To a long, long fanfare that we began to fear would never end, Top of the Pops, the world’s longest-running weekly music show, was finally killed off last night.
A classic example of how the Internet is changing consumer’s habits, the once High Priest of Pop found its viewers tumbling as music fans flocked to the Web for the latest tunes, news and videos.
Despite being a major landmark on the UK music map for what seems like centuries, a new generation of impatient, tech-savvy and Web-connected listeners were hardly likely to warm to a format that only offered a distilled breakdown of chart acts once a week.
Why wait?
Way back when we were lads, music delivery on demand wasn’t quite the slick operation it is now, with music starved teens reduced to hanging about in smelly phone boxes, dialling ‘160’ and shoving in their 2p’s to hear a crackly rendition of the song of the day (which you hoped wasn’t the Wombles).
But kids today – spoilt rotten!
Thanks to the Internet, music lovers can now instantly gorge themselves on zillions of new tunes through social networking sites like MySpace, immerse themselves in vast oceans of songs on pay-per-download sites like iTunes or smuggle in tune booty from pirate sites like SoulSeek.
With this kind of personal music delivery, the days of families sitting around the gogglebox for a weekly fix of pre-programmed music entertainment are long gone, with music fans able to listen to music whenever they feel like it, via their computers, mobile phones, iPods and media players.
The figures back up the story too, with a recent survey revealing that people spend longer on the Internet than watching television, with the audience for Top of the Pops crashing to around a million viewers from its once-lofty peak of more than 15 million.
MTV
Meanwhile MTV are still battling on with the launch of a community-style site at MTV.co.uk followed by a new channel called Flux which will let viewers control what is aired on the station, and offer live chat with other users
Aimed at challenging the big-boy social networking sites like MySpace and Bebo, MTV are hoping their new product will appeal to the wired generation.
Angel Gambino, vice president of commercial strategy and digital media at MTV Networks UK & Ireland told Reuters, “If audiences are spending more time away from the TV it is important for us to make sure we have a really compelling product.”
“It’s critical to our success to make that transition from a broadcasting company to a multiplatform media company,” she added.
Whether MTV’s new interactive TV service will manage to make inroads into a music market increasingly driven by the Internet remains to be seen, but it’s clear that traditional heavyweights like record labels and MTV are very unlikely to enjoy the domination enjoyed in the past.
The Murdoch empire continues to buy to part of the online world, as BSkyB announce the full purchase of Web publishing and design company, mykindaplace, a company that they’d invested in 2000 when they previously dabbled in buying bits of the Internet. 
James Baker, Managing Director of Sky Networked Media, who will have the mykindaplace teams under his power, invented a new term to us “super-serve,” when he said “Working even more closely with mykindaplace will allow us to accelerate the expansion of our web portfolio. We intend to super-serve audiences in key content genres and target new users with a suite of content-rich sites thatdeepen customer relationships and drive new revenue.” 
YouTube is being sued by a video news service, Los Angeles News Service for infringing the copyright of their video material, in particular, the footage of the 1992 LA riots, including the horrific attack on a truck driver. 
YouTube has made moves to reduce copyrighted material on their sites, including limiting the length of videos that can be uploaded. 
When we saw the 
There’s thirteen different skin designs currently available with any RSS or Atom feed simply turned in to a Widget. 
Logitech has dished out some details on their new QuickCam Ultra Vision Webcam, which they claim offers, “a true-to-life video calling experience by delivering twice the image clarity as that offered by typical Webcams.” 
Unfortunately, Logitech haven’t released any proper photos of the Webcam or posted up any examples of the image quality, so I guess we’ll have to wait to see if the it’s as good as they say. 
We’re sure children under 10 years old (and some cray-zee tie wearing office pranksters) will get more pleasure than we did out of using the included ‘Video Effects’ software. 
Wedging its foot firmly into the territory currently ruled by rival application World Mate, Fizz Traveller for Pocket PC is a mobile travel companion, compatible with Windows Mobile 2003/2005 and Smartphone editions. 
Great if you like that kind of thing, of course, but we’d be happier with just one clean, crisp and professional interface than a load of bubbly, baubly spinning things. 
Sadly, you couldn’t zoom into the map so it wasn’t the greatest of travel aids. 
We liked the weather maps and there’s no denying that the interface has been buffed and polished up to a very high standard with lots of options for folks who like to customise their app. 
With credit card-crazy Brits leading at the front, Europeans are spending ever more money online, with the yearly total for 2006 on course to hit €100bn. 
So where’s the cash going? 
Steeenkin’ spammers are increasingly turning their evil gaze in the direction of SMS, Web-based instant messaging, bloggers and community sites like MySpace.com, according to MessageLabs. 
MessageLabs reported that spam mail soared a hefty 6.9% in June to make up a massive 64.8% of all global emails sent that month. 
The US Democratic party has adopted net-neutrality as a party-political issue following the rejection of a second pro-neutrality amendment in a vote late last week. 
Former presidential candidate Senator John Kerry commented, “This vote was a gift to cable and telephone companies, and a slap in the face of every Internet user and consumer.” Another Democrat, Senator Ron Wyden, placed a ‘hold’ on the bill which temporarily stops further progress but a decision is inevitable and both sides are marshaling forces behind their cause.