And what of the Internet? It was supposed to allow us to stay at home and work. But now, we use the Internet to plan our trips and buy our aeroplane tickets.

Rupert Murdoch’s rumoured plan is to make much of the Wall Street Journal's content free. he inexorable trend in finance and news is that information and data have no monetary value. They are ubiquitous.

The Nigerians are still in business. Apparently, there are people who fall for their scams. They send a letter or an email explaining that they have a huge amount of money that they need to transfer to the United States…all they need is the help of an ordinary person with a bank account.

What is this Bit torrent thing that everyone talks about and how do I use it and how does it work?

Class was supposed to disappear with the modern world- particularly with the internet. It was supposed to usher us into a world where we all talked to each other and the technology was supposed to create a classless society... but it hasn't quite been like that.

For class has not gone away at all- and even on the internet class persists as a factor in the way that people use the net. Its interesting to note that as the Guardian reveals according to research done by Danah Boyd at the University of California the working class make use of different social networking sites from the middle class. In the States, Facebook (thanks in part to its origins as a site for students) attracts middle class professionals whereas My Space attracts working class and minority groups.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have once again broken Internet speed records, and this time twice on consecutive days.

While working on the high-speed Internet 2 network, an experimental system set up and managed by a consortium of more than 200 universities in the US and elsewhere, researchers have announced that back on December 30 last year they successfully transmitted data at 7.67 gigabits per second over 30,000km using only standard equipment and communications protocols.

Then, the next day, on New Year’s Eve, over the same pathway and using the same equipment and standards, the team achieved a data flow rate of 9.8 gigabits per second, which is very close to Internet 2’s theoretical speed limit of 10 Gbps.

I wouldn’t say no to getting that kind of download speeds, but it’s highly unlikely that my ISP will offer that kind of speeds in the near future.

Wikia the company behind the encyclopaedia Wikipedia is planning to launch its own search engine in a bid to take five per cent of the search engine market, and by this move taking on the mighty Google.

The news was announced by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales at a news conference in Japan, Wales condemned the practice of secrecy in search engine ranking, and explained that an online community could develop the future of search engines.

"The idea that Google has some edge because they've got super-duper rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now," he said.

Wales describes Google and Yahoo as "black boxes" that won't disclose how they rank search results, and that collaborative search technology could transform the power structure of the Internet.

Early in January, Senator Ted "Tubes" Stevens introduced Senate bill number 49, this bill would require that any library or school that gets federal Internet subsidies would have to block the Tubes to all interactive Web sites.

This means that they’ll have to block the Internet Tubes to sites like MySpace and Wikipedia and possibly also Blogs, it sound crazy, but Senator Ted Stevens thinks that all interactive Web pages could be a major threat to American children.

Last year a similar bill was introduced, the Deleting Online Predators Act, also called DOPA. That bill passed through the Tubes of the House, but got clogged in the Senate.

This new bill is being called the "Son of DOPA" due to the similarities of these two bills.

It limits access to social networks in schools (only those receiving Federal subsidies via the E-Rate Program ) and seems to encompass the same sites as DOPA, everything from MySpace to Wikipedia; additionally the schools would be required to monitor, or perhaps track, the online activities of students if not supervised by faculty. Also included in this section is a mandate for the FTC to set up a site to warn of the dangers of social networking and interactive sites.

It's difficult to point to one reason in particular why, out of all the sciences, people seem to find archaeology the most fascinating.

There is of course the aesthetic quality, which fields like say, physics and chemistry seldom can equal. Greek statuary and ancient Chinese bronze vessels are undeniable works of art to rival the best humanity has ever produced. The appeal of dinosaur fossils need no explanation to any young boy. And mummies, hidden for millennia, elicit that Gothic frisson beloved by the early Romantic writers.

But most of all, archaeology probably appeals to the part of us that wishes we were Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, "tomb-raiding" for some priceless artifact.

Some times that jolt of caffeine from the morning coffee or Red Bull just doesn't cut it to get you going. The rain is pouring down. The engine of your car is making coughing noises that didn't sound healthy when you heard something similar from the wino living in the alley around the corner. There's a ton of dreary paperwork waiting for you in the office. It's Monday.

That's when you have a very real physical need for that certain fix that you can only get by reading that Britney Spears is pregnant again and looking like something dredged up from the Mississippi, to bring the bounce back in your step. And you need it right now. That's when you log on to GossipURLs.

Web encyclopaedia Wikipedia, which blocked anonymous Qatari editors from posting on its site for 12 hours yesterday, has confirmed that this policy was only temporary and not an intentional country-wide ban.

The 12-hour ban on unregistered Wikipedia users posting to the site via the IP address 82.148.97.69 was brought into effect as a result of internet vandalism and spamming by some Qatari users, according to Wikipedia’s official online explanation.

According to a related BBC News report, these problems related to specific web pages covering the US, sex and the birthday of the prophet Muhammad.

Two days after announcing a top secret intelligence community website named "Intellipedia" the United States' top intelligence official took down a government website featuring captured Iraqi documents after concern was voiced it may provide too much information about how to make atomic bombs.

In a statement Thursday night, a spokesman for National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said his office has suspended public access to the website "pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing."

The website, which contains Saddam Hussein-era documents, was pulled after The New York Times raised questions about the contents of the government site, called the "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal."

Condé Nast, the owner of Wired and other magazines and websites, has acquired Boston based Reddit earlier this morning, and will make the announcement later today. The price has not yet been disclosed.

Reddit is a social news service that was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005, they were later joined by Christopher Slowe and Aaron Swartz.

Reddit has always played second fiddle to Digg, although Reddit does have an active and loyal userbase of about 70,000 unique visitors and 700,000 daily. Now all the four Reddit employees will have to relocate from Boston to Wired’s San Francisco office and become part of Wired Digital.

Iran’s government has banned high speed internet in an effort to cut out influence from the west, according to reports from The Guardian.

This comes shortly after a clampdown on satellite dishes, which Iranians use to watch western TV.

The move restricts the country's five million Internet users to a mere 128k connection, and broadband has been strictly forbidden. Iranian bigwigs seem to think that western music, movies and TV shows are poisoning and undermining the country's proud Islamic culture among the little ones. The ban will make it far more difficult for kids to download such things.

Back in 2001 Wikipedia began its life, founded by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales. The online encyclopedia earned its fame and popularity by allowing anybody to participate on an equal footing, but it certainly also received its share of criticism aimed at the flip side of the same distinguishing quality.

Sanger resigned from his role as "chief organizer" of Wikipedia in 2002. While still expressing support for the goals and ideals of Wikipedia, he has been singing along with the choir of critical voices since his departure. But in contrast to Wikipedia’s other critics, Sanger is not content with just sounding off.

Usage of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser worldwide has slipped since January, while Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox gained by a nearly equal amount, a Web analytics firm said Friday.

IE use fell by 0.65 percent to 85.17 percent of the market in May, OneStat.com, a Dutch firm, reported. Firefox usage increased by 0.56 percent to 11.79 percent.

Apple Computer's Safari was the third most popular browser globally and in the United States, followed by Opera and Netscape. Globally, Safari and Opera has increased in popularity since January, but usage for both fell in the United States.

In January, OneStat.com reported that IE's share rose in the last two months of 2005 to 85.8 percent globally and 80.9 percent in the United States. Firefox had slipped to 11.2 percent and 12.6 percent, respectively.

Back in 2005 Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. (Rupert Murdoch and his family own about 30% of News Corp) bought Intermix Media, owner of Myspace.com, the fifth most-viewed internet domain in the US and owner of other sites for $580m.

Those of you not familiar with MySpace.com, MySpace.com is a "Social Networking" community site with 66 million users and with about 250.000 new users signing up every day. Users can create their own profiles with details of their interests that can be viewed and linked to by other MySpace.com "friends", these profiles can contain images of yourself or your mutated cat if you like, and maintain their own blog's.

It didn't take long before MySpace.com became the centre of the media company’s internet strategy. With a significant amount of advertising dollars, but now the MySpace empire seems to be showing visible cracks.

Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corp, told the Financial Times that, although he and Mr Murdoch were very optimistic about its prospects when they acquired it last year, MySpace had exceeded their expectations.

“MySpace is more potent and powerful than even we knew,” Mr Chernin says. “And it is becoming a more integrated part of people’s lives.” However, as efforts grow to attract more advertisers to the site, News Corp is facing two challenges. Young users have to keep wanting to use the site, rather than switch to a "cooler" alternative.

For once someone in the entertainment industry has figured out how to do things in the internet world. A short while ago, in a classic case where someone should have asked themselves if they should have done something just because they could, the celebrity gossip site Gawker set up their Stalker system, where readers could use their mobile phones to text message sightings of celebrities. The aim was to keep an almost continuous tab on the movements of the glitterati.

It might be hard to drum up a lot of sympathy for the rich and the famous, who after all to a certain degree have sought out a life in the public eye. But it doesn't take much imagination and sober reflection to realise the potential for tragic results of this service.

If he were dead, the ghost of Mark Chapman would be hovering above Gawker's servers clutching a copy of "Catcher in the Rye". There are sadly people in this world who it would be best for everyone involved did not know that Nicole Kidman just went down a dark alley close by.

According to wired news The conservative Islamic regime in Iran has taken an interest in dissenting views on the net and are cracking down not only on domestic bloggers but also on bloggers based outside the country;

On his last visit to Iran, Canadian-based blogger Hossein Derakhshan was detained and interrogated, then forced to sign a letter of apology for his blog writings before being allowed to leave the country. Compared to others, Derakhshan is lucky.

Dozens of Iranian bloggers have faced harassment by the government, been arrested for voicing opposing views, and fled the country in fear of prosecution over the past two years.

In the conservative Islamic Republic, where the government has vast control over newspapers and the airwaves, weblogs are one of the last bastions of free expression, where people can speak openly about everything from sex to the nuclear controversy. But increasingly, they are coming under threat of censorship.

The President of France, Jacques Chirac, stated during his recent New Year address that France and other European countries must meet the global challenge posed by American giants - Google and Yahoo!

Jacques Chirac

He warned that in future, all that is not available online runs the risk of being invisible to the world. Asserting that Quaero, Europe's response to Google, needs to be launched, the French President then discussed it at length.

Quaero, a Franco-German project, is being developed by a consortium including - Thomson, France Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom.

The project - whose Latin name means "I seek", will focus on 3 areas: a combined sound, image and video search engine for the general public; professional search applications; and audio-visual "heritage" such as historical footage.

Quaero is all about searches "understanding" audio, images and video, sans written descriptions; and stands test to a new research and development approach driven by the Agency for Industrial Innovation (AII), which is the discovery of Jean Louis Beffa, chairman - glass and ceramics group, Saint-Gobain.

While AII will provide half of the funding on the French side, with companies led by Thomson; discussions on the German side are ongoing, with the possibility of a similar arrangement being put in place between the government and companies led by Bertelsmann.

It is said that Quaero if successful will be the first "truly multimedia" search engine, and a powerful competitor to Google. Also, even though indexing multimedia content is at the root of Quaero, it will not limit itself to being an internet search engine. Apparently Thomson is interested in offering an in-built search facility on the set-top boxes it makes, plus supplying applications to its television and film company clients; Bertelsmann wants to create similar multimedia search facilities on various platforms.

Safari and Firefox are continuing to take browser marker share away from Internet Explorer, according to NetApplications.

Explorer remains by far and away the most dominant browser with 85.05 percent, but it lost significant ground in 2005 - down from 90.31 percent in 2004.

Firefox end the year up nearly 10 percent for the year with 4.64 percent of total market share. The open-source browser had "started 2005 on fire", according to NetApplications but cooled off during the summer months. A stronger year-end was thanks to the release of Firefox 1.5.

Safari was the only browser to gain market share every month, and has jumped past Netscape to grab the third spot at 3.07 percent market share. It ended 2004 with 1.56 percent.

Netscape shrank to fourth place with 1.24 percent share, and Opera ended the year with 0.55 percent - the same as where it was in 2004

It may have taken over five years getting there, but at 10am today, the first .eu domains will go on sale - and it's going to be a landrush.

At least it will be for trademark holders, because only those holding a valid European Union trademark will be entitled to apply from now until 7 February 2006 - and only on the exact trademark they own. Applications will be checked.

The registry owner of .eu, EURid is expecting tens of thousands of requests in a very brief period as approved registrars bombard its servers in an effort to get hold of the domain their customers want.

There is no guarantee of success: a large number of trademark have mutiple legitimate owners across the EU, but only one can win the domain.

Some companies, including Pool.com, have been offering advanced domain-grabbing options - up to ?10,000 for its "premium" domain service. Customers only pay if the company manages to get it for them, following a deposit of ?125. But that remains a hell of a mark-up considering the domains themselves cost only ?10.

Microsoft is striking back at Google as they attempt to replace the Google-supplied ads on AOL with ads from its own MSN service. CNN reports that Microsoft and Time Warner are close to a deal, although talks still continue between Time Warner and Google. This seems to be merely an advertising deal, not the rumored sell-off of AOL.

This comes in the wake of rumors earlier this year that Time Warner was considering selling its stake in AOL. AOL's stock-based purchase of Time Warner in 2001 lead to a 98 billion dollar loss in 2002, and has been widely regarded as an embarrassment for Time Warner.

A new version of the popular general-purpose scripting language PHP has been released.

PHP 5.1.0 changes include a complete rewrite of date handling code, with improved timezone support. Performance improvements, more than 30 new functions, 400 various bug fixes, upgrades to PEAR and the upgrade of PCRE and SQLite libraries.

Just the sort of things that PHP developers have been waiting for as they will now have something to talk about at the office Christmas party.

How are the mighty fallen and the ISPs of yore perished. Well, once mighty AOL might not have perished just yet. But there can be no doubt they've fallen quite a bit since their heyday when they hijacked Time-Warner with inflated dot.com stocks.

When dial-up ruled, and broadband was for institutions only, AOL got close to ruling the net. They put a happy, easy, safe and rather bland face on what had been the domain of command line geeks. It was AOL that handheld the grandmothers and plumbers onto the net. Now there's bound to be differing opinions as to whether that represented progress or not; but there can be little doubt about the impact they had on the growth of the modern internet.

Now the carrion birds are circling, the old Powers That Be in Time-Warner are in the driver's seat after having given the dot.commandos the boot to the behind, and several companies have signaled and interest in acquiring the ailing giant, among them search engine company Google.

For Google, AOL offers video and other programming that Google has been increasingly trying to deliver as it expands beyond search. A stake in AOL also could let Google preserve a lucrative ad-and-search partnership that now accounts for more than 10 percent of Google's revenues, according to Google's regulatory filings.

For Comcast, AOL would give it entertainment content, which the cable company sees as key to its future growth. Last year Comcast tried but failed to acquire The Walt Disney Co., and earlier this year it joined with Sony in a successful bid to acquire the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studio.

AOL also could give Comcast's high-speed internet business a major opportunity to lure AOL subscribers looking to drop their dial-up connections.

And it would give Comcast the ability to sell more online advertising, particularly if it makes AOL the home page of choice for its broadband users -- similar to how SBC Communications and Verizon Communications now give their users a window to Yahoo through partnerships.