大象传媒

Dear Andy, can we talk?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 30 Dec 08, 11:45 GMT

Oh dear Mr Burnham - you surely cannot have expected a little light musing in the to have turned you into the blogosphere's Public Enemy Number One? On Saturday the culture secretary gave one of those broad-ranging interviews to a national newspaper which eager politicians are wont to do at this time of year.

The problem was, he threw into the mix, along with some hints about how Channel 4 might be funded, some thoughts on ways of regulating the internet. There was vague talk of "cinema-style, age-ratings for websites", mutterings about ISPs being forced to provide child-safe services, and of negotiations with the incoming Obama administration on new international rules for English-language websites.

When I heard about this on Saturday morning's radio news bulletin, my first thought was that a web storm was about to break over his head, and so it has proved. He has been attacked, abused, and mocked for days now - and one blogger went so far as to set up a in an attempt, he says, to educate him about just how the internet works. The Twitter administrators have now deleted the account.

A couple of things strike me. First, yes, Andy Burnham's suggestion that Britain and the US could get together and impose some sort of web code does beg all sorts of questions. Who would decide what was permissible? How would trillions of constantly changing websites be policed? How would it work with existing ratings schemes such as PICS, set up by the W3C consortium? And isn't it up to parents, not the state, to watch over the way their children use the web?

Then again perhaps the blogosphere is underestimating the subtlety of Mr Burnham's approach. After all, it was unlikely to have been the primary audience he had in mind when he made his remarks to the Telegraph. He may be betting that millions of parents share his concerns, and sense of helplessness about the web. He is also probably correct in thinking that governments are more able these days to apply pressure on both ISPs and on major web international brands than web libertarians would like to think. So, for instance, suggesting industry-wide "take-down" times for sites like YouTube and Facebook to remove offensive material may not actually be as na茂ve as the blogosphere believes. Whether more regulation of the internet is actually a good thing is of course another matter, and of course one on which the 大象传媒 has no opinion whatsoever!

But perhaps we all need to move on. Mr Burnham could explain more clearly exactly what he has in mind in terms of producing a safer web - and his online opponents could explain, probably in less sarcastic language, just why they think those proposals would not work, and whether there is any role for government here. The culture secretary's web-savvy colleague Tom Watson has used on Mr Burnham's "cinema-style ratings plan", and promises to forward them, but that is a bit of a one-way process, not the conversation that the blogosphere prefers.

So here is an invitation, Mr B. Why not come on to "dot.life" and start a dialogue with those critics who believe you just don't understand the web? You would be very welcome - as would anyone else with views on this matter.

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Can Britain afford fusion?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 29 Dec 08, 10:44 GMT

Nuclear fusion? Not my thing really - hard science stuff for clever colleagues like Pallab Ghosh, rather than the soppy digital stuff which is my beat. But a few months back I sat next to an engineer at a lunch and he persuaded me that I really needed to see , Europe's biggest nuclear fusion experiment. Just before Christmas, I took him up on that offer.

I'm glad I did because it is healthy for someone with an arts degree and then 20 years in business journalism to spend a day listening hard to scientists. And it gave me food for thought about the complex decision-making involved in deciding where to put government funding for technology.

Three questions came to mind as I drove onto the sprawling Culham site in Oxfordshire, the location for both JET, and for MAST, the UK's contribution to the quest for clean, virtually free nuclear energy. Where was the security? How long has all this been going on? And how far away are they from turning cutting-edge science into real power stations that can deliver cheap energy to the grid?

The answers were swiftly forthcoming. The security is relatively light because the kind of fusion they are working on does not have a military by-product and involves only small amounts of radioactivity. The research has been going on since the early sixties - and even at the height of the Cold War it was an international collaborative effort involving Russian scientists. And how far away from reality? Well the old joke amongst nuclear fusion scientists is that whenever that question has been asked the answer has been the same - "about 30 years away".

Visiting this place is like going back and forward in time. The long pale green corridors, with separate offices housing small groups of scientists, are redolent of some Cold War secret base where brilliant chaps are working against the clock to defend their country against a devastating weapon developed by SMERSH. And it is clear that many of Britain's smartest scientists have worked here - indeed some have spent their entire careers on this project: "Until recently," one of my escorts proudly told me," there were two professors of physics and three fellows of the Royal Society on my corridor alone."

Then you are taken into a control room packed with computing power and with a live web link which allows University of York physicists to participate in the experiments. Finally, after passing through an airlock, you are escorted into the giant hanger housing JET itself.

This is a great big industrial machine - again, partly ultra-modern, partly constructed of bits and bobs that appear to have been recovered from the local scrapyard. The machine, first fired up in 1983, in essence replicates what happens inside the sun. It heats two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, to 100m 潞C so that fusion can take place.

Gradually, the process has been refined over the past quarter of a century, so that bursts of fusion power can be produced albeit for no more than a matter of seconds. "So," I asked, "the next stage is to turn this into a working power plant?". Err, no.

The next stage is another, much bigger experiment, called ITER, an international fusion project which will be built in the South of France, and may then be up and running by 2024. So, we're about 15 years from fusion? Afraid not. Only if ITER proves successful can a demonstration power plant be built.

So why is it all taking so long, when it took a much shorter period to turn nuclear fission into power plants - and of course bombs? My hosts showed me a graph produced by American colleagues illustrating progress towards commercial fusion at different rates of investment. At the current rate, the graph is a horizontal line - so it looks as though we will continue to be "30 years from fusion" for the foreseeable future.

But even this level of funding means billions have been spent on a dream of cheap energy that may prove to be just that - a dream. But the scientists at Culham believe passionately that they are making progress in a project vital to Britain's future, and the only form of renewable energy that will keep the lights on in the coming decades (there was a lot of harrumphing when I mentioned other sources like wind).

Now there are plenty of other calls on government funding for technology. Just as our universities were beginning to have some success in spinning off clusters of small high-tech start-ups, the funding from venture capital is drying up, and so the search for alternative finance is on.

So here is the choice for ministers - provide a cash boost for hundreds of small ventures that will quickly thrive or fail, but are unlikely to change the world. Or think long-term, and bet the farm on fusion, which may provide huge benefits for future generations long after you have left office - or may prove a complete waste of money. Glad it isn't my job to make that decision...

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Looking back - tech in 2008

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 24 Dec 08, 09:45 GMT

The Financial Times , deciding the launch of Apple's 3g phone was the key technology event of 2008. So I've been looking back through the archives of this blog to work out what were the other highlights of the year.

January

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the big story was the impending victory of Blu-Ray in the battle with HD-DVD. Although HD-DVD's backers didn't formally throw in the towel until the following month, it suddenly became clear at the show that the high-def format war was over. That helped spread a warm glow of optimism in a technology industry which seemed confident it could weather any storms brewing in the global economy.

February

At the Mobile World Congress, all the talk was of Google's new Android platform for mobile phones. We got a first glimpse of it in the wild, and filmed some of our coverage of the event on mobiles. And proved just how useful a professional cameraman can be.

March

This was the month the row over Phorm really got going. Three big ISPs were thinking of using the web tracking ad-serving software, provoking outrage from privacy campaigners. We asked Sir Tim Berners-Lee for his view - on the principle of web tracking rather than Phorm itself - and he told us . As the year ends, BT is talking of going ahead with Phorm - so expect this row to continue through 2009.

April

The arrival of Grand Theft Auto IV was probably the - and one which we decided marked a new maturity for both the gaming industry and the mass media which cover it. For this launch was treated more as an artistic event than as an excuse for lots of soul-searching about violent games and their effects on the young. It has been a great year for the games business - one of the few sectors still confident it can ride out a recession.

May

The dullest story of the year was the interminable . It did come to life in April with the exchange of "Dear Jerry" "Dear Steve" letters between the two protagonists - one threatening all sorts of mayhem if Yahoo didn't surrender, the other pointing out that Microsoft's falling share price made its bid less attractive. But in May Mr Ballmer walked away, and Jerry Yang celebrated his victory. His shareholders weren't quite so jubilant - the year has ended with their shares worth a third of what Microsoft was offering, and Yahoo looking for a new boss.

June

Our tour of Broadband Britain took us from a remote village on the west coast of Scotland, where they relied on home-brew broadband to Ebbsfleet in Kent, where . - and many told us you were not happy with what you were getting. Ofcom and the government both launched reports on the prospects for next generation broadband - though it is not quite clear what part dot.life played in those decisions.

July

The 3g iPhone went on sale, and we gave it considerably less coverage than the original launch. But I think the FT was right about its importance because this was the moment the mobile internet came of age. The most important aspects of the phone were not its "3g" - network coverage is still a bit patchy - but the applications and the price. Apple reached beyond the early adopters, and showed a wider market just how much you could do with a phone on the move.

August

The Scrabulous affair was one of the more entertaining stories of the year - and one which excited plenty of comment on the blog. The legal battle between the owners of Scrabble, Hasbro and Mattel, and the Agarwalla brothers they accused of violating their copyright with their Facebook Scrabulous game also shed light on some serious issues. How far should media companies go to defend their intellectual property on the web? How much responsibility do businesses like Facebook have for what happens on their networks? And what seven-letter word can you get from these letters - UUOSFIR - to sum up the reaction of the millions who whiled away the hours at work playing the game?

September

This was the month when the wheels really started coming off the world's banking system. But as the skies darkened over the global economy, the technology firms - from giants like Intel to the tiniest Web 2.0 start-ups - were still insisting that they were well placed to weather the downturn. As the month ended we asked whether the party was over for technology. Just days later shares in Google, Apple and Microsoft were tumbling and venture capital firms were telling start-ups to batten down the hatches, cut their costs, and try to sit out the storm.

October

Cloud computing has been the hottest new phenomenon to emerge this year, though the idea of storing more and more data on an internet "cloud" has been around for ages. In late October and promised online versions of some of its key products - but hedged its bets by insisting that many users would want a copy of Office on their computer as well as in the cloud. The sceptics were quick to point out that Microsoft was late to the party - both Amazon and Google have already got their heads in the clouds.

November

Twitter had first proved its worth as a news source earlier in the year when Tweeters started discussing the earthquake in China before it was reported by the mainstream media. But during the Mumbai terror attacks the micro-blogging service provided a constant stream of news and impressions from the city's Twitter population. That then sparked a debate about the authenticity and accuracy of the messages - and whether mainstream media organisations, including the 大象传媒, should give space to this form of citizen journalism.

December

This month has seen a flurry of stories reflecting many of the themes of the year. The "zero day vulnerability" uncovered in Internet Explorer was another example of the growing concerns about security on the web. The blocking of a Wikipedia page highlighted the continuing conflict over the limits of free expression on the web. And the launch of Virgin Media's 50Mbps broadband service was a sign that Britain may at last be moving into the internet fast lane - but raised questions over whether ISPs will start charging more for high bandwidth traffic such as web video.

All of these issues will no doubt be the source of plenty more heated debate over the coming year. But for now dot.life would just like to wish a Merry Christmas to all our readers.

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Copyright - the empire strikes back

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 22 Dec 08, 09:03 GMT

For years it has seemed that the music - and increasingly the film and television - industries have been on the back foot in their attempts to protect their intellectual property as the digital revolution has gathered pace. But now the empire is striking back. A series of incidents over recent days have seen the content owners and creators fighting to assert - or even extend - their rights in a digital age, and winning political backing.

First, Britain's culture secretary Andy Burnham, weighed in on what some are calling the "Cliff Richard tax" - the battle by musicians to get copyright law extended from 50 to 95 years. Somewhat to my surprise (I thought he'd want to keep his head down on this one), Mr Burnham has said he favours an extension, though to 70 not 95 years. He says "We need a workable system of copyright to underpin the long-term health of our creative industries", and argues that this will benefit aging, impoverished session musicians rather than Sir Cliff or the record labels. But Mr Burnham has been lambasted by those who think more copyright law is the last thing we need and will act as a brake on digital innovation. Among his fiercest critics was one Andrew Gowers, who said copyright extension would provide a windfall for a few music companies, higher costs for radio stations and negligible benefits for artists. Mr Gowers has credibility in this area - he is the author of the on the future of copyright, commissioned by Andy Burnham's own government.

Then the great and good of Britain's film and television industry - everyone from Kenneth Branagh to Richard Curtis - signed . They say the ISPs must be forced to act against file-sharing customers: "They have the power to make significant change and to prevent their infrastructure from being used on a wholesale scale for illegal activity. If they are not prepared to act responsibly, they should be compelled to do so." There are signs that the government is sympathetic here too and may be preparing legislation to force the ISPs to do what they don't really want to do - become the file-sharing police

Finally, the music industry started getting heavy with MySpace over the use of a music-sharing website on the social network. Back in April the record labels sued Project Playlist, accusing it of running a free music business which amounted to "nothing more than a massive infringement" of their copyright. Now they've taken the battle to MySpace - and reportedly Facebook - and MySpace has stopped its users from sharing playlists created on Project Playlist over the network.

In summary, the video and music industries are fighting back against two ideas - that copyright law is irrelevant in the internet age, and that customers can now expect to get what they want online for free. But while their legal departments are busy suing everyone in sight and lobbying for more legislation, the marketing people are finally coming up with innovative ways of reaching digital customers.

I'm writing this listening variously to Handel's Messiah, Vampire Weekend and Roy Orbison (no accounting for tastes I know) via a 3g connection to a new service called Spotify. Every few tracks my music is interrupted by an advert, but apart from that I can listen to just about any piece of music I can think of for nothing (There is a subscription option which removes the adverts). This is the first streaming music service I have used which shares three qualities that I think most consumers are seeking - it has a huge catalogue, an attractive and simple user interface and it is legal. Spotify signed a licensing deal with the big four labels and a number of independents back in october.

Perhaps the music industry should be putting more of its efforts into supporting smart new digital services, rather than lobbying to protect and extend its analogue rights. But then again, the record labels would argue that there is no point in offering shiny new ways to get your products if you're simply allowing the customers to share music for nothing.

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Five grand for Sock And Awe

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 19 Dec 08, 16:21 GMT

Who says entrepreneurship is dead in the UK? The week began with an . On Monday, a few people traded ideas on Twitter for what might be a good tabloid headline for the story - and came up with "Sock and Awe".

By Tuesday one of those Twitterers - website designer , whose earlier ideas included - had come up with a game and posted it on a website, . Now he has sold the site on eBay for 拢5,215.

The buyer is a company called Fubra, and at first sight they are either mugs or just looking for a bit of cheap publicity. This site may have already attracted more than a million unique visitors but surely it has a very limited shelf life and will soon fade away, along with all those Prescott punching games and other brief internet crazes.

But Fubra have been quick to put adverts on the site, and are claiming they will have made their money back by tomorrow night. A spokeswoman told me that the firm had plans to develop sockandawe and pointed out that another Fubra property, , had continued to prosper - despite predictions that it would founder now that house prices have in fact crashed. (It must be a testament to Fubra's marketing skills that it manages to sell housing finance ads on a site devoted to the folly of investing in property).

So maybe it is Alex Tew who is the mug for selling out so quickly? But then the whole incident restores my faith in the speed and ingenuity of the British tech scene, and British journalists. After all, Silicon Valley didn't come up with a viral Bush shoe game, and the headline in the New York Times was . Not quite "Sock and Awe".

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Negroponte - missionary not manufacturer

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 18 Dec 08, 10:25 GMT

It was one of the more arresting moments of my broadcasting career. In the middle of our interview, Nicholas Negroponte picked up a laptop on the coffee table in front of him and flung it across the room.

But this was not just any laptop - it was the machine created by Mr Negroponte's organisation. And he wasn't furious with me, just trying to make a point about the rugged virtues of the XO laptop in a very graphical manner.

But you could forgive the digital guru for being just a little exasperated. After all I had started out, by asking him whether the OLPC project had stalled, overtaken by the rival Intel Classmate laptop and by a host of small notebooks at rock-bottom prices.

This month, OLPC launches its "Give On, Get One" campaign in the UK, urging shoppers to buy the XO for themselves, while giving one to a child in the developing world. But in this offer the "$100 laptop" costs 拢275 - and, as I pointed out, you can go into a supermarket right now and buy a notebook computer for under 拢200.

That was why he sent the XO spinning across the floor to demonstrate one way in which it is superior to rival products. Last year I watched as children in a dusty Nigerian village gave the machine some rigorous road-testing, so I was already aware that it was both more unbreakable and less power-hungry than other machines - and more easy to look at in bright sunlight.

But this has not been a great year for this project which aims to put laptops in the hands of millions of children across the developing world. So far, just 600,000 laptops have been delivered, rather than the millions forecast by now, and Uruguay is the only country where they are finding their way into every school. Intel announced in the summer that it is selling 500,000 of its Classmate computers to one country, Portugal.

But Mr Negroponte - who fell out very badly with Intel a year ago - says that's all corporate spin, and he is delivering computers now rather than promising them in the future. He suggests that his project will reach children in countries like Haiti and Ethiopia which commercial organisations will ignore: "We view children as a mission, not a market."

Unfortunately, many of the developing world politicians who once seemed keen to buy into OLPC seem to have lost interest. Nicholas Negroponte fears that is because they do not really understand its educational aims: "If a head of state thinks children should be computer literate - whatever that means - then they don't understand this as part of early stage learning." What he seems to be saying is that it is all about learning how to learn, rather than working out how to create a Word document.

Which bring us to the issue which has led some of OLPC's supporters to doubt the founder's own adherence to its creed, the decision to work with Microsoft. The version of the XO laptop that went skidding across the floor was a dual boot machine, able to run a version of Windows XP alongside its own Linux-based operating system. To some that is a betrayal of the project's original open source creed - and indeed in our interview Mr Negroponte spoke dismissively of other cheap laptops as "diminutive Office products".

But, having outlined the visionary mission behind OLPC, he turned into a pragmatist when I asked him why he was putting Windows on the XO: "It will increase the number of kids who get access to it - because the decision makers are often people who are comfortable with Windows - they're not comfortable with Linux." He compared it to Apple's move to enable users to run Windows on its machines which he said had turned the Mac from a niche product into one which corporate IT departments would approve.

I'm a little worried, however, that the XO may be an idea whose time has come - and gone. Earlier this year OLPC unveiled a prototype of a touchscreen laptop which looked absolutely gorgeous. The trouble is, it's still just a "concept computer" and, as Nicholas Negroponte conceded, could be years from production. In the meantime, commercial manufacturers will be taking the ideas and turning them into profitable products.

As someone who has seen at first hand how inspirational the XO can be - not only for those Nigerian children but in the hands of when I asked him to review it - I would be sad to see this project fade away.

But in a way it has already succeeded. Nicholas Negroponte's skills are those of a missionary rather than a manufacturer. Others may not quite see the mission to bring cheap computing to the world's children in his terms, but they are at least beginning to get the job done.

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Phorm: Opt-in or opt-out?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 17 Dec 08, 08:40 GMT

In all the excitement about Microsoft's problems with a "zero day vulnerability" in Internet Explorer, a significant development in a major row over internet privacy passed almost unnoticed. Earlier this week, , the company whose web tracking software has so angered privacy campaigners, issued this statement to the Stock Exchange.

"Phorm, the advertising technology company, is pleased to announce that the trial with ISP partner BT has now concluded. The trial achieved its primary objective of testing all the elements necessary for a larger deployment, including the serving of small volumes of targeted advertising. There will now be a period of joint analysis of the results. Following the successful completion of analysis, both of the trial results and of any changes required for expansion, BT has informed the Company that it expects to move towards deployment."

It was back in the summer that BT was forced to apologise after . But it then went public with its intention to mount a full test of Phorm. Crucially, this involved users opting in to having their web habits tracked so that they could be served adverts that mirrored their interests. Now that trial is over - and though BT is saying nothing beyond the statement issued by Phorm - it looks certain to push ahead with the deployment of the technology.

What isn't clear is whether it will be "opt-in" or "opt-out". If it is an opt-out service, then there will be an almighty row, and BT will be accused of installing a spy on its customers' broadband lines without consulting them. If it is opt-in, how many will choose to have it? I don't detect any great enthusiasm for targeted advertising. Perhaps a financial incentive will be needed - cut-price subscriptions for 'Phorm Broadband"?

The two other ISPs which are looking at the service, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, will presumably wait a while and let BT take the brickbats. But, in a fiercely competitive broadband market, they will find it hard to resist signing up if BT's gamble on Phorm turns out to be a nice little earner.

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Is it safe to Explore?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 16 Dec 08, 13:38 GMT

If the average computer user read the Microsoft about the Internet Explorer vulnerability - and you'd struggle to find it if you weren't looking - you might be none the wiser about how serious this was, or what action you should take.

A long way down comes this line: "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user." As far as I understand it, that means there is a real danger that Internet Explorer 7 users (and possibly users of other versions of IE) could be opening the door to cyber criminals to allow them to ransack the contents of your hard drive. In other words, it is a pretty serious situation.

So when I spoke to John Curran, head of Windows at Microsoft UK, I had three questions.

1. How serious is this?

Mr Curran told me that only a tiny proportion of websites were infected, but given the sheer scale of today's web, that could affect a large number of people.
So, he said, "it is certainly something people should take seriously."

2. So what should IE users do?

Microsoft is working on a patch but in the meantime Mr Curran said there were four steps to take.
- make sure anti-virus software is up to date.
- run Internet Explorer 7 or 8 in "protected mode".
- set Internet Explorer zone security setting to "High"
- Windows users should enable Automatic Updates so that they get any patch that is issued.

But of course doing all of that is not only time-consuming, it will make your web browsing experience slower and less rewarding. Which brings us to the final question.

3. Shouldn't you switch to another browser until the patch come out?

This has been the advice of a number of security firms - who of course are also touting their latest anti-virus products - but you won't be surprised to hear that Mr Curran disagrees. He told me he had recently seen a report which listed another browser as having the highest number of vulnerabilities. "it would not be advisable," he said,"to send people from one vulnerability (in Internet Explorer) to multiple vulnerabilities."

But given the choice between messing around with Internet Explorer and so enduring a second-rate browsing experience until the hole is fixed, or running Firefox, Safari or Opera, aren't quite a few people likely to switch? This could be the moment when the minnows in the browser wars finally score a significant victory.

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Virgin: some 50 Meg questions

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 15 Dec 08, 17:10 GMT

Within minutes of Virgin Media unveiling its 50Mbps service, I was getting messages from cynics. They wanted to know whether 50 Megs really meant 50 Megs - or in practice would end up being something much slower.

And they were right to be cynical. Anyone who has an "up to 8Mbps" broadband deal knows that they are lucky to get three or 4Mbps. And while Virgin's cable network does not slow up the further you are from the exchange - in the way it does for BT's ADSL customers - it still uses "traffic management" to throttle back speeds at peak times.

Soon, more interesting questions were coming my way - so I decided to put them to the Virgin Media press office. They boiled down to speed and coverage.

Speed: Virgin says it is very upfront about its speed limits. For instance, if you have its 20Mbps service you will have a download limit at peak times - 4pm to 9pm - and if you exceed that you will slow right down to 5Mbps.

But the company insists that at the launch of the 50Mbps service, there will be no traffic management or throttling and you will get 50Mbps - although if you are running a wireless network, you are bound to lose some speed. However, it sounds as though limits may be imposed once the new network it has built on top of its old one fills up with traffic.

Buried in Virgin's press release is an interesting figure. Its users' average monthly data consumption has gone up from 4.7Gb to 8.1Gb over the last eighteen months. That is bound to keep on rising, perhaps more steeply, as more people download movies and watch streaming video.

In other words, the company has built a whole new motorway so that we can speed around the internet but, like the M25, it will attract lots of motorists at peak times, and eventually new speed limits will be introduced.

Some people wanted to know whether existing customers on 10Mb or 20Mb packages would see any improvements. Virgin says the new network will eventually triple its data capacity, and that should have a beneficial effect for all customers.

Others wanted to know about upload speeds. At the start, you will only get uploads at 1.5Mbps, though Virgin says that will be reviewed next year.

Coverage: Plenty of people are asking how quickly this 50Mbps service will be made available across the country - and whether there is chance that those not on the cable network might eventually get it. The answers seem to be "by the middle of 2009" and "not a chance".

Virgin says that by the end of 2008, its new DOCSIS3.0 network - that is, the system upgrade which makes 50Mbps possible - will be deployed in 40% of its network, including parts of Scotland, the Midlands and south London. The rest of the fibre-optic network will be covered by next summer. But note the "fibre-optic" - Virgin also has some broadband customers that are not on its own network but are served through a BT exchange.

They won't get the new service, and a spokesman made it clear that the company, which as NTL and Telewest spent and lost billions laying cable across the UK, "won't be digging up any more roads".

So, a few answers. But I've got a couple more questions. Are people really going to pay 拢51 a month for Virgin's 50Mbps broadband? And how will BT price its 40Mbps fibre broadband when that starts to make an appearance next summer?

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Broadband Britain - slowly getting faster?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 14 Dec 08, 08:30 GMT

Back in June, we toured "Broadband Britain" - and discovered that speed was an issue of real interest and concern to internet users around the country.

Since then, the debate about building a next generation broadband network has only got hotter, with reports from government and Ofcom stressing the need for speed.

Now we've repeated the study of speed test data we commissioned in June from . Then, it showed that the average speed across the UK was 3.2Mbps, but that there was a big gap between rural and urban areas. What's surprising - in a year when it seemed that suppliers were competing to offer us faster broadband - is how little has changed. The average speed, calculated by analysing 188,000 speed tests conducted by users across Britain between June and November, is now 3.6 Mbps.

"We have plateaued" was the assessment of thinkbroadband's Sebastian Lahtinen. Sure, the gap between the cities and the rural areas has closed a little - but at a time when "up to 8Mbps" has become the norm in broadband packages, it is still pretty rare for that kind of speed to be achieved. Indeed, even in the fastest region in our survey, London, only around 15% were achieving speeds of 8Mbps and above, and the average connection speed had barely changed over the last six months.

If we are to build a network that can deliver much higher speeds, it's probably up to two companies to do it: BT and Virgin Media. Today, Virgin launches its 50Mbps service to cable customers, which will be the fastest residential broadband available to more than a handful of households. BT has started putting 100Mbps broadband into a huge new housing development at Ebbsfleet in Kent - but that accounts for just a couple of dozen homes. Next year, it's promising a pilot of fibre-to-the-cabinet, with 35,000 homes offered up to 40Mbps.

But there are questions - both technical and financial - about each company's approach. Virgin isn't laying miles of new fibre - it's relying on a software fix to its network to deliver higher speeds, and not everyone is convinced that's a future-proof strategy. BT is starting down the fibre route - but is still pretty anxious about the scale of its investment, and jousting with the regulators about the return it gets from offering rivals access to its network. As the recession bites, any large-scale investment in fibre is going to get ever harder to justify to shareholders.

In any case, most of us are probably reasonably happy with the kind of speeds that are on offer right now. Unless you are in a household which contains a hardcore gamer and a couple of heavy video downloaders, you will struggle to justify laying out the money for 40 or 50Mbps broadband. But that could change quickly. This has been the year in which internet video - the 大象传媒 iPlayer and other services - has exploded, with some grumbling from the ISPs about the strain on their infrastructure. Sooner or later, the iPlayer will go HD, and just imagine the pressure that will put on bandwidth. History has shown that when you build it, people come, and businesses will find ways of delivering them new web services. But right now, Britain seems in no hurry to build faster broadband.

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Canvas and the connected home

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 12 Dec 08, 10:22 GMT

As a 大象传媒 veteran, I'm obviously not the best person to take a completely impartial view on the importance of Project Canvas.That's the plan outlined on Thursday by the 大象传媒, , and to co-operate on a common platform for IPTV - or, as an ITV statement put it rather more usefully, to "bring broadband and television together in one box". There are plenty of obstacles to be cleared - regulatory rows, technical teething troubles, standards snafus - before we start plugging a set-top box into our broadband and watching the iPlayer and other online video offerings on our televisions rather than on a computer.

But I think that this is an exciting development that could be an important step on the road to the connected home that technology gurus have been promising us for so long. Just one question - by the time the rough sketch of Canvas becomes the full picture, won't millions already be choosing different ways to pipe web content around their homes?

By chance, as Thursday's announcement was being made, I was in a house that is already wired for the future. We were filming at the home of , top technology pundit and , as part of a report on the way we may all consume the media five years from now.

By linking together his various computers and a games console over his wireless network, Bill has got himself just the kind of arrangement that a Canvas box may deliver in 2010 - and quite a bit more. At the heart of the set-up is a Mac mini computer and an Xbox 360 linked to a projector. They are also linked wirelessly to his main desktop computer and a PC.

We watched as Bill and his 16-year-old son Max put the system through its paces - selecting iPlayer programmes to stream onto the wall, watching YouTube videos, and using the Xbox 360 - not just to play games, but to store and play video previously downloaded to Bill's desktop computer. With a 20Mbps broadband line, it all seemed to work pretty smoothly - a slower internet connection might have struggled.

The result was extremely impressive - and it was clear that the home's old cathode ray tube television sat in the corner and got little use. For those who've already got a computer or two and a games console, this kind of set-up would not be that expensive or difficult to imitate. So will Canvas look a little bit tired by the time it arrives in 2010 - and will customers who've already got a computer capable of delivering IPTV to their television really want to buy what is in effect just another one?

Well, I'm going to stick my neck out and say "no" and "probably" to those two questions. For one thing, Canvas, if the partners do their work properly, should deliver the kind of cross-platform internet television experience that we've struggled to get until now. For another, there are still millions of people who do want to use the iPlayer but don't want the "computer" experience - all that fiddling around with settings and menus that installing any network requires. Freeview shepherded the large slice of the population who are not early adopters into the digital TV age and, if Canvas turns out to be simple and elegant, it can take those same people into the era of broadband television.

By the way, apologies for the standard of the video interview with Bill Thompson. It was shot by a rank amateur, using a 拢120 camera. It just goes to show that however much technology changes television, there's still a place for professionalism.

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Wikipedia - IWF backs down

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 9 Dec 08, 09:29 GMT

It must have been a long and difficult meeting. All day on Tuesday, the Internet Watch Foundation was taking calls from journalists like me and promising a new statement about what must have been the most controversial decision in its history - the blacklisting of a Wikipedia page about the heavy metal band Scorpions. That decision had sparked fury not just among Wikipedians - those people in the UK who found themselves unable to edit any pages in the online encyclopedia as a result - but among a wider public concerned about what they saw as covert censorship. On this blog alone, we had more responses than on any other previous post - more than 200 within 24 hours - and the overwhelming number were critical of the IWF.

The statement finally appeared on Tuesday evening, revealing that the watchdog's board had removed the Wikipedia page featuring the image of a naked child from its blacklist. But this was not a total climb-down - the statement starts by reiterating that the image in question "is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978." It then goes on to concede that the picture has been in the public domain for a long time - it was of course first published in the 1970s and has apparently been reproduced in a number of books and on other websites.

The IWF admits that its actions have only made the "Virgin Killer" album cover all the more visible to millions of web users. Its objective is to minimise the availability of "indecent images of children", and it has had precisely the opposite effect. It finishes by apologising to Wikipedia and its users for the "unintended consequences" of its actions.

The responded in similar vein, thanking the IWF for making a swift decision. But the foundation's chief counsel Mike Godwin said the incident "underscores the need for transparency and accountability in the processes of the Internet Watch Foundation and similar bodies around the world".

So where does that leave the debate about internet censorship? The IWF's critics have been vehement in their denunication of the body - there has been talk of "Orwellianism" and comparisons with China and other countries where internet access is strictly controlled. Isn't this a little bit over the top? I didn't notice anyone being marched to jail for viewing that page. The whole affair seems to have got the web - how shall I put this? - a little over-excited. Here's one message I received: "We won't be boilled frogs. Once you start down the path to the Dark Side, forever will it dominate your destiny."

What the incident has done is shine a light on the workings of a watchdog of whose existence many were ignorant. The criticism is that it operates in secret, it is self-appointed, and that, in the words of one of my correspondents "it can control what we see, whether illegal or not". But it can only act as a censor if the ISPs who are its members agree to enforce its blacklist. It was their automatic blocking of the Wikipedia page which meant that users ended up getting "page not found" messages rather than being informed of the censorship, so perhaps they should be the ones answering for their actions.

And not everyone agrees that the IWF was in the wrong in the first place. Struan Robertson, a lawyer whose " blog covers web legal issues, points out that Wikipedia itself indulges in a form of censorship with a "blacklist" of people from certain IP addresses who are forbidden from changing Wikipedia's pages. Mr Robertson says it is no use telling the IWF and the ISPs to wait for a court ruling on the legality of the image: "Web hosts must not wait for an image to be declared unlawful by a court when they receive a complaint, albeit only a court can declare an image unlawful. If they wait, there is every chance that the declaration will come at their own trial."

It certainly appears that the IWF should have been aware that acting against one of the most popular sites on the internet was bound to cause an uproar. So the case for greater transparency in the Internet Watch Foundation's procedures seems pretty obvious.

But it strikes me that the critics too need to answer some questions. Is there any need to block access to child abuse images online? If so, should it be done by the Internet Watch Foundation or another body? Or should we just ask the police to watch out for these images - and let ISPs be sued if they fail to spot them?

Mind you, I've learnt one very important thing from this whole affair. The "Scorpions" are not an "obscure" German heavy metal band, but an enduringly popular rock phenomenon. Sorry.

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Kosmix - searching for optimism

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 9 Dec 08, 08:57 GMT

What's the definition of optimism in these troubled times for the hi-tech economy? How about starting a business which plans to take on Google from a base in Mountain View, the search giant's home town? Or maybe ploughing $20m into that business as an investor when everyone else is hiding under the bed covers?

But that's the story of , a new search business that has announced today that it has won $20 million in funding from investors who include Time Warner.

The co-founder of this apparently mad venture dropped into London a week or so back, and on meeting him I was almost convinced that he might just have a chance of success.

For one thing, idea does look quite compelling. He is very keen to stress that he isn't taking on the behemoth of search head-on. "Google is the best place to go if you're looking for a needle in a haystack - if you're looking for one single website or piece of information. But Kosmix is about exploring a whole topic." In the bar of the London hotel where he was staying he showed me an example. A search for Stonehenge grouped on one page pictures of the site, documents and discussions about its history, but also details of accommodation in Bath, should you want to stay there during your visit.

Later, I searched for "internet censorship" and found a useful collection of articles, videos and news relating to this topic. In this case, the results were not so different from what a Google search threw up, but they were organised in a more accessible manner.

The idea sounds a bit like the various "semantic search" companies that have popped up recently - from True Knowledge to Semantifind - but Anand Rajaraman said his firm had not gone down this path. "We deliver on the promise of semantic search without doing it that way." Instead, he explained, the Kosmix work involves "categorisation", crawling the web, extracting huge amounts of data, then using statistical analysis to figure out clever ways of extracting meaning from it. Such as working out that someone interested in Stonehenge might combine their visit with a trip to Bath.

The other impressive thing about Mr Rajamaran and his co-founder Venky Harinarayan is that they have a track record of turning their computer science expertise in to large piles of cash. They are friends who dropped out of Stanford in 1996, as part of the team behind Junglee - one of the web's firs comparison shopping software. That was sold to Amazon in 1998 for stock worth $280 million. Since then the two Indian-born entrepreneurs have used their share of that windfall to back other Silicon Valley start-ups, before setting to work to create Kosmix.

Still, even with a solid team and what appears to be impressive technology the odds must be against Kosmix making it big. Plenty of others have tried and failed to convince the world there is a better way to search. But there is no denting Anand Rajamaran's optimism: "It's a very good time to build a business," he told me. "There's not so much noise out there, and it's a great time to hire people." And when I suggested that Kosmix was entering a crowded market, he had a swift response: "It's getting less crowded every day."

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Wikipedia is censored

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 8 Dec 08, 09:29 GMT

Is the internet censored in the UK? Well, no, most of us would say - you can get to any site you want, as long as it isn't breaking the law - and even then, the authorities are unlikely to intervene.

But now customers of several big internet service providers are finding that they cannot access one page of a website. And it's not just any website - it's Wikipedia. The page that they cannot view is about a relatively obscure 70s heavy metal band, Scorpions, and it has been blocked because it includes an image of a controversial album cover. That cover shows a naked child, and even back in the 70s it proved too distasteful for many, and was withdrawn in a number of countries.

Now the - which has been Britain's leading online child abuse watchdog for the past 12 years - has . The result is that those internet service providers which are members of IWF have blocked their users from accessing that page.

A host of Wikipedians is on the warpath, suggesting that this is censorship by a self-appointed body which has no right to decide what we can look at on the web. I caught up with one of them, . He acts as a spokesman for Wikipedia volunteers in the UK - though he is not employed by the Wikimedia Foundation, the online encyclopaedia's governing body (which has issued a ). I asked him why he was so angry when most people would probably support any body which is trying to stamp out child abuse images on the web.

First of all, he stressed that he was not saying that he found the image in question acceptable. "I personally find it distasteful," he said. "But is it illegal?"

He went on to explain that there were two reasons that Wikipedians felt angry: firstly, that IWF could decide on its own that something was illegal; secondly, that its actions had blocked the text on the page as well as the image itself.

Mr Gerard claimed that there was no evidence that any court had ruled that the image was illegal - indeed it was in books that were stored in libraries. "Are the police going to go into those libraries and rip out the offending page?" he asked.

He went on to explain that it would have been relatively simple for the IWF to block the image but to leave the accompanying text alone. But he said that nobody had contacted anyone from Wikipedia - the watchdog had just gone ahead and laid down the law.

This issue is the subject of feverish debate on Wikipedia mailing lists and forums, and there is already to call for a of ISPs which censor Wikipedia. Some are suggesting that this makes the UK little better than China in terms of internet censorship, though other Wikipedia users are not quite so sure that this is the right issue for an anti-censorship campaign.

So what does the Internet Watch Foundation have to say? A spokeswoman explained that the image had been referred to them by a member of the public. After examination - and consultation with the police - it was assessed as "a potentially illegal image" and put on the banned list that is given to internet service providers, who then block the URL. She went on to explain that this is a routine procedure which is used for all sorts of images that are reported to the IWF - it just so happened that this involved one of the internet's most famous sites.

I've also spoken to one of the ISPs which is blocking the Wikipedia page. A spokesman made it clear that the process was automatic - the ISP just takes the list and implements its own blocking procedures. He said that his company would certainly not be criticising the watchdog: "The Internet Watch Foundation has a tough job and an important role in protecting our children. We just have to support them - we can't pick and choose."

So: a fascinating case which sheds light on the debate about freedom of speech on the internet. On the one side, a body which has been fighting to free the web of child abuse images, waging a war which has the support of the vast majority of web users. On the other, the digital libertarians who believe that once we let a group of unelected regulators decide what is fit for us to see on the web, we are on the road to Orwellian thought control. Who is in the right? You decide.

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Calling all game developers

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 4 Dec 08, 10:17 GMT

A casual observer might think the UK games sector was in rude good health. After all, this is the country where the year's biggest blockbuster Grand Theft Auto IV was developed - even if the franchise is in foreign hands - and there are hordes of smart young games designers and developers competing to come up with the next big thing.

But according to the innovation quango NESTA (hard to find a better term for this non-governmental body), the picture is a lot gloomier.

Its report, , says Britain is going to slip from third to fifth in the global games developers league table, we haven't the skills we need, and studios and staff are heading to Canada to enjoy that country's generous tax breaks. The solution? Well I think NESTA is calling for similar tax breaks in the UK - but it's hard to be sure.

Still, here's one ray of light - provided by the 大象传媒's Economics and Business Unit where I work. My boss has launched a competition to encourage keen young (or old) games developers to come up with something that could be used as part of a project called The Box. This involves tracking a shipping container as it sails around the world, and is a brilliant idea, which only a far-sighted 大象传媒 editor, keen to educate, entertain and inform the licence-fee payer, could have engineered. (There, I think my job may now be safe).

Even more imaginatively, he is now . They are helping to run this competition aimed at making The Box even more engaging for schools which are now following the website and tracking The Box. The top five entrants will be selected by a panel, which will include 大象传媒 executives and school students, and they will see their games loaded onto The Box site. Then there will be a public vote - and the winner will be featured on the site for the rest of the project, which will probably last into next summer. They will retain the commercial rights to the game and can then make money from it in any way they wish.

So this is a small project - but one which could show us whether NESTA's view that the games sector in the UK is suffering a severe skills shortage is really accurate. So if you've got an idea for a game for The Box, get cracking. You have until 19 December to raise your game.

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Mac malware - were we wrong?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 3 Dec 08, 10:41 GMT

There was a web firestorm yesterday over an apparent warning from Apple that its users could be vulnerable to attack and should consider installing anti-virus software. It was a firestorm that we helped to fan with a story - and a post on this blog.

Now it appears that and that the message on the Apple support site, posted on 21 November, may have simply been an update of an advisory note published back in 2007. What's more, the November message has now been removed - with no explanation.

So I'm sorry if we suggested that this was a major U-turn by Apple when it was not. Graham Cluley, who we quoted in the post, now describes the incident as "a fascinating example of how the internet can get carried away with itself", and it is certainly true that bloggers and journalists (and I include myself) hate to be left out when this kind of storm brews up.

But Mr Cluley stands by his view that Mac users should not be complacent about their security: "Yes, the news that Apple is urging people to run anti-virus software isn't actually news... apart from for the people who didn't realise they had to run anti-virus software on their Apple Macs! - which seems to be quite a lot". It is worth noting that Mr Cluley's firm Sophos sells an anti-virus package for Macs and is presumably keen to boost its sales. I have to confess, as someone who has used both Macs and PCs for the last 12 years, that I have never installed any extra security on my Macs, and I'm still not convinved that I need to act.

And one thing that this incident does show is Apple's split personality when it comes to communicating with its users and with the media. On the one hand, when it has a positive story to tell, it is brilliant at sending simple, bold messages to consumers and skilful in projecting its case to the media.

On the other, when things go wrong - complaints about scratched iPods or concerns about Steve Jobs' health - this is a company which retreats into the Cupertino bunker, closes the door and says nothing.

So I contacted the Apple PR department at 1115 GMT on Tuesday to seek a comment on the story. Back they came twenty minutes later, with a promise to look into it and "keep you posted". 23 hours later, I'm still waiting. So what is Apple's advice to customers on whether there is any need to install anti-virus software? I'm still not clear - are you?

Update Wednesday 1334: Have heard from Apple this morning - .

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Can the Mac catch a cold?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 2 Dec 08, 16:20 GMT

Update Wednesday 1041: Please see my follow-up post.

Oh dear - even as I write this, I can see the smug smile spreading across the faces of Windows users - and I can hear the clatter of keyboards as thousands of Mac fans compose angry messages. But here we go - Macs are not immune from internet infections, and [story updated since original post].

The news came on 21 November when Apple put up a little note [link no longer live - see follow-up post], explaining that "Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities." The company did not highlight this warning, and in fact nobody noticed it for some days. Now it's become a big story, and reignited the row about the respective strengths and weaknesses of Mac and Windows when it comes to security.

Because the one thing you have never needed to worry about when you get an Apple computer is spending money on expensive anti-virus software. What's more, you are not continually pestered with those annoying pop-ups asking you if you've updated the security package.

The lack of viruses and other malware targeted at the Mac OS was largely due to its relatively small share of the PC market - if you're an ambitious virus writer you want to aim at the largest possible "audience" and that means Windows users. But as Macs win a bigger share of the market, they present a more attractive target.

Now Apple seems to be telling its customers that the golden age of innocence is over, and they will have to start shoring up their defences. It's even directing them towards a couple of anti-virus products on sale in its own store. Many will ignore that - and wonder if this is just another marketing ploy by the security industry.

So do they need to worry? I've spoken to a couple of security experts.

Greg Day at McAfee admitted that the threat to Mac users was relatively tiny compared to that faced by someone using Windows. "There are about 10 million unique 'threats' in the Windows space," he told me, "compared with about 150 threats to the Mac OS." But he went on to explain that a lot of new malware was now targeted not at an operating system but at cross-platform applications, like web browsers, and that meant there was a growing threat to Mac users. "It is common sense to take precautions, even if the threat is relatively small."

pointed out that his firm had been turning up examples of Mac OS malware for some time. One recent case involved a bogus webpage, supposedly containing a video, which then directed users to download some code to enable them to watch the movie. Not a good idea, of course.

Mr Cluley says the Mac malware threat is "still a raindrop in a thunderstorm compared to Windows" but he says there are still good reasons to take precautions. "The Mac is no longer the safe haven that people think it is." That's partly, he says, because a lot of new people are coming to the Apple platform." It's no longer just black polo-neck wearing, cappuccino drinking, beardy zealots," he said, in a phrase which will effortlessly offend millions of Mac fans. "There are a lot of naive new users - so there will be people writing malware who will see that as an opportunity."

Now it's obviously in the interest of security firms to play up the threat as they try to invade the one section of the computer market which has so far resisted their blandishments. But it's interesting to see Apple also promoting that message. Mind you, it's just the support team saying it very quietly at the moment. I've just watched the which shows the PC guy coughing, spluttering and falling over, while the cool Mac guy remains immune to his virus. I wonder whether Apple's marketing department will decide that's a line which doesn't play so well any more?

Update: Comments are open in this updated post.

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Twitter - the Mumbai myths

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 1 Dec 08, 16:03 GMT

It has quickly become the received wisdom amongst new and old media commentators - Twitter came of age last week during the . It is true that the micro-blogging service did provide vast amounts of information, at breakneck speed, about a confusing and rapidly changing series of events. Here are the , starting at 16.47 London time, some time before the mainstream media started reporting the attacks. But I think a couple of myths have grown up about the role of Twitter in telling the story.

Myth 1 - The government ban

One of the stories that kept popping up on Twitter was that the Indian government was in some way trying to silence the network because of concerns that it was proving an aid to the terrorists. Here's what an Australian said:

"An unconfirmed report out of India has the Indian Government urging Twitter users to not share specific on the scene information, and further that the Government may be trying to block Twitter in India, or is asking Twitter to block Mumbai related tweets."

The story appeared on the 大象传媒's own Mumbai which pulled togther all kinds of sources, official and unofficial, to give readers a picture of the developing story:

1108 Indian government asks for live Twitter updates from Mumbai to cease immediately. "ALL LIVE UPDATES - PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mumbai police and military operations," a tweet says.

But were these "unconfirmed reports" actually true? I can't find any official sources for the story. The line on the 大象传媒 website was apparently sourced from this which in turn was quoting Twitter posts. The 大象传媒 editor I contacted stressed that the live event page was designed to allow readers to keep up with all the latest information circulating about the story, giving readers a sense of how people are reacting and what they are saying, in real time. Items are sourced, he added, and to some extent it's up to the reader to decide how much credence to give them.

(But) if this story does turn out to be a myth it will be a handy reminder to treat everything you hear on a social network with a degree of scepticism. Which brings us to our second myth.

Myth 2 - Mainstream media now irrelevant

The other idea that is spreading quickly is that the huge volume of user generated content coming out of Mumbai on Twitter and other networks highlights the increasing irrelevance of the mainstream media. A site called before the established media got out of bed. GroundReport publishes text and pictures from people on the ground and apparently recruited a number of Mumbai Twitterers to cover the story. But it is worth noting that the original story on the GroundReport website has attracted fewer than 200 viewers so far, whereas untold millions have watched television reports in India and around the world.

Now it is not a myth that each time a major disaster occurs there is more material available from witnesses - or citizen journalists - and smart mainstream media outlets are having to learn how to access that content. And last Wednesday evening it was Twitter that first alerted me to the fact that something was happening in Mumbai. But as I searched through the Tweets, the picture got more and more confusing. Who were these people - Mumbai residents or people watching cable television in the United States? Could I trust what they were telling me about this breaking story? Many of the tweets were simply quoting reports on Indian television or the 大象传媒. So from then on I turned on the television and the radio and scanned the newspapers to build up a more complete and reliable picture.

What Twitter has done is to provide instant information about anything that is happening near its millions of users, coupled with a brilliant way of sharing that information. What it doesn't do is tell us what is true and what isn't - and that makes the work of mainstream media outlets and professional reporters all the more relevant.

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