While Christmas is traditionally the time that sees traffic levels plummet on websites as folks head off to far flung families or incoherent revellers find themselves unable to type due to dangerous lager levels, Facebook enjoyed a veritable festive frenzy.
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Twittering ‘celebs’ Hit Daily Mail Where It Hurts – Sales
Funny to see The Daily Mail run a piece on how ‘celebrities’ are signing up on Twitter entitled, “How boring: Celebrities sign up to Twitter to reveal the most mundane aspect of their lives.”They deride the Tweets of the ‘stars’ as casting “a fascinating light on just how mundane, not to say downright dull, the day-to-day existence of many stars really is.”
OpenTape To Benefit From MixWit Closure?
If you haven’t heard, mxiwit, the great Web service that lets people create their own online mixtape, complete with a player that looks like a real old compact cassette tape with rotating reels, is closing, describing their situation as being “between a rock and a hard place.”There’s two pieces of good news to add to this sad news.
Last.fm: Mobile Via Vodafone Deal (video)
Last.fm is expanding their service away from just computers on to mobile phones, with Vodafone.It looks like the relatively recent corporate owners of Last.fm, CBS, are flexing their biz dev muscles, aiming to gain back some of the considerable investment they made in the music service.
iPlayer 3: New Social Functions Outlined For Q1-Q2 2009
If you hadn’t noticed(!), today is iPlayer day.The BBC Internet blog is covered in posting from various of the BBC bloggers, so many, that they run way over the front page.
Anthony Rose, Controller, Online Media Group and Vision, Future Media & Technology (blimey he must have a wide business card!), who oversees iPlayer, has recorded a video (not surprisingly playing in an iPlayer viewer).
He goes over his history with iPlayer and then projects forward into features and functions that he’d like to see incorporated into iPlayer in the future.
iPlayer 3, as it’s being labelled, will be available Q1 or Q2 in 2009 and will incoporate social features.
snom 820 review: VoIP Phone First look and Setup (video) Exclusive
We’ve got hold of the new top of the line handset from snom – the snom 820 – and are the first to review it.It’s the flagship – and currently only member of – the new snom 8 Series range and radically redesigned from their 3xx series.
The look is striking, making it stand out as a executive tool, ready for some serious ‘power dialling’.
BBC, ITV & BT Announce Open Broadband STB Project
The BBC, ITV and BT have announced a proposal to create an “open environment for broadband connected digital television receivers.”It’s an initiative open for all UK public service broadcasters, device developers and other ISPs, which they hope will lead to a new generation of subscription free devices, carrying free to air channels and a huge selection of on demand TV services like iPlayer and ITV Player, as well as the potential for films, shows and interactive content from a range of other providers in standard and high definition.
AMEE, Carbon Footprint Calculator, Raises ‘Substantial’ Funding (UPDATED)
AMEE, a company that provides Internet-based calculation and storage of the carbon footprints, has received ‘substantial’ Series A funding from O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures (OATV), Union Square Ventures (USV) and The Accelerator Group (TAG).Google Tasks: Gold Dust Info For Advertisers
In a further step to make Gmail as invaluable as possible to peoples lives, Google has released an add-on for gmail to help you handle your tasks.Released via Google Mail Labs, the app is fairly simple, letting you plug in the tasks you have to complete and when they have to be done by – but of course!
As was pointed out on Twitter by Psychemedia, Google knowing what you need to get done is fantastic for their adsense advertising opportunities.
It’s highly arguable that no piece of information could be more valuable to Google that what your plans / tasks / desire are.
IWF: How Web Sites Become Banned In The UK
Given all of the attention on the banning of Web sites in the UK (read Wikipedia / Scorpions album), we thought we’d give you the inside view on how it comes about.The setup
If a member of the public raises an objection to a Web site to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the IWF takes a look at it to judge if it’s objectionable (btw – they’re one of the few bodies in the UK legally allowed to view the child pr0n)
Funny to see The Daily Mail run a piece on how ‘celebrities’ are signing up on Twitter entitled, “How boring: Celebrities sign up to Twitter to reveal the most mundane aspect of their lives.”
If you haven’t heard, mxiwit, the great Web service that lets people create their own online mixtape, complete with a player that looks like a real old compact cassette tape with rotating reels, is closing, describing their situation as being “between a rock and a hard place.”
Last.fm is expanding their service away from just computers on to mobile phones, with Vodafone.
If you hadn’t noticed(!), today is 
We’ve got hold of the new top of the line handset from snom – the snom 820 – and are the first to review it.
The BBC, ITV and BT have announced a proposal to create an “open environment for broadband connected digital television receivers.”
AMEE, a company that provides Internet-based calculation and storage of the carbon footprints, has received ‘substantial’ Series A funding from O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures (OATV), Union Square Ventures (USV) and The Accelerator Group (TAG).
In a further step to make Gmail as invaluable as possible to peoples lives, Google has released an add-on for gmail to help you handle your tasks.
Given all of the attention on the banning of Web sites in the UK (read Wikipedia / Scorpions album), we thought we’d give you the inside view on how it comes about.