsers, but not Mozilla's Firefox. It doesn't support H.264.

This is a critical issue for Mozilla, because it risks losing market share. If users find they can play YouTube videos using Chrome or Safari but they won't play in Firefox, some users are going to switch browsers.

Mozilla's problem is that H.264 is encumbered by patents: it's not a royalty-free format. And according to Robert O'Callahan in a Saturday blog post on Video, Freedom And Mozilla (with the rider that it's "nothing but my own opinion as a developer of video-related Mozilla code!"), licensing the patents "would violate principles of free software that we strongly believe in." He says:

"Users just want video to work. You Mozilla people are such idealists! Yes, that is the reason for Mozilla to exist. Anyway, in the short term, our users probably won't be affected much since Flash fallback will still work. In the long term, I think freedom will ultimately benefit users (not just Firefox users, but all users)."

The same day, Mike Shaver, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, explained why Mozilla doesn't license the H.264 codec, and his post included the following:

"Mozilla has decided differently, in part because there is no apparent means for us to license H.264 under terms that would cover other users of our technology, such as Linux distributors, or people in affiliated projects like Wikimedia or the Participatory Culture Foundation. Even if we were to pay the $5,000,000 annual licensing cost for H.264, and we were to not care about the spectre of license fees for internet distribution of encoded content, or about content and tool creators, downstream projects would be no better off."

As Shaver points out, that kind of fee would have made the success of the web impossible. Mozilla would never have got going if it had had to pay $5m or so to use HTML, CSS, JavaScript and similar technologies.

The web has had to cope with patented technologies before. The main examples are the GIF image file format and the MP3 music file format, both of which became ubiquitous. These were discussed by Christopher Blizzard, Mozilla's Open Source Evangelist, in a long post: HTML5 video and H.264 what history tells us and why we're standing with the web.

After GIF became popular, Blizzard says "Unisys was asking some web site owners $5,000-$7,500 to able to use GIFs on their sites." He says: "We're looking at the same situation with H.264, except at a far larger scale."

MP3 was also liberally licensed in its early days (indeed, many people thought it was unlicensed), but again, there was an effort to monetise it as it became ubiquitous. Today, says Blizzard:

"If you look at the public published rates for a couple of the MP3 licensors (and there are more than just two) someone who wanted to use it would be looking at a royalty rate of about $1/downloaded unit. So if you were doing, say, two million downloads a day you would be looking at about $2,000,000 per day just to have permission from those companies to include an MP3 decoder. Could you negotiate a lower rate? Probably. But that gives you a sense of the scale if you're a small provider in a world where getting started on the web is hard and you don't have much negotiating power."

It looks as though H.264 is developing in a similar way. And the more widespread it becomes, the more power the patent-owners will have to extract money from suppliers who use it.

Free software and open source supporters will, of course, say that all this is unnecessary: YouTube should simply use the Ogg/Theora codec that offers comparable quality to H.264 (it might be worse, but not a lot worse). And as user Underhill comments on O'Callahan's post: "there is a pretty huge practical difference between 'Someone might have patents on Theora that we don't know about, and might sue' and 'MPEG-LA has patents on H.264 and *will* sue'."

There's a petition to get YouTube to support Ogg/Theora at
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/oggandyoutube/

Because Google dominates the web, and YouTube dominates web video, it looks as though the decision to use H.264 will mean we all end up using it whether we like it or not. That might not be the case. Blizzard says:

"I, like many others, have reason to believe that H.264 will not be Google's final choice. There's good reason to believe this: they are purchasing On2. On2 has technologies that are supposed to be better than H.264. If Google owns the rights to those technologies they are very likely to use them on their properties to promote them and are also likely to license them in a web-friendly (ie royalty-free) fashion. Google actually has a decent history of doing this."

Web video has never really been open, unencumbered and free. We've had Real Networks RM format, Apple's QuickTime, Microsoft's Windows Media Video (now standardised as VC-1), the DivX and XviD codecs, and Adobe Flash among others. There might never be one open standard, simply because some content owners will want to include DRM (Digital Rights Management) copy restrictions.

However, the web would benefit from having an open, unencumbered and free video format that enabled HTML programmers to include a video as easily as they now include a headline or a photo, wouldn't it? How do we get to that?

Organisational inertia means we're saddled with an ageing, vulnerable browser across our hospitals and key government departments. That's not good

Don't worry, said Microsoft a few days ago: the zero-day vulnerability that Chinese hackers exploited to infiltrate Google's network only affects Internet Explorer 6 (released in 2000) running on Windows XP (released in 2001).

The implication being that nobody uses that still, do they? Ed Bott, who has forgotten more about Microsoft than many people know, says in a vehement blogpost at ZDNet that:

"Any IT professional who is still allowing IE6 to be used in a corporate setting is guilty of malpractice. Think that judgment is too harsh? Ask the security experts at Google, Adobe, and dozens of other large corporations that are cleaning up the mess from a wave of targeted attacks that allowed source code and confidential data to fall into the hands of well-organized intruders. The entry point? According to Microsoft, it's IE6."

By Bott's measure, we'd have to conclude that there's a lot of malpractice going on in UK government. More than 750,000 workstations in the NHS and 500,000 in the Department of Work and Pensions use exactly that combination. (See the comment here from user "limbo".) The DWP installation of IE6/XP in 2002/3 took a total of three years, he suggests.

In fact it is still a requirement of any new web application being deployed in the NHS that it works on IE6/XP. You can see the 2008 machine requirements for the Primary Care Trust Prescription services report deployment, for example, which specifies machines that these days you'd have trouble finding outside eBay:

Client Machine Requirements for Report Deployment:

Windows: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5, 6.0; Netscape Navigator 4.7, 6.2; Acrobat Reader 3.0, 4.05, 5.0 (If PDF viewing/printing is required)

Mac OS: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, Netscape Navigator 6.2, Acrobat Reader 3.0, 4.05, 5.0 (If PDF viewing/printing is required)

OS/2: Netscape Navigator 4.61, Acrobat Reader 3.0 (If PDF viewing/printing is required)

Solaris: Netscape Navigator 6.2, Acrobat Reader 3.0, 4.0 (If PDF viewing/printing is required)

A year ago, Microsoft itself posted an NHS advisory recognising the problems around backwards compatibility with IE6, and noting that virtual machines (VMs) could do the job on newer machines, by hosting an instance of IE6/XP.

Neil Slater, who wrote the note, commented that he knew

"that the [NHS] IM&T Tools Project needs to remain focussed on the challenges you are facing today. One of these challenges is applications that require Internet Explorer 6 (IE6)."

He continues:

"Incompatibility of applications with Internet Explorer 7 (and soon 8) has been a much discussed problem for NHS Trusts planning upgrades to Windows Vista. Testing and migrating applications can be time consuming, and meanwhile users are unable to take advantage of the new capabilities and enhancements offered by the new OS. By delivering applications in a Virtual PC that runs Windows XP and IE6, IM&T teams can remove the barriers to OS upgrades. If you have an application that requires IE6, please get in touch. Whether it is a widely-deployed national application or a bespoke Trust-specific application, I would like to hear from you."

It's organisational inertia like this which is really dangerous. It's difficult enough of course to get the vast mass of people to upgrade their browsers; even more so to change their browsers to a different one. Yet the indications are that a significant proportion of individuals really do take an interest in what browser they're using: how else to explain that Firefox now looks like the most popular individual browser?

Part of the incentive for those upgrades must be personal security: Internet Explorer has had so many well-documented exploits targeting it that eventually the message permeates through to individuals.

The irony is that organisations like the NHS and DWP and all sorts of other government departments control personal information that is truly valuable, connected by systems which have woeful security holes. It's very easy to argue (and I'm sure that someone will) that the vast majority of those NHS and DWP workstations are not connected to the internet, and so don't face the same threats that you and I browsing the web would.

While that's true, it overlooks the point: it only takes one of those systems to be connected to the net, or to be forwarded an infected attachment over the intranet from someone perhaps on a completely safe machine and the entire network is, potentially, compromised. (A scenario like that is highly likely to have been the modus operandi at Google.)

The key question is, how do you solve that problem? How do you ensure that you won't be tied to outdated browsers and operating systems? Quite simple: write to web standards. Then all you need to do is upgrade (or move) to a browser that supports those standards.

And that's where the failing was when the NHS specification was written. In 2000, there were plenty of web standards around; IE6 didn't meet all of them. But because the NHS was a huge project, and the government wanted to use Microsoft, it went with IE6.

Short-term gain, long-term problem. Now we have to wonder if our medical records and national insurance data are safe against malware-driven intrusion on computers that use a decade-old browser which wasn't built for the hostile environment that the web has become.

Microsoft could make out that IE6/XP is the only system at risk (though it is now patching all versions of IE and Windows against the vulnerability - including a warning for the NHS). Unfortunately that "only" system turns out to be rather widely used.

It's ironic that this has happened in the week of the official launch of data.gov.uk which is a browser- and platform-independent approach to using all the (non-personal) data that the government has got squirreled away, and is now being encouraged to open up. Yesterday, the civil servants who've worked so hard at the launch of that site, who I discussed this issue with, were covering their faces in horror at the thought of it.

But then a ray of light dawned. "I know!" said one. "We'll replace them all with modern browsers running HTML5!"

Well, we can hope. In the meantime, let's hope that Chinese hackers just don't think our health records or pension or national insurance details are that interesting. Fingers crossed.

A day after the launch of the data.gov.uk webstie, the government has ruled out supplying postcode data to developers

Web developers have cried foul after the government appeared to rule out the possibility of a free copy of the Postcode Address File (PAF) which contains geographical data about the locations of every Royal Mail delivery address in the UK being made available to non-profit and community websites.

Coming the day after the launch of data.gov.uk, a website which brings together more than 2,500 datasets from across central government for unrestricted reuse including commercial exploitation disappointed developers have said that the rejection looks like "it's back to government business as normal".

Although Gordon Brown has pushed through a scheme which will make some Ordnance Survey mapping data free from April, postcode data has been harder to come by. The release of that would have to be approved by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, headed by Lord Mandelson.

For now that seems to have been turned down. In a response to a petition lodged with the No.10 website which said that "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to encourage the Royal Mail to offer a free postcode database to non-profit and community websites" the government has passed the buck,, saying that deciding whether a copy of the PAF is provided under such terms is down to the Royal Mail and the postal regulator Postcomm.

"As access to the PAF is governed under a condition of licence, Postcomm monitors its practice. Royal Mail's licence obliges the company to make access to the PAF available on reasonable terms," says No.10. "Postcomm allows the company to make a reasonable specified profit margin and monitors its accounts."

In 2005-06, the latest year for which figures have been made available, sales of PAF generated about 18m and a profit of less than 2m.

The PAF or its simpler version, PostZon, which has geographical details for the UK's 18m are frequently used by web services to provide location-based information about users' surroundings. Last September the PostZon file was leaked on Wikileaks but developers shunned it on the basis that they could be prosecuted for using it without a licence.

Harry Metcalfe, a web developer who attended the launch of data.gov.uk and who has also previously built applications that used data derived from PAF and received a lawyers' letter from the company telling his company to cease and desist said the government's approach to PAF and postcode data was outdated.

On the blog for the ernestmarples site which was sued by RM - he wrote:

"The problem is that the licence was formed to suit industry. To suit people who resell PAF data, and who use it to save money and do business. And that's fine I have no problem with industry, commercialism or using public data to make a profit."

"But this approach belongs to a different age. One where the only people who needed postcode data were insurance and fulfilment companies. Where postcode data was abstruse and obscure. We're not in that age any more."

But there are signs that the PAF's elusive paywall will not last for long. Nigel Shadbolt, professor of computer science at Southampton University who together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee was instrumental in opening up government data for the new data.gov.uk website, tweeted that there is "Still much to do" upon seeing the failure of the petition.

Shadbolt and Berners-Lee have been making the case inside government since June last year that data collected by government-owned bodies has in effect been paid for already by the public - and that releasing it to them enhances the economic benefits and opportunities far more than any monetising by government itself.

The No.10 response to the petition notes that the government is the only shareholder in RM, and notes that it maintains an "arms-length" relationship. But it then recognises the potential usefulness of the PAF:

"The Postcode Address File (PAF) dataset was designed and engineered by Royal Mail and is owned and managed by the company as a commercial asset of the business (containing around 29 million addresses in the UK). Royal Mail developed the PAF with the primary purpose to aid the efficient delivery of mail, though over the years the PAF has come to be used for a number of purposes other than the postal purpose for which it is designed and was established. Indeed, many organisations, including new postal operators, banks, insurance companies and others offering to deliver goods to your door, use the information held on the database. The PAF is also used in other business processes, including mailing list "cleaning", anti-fraud activities and various customer services. "

It adds that

"Royal Mail invests significantly in collating and maintaining the Postcode Address File (PAF) and this cost is recovered through an independently regulated licensing arrangement. It would of course be very time-consuming and costly for anyone to try to replicate the list, so Royal Mail licenses PAF data, for a fee, allowing others to use it. "

However figures for the precise amount of investment made by RM in the maintenance of PAF are notoriously difficult to find.

There is understood to be some resistance within government to Berners-Lee and Shadbolt's manifesto - which mirrors that of the Free Our Data campaign run by Guardian Technology since March 2006, arguing that government-collected datasets including those of government-owned organisations like Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey should be made available for free to all users.

Even with Royal Mail it seems that the PAF's licensing is a problem. As a commenter called Chloe points out in a comment to one of Tom Watson MP's posts about RM and PAF, "I work for royal mail and i know my managers use google to lookup incomplete addresses and not the royal mails own software because it is more accurate and up to date and does not have to be licensed to each computer in their office."

Overweight and over here not one for the veggie jogger, then

The last time I drove a Dodge was on holiday in France last year. It was the usual arrangement. You order a Renault Espace online and then you get what you're given at the airport. And what we were given was a Dodge Caravan, a real tanker of machine that was roughly 3mm narrower than the car park exit.

I'm not sure my feelings towards that Dodge ever recovered from the 48 manoeuvres it took to get out of the car park. Even on the open road, amid the rugged terrain and panoramic views of Provence, it seemed needlessly large and conspicuously overbearing. I felt automotively obese. I felt, in a word, American.

The Dodge Journey 2.0 CRD is also not a small car. In this respect it is not alone. There are plenty of non-small cars on British roads. But few make quite so much a spectacle of their size as the Dodge. Everything about it, from its 19-inch wheels to its chunky bonnet, seems to suggest an external vista of, say, Idaho, rather than, for example, Islington.

But suggest is the operative word here because, like an increasing number of cars, the Journey isn't really what it seems. It's a mock 4x4, a plastic cowboy, a seven-seat estate car pretending to be a pumped-up SUV. Why anyone would want to convey that sort of excess at this moment in history without actually possessing it is a question the Dodge Journey never begins to answer.

It's certainly not for the smoothness of the diesel engine. It sounds like a faulty tractor. There's plenty of space, at least in the three rows of seats. But if the back row isn't folded down, the boot becomes less a storage facility than a decorative gesture.

The interior spec is an improvement on the Caravan, although it's fair to say that I've been in public phone boxes with plusher fixtures and fittings than the Caravan. There's nothing that looks cheap or nasty in the Journey. But neither does it reach a level of comfort that compensates for its all-round heaviness.

Nor is it a speed monster. At between 60mph and 80mph on the motorway, it works just fine. In other places, and at other speeds, it's less than a pleasure. So what's the attraction?

You could say flexibility the middle row of seats is adjustable though that's not the word that comes to mind when driving the car. No, the answer must be its supersize quality, the appeal of unnecessary largeness in itself.

It's a car for the person whose instinct is always to reply in the affirmative to the inquiry, "Do you want extra fries with that?" Or, to put it another way, the Dodge Journey is not what your average jogging vegetarian is likely to drive. And perhaps that's where its true appeal lies.

25,000 pages posted online show Tory leader followed crash diet before election, genesis of 'no such thing as society' and how Denis missed dinner with his chums

Her fondness for whisky is well known, as is her ability to get by on as little as four hours sleep a night. But an even more unusual aspect of Margaret Thatcher's lifestyle is revealed today: the Tory leader steeled herself for the 1979 general election with a crash diet that featured no fewer than 28 eggs a week.

The two-week high-protein diet included one day - Thursdays - on which eggs were on the menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The only respite she was allowed in this grapefruit and black coffee, steak and lettuce diet was a glass of whisky "when meat is eaten". Otherwise it was "no alcohol".

The impact of such a diet on her temperament, especially when combined with her famed lack of sleep, can only be guessed at. But the ticks she made against each ingredient on her personal diet sheet seems to indicate that she followed the Mayo Clinic regime well-known for rapid weight loss rigorously.

The diet plan was tucked into the cover flap of her 1979 Economist pocket diary which is among her personal papers released today.

The 1979 files from Thatcher's Downing Street political and press offices also reveal that even before she recited the St Francis of Assisi prayer on the steps of No 10 she was telling an American management consultant: "I shall have to take most of the major decisions myself."

They confirm that she regarded her first cabinet as a well-balanced government that included some "fervent believers in the almost pure political belief". They were "balanced out" with others "not for me, but to give a certain confidence that one is determined to take the middle ground," she told the newly elected Canadian prime minister, Joe Clark.

The papers also show that her 1987 "no such thing as society" remark, which for many critics defined the immoral truth of Thatcherism, was not off the cuff but was her view as early as 1979.

In a two-page personal credo for inclusion but never used in her October 1979 conference speech, Thoughts on the Moral Case, she echoes the sentiment: "Morality is personal. There is no such thing as collective conscience, collective kindness, collective gentleness, collective freedom. To talk of social justice, social responsibility, a new world order, may be easy and make us feel good, but it does not absolve each of us from personal responsibility."

This passage goes further when she looks forward to the creation of what she calls the New Patriotism. She writes: "When we have succeeded with a nation of people who take personal responsibility then we shall have, and be entitled to have, The New Patriotism."

This appears to have been too strong a sentiment even for her speechwriters and did not make it into the speech.

The 25,000 pages of her personal papers and those of her press secretary, Bernard Ingham, and policy adviser, Sir John Hoskyns, are being put online today by the Margaret Thatcher Foundation in one of the most ambitious projects of its kind.

Given the later civil war between Sir Alan Walters, her economics adviser, and Nigel Lawson, it is interesting to find that she initially wanted to establish a Gordon Brown-style Council of Economic Advisers, but this came to nothing in the face of Treasury hostility.

She tried to set up a small army of "irregular advisers" but told the US management consultant Alcon Copisarow in 1977: "It is most important that we get the structure and strategy right and I have already come to the conclusion that I shall have to take most of the major decisions myself. It is therefore vital that I also arrange to keep in touch with a number of key figures in the 'outside' world."

Michael Heseltine caused Thatcher trouble from the off. Her handwritten notes for the first cabinet confirm that she wanted to put him in the energy department, but he objected at the last moment and swapped jobs with David Howell at environment.

Letters of congratulation poured in from unexpected sources. It is a surprise to see Peter Sellers and Eric Morecambe alongside the Daily Mail's David English and the Sun's Larry Lamb. Harvey Thomas, who cultivated celebrities on her behalf, particulary asked for thank you letters to be sent to BBC figures including DJ Pete Murray and sports commentators Peter Lorenzo and Ron Pickering all "staunch Conservatives" for their help in opening doors to the likes of Bobby Moore, Barbara Windsor and Petula Clark.

But one figure refused to get too excited about it all. Denis Thatcher did not always find attending his wife's engagements too much of a joy. "Another dreaded State Banquet I'm afraid," the Diary Secretary informed him. "1. J. C. What I do for the Party! I have entered and will show up. 2. The same evening I was going to attend probably the best Rugby Football Dinner this year, namely the Centenary Dinner of the Middlesex RFU. All me chums will be there! D."

See the papers at: margaretthatcher.org

The Sixty One

The Sixty One is a music exploration site with an unusual but beautiful interface. Without much hand-holding, you're invited to enjoy new music including some free downloads while perusing full-page pictures, info boxes and slick graphics; some straightforward interactive touches also make an interesting departure from standard music blog layouts. Although it's mainly built around unknown US college acts, dig around to find tracks by the Killers and Portishead, as well as a band who hold the world record for the most crumpets eaten at a live concert.

Kid Casting

You know when a movie has a flashback scene and you get to see the character as a child? Well, that's what this website has dedicated itself to documenting, with hundreds of side-by-side screen grabs of the adult and flashback kid versions. Great fun especially if the film stars Woody Allen, whose gawky alter egos are boss-eyed, where everyone else's are cuter mini lookalikes. Some kids reappear several times; a young man called Troy Gentile has a permanent gig as Jack Black's younger self. Others eclipsed the careers of the main actors (Dakota Fanning played a miniature Reese Witherspoon in her first movie). But for many, roles like 30 seconds as a 12-year-old Brad Pitt will remain career peaks.

BLOG ROLL: LOST

Dark UFO

Theories, spoilers and Nike's Dharma trainers.

Lost media

The Lost cast's chatshow appearances on one site.

The Tail Section

Sayid's best moments, 42 signs you're addicted to Lost and episode recaps.

Daily Lost News

The Flight 815 crash in real time and Lost re-enacted by an Italian family.

Lost Initiative

Sky's site with cast interviews, clues, chat and Iain Lee's weekly podcast.

Fuck Yeah Lost

Fan videos, bento boxes and updates on the producers' Twitter activity.

Lost Books

Tracking every literary reference from Flannery O'Connor to Dostoevsky.

Lost ROFL

Childish humour applied to the sci-fi soap.

Lost in Lost

The Guardian's Lost blog.

WHAT WE LEARNED ON THE WEB THIS WEEK

A deeper understanding of the ampersand

The Lady Gaga is edible

Five ways to be boring on Second Life

What's been on Bill Gates's mind

Some hairstyles Indian men should avoid

James Joyce is now available in cartoon format

Life is hard for a man with tiny hands

How to make your own Star Trek phaser

The irresistible science of Ke$ha

When it's OK to eat stuff you've dropped on the floor

Communications technology, books and 'convergence and bizarre associations'

A Better Pencil, by Dennis Baron (Oxford, 13.99)

Computers are destroying the written word and generating a cultural tsunami of incivility and illiteracy, moan today's bookish technophobes; yet, as linguist Baron's highly enjoyable book shows, such alarm has greeted every new communications technology in history. Writing was going to destroy people's memories; printed books were more superficial than inscribed parchment; pencils with rubbers on the end were going to rot schoolchildren's minds because they would no longer need to think before scribbling; typewriters were going to leach all the humanity from letters. Thoreau was sceptical of the newfangled telegraph, though he was himself a communications-technology entrepreneur, being in the pencil-manufacturing business.

Baron's argument ranges from the Unabomber ("It would be difficult to argue that one goal of the do-it- yourself bomber is to restore craft, artistry, and human dignity to the manufacture of explosives") to the surprisingly difficult task of writing on clay tablets, and the difficulties of early typewriters or the first computer word-processing programs. He writes with infectious curiosity and wit, and a  confidence that writing is in no danger from modern gadgets: most of what we do on them, after all, is still "word-processing".

The Case for Books, by Robert Darnton (PublicAffairs, 13.99)

Computers may not be threatening writing, but are they threatening reading? In a series of incisive articles for the New York Review of Books, reproduced here, book historian Robert Darnton has limned the potential dangers to scholarship of the Google Book Search project. It has sloppy quality control ("Google employs thousands of engineers but, as far as I know, not a single bibliographer"), and will be an unchallengeable monopoly that could, if it wanted, raise prices sharply.

Like any bibliophile, Darnton finds the prospect of a universal digital library appealing; but physical libraries, he argues, will not be made obsolete. The volume also includes essays in book history: pieces on commonplace books, the compositing of Shakespeare's plays, or Voltaire's deal-making with pirate publishers. Several of Dennis Baron's lessons are echoed here: there was never such thing as a fixed, authoritative text; the physicality of books enables serendipitous discovery; and, in a rather beautifully huffy formulation, "computerised texts communicate a specious mastery over space and time". For a moment, luxuriance in specious masteries sounded like a fine description of our whole age.

Everything that Rises, by Lawrence Weschler (Atlantic, 15.99)

This is one book that revels in its physicality: confidently square and printed on semi-glossy paper, the better to display the images from painting, photography, graphic art and reportage between which the author argues for "convergence, bizarre associations, eerie rhymes, whispered recollections", constructing a kind of benign conspiriology of the image. A skyline of New York City post-9/11 is placed atop Vermeer's View of Delft; Monica Lewinsky is inserted into the Mona Lisa; and the facial similarity between Newt Ging rich and Slobodan Milosevic prompts a comparison between their rhetorical behaviour: "fundamentalist, peremptory, and intolerant". The book's governing idea that any connection, no matter how apparently arcane or arbitrary, may conceal some truth occasionally leads Weschler into mere juxtaposition, but the cumulative effect is mesmerising. By the end I was looking at my surroundings with a newly suspicious eye.

Your coverage of the iPad launch (28 January) had plenty about Apple's plan to corner the ebook market, and a couple of references to the educational sector; but no mention of the needs of the critical reader. Will the iPad let you underline sections and make notes in the margins? That would be fantastic. And what about that facility supplied to generations of teenage boys by well-thumbed library books to fall open at the steamy bits?

Chris Marshall

Droitwich, Worcestershire

Is it me or does Steve Bell's depiction of Tony Blair resemble Steve Jobs (If , 28 January)? Are we about to see the announcement of the iWar?

George Tripp

Northampton

Army Of Two: 40th Day, PS3, PSP, Xbox 360 (reviewed)

Army Of Two told the story of two boorish mercenaries whose ill-judged smack talk and clumsy co-operative gameplay made the prospect of a sequel questionable. And here it is. Fortunately for the rematch, our two gunmen-for-hire are now significantly more affable as they go about wiping out legions of uniformed terrorists of uncertain denomination, and while it's still a game designed to be played alongside a fellow human, fighting with an AI chum is rarely too frustrating. Other new features include the ability to mock surrender or feign your own death under fire, springing up when your enemies turn their backs. You also now have the option of saving civilians by taking their highest ranking captor hostage. While its team tactics are almost always impractical to use in the heat of a firefight, its enjoyably silly premise and the sight of Shanghai exploding make its flyweight thrills worth persevering with. EA, 29.99- 49.99

Dante's Inferno, PS3, PSP, Xbox 360 (reviewed)

A little like EA's take on The Godfather II, Dante's Inferno loses a little gravitas in translation from cultural icon to hack'n'slash hokum. That means endless gratuitous gore and nudity, with larger foes often dispatched via eye sockets or from the inside out, which, while barely interactive (finishing moves are executed by pressing buttons in sequence, rhythm action game-style), certainly add to the grisly spectacle. Whether you choose to punish or redeem enemies adds points to your hellish or holy powers that evolve steadily over the course of the game, but its fights lack the flow or spectacle of Darksiders, let alone the towering artistry of Bayonetta, compared to which this game is disappointingly retrograde and prosaic. Its real inspiration, though, comes from God Of War, and as second rate rip-offs go, this couldn't be worse timed the third instalment of the real thing arrives on PlayStation 3 in March.

EA, 29.99- 49.99

Games news: Halo Reach

News is finally starting to seep out about what developer Bungie promises will be its final Halo title, and since this is the second instalment since Halo 3 "finished the fight", it may be best to leave that claim to the court of history. Pre-launch hype cynicism apart, the series is Microsoft's most enduring on Xbox and a staggeringly good set of games. Reach is a prequel to the original Halo, telling the story of the fall of an Earth colony and the death of its 700 million inhabitants, so you can probably rule out a diversion into slapstick comedy. What is being promised is a more visceral set of weapons, new types of enemy and a whole squad of team-mates wearing the game's famous, energy-shielded Spartan Armour, rather than just the lonely Master Chief. Not expected until autumn, this is already shaping up to the biggest game of 2010.

Lucy Mangan on the people under the media microscope

Principle witness

Elizabeth Wilmshurst

Obviously it was luxury-luggage shiller and former PM Tony Blair's big day yesterday, but as his smooth, complacent face fills our screens and pages once again like an unwanted bladder of lard, let us remember the beautiful day that the former deputy legal adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (below) arrived and gave her evidence.

After the arse-covering testimony of Jack Straw, Alastair Campbell and various other members of the Illegal Warmongers Collective, Wilmshurst who resigned just before the war on the grounds that it was, uh, illegal explained how, what, why and where they were wrong. And then left. Took an hour. Brilliant. Such a pity it's always the principled that resign on principle.

The creator

Steve Jobs

And lo, he did say unto his Appostles, "And I give to you the iPad that is like an iPhone that begat a bigger iPhone." And the Appostles did say, "Yea, verily, that is real cool-looking, O Holy Not-Quite-Redeemer of the Turtleneck, but what can it do that the iPhone can't?". And the Turtleneck did say, "It can be bigger and thou can use it a bit like a notebook and also to keep thy head dry when it rains." And the Appostles did say "You're right. Where can I get one? Despite it also sounding a bit like a sanitary towel?"

All except Thomas, who already had a notebook and pockets too small for a giant phone, and did secretly think the whole thing was a bit "meh" and spake unto himself thus: "I think I'll just wait for a bit and see if Our Lord of the Funkification of Technology has truly added any value to what has gone before." So endeth the lesson if not, alas, the coverage.

Portmant-over

Brangelina

Can it be? Can it be that after a mere four years and 800 children together the world's most pleasing portmanteau is no more? Yes, it can. Or, maybe, no it can't. One side says Angelina has been having an affair, yeah, with her new voice coach and that was just, like, too much for Brad, OK, because he was already, like, sick of her batshit craziness and wants to get out now before she tries to adopt Haiti.

The other side says it's all been a terrible misunderstanding based on them being spotted in a lawyer's office a few weeks ago where they were working out a post-nup pre-nup just in case they ever split up. You see? My goodness, but life gets complicated sometimes. I hope somebody somewhere is working on rendering Grazia in a pill form that we can just pop at breakfast and then get on with our days.

What they said

Vinnie Jones to Alex Reid

"There should be a booth on every corner where you can get a martini and a medal."

Martin Amis extols the virtues of euthanasia for the elderly. Martin Amis is 60 years old and might want to watch himself.

"It's just a slice of cheese."

Leeuwarden district court comes down on the side of a McDonald's employee fired for adding said foodstuff without charge to a colleague's meal after he changed his order from an ordinary hamburger. A written warning should apparently have sufficed.

"A virus that swept the world."

Singer Elaine Paige's opinion of her most famous fan, Susan Boyle. True, darling, but graceless, you know? Just a tad.

"I admire the wife and mother that she is and, at the same time, this glamorous, beautiful businesswoman. I aspire to be like her some day."

Eva Longoria on Victoria Beckham. Don't all be sick on your shoes at once, please.

What we've learned

The first commercial crop of olives grown in the UK has gone on sale

Eight out of 10 of the dirtiest hotels in Europe are in England

The wealth gap between rich and poor in the UK is wider than it has been since the war

The dinosaur sinosauropteryx was ginger coloured

and what we haven't

Whether he was bullied in the dinosaur playground

A change of heart has helped Tiscali customers left worse off after merger with TalkTalk. Miles Brignall reports

The home phone and broadband supplier TalkTalk has been forced into a U-turn after telling customers of the recently merged Tiscali that it would not be honouring contracts offered prior to the takeover.

As Guardian Money revealed shortly before Christmas, the merger of the broadband and phone giants, originally announced in May 2009, has resulted in a big price increase for some Tiscali customers pushed on to the higher TalkTalk tariffs. Some broadband-only customers face costs rising from 14.99 to 19.99 a month.

It was initially thought most of those affected were out of contract. However, in the past two weeks, TalkTalk has been telling customers who had recently signed new agreements it would not be honouring those struck with Tiscali salespeople even if it was just a few weeks before the known-about merger. Some say they were told by TalkTalk staff that the fact they had signed an 18-month contract at an agreed price was "meaningless" as they were TalkTalk customers now.

One such customer is new mum Sarah Gladwin. The bank manager, who lives in Richmond, Surrey, was contemplating leaving Tiscali and finding a better deal after reading our original article.

Out of contract and free to take her business elsewhere, she called the Tiscali sales team in late December and was offered line rental, broadband, and free calls in the evenings and at weekends its basic phone/internet package for a very attractive 12 a month, with the first three months free.

She had to sign up for 18 months. "I was very happy with the deal. Confirmation came by email the same day and later by post. Both stated that my Tiscali package had been successfully upgraded, as per my order. We received a new wireless router in about three days. All great, or so I thought."

A few days ago she received a letter welcoming her to TalkTalk and saying that, in future, she would be paying 18.50 a month. Other readers have contacted Money complaining about the same thing.

"Obviously, I didn't want to pay nearly 50% more, so I phoned them to say 'no thank you, we'll continue with our agreed contract made last month'. But the call centre did not understand. It offered me three months free after speaking to a 'supervisor'.

"I explained I already had an 18-month contract with three months free, and a cheaper monthly fee, but all she kept saying was 'we're Talk Talk now'. After 45 minutes, I gave up," says Gladwin. A second phone call elicited the same take or leave it response.

"How can you deal with a company that treats its customers in this way?" she says.

TalkTalk originally said it wanted to streamline its complicated range of tariffs down to one. "Our aim, at the end of this process, is to have one clearly understood set of prices. That will mean no one is paying more than the TalkTalk tariff and is fair to everyone," it said in December, seemingly unaware its colleagues at Tiscali were offering different deals to retain customers.

Consumer law expert Dr Christian Twigg-Flesner at the University of Hull says telecoms companies and financial services providers rely on "unilateral variation clauses" to allow them to vary prices in this way.

"Most of the banks have these in their terms to allow them to change interest rates and the like. However, in this case, customers might be able to argue the company was misrepresenting its offer.

"But, as a consumer, you can't force a company to honour a deal. Unfortunately, English law is reluctant to hold companies to contracts as long as they give the consumer the chance to opt out," he says.

After Money raised the issue with TalkTalk the company had a change of heart, and says it will now honour the contracts with Tiscali albeit with a rather complicated billing arrangement.

A spokesman says: "Customers who signed up with Tiscali or altered their package between September and December 2009 will be offered six months service at half price when they sign up to a new contract with TalkTalk. Those customers who want to stick with the original deal they signed, can do so. They will have to pay the TalkTalk tariff, but their account will be credited, up-front, with the difference, meaning they will pay nothing for the first few months."

He explained the company's recent downturn in customer service on the poor weather, during which just 25% of its staff were able to get to work at its Preston and Warrington centres.

"It caused us big problems in terms of answering calls and it came at the worst time, but we are now back to normal," he says.

Meanwhile, the regulator Ofcom may have had a hand in the about- turn.

"Ofcom is aware of this issue; we are monitoring complaints and we are in touch with TalkTalk," it says.