Some people get rather too carried away with online communities, and we’re safe in saying that Scott Leo of the City of Toledo in Ohio, USA.
Not unusually in the online world, Mr Leo took a female form online, under the pseudonym of “Sassy Sarah”. He extended this to include a photo of an alluring blond, and posted as if he were a female.
He was no slouch, ending up with 6,622 postings since August, averaging at 45/day.
His down fall came when a ‘concerned citizen’, Mike Brubaker, a resident of Tennessee raised the issue on 27 December, after getting concern that they Cities money wasn’t being spent wisely.
“My son comes to me and says, ‘This person works for the city of Toledo,'” said Mr. Brubaker. “He said, ‘Are you allowed to look at sports Web sites while you’re at work?’ “
After investigations, it was found that slightly rabid poster has accessed the site 19,200 times between Aug. 18 and Nov. 2 by computers near Mr. Leo’s, all using his password.
Robert Williams, director of the Department of Public Utilities, has responded by saying that he planned to introduce controls of Internet access when sites “receive an inordinate number of hits.”
This kind of behavior isn’t unique online. To get the lowdown, we spoke to Digital-Lifestyles’ Mike Slocombe, who has a parallel life as head honcho and founder of UK discussion board Urban75. It’s a seriously busy board with nearly 2.5 million postings and over 26,000 members.
Mike said it’s not unusual for some of his more keen members to post over 45 messages a day, with the highest being 80/day. Not surprisingly a number of the members have received warnings from their work places, some receiving official warnings.
Torledoblade – ‘Sassy Sarah’ posted on Web 6,622 times
Urban75
Blinkx have unveiled blinx.tv To Go, a new service that helps users track down online video content and then lets them upload it to their iPod or personal video player.
Visitors searching the company’s database of video blogs and podcasts are able to either save the video to their player with a single click, or save the search to a channel which automatically feeds updated video content to their player, where it can be viewed as a single media stream.
“Our vision of IPTV combines the interactive, customisable experience of the Internet, with the simple, seamless way we watch TV, and now we’ve made it portable,” Chandratillake added.
Mydeo, the UK consumer video streaming company, has teamed up with UK ISP Tiscali to offer streaming video sharing services to broadband users of the UK Tiscali Website.
Members will be able to stream their cinematic masterpieces on a pay-as-you-go basis, and will only have to shell out when they choose to upload a video. Users can pay in Euros, UK Pounds or US Dollars.
“Mydeo is really easy to use and offers lots of help and support for our members who may be putting video on the Web for the first time,” Hole insisted.
Not satisfied with its already-almighty online presence, the BBC has launched the Film Network – a growing interactive showcase for new British filmmakers, broadcasting three new short films in broadband quality every week.
The Website aims to expose new talent and create a platform for some great films that are rarely seen elsewhere.
Viewers keen to grab a slice of the free film action will first have to register on the site.
It should be noted that the BBC Film Network is not part of the currently in-trials 
The festival has been developed by Bloc (Creative Technology Wales) and Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. They have managed to accommodate a large number of complex yet accessible projects. This collaboration is all the more impressive in its scale when you realise that both organisations have their own projects running concurrently (Bloc are developing Northern and Southern pilot projects in Wales with accompanying seminars; Chapter are hosting the first UK showing o the artists Olaf Breuning).
To join in you can access a number of computer terminals at the National Museum and Gallery or at one of the festival hubs at Chapter or g39 (cor). If you are unable to visit you can play from your own 
The artist group Second Site will be displaying new video works in the windows of a empty bank on Bute Street, while Chris Evans will project his interactive game onto St John’s Church in the centre of Cardiff.
It’s a fact of life – almost everywhere we turn we are surrounded by technology. From mobile phones and digital cameras to TVs and video games. But as well as making our lives easier and providing us with entertainment, more and more artists are now turning to everyday technologies when they create their work.
“The event will be held at various sites across the capital and will illuminate the city with dynamic and individual work using a range of new and existing technologies,” said festival co-director Emma Posey.
“We want to create a vibrant creative technology sector in Wales, with the festival celebrating this every two years.”
Keen to get their size nines stamped all over the fast-growing podcasting revolution, Yahoo have launched a spanking new podcast service designed to make it easy for punters to rummage through the zillions of audio files available and find the stuff that interest them.
Surfers will also be able to listen to or subscribe to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for individual shows, episodes or entire series.
The service will offer a unique feature that lets users find content quicker by speeding up playback without the the broadcaster’s voice sounding like Mickey Mouse on helium.
Unlike rival Podcast search sites, Yahoo! isn’t bundling in tools for creating podcasts at the moment, although that’s likely to happen in the future, with Joe Hayashi, Yahoo!’s director of product management saying, “This is all about discovery for now. Step One is all about growing the ecosystem.
Search company Blinkx have launched a free service that lets amateurs and pro filmmakers upload and store their video files to a searchable online library.
Users of the Blinkx.tv service will also be able to create custom channels, based on a specific search term.
This will be automatically populated in the background with videos that match a chosen search term, encouraging users to have the occasional rummage around in their smart folder to see what new videos have been added.
Google’s virtual world domination plans continue afoot with the beta launch of their new blog search service, making the company the first major search engine to offer comprehensive blog and feed search capabilities.
Google’s new service (sporting its trademark, no-frills interface) can be found at 
The Blogger version comes with a branded interface with an extra “use search options” link giving access to most common search advanced options, like searching in specific posts, entire blogs or specifying a date range to search within.