The BBC are reporting that they are suspending a Blue Peter badge scheme. Why? Cheeky blighters are buying them on eBay and presenting them as if they ‘earned’ them and claiming the benefits.
Non-BBC readers may be confused as to the relevance of the Blue Peter badge. Blue Peter is a British institution. The late afternoon TV show for children, which every child in the UK has watched, awarded badges to children who hard work and appeared on the show. Back in the 70’s they were highly prized items – the sort of thing that people would place under their pillow when they slept.
In the thirty or so years since then they may have got a little slack with their distribution because people are now selling them on eBay. Heresy in the old days. It’s be like chucking out your Jim’ll Fix It badge.
This may not be news to owners of the hallowed Badge, but apparently Blue Peter has a deal with over 100 venues around the UK that gives free entry.
Some rotters have clearly come to learn this and have been pursuing on eBay. The £30-odd that they are paying for them more than balance the amounts of money they have saving by getting in free to the locations.
Having become aware of this, the BBC say that they have been forced in to reconsidering if the free access to venues will continue.
A spokesman said: “The BBC investigations unit has been monitoring eBay over the past few months and has noticed badges being sold in large numbers by individual sellers.”
Sanyo have just launched what it’s claiming is the world’s smallest, thinnest and lightest solid state digital camcorder, the Xacti C6. 
Saving space by recording straight to a SD card instead of using conventional tape, recordable DVD or hard disk, the Sanyo can grab an hour of VGA resolution (640?480 pixels) video at 30 frames-per-second on a 1 GB card using the “TV-HQ” mode (MPEG-4 bit rate: 2 Mbps). 
There’s also a 5x optical zoom, 12x digital zoom and a Digital Image Stabiliser for correcting any wobbles, with the CCD sensor using 9-pixel mixing technology to record brighter and clearer video in low-light situations. 
With a leather-gloved stroke of the company white cat, Google’s mastermind cackled loudly as new figures revealed that their plans for UK domination are nearly complete, with almost three out of every four searches in the UK using their search engine. 
It looks like the Brits have taken a particular shine to the San Francisco-based search giant, with February’s search referral stats outperforming Google’s US average for the the month (55.39 percent) and their global average (62.4 percent). 
It is being reported that MySpace-owner, News International, is looking to expand its presence in Europe with its focus being London.
Importantly it also has social/network effects built it. This works both for the creators, as they grow their links to their friends – real and imagined; but importantly for MySpace’s income, the network effect for browsers is huge. As a browser looks at the original site, they split off in a myriad of different directions as they distract themselves, exploring the music taste and hobbies of linked friends. 
It’s expanded beyond this now and has now reached the point where record companies feel bands _must_ have their own presence on MySpace, even if they’ve got their own Web presence – witness sons of Ventnor, 
With the media footprint that News International has, it’s highly likely that they’re going to be able to make best value from what appears to be a considerable purchase price. Already there’s been reports their 
You’ll probably remember that we broke the story back in September about the 
BT’s also confirming that the box that will do all of these things is to be call the BT Hub. Its will use a software platform powered by Microsoft and that the set-top box is to be made by Philips. 
The Welsh Assembly has announced today that they’ve selected the BT Group to provide the broadband infrastructure for the remaining exchange areas in Wales. 
Once completed, virtually every single household in Wales will be able to join in with the broadband revolution and get stuck into video conferencing, Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and other business and entertainment uses. 
Compared to some other European countries, Wales’ achievement is significant; in Ireland, for example, only about 18.0% of the population have broadband connections. 
We’ve already run several stories about WiFi being made available for some passengers, sorry customers, on the UK’s rail network, but until now coach users have been left unconnected. 
With luck, the free trial may give the rail companies currently charging hefty prices to use their Wi-Fi a well-deserved kick up the buffers. 
BT has announced that some of its users should be able to obtain broadband speeds of ‘up to’ 8 Mbps by the end of March.
All good news you’d think, but the new connectivity comes with a bag full of caveats related to physical factors, with only those lucky enough to live or work close to their local telephone exchange able to scoop up the maximum 8Mbit/s speed.
Paul Reynolds, BT’s Wholesale chief executive, was keen to big up his company’s commitment to broadband availability in the UK “Thanks to BT’s continued investment in the broadband network, the UK now boasts the highest level of broadband availability in the G8. We’re now building on those efforts in becoming the first operator in the UK to commit to a national service which is capable of broadband speeds of up to 8Mbit/s.