Google, which has a 30% market share of Chinese search traffic, given renewal despite recent strained relations

China has renewed Google's licence to operate in the country, the search giant announced today.

Writing on the company blog, chief legal officer David Drummond said: "We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China."

Google which has a 30% market share of Chinese search traffic recently began directing Google.cn visitors to its uncensored Hong Kong site, saying the new approach ensured it stayed true to a commitment not to censor searches from internet users in China.

Relations with authorities in China have been strained since Google said it no longer wanted to cooperate with government internet censorship. The announcement was prompted by cyber attacks the company traced to China.

Google stunned markets and consumers in January when it warned it might quit the country, saying it would not provide the censored search results that China requires.

However, the Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said yesterday the company was confident of being granted an ICP licence extension.

Google is due to report its second-quarter financial results next week. Google's search business in China accounts for a tiny slice of the company's 15.82bn in annual revenue. Analysts' estimates of Google's annual revenues in China range from $300m to $600m, but long-term growth prospects are key.

There was no immediate word from China's Information Ministry about the renewal.

Ministers to examine ideas sent to social networking site before making decisions over further cuts to public spending

The government has struck a deal with Facebook to field ideas from the public on further state spending cuts, it emerged today.

Facebook's "spending challenge channel" is an expansion of the social networking site's "Democracy UK" pages, set up during the run-up to the general election, and will be used to take suggestions from the public for saving money ahead of the spending review.

The chancellor, George Osborne, has already asked public sector workers for their views on cuts, to the fury of one trade union. The government claims the exercise has resulted in 60,000 suggestions being put forward in just two weeks.

Now, a call has been made to the wider public as "taxpayers and users of services" to submit and vote on ideas for where cuts can be made.

To complement the online consultation exercise, ministers will meet the public to hear views and suggestions first hand. Writing in today's Sun, Osborne urged readers as taxpayers to come up with ideas between now and the end of August to help the government cut the deficit.

"People know this new coalition government has got to deal with the debt we've inherited if Britain is to avoid economic disaster. That's what the Budget was all about. And as every family knows, when you've got less money you have to spend it better .That means getting your ideas."

He went on: "You pay the taxes that fund our public services, so you should also have a say on how we improve public services."

David Cameron said: "We are really excited about having Facebook involved in the spending challenge. There's enormous civic spirit in this country where people want to take control and do things in a different way. We are giving people an opportunity with Facebook and I am sure that they will take it."

Facebook says that more than 1 million people participated on the democracy page in election day polls. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said: "The government's willingness to reach out and engage with Facebook users is going to go a long way because I'm sure that all the people using Facebook in the UK have a lot of great ideas on how they could do this.

"It's really innovative to open up policy making and engage the public in this way to try and create more social change."

Osborne today published a sample of ideas put forward by public sector workers in the first phase of consultation. These include merging back-office services for public sector organisations, renegotiating government IT contracts, and switching off office computers over the weekend.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy says extra time needed to review what content should be mandatorily blocked

Australia has rowed back on plans to introduce a wide-ranging mandatory internet filtering system, with communications minister Stephen Conroy saying a further 12 months is needed to review what content should be blocked in the country.

Conroy announced plans in December that would force Australian internet service providers to ban access to any websites listed as "inappropriate." If implemented, the policy would make Australia one of the strictest internet regulators in the world.

The move which attracted widespread condemnation, not least from the majority of potentially affected ISPs, including Google and Yahoo has now been put on hold for another year. "Some sections of the community have expressed concern about whether the range of material included in the RC [restricted content] category... correctly reflects current community standards," Conroy said. "As the government's mandatory ISP filtering policy is underpinned by the strength of our classification system, the legal obligation to commence mandatory ISP filtering will not be imposed until the review is completed.

"The public needs to have confidence that the URLs on the list, and the process by which they get there, is independent, rigorous, free from interference or influence and enables content and site owners access to appropriate review mechanisms."

The proposed filter would ban access to a regularly updated list of sites that include child pornography, sexual violence, and detailed instructions on crime, drug use and terrorist acts. Three of the country's largest telecommunications companies today said they would voluntarily implement a child pornography filter, a move that would take several months to put in place.

Karim Temsamani, managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, welcomed the review, but said concern remains about the plans. "Our primary concern had always been that the scope of the proposed filter is far too broad," Temsamani said in a statement. "It goes way beyong child sexual abuse material and would block access to important online information for all Australians."

Simon Sheikh, chief executive of online activist group GetUp!, told the Sydney Morning Herald: "A delay is not enough the government needs to announce that they will either scrap, or change the policy to an opt-in model, so that Australians themselves can judge how best to protect their children online.

"When it comes to protection of our children online we need investment in education, home-based filters and the federal police. These investments will better equip parents to protect their children at home, and better equip police to combat the issues at their source."

More than 127,000 people have signed up to a protest launched by group.

Jimmy Doherty tells us all about his life as a luddite who looks like a nerd

What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?
That's an easy one for me it's my iPhone. It allowes me to email and receive email wherever I am. You suddenly realise: how did I ever live without it? You can also listen to music with it and play games.

When was the last time you used it, and what for?
This morning to have a look at these questions.

What additional features would you add if you could?
A lie detector would be quite good that would be awesome.

Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time?
Only if people stop lying. But the phone? I hope not, because it's one of the great design classics.

What always frustrates you about technology in general?
There's always something new coming out. You buy something and then they launch a new, better model. They always get you hooked like that.

Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated?
Not really. The only thing I could think of is those hands-free kits. Very practical when you're driving, but I hate people walking down the street using them it looks like they're talking to themsevles, and it drives me nuts.

If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?
Read the instructions, which I never do. Or ask the wife, who always does read the instructions.

Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd?
I'm a luddite who looks like a nerd. Or should that be the other way around?

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
I try not to buy expensive kit because I lose it or break it! But I suppose my tractor was quite expensive. I bought a new one and had it sprayed Barbie pink. I bought it for my wife, but she never uses it because I'm always on it.

Mac or PC, and why?
Probably PC, because all the Mac owners say they're no good. And Mac owners all seem a bit smug.

Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download? What was your last purchase?
I love buying books, because there's something tangible about books. DVDs I buy, but music I download. The last DVD I bought was Zombieland.

Robot butlers a good idea or not?
As long as it came in a 4-by-4 verson, otherwise it would be useless on the farm.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
A litte personalised submarine, which would be perfect on holidays. Everyone should have one it beats snorkelling.

Watch Doherty's new BBC series, The Private Life of...

Three computer experts reveal how their office lives compare with the TV comedy

Wondered what the real-life counterparts of Jen, Moss and Roy make of Graham Linehan's much-loved sitcom? We asked three tech-heads to tell us what they think.

IT project manager Shaheen, 38, is married with two children and lives in Cheshire. Technical architect Harry, 34, is separated with two children and works in Greater Manchester. Account manager Bob, 31, works for a major IT outsourcing firm in Greater Manchester.

Do people like Moss, Jen and Roy really exist?

Shaheen: People like Jen exist there's one in our department, who was hired to translate between the geeks and the management but she doesn't have a clue what she's doing.

Harry: People like Moss and Roy exist less and less, because the competencies you need tend to mean you're multi-skilled, so you can't just ignore people and sit in front of a screen all day.

Bob: The Jen figures aren't exclusively female. There are plenty of men with top jobs in project managing who don't know the first thing about IT.

Can you spot IT people by their clothes?

Bob: Yes. One guy I work with has a utility belt. It's got his PDA, his personal GPS unit and multiple phones on it. He's got his pants dead short, and he never speaks to anyone.

Harry: T-shirts [Harry shows his Darth Vader T-shirt with the caption: "I Am Your Father"].

Shaheen: I think it's generally a guy thing. Though I have been known to wear the occasional rock T-shirt to the office.

Are IT people treated with contempt and hidden in a basement, as they are in the show?

Shaheen: When I've worked on site, IT people have a godlike status. I've had factory foreman shouting at staff, telling them what they can and can't do, based on my word and whim, so I've seen the opposite.

Harry: It's quite central to The IT Crowd that the department is stuffed away somewhere, and that isn't the way we work. Going back a few years, it was like that, and people used to complain that we were obnoxious, a bit prickly, difficult to talk to when they needed something sorted out. Now, it's moved, and it's very much integrated with the rest of the business.

Bob: More and more businesses are getting rid of their IT departments. It's all about self service now, and any technical needs are outsourced. In that respect, I think the show is documenting a dying culture. I think it was dying even when the show started.

Do IT people lack social skills?

Harry: There's quite a few stereotypical geeks in our department, but only one or two with no social skills.

Shaheen: One guy I worked with built a wall of box files around the edges of his desk so that people wouldn't look at him. I think IT does attract a few obsessive, slightly odd personalities, definitely.

Bob: Less and less, though what's happening to these people is perhaps a mystery. I think a lot of them have been forced to take on more business-focused roles.

Are IT people particularly into geeky pursuits?

Bob: There's people in the office who spend 20-30 hours a week on Warcraft. But I think you'd find people like that in the rest of the male population.

Harry: Guys on the coding team go home and work on open source stuff in their spare time, and I must confess, one of my hobbies is to build virtual machines when I'm not at work.

Shaheen: I think the only way I can relate to a lot of the stuff that goes on is that I'm into metal and rock that subculture is massive among IT types.

Does the IT sector respect diversity?

Bob: There is sexism in IT. There are very few women in technical roles.

Harry: Where I work, there is a representative number of ethnic minorities and two women on the configuration team.

Shaheen: I've sat in meetings where senior consultants said: "She's not going to do anything" and "She doesn't know about it." I took it at the time, because I was new, but sexism is a very real thing in IT.

Does the advice "turn it on and off" really work?

Bob: With surprising regularity. From an outsider's point of view, that is everything that we do.

Harry: It solves 80% of problems. You've got to know when to switch it on and off. Switch it off, wait 10 seconds, then switch it on, that's the trick.

Shaheen: It does, but IT people dress it up. They'll say, "Have you given it a service reboot?" There's quite a few euphemisms they've developed because it's often effective. Like a "power recycling", "refresh" and things like that.

Argentinian researchers claim to have hacked The Pirate Bay and downloaded the private data of more than 4 million users

A group of Argentinian researchers has reportedly compromised the Pirate Bay's database of more than 4 million email and IP addresses of registered users.

Ch Russ posted on the blog for the group, explaining that it took advantage of flaws in the security of the site through multiple SQL injections to download the information.

Surprisingly, the blogpost includes a comprehensive video explaining the process. The group believes it was acting with the best possible motives in gaining access to the site.

Ch said in the post: "What we have done, we did not do it with anger, or for commercial value. As always, we saw the change, the moment and decided to take it. The protocol or procedure done to achieve this wasn't anything out of the ordinary". How very noble.

No matter the nature of its content, gaining unauthorised access to a website and downloading confidential information is illegal in most countries. The group believes it was aiding the work of the authorities to curb illegal file sharing from the site, as well as proving what it considers to be the insecurity of The Pirate Bay. "We beleive [sic] that the people behind this comunity [sic] always acted with the local laws on their side, and so have we."

The MPAA and RIAA have notoriously battled to bring down the website as one of the main proponents of illegal file sharing. Whether the agencies will want to work with a group of unaffiliated hackers to further their goals is yet to be seen.

Despite this and many other attacks on the fabric of the site, it was announced earlier this week that the site may be soon hosted from inside the Swedish Parliament, under the auspices of the Pirate Party.

Number 'porting' must take place within one working day from April 2011, regulator rules

Mobile phone users in the UK will at last soon be able to transfer their phone number to another network within one working day.

Britain will come into line with European Union guidelines on the matter in April 2011, Ofcom ruled today, following several years of wrangling between the communications regulator and the mobile telecoms industry.

Currently a mobile operator is allowed to take two working days before allowing a departing customer to "port" their number to their new operator. Ofcom originally tried to bring this down to two hours, but lost a court challenge from Vodafone, O2 and Orange in 2008.

Ofcom has also decreed that the code required to switch provider and retain a number, called a PAC, should be issued to consumers immediately over the phone or within a maximum of two hours via text message. This will end the practice of some PACs being sent out by post, forcing customers to wait several days before changing to a new operator.

"Ensuring consumers can switch between communications providers by removing unnecessary barriers is one of Ofcom's priorities for 2010/11," said the regulator's chief executive, Ed Richards. "Being able to switch quickly and easily between mobile providers is an important part of healthy and effective competition."

But the decision was criticised by 3, the fourth-largest UK mobile operator. It is unhappy that the onus for moving the number still falls on the customer, rather than the operators involved, and accused Ofcom of failing UK consumers.

It said that the system of "recipient-led porting", where number transfers are handled by the new provider, was "the fundamental platform for choice and competition" in the mobile market. "Nowhere else in Europe is a consumer forced to ask permission to take their number with them when they choose a new operator," said a 3 spokesman. "The donor-led porting system that Ofcom proposes to keep makes it more difficult for customers."

But other operators argue that if consumers did not have to request the PAC themselves before swapping networks, they could fall victim to high-pressure sales tactics known as "slamming", where their mobile phone providers are summarily changed without their full consent.

The Flip range of camcorders puts 8GB of film time in your pocket. But where should you go to get the best price?

Video cameras have caught up with digital cameras when it comes to ease of use and reduced size, and the latest Flip range has taken amateur movie making by storm.

Fitting easily into your pocket or handbag and weighing only 170g, the miniature size does not impact on quality: the UltraHD range lets you shoot stunning 720p video that will look crisp and clear on your HDTV, even in low-light conditions.

There is a "flip out" USB arm that directly connects to your computer and instantly launches FlipShare. This software allows you to upload your footage instantly on to YouTube or MySpace. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface also offers organising, emailing and editing options covering everything from creating custom movies to sharing your favourite snapshots.

Below are the best prices available at the time of publishing for a black Flip Video Ultra High Definition Camcorder with 8GB Memory (RRP 159.99). It films approximately two hours of HD video, perfect to capture those great holiday moments. Readers who have found better deals should post the details below.

Online

Deltatronics is cheapest online charging 114.50 plus 4.50 postage, followed by Comet at 119.99 with free postage if you are prepared to wait around a week, otherwise postage varies between 5.82 and 7.78.

If your preference is for a white Flip camcorder then Amazon is charging 124.

In store

For those of you eager to take the camera away this weekend, then John Lewis is best priced at 149.95 with a two-year guarantee, followed by Argos at 152.39.

Cheaper alternative

If HD is not required and you are happy with 4GB of high-quality recording then the Flip Ultra (II) Camcorder at 89.99 plus postage from Misco.co.uk is a price-busting equivalent, or you could collect in store at Tesco (subject to availability) for 99.97.

Whichever version you choose make sure you register your Flip and enjoy 2 for 1 entry at some top UK attractions.

If you want to link the Flip to your television then buy an HDMI cable with a mini HDMI connector for 2.28.

The speed race, at least. Books are faster and 'more relaxing' to read, but iPads and Kindles are 'more satisfying', finds new study

E-book readers might be heralded as the future of literature but a new report shows that it's still quicker to read the old-fashioned print version of a book.

The study, by Jakob Nielsen from the Nielsen Norman Group, gave 24 people a short story by Ernest Hemingway to read chosen because "his work is pleasant and engaging to read, and yet not so complicated that it would be above the heads of users".

Each participant read their story using four different devices a printed book, a PC, an iPad and a Kindle. While on average the stories took 17 minutes and 20 seconds to read, the Kindle experience was 10.7% slower than print, and the iPad was 6.2% slower.

The readers were also asked to rate their satisfaction of the four experiences on a one-to-seven scale: the iPad was top at 5.8, followed by the Kindle at 5.7 and the printed book at 5.6. The PC came in last, with "an abysmal 3.6".

"They disliked that the iPad was so heavy and that the Kindle featured less-crisp, grey-on-grey letters. People also disliked the lack of true pagination and preferred the way the iPad (actually, the iBook app) indicated the amount of text left in a chapter," said Nielsen. He added that "less predictable" comments included participants saying that the book was "more relaxing" to use than the electronic devices. "And they felt uncomfortable with the PC because it reminded them of work."

We thought we'd celebrate the passing of this year's World Cup with a special mention of Paul, our favourite wiggly mollusc

With everyone desperately deciding who to back in the final stages of the 2010 World Cup, inspiration is coming from the heavens, papers, television and internet.

One sure source so far has been Paul, the psychic octopus. He has corrected guessed every Germany game's outcome, including their defeat. Predictions for Sunday's game will be on their way soon.

The iPad has been attracting attention as the 21st century alternative to the sketchbook and thanks to the twittering work of Stephen Fry, David Kassan has become an internet star. His painting of this fellow over a three-hour period is a combination of beauty, talent and extraordinary use of the device.

Guardian Viral Video Chart. Compiled by Unruly Media, edited by Sebastian E Payne

1. Oracle Paul 'Psychic' Octopus puts Spain, not Germany to WC final
Everyone's favourite cephalopod gets yet another prediction right

2. Finger Painting on the Apple iPad from the live model David Kassan
The level of detail and attention in this painting is absolutely stunning

3. Will It Blend? - Vuvuzela World Cup 2010
Would we not all love to do this to those blasted horns?

4. Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10
One of the most popular videos around this week, the rainbow managed to impress someone

5. Super Mario on Violin
Modern interpretation of a classic game, the response is stunning

6. Waterford United v Mervue United. Own Goal
Really, how did this happen? That's going to be painful for someone

7. Resource Furniture: Italian-Designed Space Saving Furniture
Sleek and chic, the Italians always manage to come up trumps with their designs

8. World's Largest Skateboard Disaster
That's a ramp not to cross at a high speed

9. Cardboard Warfare
It's been said before, some people have far too much time on their hands. An interesting way to pass the weekend

10. This drummer is the wrong gig
This fellow should be at the front with such flamboyant drumming skills

Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 15:00 on July 08 2010. The Weekly Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately two million blogs

Analogue sets are no longer available in British shops. Here's a glimpse back through the history of the cathode ray tube

Despite improved quality and more content, streaming television has yet to make it out of the study

In a bid to introduce it's content to a wider audience, YouTube has launched two new services to deliver video straight into the hands of viewers in the form of Leanback and the new YouTube Mobile site.

Following from the announcement of Google TV back in May, the launches from the internet's favourite video site come as no surprise. But where did we begin?

With the launch of YouTube in 2005, the video streaming phenomenon truly began and, for the first time, users could view clips of skateboarding dogs or cats falling about without the hassle of installing third party applications. Internet providers baulked at the increased strain on their capacity and rapidly started expanding their bandwidth to cope.

The launch of the BBC's iPlayer in 2007 upped the ante again, providing full length television shows any time of the day. Despite shows only being available for seven days after broadcasting, the service has been a tremendous success, with the BBC reporting more than 18 million users streaming videos each week.

The caveat is that you have to sit in front of your computer. Instead of lounging on the sofa to gaze at your 42in plasma screen, internet streaming entails perching in front of a considerably smaller screen, inevitably producing an inferior experience.

However, the push out of the study and into the living room has already begun iPlayer is available on many games consoles as well as numerous digital TV set-top boxes, of which the implementation works rather well. The golden magic box we are waiting for streaming music from Spotify and streaming television from YouTube and iPlayer has yet to appear.

The little-known Apple TV and SlingCatcher devices give us a glimpse at how these eventual devices may work.

Who wins out of the providers having new mediums to pump out content? The consumer of course. Instead of sitting through adverts and hours of irrelevant programming, on-demand television provides what you want, when you want.

The barrier of the personal computer still exists and the jump needs to be made for streaming to become a mainstream technology. Do you think online television streaming will reach the mainstream mindset any time soon? Will it rival the content of the main television channels?

There's a new layout, increased speed and plenty of new features to be found in the first beta of Firefox 4

The Mozilla Foundation has announced the first beta version of Firefox 4, the next generation of its cross-platform web browser.

Although there is some way to go until the final release, the beta is considered to be stable and safe enough for daily use.

Mozilla is aiming to engage up to 4 million users in an interactive process to shape the final release. Feedback opportunities are prominent in the user interface, with users encouraged to submit their thoughts to the developers.

The popular browser is undergoing many changes, both visible and under the hood. The Windows release has seen the most apparent refinements, with tabs moved above the address bar as well as a single Firefox button to replace the menu bar.

Universal changes include a Smart Location bar, updated add-ons manager, replacement of the bookmarks bar with a bookmarks button, support for high definition WebM video, extra privacy protection and crash protection against media plug ins.

For web developers, the main feature to embrace is the new HTML5 parser which has full support for drag and drop, audio, video, file handling, and in-line SVG and MathML support.

Taking the beta for a spin, one enhancement is immediately apparent the speed. Taking a leaf from the book of Chrome, the rendering of web pages is instantaneous and video sites such as YouTube load up in record time.

The beta does not include all the intended features of the final release the Mac and Linux releases have yet to adopt the new menu layout and the synchronisation and privacy controls features are yet to be seen. Mozilla claims that it is going to squeeze even more speed from the engine for the final release later in the year.

So, have you had a look at the Firefox 4 beta yet? If so, what do you think? Do you like it? Let us know below.

Xbox 360; 49.99; cert 15+; Ruffian/Microsoft

The original Crackdown is one of the finest Xbox 360 games ever released. Arriving at a time (2007) when the 360 was dominated by shooters and sports, Crackdown offered gamers an expansive urban playground to play in.

Yes, there was a plot of sorts but essentially Crackdown was a go-anywhere-do-anything experience where players could drive, climb, collect and fight.The ability to go online and team up or simply do you own thing in another part of their world with a friend was a key part of the experience and remains so in the sequel.

This time round up to four players can play together and it's when this happens that Crackdown 2 really shines. The addition of two extra players simply multiplies the opportunities for chaos. Unfortunately, the rest of Crackdown 2 feels very familiar. This is primarily due to the use of the original albeit modified city from the first game.

A change in art style struggles to disguise the fact that the locales have previously been used. The addition of a day/night cycle a zombie-like horde called the Freaks comes out at night does help, but ultimately the city feels very similar.

Luckily then the gameplay is as enjoyable if not as groundbreaking as before. Upgrading your hero; grasping at air as you fail to reach a tantalisingly close ledge; taking out enemy goons in ever more explosive ways Crackdown 2 is undeniably entertaining. Collecting orbs remains as compulsive as ever too, particularly when chasing the new movable variety. A stack of new weaponry is included too, with magnetic grenades a particular treat.

Overall though, Crackdown 2 feels like a missed opportunity. The changes to the original game multiplayer aside are relatively minimal. Also, the graphical overhaul has not been successful. The comic book art design suits the mood but the vistas so impressive when climbing up high in Crackdown look underwhelming when compared to the likes of the Assassin's Creed series. The targeting system too is erratic and unhelpful, especially in the heat of an outnumbered battle.

Despite the issues there is undoubtedly an entertaining ride to be had with Crackdown 2. Fans of the original though should prepare for evolution rather than revolution.

Rating: 3/5

Chris Green's wife wants a light laptop suitable for business travel, but she also wants to run the Civilization IV and V games

My wife travels a lot for work, and would like as small a laptop as possible that is capable of running Civilization IV comfortably and hopefully Civ V when it comes out.
Chris Green

Gaming laptops need lots of power so they tend not to be very portable. Usually they will have a 17in or similar large screen, a separate graphics card, and perhaps even a quad-core processor. Portable business laptops are at the other end of the scale. Usually they have 13.3in or smaller screens, Intel integrated graphics chips, and nowadays may well use slow but power-efficient Intel CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) processors.

Civilization IV is a relatively old game and certainly ought to run on a modern thin-and-light CULV portable, but I suspect it would not be comfortable. I'd look for something with at least a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip and a separate graphics card.

There can't be many lightweight laptops that fill the bill, and the one that springs to mind is the Acer Timeline 3810TG running Microsoft Windows 7. This has an Intel Core 2 Duo (SU9400) processor and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics card with 512MB of dedicated memory. It is thin and light (1.4kg) and Acer claims a 9-hour battery life, so it is certainly suitable for a business traveller. It ought to be good enough for mid-range games, the drawback being the processor speed: it's only 1.4GHz.

I looked at a CULV version of the Acer Timeline 3810T for Technophile, and was impressed by its quality. You can now get a 3810TG for about 600. However, I'd worry about the SU9400 running Civ IV, because it's a processor-intensive game. If any readers have tried it, please let us know.

At this point, however, I'd go for one of this year's new processors such as an Intel Core i3, i5, or i7. The i3 is the cheap entry-level version while the i7 offers the highest performance at too high a price. For gaming, the Core i5 would be a good compromise.

The new range of Core chips has an improved version of Intel Integrated Graphics on the processor. The new Intel HD Graphics system is DX10-compatible and seems as good as or better than the sort of mobility graphics cards fitted to laptops. Any Core i5 laptop should handle Civ IV comfortably, and might handle Civ V. Fortunately, HD Graphics is switchable, which means the Core processor will also exploit a separate graphics card if one is available.

Sticking with the Acer Timeline range, the Timeline X 3820TG has a 2.26GHz Core i5 processor with HD Graphics and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 graphics card with 512MB of memory, so it should be able to handle most games. The specification includes a 4GB of memory, a 650GB hard drive and Windows 7 Home Premium. Acer is still claiming up to 12 hours battery life. Of course, it's a bit heavier at 1.8kg, and more expensive, but you can find models discounted to 770 - 780.

Both the Acer machines mentioned above have 13.3in screens. If you shop around, there are Timelines with 11.6in, 14in and 15.6in screens and different processors at prices from about 300 to 1,000. There are also a few Sony models such as the Vaio VPCZ12M9EB with a Core i5 and Nvidia GeForce GT 330M graphics, but that costs 1,700 to 1,800.

Civilization V is scheduled for its UK release on 24 September, and we don't know what sort of specification will be needed to run it. It's hard to guess because there are some dramatic changes from Civ 4, such as from squares to hexagons. (GameSpot published an interview with the lead designer, Jon Shafer.)

But Civ has never targeted high end PCs, so I expect Civ 5 will run in Windows XP with 2GB of memory, a Core 2 Duo processor and DX9c graphics. If it actually needs a next-generation PC with Vista or Windows 7 and DX11 graphics, that would greatly restrict its potential market. I would therefore predict that a Core i3/i5/i7 with 3GB or 4GB of memory and integrated DX10-compatible HD Graphics will be able to run Civ 5. However, it would be safer to wait until the recommended specification is published at civilization5.com and then, for "comfortably", try to double it.

ScreenReach co-founder Paul Rawlings says the Difference Engine was the most rewarding experience of his life

Reflecting on 91 days holed-up in an intense business hub in the North East, entrepreneur Paul Rawlings exhales heavily. "It was the most rewarding experience of my life. Seriously, I can't emphasise it enough," said the ScreenReach co-founder.

Rawlings' feet have barely touched the ground for the past three months. Along with entrepreneurs from eight other fledgling companies, he has just completed the first 13-week programme of new start-up incubator The Difference Engine.

"When we started The Difference Engine we started with a technology which we had high hopes for," Rawlings says. "Being part of the Engine has really helped us focus our technology into a series of products, given us access to some of the North East's finest mentors, and given us the confidence to sit in front of global businesses and tell them why they should be using ScreenReach."

Using Reach XML code, ScreenReach offers an "audience engagement technology", ripe for content companies and retailers to interact with their customers. Having secured 250,000 first-round investment through the programme, Rawlings and fellow co-founder Chris Farrell are in talks with big-name potential clients with partnerships expected to go live in the next two weeks.

As well as the access to mentors, initial funding of 20,000 (in return for 8% of future stock) and being surrounded by like-minded digital upstarts, Rawlings said being squirreled away in Middlesbrough away from the hustle-and-bustle of London helped focus attention on the product. The importance of this can be understated, says Jon Bradford, who originated the idea of The Difference Engine two years ago, eventually launching the first programme in December last year.

"There are significant advantages of being outside London," Bradford says as he catches a breather inbetween catching trains and aeroplanes marketing the Engine. "One of the key elements of being up north is for them to concentrate on their start-ups for a short period of time. We make sure we have all the right people for the right companies so there's no distractions.

"You have to have the right people to do the programme. Most good small businesses start and work up to 25 people then start fragmenting that's why we only have around 10 teams, to create a more cooperative atmosphere."

Bradford says that he actively encourages people to launch similar incubator setups around the UK. "The model we've adopted is similar to TechStars in the US, that kind of open-source spirit to help build an ecosystem of mentorship.

"That's the hard part of Europe," he says. "Culturally, we're people who are not warm and friendy, we're quite reserved people. When we get over that and not feel there's something in it for us, I think we genuinely can compete with the Americans."

The Difference Engine are now accepting applications for the second programme, based in Sunderland and starting on September 20. A shortlist of around 25 start-ups will be whittled down to around 10 who will complete the 13-week programme ending on December 17.

UK-based Difference Engine early alumni

CANDDi
In it's own words, CANDDi "turns anonymous aggregated analytics into a rich list of targeted individuals". The team threw away their software two weeks before the end of the Difference Engine programme and started from scratch, having realised that it wasn't what people wanted!

Curated.by
Curated.by is a curation platform for the real-time web. The crowd are given the tools to create handpicked streams of updated, tagged and categorised content. Similar to Wikipedia, users sort the best content into bundles of information to be shared and consumed by other people. Curated.by currently supports Twitter, with additional social networks and microblogging services coming soon.

Recite
Recite says it allows any website to become more accessible to people who are dyslexic, visually impaired or who have a "young reading age." By intercepting the webpage content, Recite instantly adds and outputs accessibility features such as voice, high contrast text, and alternate word options.

Rock Control
Rock Control encourages the public to launch and manage a band from scratch. From deciding the final line-up, "the public" will decide the look and feel of the band and manage their PR. Ultimately, one song will be created and simultaneously released into every chart around the world with the intention of gaining a global number one slot.

ScreenReach
ScreenReach is pitched as "the next generation in presentation and interaction technology," allowing real-time delivery of media content to a smartphone via any digital display (TV, outdoor advertising, PC, kiosk etc). Service providers - such as museums, broadcasters, fashion retailers - can engage and interact with customers instantly and reward them for interacting with their content. Secured 250,000 first round funding.

Tagorize
The Tagorize system apparently describes online information so accurately that it can provide a level of search relevancy that is more valuable and accurate than existing systems. Using the Tagorize indexing system substantially increases search accuracy and relevancy, leading to higher search conversion rates. Tagorize is the most natural and flexible way to store and retrieve data of large, unstructured datasets.

Wishlist
wishli.st is a Facebook application that helps people give gifts. Users can create a list of the people they buy presents for and invite them to create wishlists. Then they receive email reminders before birthdays and buy them things they want.

Satnav launches an on-the-ropes, ninth-round-style counteroffensive against greatly exaggerated reports of its death

Photo by Ben Oh on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Reports of satnav's death are greatly exaggerated and retailer Garmin has launched an inspired marketing fightback to prove just that.

The arrival of Google Maps Navigation was touted by many including the Guardian's own Jemima Kiss as a "satnav killer." Google Maps Navigation is free (at the point of sale), familiar, and feature-rich. But don't count on traditional satnav retailers to give up the ghost just yet.

Seeking to capitalise on customer (and industry?) confusion surrounding mobile data charges not to mention what happens when you dare to venture outside of the UK satellite navigation specialists Garmin have embarked on a Top Gear-esque experiment.

Using Google Maps on an O2 Pay As You Go tariff, the company set out to see how much a summer tour of France would cost with only an Android phone for company. Twenty pence per mile is the (approximate) answer.

A return Calais-to-Paris (185 miles) trip by car notched up 74 of data roaming charges, using 12-13 megabytes of data. Here's what return trips further afield cost:

Avignon, 614 miles: 245.60

Saint-Tropez, 730 miles: 292

Grenoble, 540 miles: 216

Marseille, 667 miles: 266.80

Lyon, 474 miles: 189.60

Cannes, 747 miles: 298.80

Bordeaux, 540 miles: 216

Valence, 539 miles: 215.60

Saint-Etienne, 510 miles: 204

And the eye-watering bill you could find on your doorstep isn't the only reason you should spurn Google's advances and stick with traditional satnavs, says Garmin head of communications Anthony Chmarny: "Using free satellite navigation isn't as free as it would like to make out, especially when you are using your mobile phone abroad.

"Many of the well known navigation products use the mobile phone network to download maps as they go, meaning people could end up with a nasty shock when their mobile phone bills arrive the costs could be double that of the fuel used for the journey they were navigating.

"For someone using so called 'free' navigation abroad this could leave them in the absurd position that they get half way through a journey and no longer have access to navigation to complete it."

Convinced?

UPDATE 15:46: An O2 spokesperson, unavailable when contacted before publishing, told us: "Those figures are incorrect. O2 charges 3 per MB, so 12-13 MB would cost 39 at most. Once you reach 40 per month, O2 stops charging you until you reach 50 MB. We then offer you the high user bolt-on, which gives you up to 200 MB for 120."

Twitter finally explains new EarlyBird promotional account to distribute exclusive offers to users

Despite reeling in $160m in venture capital funding and worth an estimated $1bn, Twitter is still on the hunt for sustainable revenue sources to support the company.

Early indications on Promoted Trends and Promoted Tweets appear to have been successful, and are part of a larger strategy to avoid paid accounts yet gain financial security.

After what seems like a lifetime, the company has now officially announced EarlyBird, which aims to inform users of special promotions that are unique to Twitter and the account. Selected advertisers will pay to distribute offers to the thousands of users present on the network, although none of these has yet been named. The offers will be time sensitive, so fast action will be needed to catch that particular worm.

EarlyBird functions in the same way as a normal Twitter account for the offers to appear in your follow feed. Unlike Promoted Trends, however, they do not appear automatically on your front page and it is an opt-in service, as opposed to the opt-out follow that had been mooted. EarlyBird tweets can also be retweeted to pass them onto your followers.

What's the catch? Initially, EarlyBird offers will be US-centric, although Twitter has said this will likely change: "We're starting with US-wide offers but will explore location-based deals in the future."

The opportunity for EarlyBird to go viral is huge, with offers potentially spreading around like internet like wildfire if they are deemed worthy enough. As I type, the account has 9,545 followers, something that will need to multiply infinitely for the scheme to be successful. Thanks to the joys of trends and retweeting, this seems likely. Assuming the followers flood in, Twitter will be closer to long-term sustainability.

Apple's Steve Jobs doesn't like pornography. Nor do parents' groups and campaigners. The new .xxx web domain, approved last week after a $10m battle, promises benefits to porn buyers and sellers, but does the internet need a red light district?

Everyone at Gerrard Dennis's online swimwear business, run out of a business park in Kent with his wife Jo, is enthusiastic about Apple. The marketing department use Apple computers, senior staff have iPhones. So it came as a shock when Dennis received an email from Apple earlier this year informing him the iPhone app he had spent several thousand pounds developing, advertising his Simply Beach range, had been banned due to sexual connotations.

"We replied saying, 'Are you sure? Have you had a complaint?'" he says, "but in true Apple style, absolutely nothing back. I felt a bit hard done by. To sell bikinis you have to have pictures of women in bikinis, that's what you have to do. We're not talking micro bikinis or anything we're talking about normal bikinis."

Dennis decided to give his grievance an airing on a trade website, from where it was picked up by technology blogs. Five days later his app reappeared in the App store. "I did try sending them an email to say thanks," Dennis says. "But no word from Apple. We're now developing an app for the iPad and we hold no malice. I think my comment was, 'It seems unfair that we're caught up in Apple's puritanic morals but we understand why they're doing it.'"

In the past year, with much-hyped launches of the iPhone and iPad, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has become famed for the stand he has taken against pornography. The company's developer agreement prohibits "materials that in Apple's reasonable judgment may be found objectionable [eg] materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic or defamatory". Recently the Sun newspaper fell foul of the rules, only managing to launch its iPhone app two weeks ago.

Critics have been quick to point out inconsistencies: since Apple gadgets feature web browsers, banning rude apps doesn't stop anyone accessing pornography on the internet, and while thousands of apps were removed from the App store, Playboy and Sports Illustrated kept theirs (Apple executive Phil Schiller explained that rules apply differently in the case of "a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format"). Staff at Dazed and Confused magazine nicknamed their iPad app "the Iranian version". But while in the technology world Jobs's anti-porn stand is ridiculed as control-freakery or Google-baiting, outside the media loop his views find vocal support.

Jobs has made it clear that it is the idea of children accessing porn that bothers him, and over recent months and years parents' groups, feminists and anti-pornography campaigners have been making the same point. Pornography, they argue, is ubiquitous as never before. With the click of a mouse, without a credit card, anyone using the internet can access vast numbers of images of people having sex in a variety of ways, many of them unusual and cruel.

What once was taboo, hidden inside a suitcase or wardrobe in an older male relative's "girlie magazines", has moved into all our homes, goes the argument. A new generation growing up on the internet will be routinely exposed to extreme sexual violence before they have so much as removed their shirts in front of a real-life boyfriend or girlfriend.

When the British, Florida-based internet entrepreneur Stuart Lawley won the right last week to start selling registrations to a new domain devoted to pornographic content, .xxx (known as "dot-triple-x"), he was eager to point out that concerned parents were among those who stood to gain. Registration at .xxx is voluntary, and Lawley believes the first amendment guaranteeing free speech means any attempt by US legislators to corral sex sites into .xxx is doomed to fail. But he believes that the premium service offered by .xxx which at $60 ( 40) per registration is much more expensive than other domains will lead to a "natural migration". Within five to 10 years, he hopes ".xxx will be synonymous with adult online entertainment and will be the first location people look for it", a kind of online equivalent to the top shelf, an internet red-light district.

While this doesn't necessarily mean there will be less pornography in other domains some sex domain operators insist that it won't, that dotcom will remain the "premium" online property Lawley's idea is that his compulsory labelling system, tagging sex sites with keywords in the computer code read by browsers and search engines, will mean that explicit sexual content becomes easier to filter or block.

"Many adult webmasters own multiple domains all pointing to the same site, so you might have bigboobs.uk, bigboobs.net and bigboobs.com all pointing to the same underlying website," he explains. "So bigboobs.xxx will point to the same website. The rule we have is that any website that the domain redirects to or lands on has to be labelled, so as a knock-on effect those adult sites that are in .uk or .com are going to be labelled as well."

The history of porn on the internet is almost as old as the internet itself. In the early days people scanned pictures from magazines and sent files to each other via modem. Bulletin board systems created the first opportunity for commercial online porn, and became stores that charged users for access. New e-commerce mechanisms and faster broadband connections led to vast expansion, and porn sites today offer video chats and live webcams, enabling real-time interactions.

Internet consultant Kieren McCarthy, who wrote a book about the battle for the sex.com domain and has worked for Icann, the non-profit body that governs the internet, says that "because they're very focused, and there's a lot of money there, pornographers often do really good advances in technology, so in-stream video, a big chunk of that is thanks to the adult industry".

"Also affiliate linking and making money simply by having links on the internet, that was all the adult industry," says McCarthy. "The step forward to think of doing that, or monetising it as they call it, was a kind of genius."

But technology brought problems too, as amateur pornographers began to put up their own footage, and there were lawsuits over piracy.

Today, between 15% and 23% of all internet searches are pornographic, and in 2008 the FT estimated global revenues from the industry to be about $12bn, though in the US, which controls 40% of the global business, more profits come from DVDs than from the internet.

To those like McCarthy who regard pornography with acceptance mixed with disapproval ("some of it I think is awful, big chunks of it aren't"), a designated x-rated zone on the internet seems like a good idea. Feminist writer Natasha Walter agrees it could be a step in the right direction, and 83% of 240,000 respondents to a CNN poll last weekend supported it.

But not everyone is convinced. The most vociferous objections to .xxx came from rightwing Christian groups in the US, who lobbied the department of commerce and led to Lawley's application being rejected in 2007.

A highly vocal section of the porn industry, organised under the banner of the Free Speech Coalition, was also violently opposed, fearing ghettoisation and objecting to .xxx's fees. Independent adult entertainment creators such as Ms Naughty voiced objections along similar lines ("Already people are demanding that all adult sites be forced on to .xxx domain and blocked"). She also complained about being forced to fork out for pricey .xxx domains in order to protect existing properties. Zoe Margolis, who wrote the sex blog Girl With a One Track Mind under the pen name Abby Lee, shares the fear that .xxx could signal the start of attempts to censor sexual content more widely.

Meanwhile, anti-porn campaigners such as the writer and academic Gail Dines (interviewed in yesterday's G2), think .xxx is a disaster because "the only thing that can happen is that pornography will increase". About this, and nothing else, she is in firm agreement with Stuart Lawley.

Lawley expects to make a lot of money out of .xxx. Currently, there are 7m adult domains and if he sells half a million more, he will have revenues of $30m a year. His company, ICM Registry, has 158,242 pre-reservations, but he hopes to win a 50% market share within a couple of years. Lawley has spent almost $10m of his own money on the project, most of it on lawyers. About pornography itself he claims to be "neutral" and he refuses to comment on the suggestion that exploitation of vulnerable women in the industry is rife.

But he apparently has some scruples about making a fortune out of porn, and has promised to give a substantial chunk of his money away. "For me it was clear this would be a very lucrative business venture," he says, "but at the same time, at the beginning of this process I was the father of a two-year-old son and we put this non-profit element in, that we have this sponsoring organisation [Iffor] to which we donate $10 of every registration every year, that is going to use most of those proceeds to further parental education, and child protection initiatives on a global basis."

Iffor stands for the International Foundation for Online Responsibility and its charter employs the words "responsible" and "responsibility" six times. Whether this is PR, a rich man's guilty conscience, or good business one of the things he has promised his clients is an enhanced reputation is debatable. McCarthy, who wrote a report for Lawley about the .xxx consultation, says: "Oddly enough, there are quite a lot of what you would call responsible people in the adult industry, they're putting up porn which a lot of people have a lot of issues with but their philosophy is, it's not illegal, people want this, I'm going to try and be as responsible as possible in providing it".

Those like Dines who oppose the huge increase in the availability of pornography that the internet has brought about, see a more sinister attempt to infiltrate the mainstream and it is true that Lawley's pitch to the industry, that effective self-regulation is the best way forward, is designed to buy credibility, leading to "more customers spending more money on a repeat basis", in his phrase. Lawley plans to enhance data protection and security and get rid of the viruses and rip-offs for which adult sites are famed. He likens .xxx to a club, a kite mark and a trade association, whose benefits will be so great that belonging to it will become the norm.

Gregory Dumas, an industry veteran who runs an adult portfolio, GEC Media, from Panama, lost his seat on the Free Speech Coalition board as a result of his support for .xxx. He is a robust defender of practices within the sex industry, suggesting critics "need to get their head out of their ass, and you can quote me on that the women in the adult business, they dominate, they reign over the business, they're who everybody wants to see". But he supports Lawley's effort to tighten up age registration: "I do think the marketplace does need to be cleaner and clearer If adult sites can be seen to clean up their act then it will benefit the industry."

So far, research on the social impact of internet pornography is inconclusive partly for the good reason that its effect on a generation of young people growing up now can't be measured yet. Critics express a range of concerns, including addiction and its knock-on effects on relationships; the specific risk to vulnerable young people; and the wider influence of pornography on contemporary culture, as set out by journalist Ariel Levy in her influential book Female Chauvinist Pigs.

Psychologist Terri Apter, of Cambridge University, is more doubtful, arguing that there's no historical correlation between the incidence of sex crimes and pornography. She believes the wider pressures on girls and women to conform to a visual ideal are more corrosive than porn itself, and also that cultural anxiety about pornography serves to displace wider fears about the impact of new technologies on our ways of thinking and relating to each other. "I don't want to be alarmist, the brain is plastic and adapts very rapidly to changing circumstances, but daily life has changed and we haven't yet really managed to think about that."

Feminist philosopher Nina Power agrees that we risk overstating the significance of pornography, and suggests we pay more attention to the economics: "If there's this new domain set up, who makes the money? Where does it go?" She agrees that the pressures on women to shave, slim, seek surgical enhancement, are not down to pornography, and takes issue with what she sees as the overwhelming pessimism of porn's critics: "I have a belief in human nature, that things do change, and people are not doomed to be stuck in these horrible stereotypes."

Sex blogger Margolis says: "I don't think we will 'win' an 'anti-porn' battle and I also don't think that censorship is the answer. The best way to oppose the offensive material is to a) not buy in to it and b) support feminist pornographers like Ms Naughty, who are trying to offer an alternative."

"Will there be a broader backlash against porn?" asks McCarthy. "I doubt it. If a lot of people decide they really want to block pornography then a lot of applications will appear that enable them to do that.

".xxx might be the perfect answer, it might be a partial answer, it might be a complete failure. You don't know until you do it. With the internet you never know quite what will happen."

The internet guru on the death of newspapers, why paywall will fail and how the internet has brought out our creativity and generosity

If you are reading this article on a printed copy of the Guardian, what you have in your hand will, just 15 years from now, look as archaic as a Western Union telegram does today. In less than 50 years, according to Clay Shirky, it won't exist at all. The reason, he says, is very simple, and very obvious: if you are 25 or younger, you're probably already reading this on your computer screen. "And to put it in one bleak sentence, no medium has ever survived the indifference of 25-year-olds."

You have probably never even heard of Shirky, and until this interview I hadn't either. When I ask him to define what he does, he laughs, and admits that often when he's leaving a party someone will say to him, "What exactly is it you do?" His standard reply "I work on the theory and practice of social media" is not just wilfully opaque, but crushingly dreary, which is funny, because he is one of the most illuminating people I've ever met.

The people who know about Shirky call him an "internet guru". He winces when I say so "Oh, I hate that!" and it's easy to see why, for he is the very opposite of the techie stereotype. Now 46, his first career was in the theatre in New York, and he didn't even own a computer until the age of 28, when he had to be introduced to the internet by his mother. Arrestingly self-assured and charismatic, his conversation is warm and discursive, intently engaged yet relaxed but it's his rhetorical fluency which bowls you over. The architecture of his argument is a Malcolm Gladwell-esque structure of psychological and sociological insight, analysing contemporary technology with the clarity of a historian's perspective and such authority that were he to tell you the sun actually sets in the east, you might almost believe him. At the very least, you'd probably want to and if a guru is defined by the credulous deference he commands from others, then Shirky unquestionably qualifies. Within minutes I found myself hanging on his every word despite being temperamentally hostile to almost everything he believes.

Shirky has been writing about the internet since 1996. As the chief technological officer for several web design companies during the 90s, he was quickly hired as a consultant by major media companies News Corporation, Time Warner, Hearst all curious about this new thing called the world wide web. In 2000, following "an intuition that the internet was turning social", Shirky turned to the fledgling phenomenon of online social networking an obscure concept back then, but which has since evolved into MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, to become the web's primary purpose for billions of people all over the world. Shirky now teaches new media at New York University, and in 2008 published his first book, Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together, which celebrated individuals' new power to communicate, organise and change the world via the web.

His predictions for the fate of print media organisations have proved unnervingly accurate; 2009 would be a bloodbath for newspapers, he warned and so it came to pass. Dozens of American newspapers closed last year, while several others, such as the Christian Science Monitor, moved their entire operation online. The business model of the traditional print newspaper, according to Shirky, is doomed; the monopoly on news it has enjoyed ever since the invention of the printing press has become an industrial dodo. Rupert Murdoch has just begun charging for online access to the Times and Shirky is confident the experiment will fail.

"Everyone's waiting to see what will happen with the paywall it's the big question. But I think it will underperform. On a purely financial calculation, I don't think the numbers add up." But then, interestingly, he goes on, "Here's what worries me about the paywall. When we talk about newspapers, we talk about them being critical for informing the public; we never say they're critical for informing their customers. We assume that the value of the news ramifies outwards from the readership to society as a whole. OK, I buy that. But what Murdoch is signing up to do is to prevent that value from escaping. He wants to only inform his customers, he doesn't want his stories to be shared and circulated widely. In fact, his ability to charge for the paywall is going to come down to his ability to lock the public out of the conversation convened by the Times."

This criticism echoes the sentiment of Shirky's new book, Cognitive Surplus; Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. The book argues that the popularity of online social media trumps all our old assumptions about the superiority of professional content, and the primacy of financial motivation. It proves, Shirky argues, that people are more creative and generous than we had ever imagined, and would rather use their free time participating in amateur online activities such as Wikipedia for no financial reward because they satisfy the primal human urge for creativity and connectedness. Just as the invention of the printing press transformed society, the internet's capacity for "an unlimited amount of zero-cost reproduction of any digital item by anyone who owns a computer" has removed the barrier to universal participation, and revealed that human beings would rather be creating and sharing than passively consuming what a privileged elite think they should watch. Instead of lamenting the silliness of a lot of social online media, we should be thrilled by the spontaneous collective campaigns and social activism also emerging. The potential civic value of all this hitherto untapped energy is nothing less, Shirky concludes, than revolutionary.

Unfortunately, I am precisely the sort of cynic Shirky's new book scorns a techno-luddite bewildered by the exhibitionism of online social networking (why does anyone feel the need to tweet that they've just had a bath, and might get a kebab later?), troubled by its juvenile vacuity (who joins a Facebook group dedicated to liking toast?), and baffled by the amount of time devoted to posting photos of cats that look amusingly like Hitler. I do, however, recognise that what I like to think of as my opinions are really emotional prejudices. But equally, Shirky's prediction for Murdoch's paywall sounds suspiciously like an emotional objection, rather than a financial calculation. How, then, can he be certain his entire analysis of the internet isn't just as subjective as my kneejerk cynicism?

"I'd say first of all that the notion that any expression of the world can be a value-neutral description of what life is really like is a fantasy, right?" he agrees readily. "We're all postmodern enough to recognise that any writer on any subject is operating within those constraints. And I have the amiably simple-minded view of this stuff you would expect from an American, which is that I think freedom is good, full stop. So therefore I think I'm probably constitutionally incapable of seeing a massive spread in those freedoms as being anything other than salutary for society.

"But ultimately, over the long haul I'm vetted on accuracy, not on enthusiasm. So if I'm wrong about paywall, I've got no place to hide. I will have been flamingly, publicly wrong for 15 years. There will be no way I can weasel out of it." He laughs, looking sublimely untroubled by this possibility.

"The final thing I'd say about optimism is this. If we took the loopiest, most moonbeam-addled Californian utopian internet bullshit, and held it up against the most cynical, realpolitik-inflected scepticism, the Californian bullshit would still be a better predictor of the future. Which is to say that, if in 1994 you'd wanted to understand what our lives would be like right now, you'd still be better off reading a single copy of Wired magazine published in that year than all of the sceptical literature published ever since."

The one point of agreement between internet utopians and sceptics has been their techno-deterministic assumption that the web has fundamentally changed human behaviour. Both sides, Shirky says, are wrong. "Techies were making the syllogism, if you put new technology into an existing situation, and new behaviour happens, then that technology caused the behaviour. But I'm saying if the new technology creates a new behaviour, it's because it was allowing motivations that were previously locked out. These tools we now have allow for new behaviours but they don't cause them." Had Facebook been around when he was in his 20s, he cheerfully admits, he too would have spent his youth emailing photos of himself to everyone he knew.

But even if he's right, and the internet has merely unveiled ancient truths about human behaviour, isn't it still legitimate to feel a little bit dismayed by Facebook's revelation of almost infinite narcissism? Shirky lets out a polite but weary sigh. "Would the world really be better off if we were to hide from ourselves the fact that teenagers waste a lot of time trying to either flirt with each other or to crack each other up? Like, to whom was this a mystery, prior to the launch of Facebook?" He grins in good-natured amazement.

"Look, we got erotic novels, first crack out of the box, once we had printing presses. It took a century and a half for the Royal Society to start publishing the first scientific journal in English. So even with the sacred printing press, the first things you get serve the basest human urges. But the presence of the erotic novels did not prevent us from pressing the printing presses into the service of the scientific revolution. And so I think every bit of time spent fretting about the fact that people have base desires which they will use this medium to satisfy is a waste of time because that's been true of every medium ever launched."

Shirky concedes that the web's ability to connect people with a common enthusiasm, however obscure or deviant, can create a dangerously distorted impression of what is healthy or normal. "But so the question in all of this stuff, always, always, always, is: is the net trade-off better or worse for society? I've never been a cyber utopian. I've always understood that this is a set of trade-offs. So for all the normalisation of, say, paedophilia, we also get young small-town kids growing up gay who now know they're not abnormal. And it seems to me that the net trade-off of lessening society's ability to project a sense of normal that no one actually lives up to is a good thing.

"I don't mean to say it will therefore be an endless fountain of raindrop-flavoured kittens from now till St Swithin's day. But rather, in the same way that we've generally decided that the printing press was a good thing and I would contrast that with television, which in my mind is an open question rather than just saying in the panglossian way that all new technologies are an improvement, it is an on-the-balance calculation."

The neuroscientist Susan Greenfield produced a report last year which suggested that the popularity of online social media was damaging children's brain development, in particular their capacity for empathy. Shirky has two children, aged nine and six, and says they live in "a very restricted media household", with only supervised access to a communal computer. "I would not hesitate to say I was addicted to the internet in the first two years. It can be addictive and things not taken in moderation have negative effects. But the alarmism around 'Facebook is changing our brains' strikes me as a kind of historical trick. Because we now know from brain science that everything changes our brains. Riding a bicycle changes our brains. Watching TV changes our brains. If there's a screen you need to worry about in your household, it's not the one with a mouse attached."

Shirky does not own a television. Americans watch, collectively, two hundred billion hours of television a year, and if online social media diverts even just a fraction of that time, he argues, that has to be a good thing. "As I say in the book, even the stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act. And I'd still take the most inane collaborative website over someone watching yet another half hour of TV."

By now, despite myself, I'm having to reconsider my old snootiness towards social media. There's just one last thing, I say. Had I never been online before, and had just read his book, I'd probably be so inspired by his account of the creative and collaborative instincts of the online community, I'd be rushing to log on. But if I started out on, say, the Guardian's Comment is free site, the sheer nastiness of many of the commenters would floor me like a train. If the web has unlocked all this human potential for generosity and sharing, how come the people using it are so horrible to each other?

Shirky smiles, confident that he has the answer even to this. "So, there's two things to this paradox. One is that those conversations were always happening. People were saying those nasty things to one another in the pub or whatever. You just couldn't hear them before. So it's a change in our awareness of truth, not a change in the truth.

"Then there's this second effect, that anonymity makes people behave more meanly. What I think is going to happen there is we are slowly going to set up islands of civil discourse. There's no way to make the internet not anonymous and if there was, the most enthusiastic consumers of that technology would be Iranian and Chinese and Burmese governments. But there are ways of saying, while you're here, use your real identity. We need to set up the social norms which say in this space you need to use your real names, or some well-known handle.

"Whenever you say that, people cry censorship, but frankly? Fuck off." He breaks off, laughing. "You know, getting that right is important. The whole, 'Is the internet a good thing or a bad thing'? We're done with that. It's just a thing. How to maximise its civic value, its public good that's the really big challenge."

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky is published by Allen Lane, price 20

This article was amended on 5 July 2010. The original referred to Western Union telegrams looking arcane today. This has been corrected.

It's a hatchback on steriods. And it works

Another year, another minor variation. The car industry likes to talk in terms of complete overhauls, extensive updates and revolutionary redesigns. That way a car sounds so dramatic and new that it makes 2009 seem so last year. Suddenly you find that what you need is the very latest model featuring a fearlessly radical initiative on ashtray positioning.

That's the theory, at least. Generally, of course, manufacturers are not in the habit of changing a winning hand, and Nissan is no different. The new Qashqai Crossover claims to be a makeover, but in cosmetics terms it's a facial rather than a facelift. Which makes sense. After all, the Qashqai has proven a success, so why redesign the wheel?

Actually, that's one of the few things Nissan has redesigned. There's now a five-spoke alloy wheel that's perfectly nice, though I can't say it changed my view of the Qashqai. It remains that strange paradox: a car designed to look like a large, fuel-guzzling, space-eating 4x4 SUV in an era that takes a dim view of large, fuel-guzzling, space-eating 4x4 SUVs, while in fact being a relatively compact, not overly fuel-hungry 2x4 that is a decidedly on-road, urban car a hatchback on steroids.

And it works. The reason being that driving an SUV, even a pseudo-SUV, is a soothingly empowering experience. You feel on top of the road, rather than ground down by it, and protected from the beastliness of the world, in particular those revved-up, fist-faced drivers whose path you happen to be blocking.

However, the Qashqai I drove was a CVT or continually variable transmission version. CVT is a type of automatic transmission without fixed gear ratios. Instead, it aims to match the engine revs' speed to the car's different speed demands higher revs for increased acceleration, lower for more fuel-efficient cruising. The idea is that a more efficiently responsive engine helps conserve energy.

In practice, though, it can seem as if you're in the wrong gear all the time. As if you don't actually know how to drive a car, which is an achievement in an automatic. A few times when the engine raced as I was accelerating away from a stationary position, I almost felt obliged to make theatrical shoulder-hunching movements, as if to say, "Search me, I dunno what's wrong with it."

But you do get used to it, or perhaps it gets used to you. Either way, I found that after a while I didn't try to hide as I pressed the throttle. Still, it's not quite as soothing a ride as we've come to associate with SUVs. And overall, the appeal of the Qashqai remains a mystery to me. But then I don't even get why it's named after Persian nomads.

Qashqai Crossover n-tec CVT 2.0

Price 21,295
Top speed 114mph
Acceleration 0-62mph in 10.7 seconds
Average consumption 37.1mpg
CO2 emissions 179g/km
Eco rating 5.5/10
Bound for Isfahan
In a word Puzzling

Spotify, Last.fm and We7 are old hat when it comes to innovation within the industry check these out

The music industry, as bemoaned ad nauseum, has been financially skewered by the digital revolution and consumers' new-found ability to share music freely. But green shoots are springing up everywhere and even Spotify, Last.fm and We7 are old hat when it comes to innovation within the industry. Here are five new digital music projects using crowd-sourcing, cool coding and collaboration to help the music industry rock out in the digital age:

No1: GigsWiz

GigsWiz is a site that generates analytics allowing bands to gather more accurate information about local fan demand for gigs. Based on a few questions, GigsWiz generates a piece of code that artists can embed on their websites, MySpace and Facebook pages. This piece of code then pumps out data about where visitors to their site come from. Bands can use this data to plan their next gigs. Based in Helsinki, Finland, GigsWiz was founded last summer by marketing professional Juuso Vermashein and entrepreneurs Joonas Pekkanen and Kai Lemmetty. It launched its invite-only beta site in May 2010 and is now open for all. GigsWiz aims to overcome the recorded music industry's financial challenges by allowing bands to maximise their revenues from live performances.

No2: MusicGPS

This iPhone app produced by musicDNA - not to be confused with MusicDNA, the possible successor to the MP3 which launched in January is focused on pairing music with maps. Users download the app to their iPhone and as they travel while listening to music, MusicGPS records which songs are listened to where. While the community is still small, at only just over 700 members, the potential applications for the sort of data collected are significant if it gained enough popularity. Similar to GigsWiz, MusicGPS collects local data about musical tastes, but is listener-driven rather than artist-driven. While it has huge potential for targeted advertising and local revenue generation, it is also a step in the development of the semantic web.

No3: Indaba Music

Ever wanted to start a garage band but without a garage and with band members stationed all over the world? Thought so. Indaba has created a very usable online music collaboration platform where multiple people can upload and remix with hundreds of other musically minded individuals. There are also community forums for everyone involved in music from engineers to producers to musicians. Wired used Indaba in May to take crowd-sourced music to the next level. 122 members remixed one single track, creating 85 new music files. Voting is underway to determine which of the top five of these tracks is king. At the end of the day, the project takes music production to the next level using crowd power and collaboration.

No4 fairsharemusic

Will people be more willing to pay for music online if they know it's going to a good cause? Maybe. Fairsharemusic's going to find out. Apple's iTunes store may have begun to get music consumers used to the idea of paying for their music online, but UK-based Fairshare adds a philanthropic element to this model. The site which launched Tuesday donates half the profit of every music file downloaded to one of 11 partner charities chosen by the listener. Fairshare takes the now ubiquitous idea of micro-payments, and turns them into "micro-donations".

No5: slicethepie

In digital years, slicethepie is actually pretty old at the ripe age of three, but it's got the right idea. Slicethepie, as we've talked about before, allows fans to fund the bands they like, cutting out the middle men between producers and consumers of music. Fans are also paid to review bands and scout out new talent. At slicethepie, anyone can invest in any band and every 1 chipped into the hat entitles the donator to a share in the band and subsequent royalties. Contracts can also be traded on the virtual exchange for the chance to profit from their good scouting abilities and get in on other bands from the ground up.

Nick Clegg's 'Your Freedom' project basically a bonfire of the inanities should start on the act passed in the wash-up, especially given the example of Finland

Finns now have the legal right to broadband access, as a law passed in October comes into force today. Under the law, telecomms providers are obliged to offer always-on high-speed internet connections to all of the country's 5.3 million citizens, with a minimum speed of at least 1 megabit per second.

It makes an interesting contrast with the UK where Nick Clegg's announcement of the "Your Freedom" project, aiming to repeal laws seen as onerous or unnecessary came with a new website where people can suggest laws that they want repealed. Basically, a bonfire of the inanities.

And one of the first laws that got put up there by annoyed citizens as a candidate for repeal? The Digital Economy Act, passed in the "wash-up" period at the fag-end of the last Parliament, opposed then by the Liberal Democrats (in particular Don Foster) and the occasion for his first-ever revolt by Labour MP and former Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson.

Indeed, Clegg himself called during the election for the DEA to be repealed. Can't see his name in the comments. Yet.

The contrast between Finland and the UK could not be more stark. Where Finland is treating broadband as being essential to its infrastructure, the DEA offers the potential for strictures where people could, in theory, be cut off if they are judged to have broken copyright law. (The Labour government insisted that this would only happen in the most extreme of cases, and there is no mention in the Act of any "three strikes" methodology, but the threat still remains. It's just a question of process.)

Finland, of course, has good reason to want to make sure that all its citizens can get broadband. They're not solely about high-tech. It's also because Finland has some incredibly rural areas, as well as its cities. And it gets extremely cold in winter, which means that it's preferable to stay where you are than to travel long distances to work, if your work can be done via a computer.

Partly for that reason, Finland is already one of the world's most connected countries, with 96% of citizens online - but in October the communications minister, Suvi Linden, said that the mandate was necessary in order to improve the availability of internet in Finland's remote rural areas. In an announcement in September, Ms Linden committed to making 100Mb internet access - one hundred times faster than the connections mandated under the current law - available to all Finnish residents by 2015.

In the UK, the government is aiming at 2Mbps for 99% of the population by 2012 - but there's no law to back it. Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, declared early in June that he wants the UK to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe: "We are now ranked 33rd in the world when it comes to broadband speed, with an average that is nearly five times slower than South Korea", he said. "Within this parliament we want Britain to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe."

Unfortunately we're miles behind in that race, and without any legal force to make telecomms companies provide that sort of connectivity, and no clear subsidy to encourage them to connect the rural areas (which are most expensive to wire, and produce the lowest return, because you have few customers far apart, compared to cities where you have many customers close together) it looks like we're going to continue to lag.

Even so, we can be hopeful about the DEA. It would be interesting if the Lib Dem arm of the coalition manages to get the DEA repealed. As sheredom, who suggested it for the bonfire, pointed out, the reasons for killing it are:

"1. Misguided bill that will not combat the issues that it claims to. Puts unnecessary strain on ISPs that do not wish to enforce the law; 2. To stand up to these lobby groups and say 'No, we are not going to do things because big business tells us to.'"

Graphs put together by Pingdom show the prounounced long tail of the internet, competition is fierce around websites topping four million uniques per month

Using data from Google's top 1000 sites list, Royal Pingdom have put together this fascinating graphic showing just what it takes to make it to the top of the internet pile.

The graphic above shows that to break into the totemic top 100, your website needs to be pulling in a not inconsiderable 22m unique visitors a month. Take those 22m visitors, add at least another 78m and your website will sit pretty in the top 13.

Altogether, the top 10 websites attract 2.78bn visitors per month - that's 42% of all visitors to the top 100. See the full list on Royal Pingdom .

Top 1000 websites by monthly unique visitors

1. Facebook.com - 540m
10. Mozilla.com - 110m
25. Hotmail.com - 60m
50. Sogou.com - 37m
100. Thepiratebay.com - 21m
200. Typepad.com - 13m
300. Ourtoolbar.com - 9.8m
400. Zhaopin.com - 8.1m
500. The2009.cn - 6.8m
750. Marriott.com - 5m
1000. Trialpay.com - 3.8m

Internal memo said Twitter tribute to Hezbollah's spiritual leader had compromised senior Middle East editor's credibility

Twitter, with its strict 140-character limit, was never going to be the best medium to make a nuanced point about Middle East politics. But Octavia Nasr gave it a go.

The cost was great: Nasr was fired as CNN's senior Middle East editor after 20 years with the US-based news channel.

The offending tweet was sent on Sunday morning following the death in Beirut of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who was instrumental in the establishment of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Using her official CNN Twitter account Nasr wrote: "Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot."

The tweet was immediately picked up by supporters of Israel, to which the Islamist group is bitterly opposed. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in the US released a statement demanding Nasr "apologise to all victims of Hezbollah terrorism whose loved ones don't share her sadness over the passing of one of Hezbollah's giants".

The text was swiftly removed from her Twitter feed, but by then it had been heavily circulated, with criticism mounting.

Nasr responded on Tuesday with a blog on the CNN website, calling her initial message "simplistic" and "an error of judgment". Her respect for the ayatollah, who she had interviewed for Lebanese television in 1990, was owing to his stance on women's rights, notably his demands that "honour killings" stop, she explained.

But this was not enough. The next day, Nasr was reportedly called in to see her bosses at CNN's headquarters in Atlanta. The New York Times quoted an internal memo from a senior vice-president, Parisa Khosravi, which said: "We have decided that [Nasr] will be leaving the company."

The memo added: "At this point, we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward."

The company has not confirmed the news, saying only that the tweet "did not meet CNN's editorial standards". A spokesman added: "This is a serious matter and will be dealt with accordingly." Nasr's Twitter account has fallen silent.

Fadlallah, 74, was Hezbollah's spiritual leader when it formed after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, though he later distanced himself from the group's ties with Iran.

Nasr, who appeared on camera and worked behind the scenes at the TV station, soon realised her mistake, writing on her blog: "Reaction to my tweet was immediate, overwhelming and provides a good lesson on why 140 characters should not be used to comment on controversial or sensitive issues, especially those dealing with the Middle East."

While her tweet attracted controversy, a tribute to Fadlallah came from another seemingly unlikely source: the UK ambassador to Beriut.

Frances Guy, who has headed the mission since 2006, wrote on her official Foreign Office blog: "Lebanon is a lesser place the world needs more men like him, willing to reach out across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints. May he rest in peace."

Comments beneath the post were mainly positive, although one read: "Her esteemed predecessors, such as Sir John Gray, lived in mortal fear of being blown up by Fadlallah's Hezbollah hoods. So much for the 'admired Shia leader' she refers to above."

Nasr is one of the more high-profile victims of a phenomenon known as "twittercide". A notable UK casualty was Stuart MacLennan, a Scottish Labour candidate deselected a month before the election for using Twitter to call old people "coffin dodgers" and David Cameron "a twat".

Last month an Irish exam supervisor was dismissed after using his phone to tweet: "I do pity the girls that have me supervising, im young, handsome & probably very distracting ha ha". Meanwhile a columnist for Australia's Age newspaper lost her job after tweeting her wish that an 11-year-old child TV star "gets laid".

ISPs say a judicial review of controversial law is needed because it could infringe human rights

BT and TalkTalk want a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act, saying the controversial new law could infringe "basic rights and freedoms," reports the BBC.

The act which proposes to disconnect persistent illegal filesharers from the internet was passed into law in the April wash-up period before parliament was dissolved.

Both BT and TalkTalk are understood to want the high court to clarify whether the act conflicts with existing EU regulation. Ofcom has said plans to disconnect people from the internet would not come into force until next year.

Concerns over "basic rights and freedoms" to access the web are made worse by the manner in which the act was passed into law, BT and TalkTalk say.

The act was "rushed through" parliament with "insufficient scrutiny", claim the internet service providers. After two hours of debate in the House of Commons, the bill was given royal assent the vote in the government's favour by 189 votes to 47.

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said at the time: "We did our best to prevent the digital economy bill being rushed through at the last moment. It badly needed more debate and amendment."

"This is exactly what we and 20,000 supporters warned their MPs," said Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group. "The Act was rushed through and is already working extremely badly. It threatens basic rights and large chunks need to be repealed."

At present, the act applies to ISPs with more than 400,000 customers putting larger companies at a commercial disadvantage, says TalkTalk.

Andrew Heaney, executive director of TalkTalk, told the BBC: "It means we could have huge swathes of customers moving to smaller ISPs to avoid detection [from copyright owners]."

Heaney said the act could be in contravention of EU privacy and electronic communications directives, as well as an e-commerce directive stating that ISPs are "mere conduits" of content and should not be held responsible for traffic on their services.

The coalition government, of which Clegg is deputy prime minister, told the BBC it has no plans to backtrack on the act: "The Digital Economy Act sets out to protect our creative economy from the continued threat of online copyright infringement, which industry estimates costs the creative industries, including creators, 400m per year. We believe measures are consistent with EU legislation and that there are enough safeguards in place to protect the rights of consumers and ISPs and will continute to work on implementing them."

Charles Dunstone, chairman of TalkTalk, told The Times: "The Digital Economy Act's measures will cost the UK hundreds of millions and many people believe they are unfair, unwarranted and won't work. Innocent broadband customers will suffer and citizens will have their privacy invaded."

Gavin Patterson, chief executive of BT Retail, said: "We feel we have no choice. We have to do this for our customers."

Ofcom declined to comment.

Giant internet retailer will offer wider product range than Ocado from major suppliers including Kraft, Nestl and Procter and Gamble

Internet retailer Amazon piled the pressure on Ocado today with the overnight launch of a grocery division selling 22,000 products including brands such as Pampers nappies, Ariel washing powder and Pedigree Chum dog food.

The company, best known for its online sales of books and CDs, made the surprise announcement hot on the heels of the publication of the float prospectus for Ocado, which is aiming for a market valuation of 1.37bn when it lists on the stock exchange later this month.

Amazon said its new "grocery store" would offer 22,000 lines with big consumer goods firms Kraft, Nestl and Procter & Gamble among the suppliers involved. By comparison, Ocado sells 20,000 products, roughly a quarter of which come from Waitrose.

Amazon already sells groceries online in the US and has recently launched a similar service in Germany. Analysts, however, said shoppers would find it difficult to rely on the website for their weekly food shops as some items such as fresh and chilled food would be delivered by third party suppliers, meaning orders could arrive in several separate parcels. The delivery terms are the same as other Amazon goods and delivery is free if customers are willing to wait several days for their chicken.

Brian McBride, managing director of Amazon.co.uk, said the division offered customers the chance to buy staples such as washing powder and toilet roll in bulk, or shop for gourmet and organic products such as pheasant, partridge and wheels of cheese. "I don't think many people will do their weekly shop [with us]," said McBride in one interview, adding: "There will be many people who live outside of the big cities, who might find it difficult to track down their favourite brand of green tea, or ingredients for a Japanese recipe."

Indeed, items for sale include a whole lamb carcass for 120. Ambrian analyst Philip Dorgan said this suggested the retailer was targeting cash-and-carry and wholesale customers. The website also offers an eclectic mix of niche and ethnic foods, and halal and kosher meat. Dorgan said the product mix was "crazy" but that the breadth of the range demonstrated the weakness of the Ocado model and "would not be helpful" for the flotation.

An Amazon spokeswoman said it was "early days" and that the groceries range would continue to expand over time. She declined to comment on whether, like Ocado and Tesco, Amazon planned to use liveried vans to make deliveries.

Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1995, Amazon started out selling books but now also offers items ranging from e-books to shoes and washing machines. It took seven years to become profitable but global sales reached $24.5bn ( 16bn) last year.

In the past comparisons have been drawn between Amazon and Ocado, which, despite its float plans, is still loss-making after eight years of making deliveries. Fans of Ocado argue it is well placed to benefit from the growth in internet food shopping: analysts at market research firm IGD predict that online sales of groceries will almost double to 7.2bn by 2014.

Dorgan said such comparisons flattered Ocado. He believes Amazon was able to revolutionise bookselling because it was the only sector where an online operator could have cheaper distribution costs than a traditional store. "This is not the case in online food retailing," he added. "Both companies are pure-play retailers and lost money for quite a number of years, but that is about it [for comparison purposes] as far as we are concerned."

Local authorities are about to release a real tsunami of data - but campaigners are already worried it could be going wrong. How useful will it really be?

We all thought Coins was going to be the government's promised "tsunami of data", but the real data storm is going to come when local government (under Downing Street duress) will release every spending item over 500.

This should be a moment to celebrate, for developers, journalists and everyone concerned with how councils spend our council tax. Instead, campaigners are united in anxiety that what we might get could just be more of the same.

And it all started so well. Local government secretary Eric Pickles told councils that:

"I don't expect everyone to get it right first time, but I do expect everyone to do it".

Well getting it wrong might be the default position for some local authorities. CountCulture's Chris Taggart is concerned about data company Spikes Cavell's SpotlightOnSpend muscling in on local government data (you can see his latest post on the issue here).

The upshot seems to be this, councils hand over all their valuable financial data to a company which aggregates for its own purposes, and, er, doesn't open up the data, shooting down all those goals of mashing up the data, using the community to analyse and undermining much of the good work that's been done.

Paul Bradshaw reports that a Help Me Investigate page has been set up over the issue, to see how widespread it really is.

Spikes Cavell has been stung by the furore - chief executive Luke Spikes has pledged to allow raw data downloads, according to Information Age.

As it is, there is a real fear that councils could get it clangingly wrong. Openlylocal's data scoreboard shows that only 15 out of 434 local councils are publishing open data at the moment - only seven of them in a truly open format.

There seems to be a panic up and down the country among councils suddenly faced with releasing data they've previously kept to themselves - presumably combined with beffudlement over why they have to do it at all. If that panic translates into a default position of outsourcing the task, then we have real problems.

The thing is, there are no shortage of official guidelines showing exactly how to release the data. The Local Data Panel has a concise and clear set of principles for local data release - worth reading for their clarity alone. The Open Knowledge Foundation does too.

Essentially, they boil down to some pretty simple ideas:

1. Make it open

No T&Cs about not using the data for commercial use, no restrictions on access. Make the data available to anyone to do whatever they want to with it. That's the only way that the data information revolution is going to work.

2. Make it readable for computers

The data needs to be in a format that any computer can use - no more PDFs, thank you very much. If developers can't build applications and campaigners can't analyse it, what use is it?

3. Make it granular

The days when we only wanted official statisticians to just put the numbers together in a way we could understand are gone. Now we also want the full, disaggregated data too. It's the only way it will ever be useful for someone wanting to gather the true local picture of local spending. Let us worry about whether the dataset is too big or not. It's not your problem anymore.

4. Make it quick

Just get the stuff out there. We'd rather have it as it is - and then get it revised later than have to wait months for it to be finalised. The government has provided express permission for local authorities to do this. So just do it.

5. Make it easy to find

There's no point hiding this stuff away. If we can't find it, it may as well not exist. It should be easy to discover and simple to access.

That's a manifesto we can sign up to. What do you think?

Can you do something with our data?

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The Muir Russell report has cleared the scientists of any dishonesty over data, but how did the scandal affect Copenhagen?

The East Anglia emails were released just weeks before world leaders gathered in Copenhagen in December to continue talks on a new treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Many saw this as a deliberate attempt to undermine the summit, which produced a disappointing outcome.

Today, the third and final review of the emails affair cleared the scientists involved of any dishonesty over data. But while the Muir Russell report may have exonerated the "rigour and honesty" of the scientists and the science, did the fuss over the emails contribute to the failure at Copenhagen to agree a meaningful deal? Was there a swing in public opinion that saw politicians retreat from the previously bullish positions on climate?

Ben Stewart, head of media at Greenpeace, says the emails controversy had a significant impact. "It's pretty hard to say what the impact has been but it would be hopelessly naive to say it has not had an effect. To peak and decline our emissions was always going to need us to push a large rock up a steep hill, but the rock got heavier and the hill got steeper because of the reporting of the emails."

Stewart says it is the media, not the CRU scientists, who are to blame for any extra confusion among the public. "The public haven't read a thousand emails from scientists they have never heard of. The emails didn't change the way that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere, but the media created a situation that presented a false symmetry between the various sides of the debate."

Michael Jacobs, former special adviser on climate to Gordon Brown, and a figure central to the way the climate debate has unfolded in the UK, says: "I don't think it [the release of the emails] had an impact on Copenhagen. It affected the mood but not the outcome. The emails gave a huge boost to the sceptics but we didn't see a weakening of commitments on climate at a state level anywhere. Any government that wanted to stall action could have played up the importance of the emails and called for more enquiries, but that didn't happen, so I think they had less of an impact than some people were claiming."

Saudi Arabia, long-standing opponents of a global agreements to curb emissions, tried to use the emails controversy to bolster their position in Copenhagen. China cited them once, but made little headway.

Jacobs, now a research fellow at the London School of Economics, adds: "Since Copenhagen it's very difficult to tell. There's no question that climate agnosticism has increased, but I think that has more to do with a backlash to all the hype around Copenhagen. We were worried about the impact [of the emails] on public opinion but government action on climate change is not driven by public attitudes, but that it is the right thing to do. Public consent is important but not essential so long as there is not downright opposition. Governments introduce plenty of things that are less popular than action on climate."

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said: "It hasn't in any direct way affected the political process. Governments have scientific advisers who know this is just a storm in a teacup."

There could be an indirect effect, he said, from a confused public who feel there is less need to pressure politicians to cut emissions. "But I haven't seen any evidence there has been any big change in public opinion."

Apple iPhone 4 - good for Apple, bad for Apple PR, bad for mobile operators, good for HTML5 developers. And the customers? Well they're not exactly fully paid-up members of the Apple fan club either, according to a new report on the mobile web.


Photo by Sroown on Flickr. Some rights reserved

The unique selling point of the iPhone - it's App Store - will dwindle in appeal within two years as HTML5 becomes the standard for browsers and mobile web applications become increasingly feature-rich, says the 2010 Mobile Web Usage Forecast by mobile internet firm Volantis. And it will be gaming and social networking that provide the biggest pull towards the mobile web, the YouGov poll of over 4,000 US and UK consumers aged 18+ found.

Fifty-five percent of UK-based respondents said social networking would encourage them to use the mobile web more, while 17% were keen to access games on their mobiles. Those findings certainly correlate with this year's GSMA Mobile Media Metrics report which found that Facebook accounted for almost half of the 4.8bn minutes UK folk spent browsing the mobile web in December 2009. Over a third (38%) of all respondents felt that an iPhone was inconsequential as part of having a good mobile web experience, with just one in ten Americans thinking that an iPhone was essential to enjoy the mobile internet.

Volantis chief executive Mark Watson said the findings were good news for developers turned off by Apple's more restrictive approach to mobile apps: "The arrival of HTML5 will release developers from the constraints of Flash, making the user experience more varied and allowing the development of entertainment, lifestyle and business apps which are optimised to provide the same experience across all devices. Freeing developers from having to focus on either 'Apple' or 'Other' applications will further drive the mobile web market.

"Mobile internet users want compelling web experiences that will allow them quick and seamless access to the services that matter to them most," he said. "With the advancement of HTML5 the limitations of web apps for mobile are declining; inch by inch, function by function, handsets are becoming more web accessible."

In January this year, Gartner predicted mobile app downloads would surpass 21.6bn by 2013. By the same year, the analyst said, mobile phones would replace PCs as the most common device for web access.

An unrelated report by Denmark-based Strand Consult say Apple's latest mobile offering is "really bad news" for carriers, warning that mobile operators could well be issuing profit warnings due to large subsidies for the iPhone 4. Invoking its almost countercultural September 2009 report, The Moment of Truth - a Portrait of the iPhone, Strand Consult argue that any evaluation of iPhone 4 success should be based on six parameters:

How does the iPhone 4 differ compared to previous iPhone models?

Does the iPhone 4 have a new form factor that makes it attractive to new customer segments that did not purchase previous iPhone models due to the design?

Which customers will primarily purchase the new iPhone 4, new customers or existing iPhone customers that want the new model?

How will a massive upgrade of the iPhone base influence the economy of operators that have large customer bases that want a new subsidised iPhone 4?

What will happen with all the old iPhones when people purchase a new iPhone 4? Will they destroy them, or will they try to sell them to friends and family?

How big is the iPhone market? Is it so big that it deserves the uncritical attention it is receiving?

On each of these scores, Strand Consult contends, the iPhone 4 leaves much to be desired from mobile operators, while leaving the door open for mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) to deal in SIM-only strategies.

Domestic web connection joins holidays, mobile phones and fridge-freezer among necessities of modern life, Joseph Rowntree Foundation finds

A computer and an internet connection at home are no longer viewed as luxuries but as essentials, according to research published today. The latest Minimum Income Standard report released by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the social research charity, gauges what members of the public think people need to achieve a "socially acceptable standard of living".

Participants decided that a computer and internet access at home were now vital for all working-age households to enable people "to participate in society", both to access job opportunities and to get discounts on services.

The Minimum Income Standard differs from the government's official poverty line (which is set at 60% of the median income) because it looks beyond money and focuses on what a household has to budget for. It is an attempt to determine what, aside from physical necessities such as food, warmth and shelter, people need to allow them to feel part of society.

Participants confirmed that fridge-freezers, DVD players and mobile phones are "such an integral part of modern life that everyone should be able to afford them". Everyone should have enough money to allow them to buy birthday presents and to go on a week's holiday a year (not abroad), they said.

A car, however, is not seen as essential: it was judged that a minimum budget should cover only public transport.

The inclusion of a computer and internet connection echoes the government's drive to get more people online a campaign motivated partly by the desire to streamline public services and partly by a drive to foster digital inclusion. The Race Online 2012 strategy calculates that 10 million people in the UK have never been online four million are among the country's most socially excluded, it says.

The Rowntree paper reveals that a single person needs to earn at least 14,400 before tax to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living. A couple with two children would need 29,200.

Because the price of food, council tax and public transport have outstripped official inflation, families on a low income have seen their benefits dwindle.

The report calculates a single person whose income had risen by only the official inflation rate would have experienced a 10% fall in his or her standard of living over the past decade. "Without action to combat these effects, social and economic exclusion are likely to rise," the report concludes.

According to Rowntree's calculations, basic out-of-work benefits provide less than half the minimum income for an adult with no children and about two-thirds for families with children. Those in work need to be earning 7.38 an hour well above the national minimum wage ( 5.80) to achieve this minimum standard.

The BBC spent 199.3m on its BBC Online service in 2009/10, according to its annual report - 12% more than the previous year.

The outlay is 6% of the 142.50 annual licence fee, or the equivalent of 0.67 per month

BBC Online spend breaks down as: 126.7m content budget, 22.3m on distribution and 50.3m on infrastructure and support.

Future media and technology director Erik Huggers' salary totalled 407,000 - that's 330,000 base pay, 15,000 in taxable benefits and 62,000 in cash-based pension supplements.

More stats
BBC Online reaches 37% of the population each week and therefore costs 8.9 pence per user hour.
On a per user user basis, that makes it amongst the most costly of the BBC's main services, with only BBC Alba costing more.
More than 18m iPlayer requests per week.
Monthly mobile users up from 4.4m to 7.8m.
External suppliers received 26% of BBC Online spend - slightly more than its 25% quota.

Coinciding with the annual report, the BBC Trust has published its response to the BBC's Putting Quality First strategic review proposals. Regarding online, it says: "The Trust endorses the Executive's proposed 25% budget reduction, although it will want to understand and approve the editorial changes involved. In line with the Executive's proposals, the BBC should sharpen online's focus so that it is truly distinctive and has clearer editorial vision and control .

"The BBC needs to identify future tipping points where reassessment of the structure will become necessary, such as full digital switchover in 2012 and 50% of viewing on a non-linear basis.

"The case has not been made for the closure of 6 Music. The Executive should draw up an overarching strategy for digital radio."

Meanwhile, BBC is now rolling out "BBC Fabric", "a desktop-based digital production tool that allows content to be accessed, edited, and shared remotely across the entire BBC" and "will fundamentally change the way we make programmes", according to the annual report.

The site dates back to 1997, but its terms and conditions to about 1770 - and mobile developers are very frustrated by them

The Edinburgh Fringe is nearly upon us: it runs from 4 August to 28 August. And to cover it, there's the venerable Edinburgh Festival Fringe website - set up in January 1997, when the web was young(ish).

But look more closely at the site - specifically, at its terms and conditions - and you may get a throwback to those days you thought long-gone.

They begin:

"You are reading the terms and conditions for use of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe website (edfringe.com). They make a legally binding contract between us and you. Your acceptance of the terms and conditions is made by your browsing our website and is dated to your first use of the website. If you do not accept the terms and conditions or any part of them you should stop using our website immediately."

Gosh, I'm scared already. Reading them constitutes a legally binding contract? I'm no lawyer, but I think you have to do something - like signing dotted lines, opening packaging, or clicking buttons - to be shown to have entered into a contract. Reading isn't the same as assenting.

But carry on: there's another section.

"About linking by hypertext to our website: Before providing a link to our site you must seek our permission. To do this, email admin@edfringe.com with details of the URL to which you wish to link and the URL of the page on which you will be displaying the link. We do not permit the display of our web pages in any HTMLl [sic] frame unless we have expressly authorised this."

Pardon? We have to seek your permission to link to your site?
Update 17:40: that section has now been removed from the terms and conditions - although completely silently. (You can find it, for now, in Google's cache.)

At this point I did pick up the phone to speak to the people behind the site. So, I asked, has Google explicitly asked 1,200 times to link to pages inside the site? Has Bing asked 69 times? Or is there some sort of exemption for search engines?

There is a point to this line of questioning, which is driven by a post by Chris Gutteridge at Southampton University. He pointed to the absurd Ts&Cs, writing:

"I work with the Web Science Trust and some of the big names in the Semantic Web and I was hoping I would be able to create "linked data" for the fringe festival. Linked data is the technique being used to publish government data on data.gov.uk and, according to Sir Tim Berners Lee, is the future of the web.

"If I was able to do this (which I would happily do for free and with no bother to you), it would result in dozens of websites and phone apps remixing the fringe guide. While I'm sure your own iPhone app will be good (although I have a android phone, so no use to me), it would have been exciting to have 100's of people providing alternate ways to work with the programme, and far more in the spirit of the fringe. Sadly it looks like the rules have been written from the perspective of advertising revenue and control, rather than fostering creativity and experimentation.

"The Fringe will be awesome without linked data, but it could be and should be awesomer."

Well, I asked the Edinburgh Fringe website team, how about it? Why not let Gutteridge and similar people link in and create apps? Surely they'd be able to generate benefits for both the people visiting Edinburgh (you'd have an Android or iPhone app which you could use if you said "I've got a half-hour to spare... is there a show on? Are there tickets?") and the performers, who'd see more people at performances, and the site itself?

The response from Neil Mackinnon, head of external affairs for the Festival Fringe Society, was:

"The Edinburgh Fringe website is the only source of comprehensive and accurate information about every show taking place each August. It is also the only place where audience members can buy tickets for every show in every venue. In 2010 that amounts to 40,254 performances of 2,453 shows in 259 venues. The terms and conditions covering use of our website are kept under constant review to ensure that they meet the needs of the performers and venues who provide the information for the website and our audience members who trust us to deliver accurate and up to date information that can help them select the right shows for them."

Though I pointed out that this didn't actually answer any of the questions I'd put - about the weird Ts&Cs, the potential benefits to performers and customers - the team was unmoved, beyond saying that it "keeps these things under review".

Possibly, of course, it is simply trying to corner the market for itself, with its own iPhone app which - recently - it has begun picturing on the front of the site with the words "coming July". That might be useful, though it won't be much good for Android users.

And we really don't like those terms and conditions.

Temporary halt put on newly-introduced API feed as implementations catch the London open data experiment unprepared for demand

Stop all the tubes, cut off the API. Transport for London has had to stop its supply of data about the movements of Underground trains due to "overwhelming demand" from demonstrations of what can be done with that data such as Harry Metcalfe's Matthew Somerville's maths-and-magic live tube map. (If you try to go to that site now it just hangs.)

The reason: after opening up the API, requests for data ballooned from 180,000 to 10m. Consequently, TfL found itself a bit underprepared.

As the London Datastore - which has been the throughway for those API requests - notes,

"Owing to overwhelming demand by apps that use the service, the London Underground feed has had to be temporarily suspended. We hope to restore the service as soon as possible but this may take some days. We will keep everyone informed of progress towards a resolution."

Our understanding is that the London Datastore is now encouraging TfL to serve API requests directly, rather than proxied through the data store, because that will mean that TfL gets a clearer idea of who the customers and developers for its data actually are, and where they're based.

In the comments to the blogpost, there are some useful suggestions for TfL about how to improve the service while easing the strain on its (well, the LDS's) servers: more partitioning of feeds with less data per feed, and more caching. Obvious to developers - not so obvious to an organisation which has lived its life functioning, as one developer described it to me, as "a black box that people pour money into and which then spits out travel".

But for TfL, the lesson is clear: there's real, eager demand for its data via an API. There are people who have positive, helpful suggestions for how to improve its servicing. And it's being advised to hold those customers/developers closer, rather than at arm's length. It's going to be interesting to see how it progresses.

Now, can we have the live tube map back please? Soon?

Video from BBC site sees internet traffic more than triple as almost 1 million people log on to watch from work

Was there a sporting fixture on yesterday? Why, yes, there was - but apart from the titanic struggle of John Isner and Nicolas Mahut (the longest-ever professional tennis match in the history of the solar system, which is 6bn years, so not bad) there also seems to have been some sort of football game going on in a distant land. It didn't last very long, but football doesn't compared to tennis.

But because the England v someone else match happened during office hours, many people were, well, in the office when it happened. Which meant that they had to take sneaky advantage of the streaming capabilities of modern networks to watch it.

Early figures from the BBC suggest the total number of 'concurrent streams' peaked at 800,000 although the total number of viewers will be many times higher. The BBC said this was a viewing record.

That, according to Demon Internet, which provided the graph above (click for a larger version), saw internet use increase by 55% solely during the game compared to an ordinary working Wednesday afternoon, compared with a 38% increase during the first World Cup game between Mexico and South Africa on 11 June.

But EasyNet Connect, a business ISP, says things got even heftier: it saw a 226% surge (that would be a more than threefold increase) in web traffic compared to the average day.

After kick-off, traffic more than doubled (up 114%) compared with the pre-match levels (from 0900 to 1400).

Chris Stening, the managing director of EasyNet Connect, said: "As the first England game to take place during work hours, this afternoon's match between England and Slovenia was the biggest test for businesses' internet connections so far. The data from our own network shows that streaming the game at work was a popular choice this afternoon, pushing many business connections to their limits."

Matt Cantwell, the head of Demon, states: "Customers see the internet as a utility and yet, their networks might not be able to cope with the demands like electricity can. The surge in internet traffic could cause problems for SME businesses, who are the lifeblood the UK's economy. If they can't run their business normally during a World Cup match and ban their workers from keeping an eye on games during working hours, then inevitably, the business will lose out both on productivity and customer satisfaction. Whatever happens, it's a lose-lose situation for those without the right network infrastructure and support."

And another business ISP, KC, says that the game triggered a 31% jump in web traffic, as users watched the game via the BBC's live online stream.

Not mentioned because it worked so well is the fact that the BBC's streaming has held up so well, while ITV's has been roundly criticised for failing to manage the load, notably during England's the tournament's first game, which also happened during office hours, but for which the demand was probably impossible to estimate. The BBC may have been better warned but even so, it can pat itself on the back for its success here.

Bug in more than 500,000 Sony Vaio laptops can cause them to overheat but problem can be fixed by software update

About 535,000 Sony Vaio laptops have a software bug that could cause them to overheat, the company said today. But it denied reports that the machines would have to be recalled, saying that they can be fixed with a software update that is available on its website.

In a statement, Sony said that there have been 39 overheating cases in total, all outside Japan. Some of these have resulted in damage to computer bodies, but no burn injuries have been reported.

Some of Sony's F and C series Vaio PCs made in January this year and some custom-made models from the same series have been affected, the firm said.

Sony is asking a total of 646,000 owners to update their machines. The additional 111,000 machines are susceptible to several less serious problems that have also been found in the software.

The overheating is caused by a bug in the bios (basic input output system) software which provides the basic functionality for the machine, rather than the Windows operating system which runs on top of it. The bios is embedded in the chips of the machine, but can be upgraded. Sony says that people should either apply the update themselves, or take the affected machines to a Sony repair centre.

Affected models sold outside Japan are the VPCCW25FG/B, VPCCW25FG/P and VPCCW25FG/W.

A Sony spokeswoman said the company has not estimated possible costs stemming from the problem.

The fact that the problem is due to software, and not a hardware problem, will be a considerable relief to Sony. In 2006 it had to recall and replace approximately 10m Sony-made lithium-ion batteries used in laptops made by Sony, Dell and Apple. That cost it $250m.

This week's programme comes from the Guardian's Activate summit a conference dedicated to the future of the web, and how we get there.

The editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, spoke to Google CEO Eric Schmidt about the search giant's current problems in China, the future of newspapers in a digital world, and Google's ongoing issues with personal information and privacy.

Aleks Krotoski sits down with Martha Lane-Fox, the UK government's digital champion. She's tasked with connecting 100% of the population to broadband, and engaging them with a digital Britain. They're joined by Martha's US counterpart Beth Noveck to discuss their respective approaches to empowering citizens through the internet.

Finally, Nigel Shadbolt from Southampton University tells Charles Arthur about the next phase of his drive to open up government data. After success earlier this year with national government, now comes the tricky task of securing the release of local government information.

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