Archives for June 2008

As I stated back in May, the in-game Cross Media Bar (XMB) for PlayStation 3 will be a reality on 2 July.

The lack of in-game XMB - so that gamers can check friend requests, send messages while still playing a gamer - has been one of the biggest gripes of PS3 owners since it launched.

But the feature will be introduced in the next firmware upgrade to the PlayStation.

Perhaps more importantly, the PS3 is introducing the idea of virtual "trophies", which represent your success in different games. These trophies will be on display to your friends.

Sound familiar? They should; trophies are a lot like Achievements on the Xbox 360.

And it's no surprise that Sony is introducing this feature: Achievements have been one of their truly innovative features of Xbox Live.

Super Stardust HD is the first game to implement trophies, with first-party titles like Buzz, LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm Pacific Rift and Resistance 2 to follow.

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Chuck Thacker is something of a hero in the world of technology yet outside of it, he remains a virtual unknown.

Show people a photo of say Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and I bet quite a few people on the street will know who they are. Certainly they will have heard of them and probably have one or more of their products but Chuck Thacker is a different kettle of fish. And that's a shame given the influence he has had on so much of our lives.

In short, Chuck is the man who essentially gave us the personal computer. In 1974 he switched on the Xerox Alto, the first computer that looked and worked like the PCs we are all so familiar with today. Incidentially, it's first task was to display an image of Sesame Street's Cookie Monster.

While working at the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre he also helped pioneer another major advance in the world of computing, namely the Ethernet LAN (Local Area Network). He has also been involved in a host of computer architecture advancements, the tablet PC and even did work on the X box.

Today Mr Thacker works for Microsoft . I met him recently at their Silicon Valley labs where the world's number one software company had thrown open their doors to the press and school kids to display what innovations they are working on.

The white haired and bespectacled Mr Thacker is still getting his hands dirty. He was happily showing off his work on a hardware platform called the BEE3 which he hopes will return architechture to the cutting edge of computer science.

As well as being inundated by people interested in what he is doing today, there was a steady stream undeniably in awe of the man and his achievements.

He is quietly proud of his time at the PARC labs but it's not something he boasts about having to be prompted several times to talk to me about it.

"It was the most intensely creative period of my life that roughly 10 years between 1970 and 1980. More good stuff came out of that Lab than I ever thought possible. It was truly amazing."

Legend has it that the Alto directly inspired Apple to build the Macintosh after Steve Jobs paid a friendly visit to the Xerox labs in 1979 where Chuck was working at the time.

Mr Thacker is a man of few words, most definitely not given to hyperbole. And even when he criticises he does it in a reasoned logical way.

Take his comments on the progress of the PC, the industry he paved the way for: "You have to make money, there is no doubt about that. But I think it is having a negative effect on innovation. If you look at the pc industry as a whole, the people that make the hardware do not have high margins. That's a very razor thin business.

"In the PC industry, not the computing industry in general, the margins are so low that innovation happens much more slowly."

And just in case that all sounded a bit too critical, Mr Thacker talked up the future of the PC and his vision for it. A vision that has been echoed by his retired boss Bill Gates who said he wanted to put a PC in every home.

"The PC has done an awful lot for improving people's lives, there is no doubt about that. I did envisage that.

"I used to say that the first revolution of computers was when scientists had them, the second was when business had them and the third revolution is when everyone has them. We haven't quite made that but I am optomistic that we will."

So what for Chuck Thacker is the indespensible gadget of the day? He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his smart phone.

"It weighs a mere 50 grams and can do everything I need it to do. The first computer I made probably weighed 30,000 pounds and was a couple of inches by a couple of inches.

"This phone is roughly 2,000 times the speed and has a thousand times the memory of that Alto. Plus this is just $400 and that thing back then was around $12,000."

And he adds wistfully: "That was back when a dollar was actually worth more than a dollar."

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As Bill Gates clears his desk, shuts down his computer for the last time and hands in his security pass, I've been reflecting on several encounters over the years with Microsoft's founder. I've interviewed him four or five times, and sat though a number of keynotes at Las Vegas conferences where he has been billed as the star speaker. But trying to pin down just what I think of him - and why he attracts such a mixture of adulation and scorn - has been tricky.

On a bookshelf at home is one of the better souvenirs of my career in journalism - "The Road Ahead", a 1995 vision of the internet future signed by the author with this slightly enigmatic inscription: "Rory, good luck with computers, Bill Gates".

It was presented to me in Washington DC after an interview in which the author was promoting his book. My first encounter with Mr Gates and the Microsoft machine was pretty typical. He was surrounded by all the apparatus now deemed essential for a titan of industry - the hired-in television crew, the flunkies and public relations advisors, the security, the bowl of fresh fruit. But Bill Gates, who even then was the world's richest man and commander of a corporate empire which struck fear into every other software business, did not fill the room.

Other self-made bosses of technology businesses have a more compelling presence. Steve Jobs comes across as a scary Zen master, all black polo neck and piercing blue eyes. Larry Ellison of Oracle is funny, bombastic and always on the verge of saying something defamatory. And Britain's Sir Alan Sugar, creator of the once mighty Amstrad? Just as warm and personable in real life as he is on The Apprentice.

Nobody could accuse Bill Gates, with his slightly squeaky voice and dressed in the chinos and polo-shirts favoured by software developers on a day out, of being charismatic. What's more, for a television reporter trying to reach a mass audience, he lacked the gift of presenting his subject in compelling sound-bites. Looking back at the interview when we edited it, we struggled to find three minutes of interesting material.

But he got a lot better in later interviews. And I realised that although he was willing to take on the questions about Microsoft's long war with the competition regulators they never produced anything very interesting - "You're abusing your monopoly aren't you?", "No we're not, we're just making world class products which everyone wants."

Whatever the critics say about Gates being a businessman not a technologist, he really comes alive when talking about software and its potential to change our world. And if he has a prop to hand - like the surface computer he was so keen to show off in Las Vegas this January - so much the better.

Why, then, has he attracted so much hostility? It seems the charge sheet has two main counts - he is a corporate bully and he has never had an original idea.

So what did his book tell us about that second charge? I took "The Road Ahead" off the shelf for another look. Remember, this was written at the time when, if some critics are to be believed, Bill Gates just didn't get the internet. The language in the book does feel a little dated - these were the days of "the information super-highway" rather than Web 2.0. But a lot of the predictions are spot on.

"Movies, television programs and all sorts of other digital information will be stored on servers". We would be using all kinds of "digital devices" to access that data. "Video-on-demand" had the potential to the killer app for the internet.

"Kids in school will be able to make their own albums or films and distribute them on the information super-highway." YouTube anybody?

"An editor who today works at The Economist might start his or her own service and offer a digest of the news with links to text and video news accounts from a variety of sources." The blogging revolution foretold - though note it's professionals, not citizen journalists doing it, which may actually turn out to be the case.
"The current Internet lacks security and needs a billing system." Nothing much has changed there - though Google has developed a billing system. It's called advertising.

Some of it is wide of the mark - mobile phones, not Gates's "digital wallets" are becoming the most common route to the information highway. But all in all, it's a pretty good guide, written 13 years ago, to what the internet has become.

Ah, say the critics, but even if Bill Gates saw the future coming, it was Google which climbed aboard and drove the internet train, not Microsoft. But they can't have it both ways - you can't still call Gates' Microsoft an evil empire, stifling innovation and reaping monopoly profits, while at the same time complaining that it has been left in the dust by Google.

So Bill Gates may not have the charisma or the cool of Steve Jobs, and he and his company may now look a little frayed around the edges compared with the Google of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But you have to respect the drive and vision of man who has changed the way we live and work - even if you don't like his software.

Mind you, tucked into the back of "The Road Ahead" I found something which reminded me how quickly things change in the internet era. It was a CD-ROM (remember those?) which promised "hundreds of multimedia hyperlinks, video demonstrations of future technology, and a World Wide Web browser." But when I popped it into the drive of my computer it wouldn't play. So the paper version of Bill Gates' book holds up pretty well. But Bill, with your digital version, I didn't have "good luck with computers".

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Now that Bill Gates has left the building at One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Seattle, what does the future hold for the firm?

Here are the five things that I feel Microsoft urgently needs to do if it hopes to remain as relevant over the next 20 years as it has in the last two decades.

1. Accept there is not One Microsoft Way

Microsoft's attitude to the open source community has veered from the cool to the hostile in the last two decades. For starters, it has claimed the community has violated many of its patents, without actually naming names or dealing in specifics.

The company's goal, according to some in the open source community, has been to crush Linux. And why not, you might argue. Surely every company wants to remove competitors from the landscape?

But Microsoft has abused its monopoly position too often and suffered the legal consequences too many times.

Microsoft's definition of open and interoperable has too often been less than clear, and in its pursuit of building platforms (Windows, Office, Xbox, IPTV, mobile etc) too often it has failed to offer the openness that consumers are crying out for.

But in the last few months the firm has pledged again its commitment to open standards in certain areas. The pledge must be open this time.

2. Get Live Mesh right

Famously late to the net, Microsoft is bending over backwards to embrace the future of the web. With Live Mesh Microsoft is promising a seamless integration between connected devices, and inviting developers to work on the project.

Microsoft has said Live Mesh will be an "open platform". Some developers have questioned just how open it will be. If Microsoft has any hope of competing with Google then it needs to make Live Mesh as open as possible.

3. Ditch Windows Mobile

According to one analyst Windows Mobile has already been overtaken by Apple's iPhone in terms of smartphone market share.

To be clear: In a single year Apple has, with just a single phone, achieved a greater market share than all of the OEMs offering phones with Windows Mobile installed. That has to be a slap in the face for Microsoft.

I just don't see the need for Microsoft to be in this market. Running Windows Mobile does not even give users of other Microsoft products, such as Office, any clear advantage over users of other operating systems.

The mobile market right now is a carve up between Linux, RIM (Blackberry) and Symbian. Apple has made modest inroads in the smartphone sector, and Google is lurking on the horizon with Android.

Down the road I can only see Linux, Android and Symbian dominating the global mobile market so if I were Steve Ballmer, I would walk away from Windows Mobile - today.

4. Make Xbox a true platform

The Xbox project has cost Microsoft billions of dollars in investment and start-up costs. More than half a decade in and Xbox is not exactly filling the coffers with profit at Microsoft.

Xbox was always a long-term bet: one plank in a strategy to get Microsoft into the living room and to extend its reach beyond the desktop.

It's been a qualified success - millions of Xboxes have been shifted but it is neither the market leader nor the solution to our digital living needs that Microsoft hoped for.

One solution might be to take Xbox and more crucially Xbox Live beyond the console.

Xbox is not just a brand, it is also a potential platform. Why not license the Xbox technology and have it embedded into other CE devices, such as set-top boxes or Blu-ray players, or allow other manufacturers to make their own Xbox consoles?

It's been a rumour that Microsoft will take this route for some time. I hope they do.

Games consoles are unlikely, in my view, to exist as stand-alone entities, or to be primarily games-playing machines, in the coming years. We all know they are becoming multimedia hubs, so why not let other devices absorb the Xbox, rather than having Microsoft trying on its own to turn the Xbox into a device for all seasons?

5. Ditch Vista and get Windows 7 out the door

Forget the sales numbers or install base: Vista has been a failure because for many people it is synonymous with mediocrity.

To many people it was late, expensive, overly complex and bloated; Vista neither delivered on its promise of "Wow" nor marked a genuine improvement on the existing operating system, XP.

No wonder then that Microsoft is already talking up Windows 7, the Vista successor. And if 7 is to succeed where Vista failed, it needs to be on time, cheap and slimline.

In an effort to work on a great range of PCs, Vista ended up being a painful compromise, and in some cases PC firms were guilty of encouraging users to install it on machines that just did not have the power to run it successfully.

Microsoft needs to draw a clear line in the sand for Windows 7 - those that will run the OS fully and without compromise and those that won't.

There needs to be one price and one version only of Windows 7. By all means offer a Server version for Enterprise. But no more Home, Business, Ultimate nonsense.

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Back in 1999 the British company Psion was poised to take on Microsoft with a mobile operating system which was making Bill Gates quake in his boots - at least, that's what a report from a naive young BBC reporter said. The mobile internet was coming - and whoever made its operating system could reap the kind of megaprofits Windows produced from the desktop.

The Symbian platform, launched the year before by Psion in conjunction with Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson, helped make the hand-held computer maker one of the dotcom wonder shares for a brief period - until the world woke up to the fact that it was not going to be quite the powerhouse predicted by the BBC reporter.

That young reporter (okay, it was me) looked pretty daft as Psion gradually evaporated, selling off most of its business including its stake in Symbian. But today Nokia has shown that it still believes the operating system can be a powerful weapon which will shape the way we use the mobile internet. It's bought up the half of the business it doesn't own - but what is really significant is that it is taking Symbian open-source, and putting its assets into a non-profit foundation.

Already most of the superpowers of the mobile world have signed up to this foundation - and at a press conference at London's Somerset House executives were ranged across the stage, uttering all sorts of hyperbolic phrases to sum up what all this meant. It was "epoch-making", "exciting", "ground-breaking", and the new open Symbian had a mission, according to its chief executive, Nigel Clifford, "to be the most widely used platform on the planet." From next year, the existing software will be available royalty-free - currently a licence costs around $5 per handset - and a completely new open-source platform is promised, though not until 2010.

So what's all this about? Symbian has actually done just what Microsoft feared back in the late 90s, winning a 60% share of the market with 200 million handsets featuring its software. But the fact that it has not proved a huge moneyspinner for any of its owners shows two things - the mobile internet has been very late in arriving, and open-source has changed the rules of the software game.

So it's Google, not Microsoft, which is now in Nokia's sights. The launch last year of Google's open-source Android platform was an even more significant event for the mobile industry than the arrival of Apple's iPhone. It looks as though Android is falling behind schedule, with no handsets imminent, but Google's - and Apple's - arrival in the mobile world has given a huge boost to software development for handsets.

Nokia wants all those smart young software developers to be working with Symbian and is confident that open-source will make that happen: "It will create a gravitational pull that no developer will be able to ignore," says Kai Oistamo, boss of Nokia's handset division.

So the battle for your handset is under way - but it may pass many people by. Just about everyone knows whether their desktop runs on Windows, Mac OS or Linux - but who knows whether they've got a Symbian phone? In the new open-source world the operating system may be just as important - but its name will no longer be in lights.

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The boss of the mobile video streaming service Kyte.tv dropped by this morning - and after an hour spent chatting and recording an interview with him on my mobile, I emerged with a number of conclusions about the instant online video market.

It's not about "live" - it's about getting short bursts of recorded video online quickly and easily. It's not about you, me or any other Joe Soap putting ourselves in front of a global audience - it's about big brands like the rapper 50 Cent. And finally - both those conclusions better be true for Kyte, because if my experience is anything to go by, any ordinary punter without access to loads of bandwidth will find getting their Kyte video online quite frustrating.

Daniel Graf is a young Swiss entrepreneur who has been on a fast journey from a degree in electrical engineering, to working for Philips, to a San Francisco based start-up - Kyte.tv - with backing from the likes of Nokia, Disney and Telefonica.

As we sat in a cafe going live from my mobile, he was keen to stress that, unlike rivals Qik and Flixwagon, the Kyte.tv platform sees "live" as a bit of a sideshow. "Live is not what the internet is about," he said, making the point that far more people will watch a two to five minute piece of recorded video than will watch something streamed live at great length, Fair enough - especially as my mobile told me just five people were watching our interview.

And Kyte isn't really aiming at citizen journalists or mobile bloggers - but big brands who want a one-stop shop for online video. Mr Graf pointed me at 50 Cent's site which is powered by kyte.tv. It has had 19 million viewers since its launch last November, generating advertising revenue for the rapper, some of which is shared with Kyte. The technology is also being used by some television stations as a cheap and easy way of generating their own online video service.

Kyte, with its big-name backers, may have a better chance of surviving than the likes of Qik or Flixwagon - but surely it faces the same threat as just about any other web 2.0 start-up, being suffocated by Google? The search giant owns YouTube, the giant of the online video business, which is using all those Google dollars to expand in every direction - mobile, live, in fact all those places where Kyte is too.

But Daniel Graf insists there is a big difference - he's not building his own brand but offering his technology to existing brands: "We have 99% of our traffic not on Kyte, but from 50 Cent's site, Facebook, and other sites. Kyte.tv is a content production and distribution platform for brands, not a content destination site." Well maybe, but YouTube too is touting itself to all kinds of brands as a distribution platform - after all even Buckingham Palace has its own YouTube channel these days.

And for anyone who is not a big brand, using Kyte.tv to get your video online can be a struggle. You can see my "live" interview with Daniel here. But it suffers the same problem I've had with other videos - after about ten seconds it stutters and jumps. My recorded interview uploaded from the phone took two hours to get to the site - and was then incomplete. Only when I transferred it to my laptop and sent it via wi-fi did I get a speedy and satisfactory result.

The reason for my problems, according to Daniel Graf, is bandwidth. In other words, the mobile operator I am using, O2, simply does not have a good enough 3G network in my area to pump the video from my mobile to the internet in a satisfactory fashion. But, as I pointed out, O2 is now owned by Telefonica - which is an investor in Kyte. So maybe he needs to have a word...

For those who saw the online video explosion as a wonderful example of the democratising power of the internet, giving anyone the power to broadcast to the world, the Kyte view is a little depressing. Yes, we can all do it - but it looks as though the mainstream media and the likes of 50 Cent will be more adept at using these tools and winning millions of new viewers.

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While Yahoo punches out fun facts on its website, here's one I bet it won't be bleating about. More senior executives have jumped ship from Yahoo in the last few months than at any other high tech company.

Someone might quibble with that 'fact' by punching out some numbers from say Google which has recently suffered its own share of brain drainage.

But it has to be said that with the spotlight on Yahoo following the disastrous Microsoft shenanigans, it does seem like the company is a bleeding animal given the number of top honchos who are calling it a day at the Sunnyvale firm.

The highly respected blog TechCrunch has done a great job actually tracking exiting Yahoo execs since January 2007. Mike Arrington has listed 50 people who have decided to pack it in and that's everyone from the VP of engineering to the VP of Global Research and from former CEO Terry Semel to Ambassador Plenipotentiary to Madison Ave Yahoo!

What!

This week alone must surely have shareholders wondering what on earth is going on. Six high level execs have quit including the talent behind the phenomenally successful photo sharing site Flickr which Yahoo bought in 2005 to arguably give them some street cred.

And now comes news that another three major lynchpins in the organisation are set to call themselves ex-Yahoo employees and perhaps sign up to the Yahoo alumni page on Facebook which boasts thousands of former Yahoo-ites!.

The three who are leaving are Qu Li, head of search and monetization who has been described by insiders as a 'rock star' and 'someone that people would go to war for"; Vish Makhijani the head of Yahoo Search and Brad Garlinghouse the head of press. Actually Mr Garlinghouse only has one foot out the door according to some reports.

He is however famed for his 2006 Peanut Butter Manifesto in which he said "I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world.

The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter."

Hours after the news broke of this trio's departure came the confirmation that Joshua Schachter who founded del.icio.us, which Yahoo bought in 2005, has also decided to resign and join the "gloriously unemployed."

Greg Sterling who is a tech analyst and writes for searchengineland.com told the BBC "This all looks bad for Yahoo because it's happening so publicly and will impact on morale and those workers doing the actual work at a lower level."

Yahoo's statement to the BBC was pretty bland saying "We have a deep and talented management team across all areas of the company. Yahoo continues to be a leader in our industry and remains a unique, exciting and important place to work."

Not anymore I guess according to the myriad number of senior execs who have chucked it all in at the internet portal.

It has been rumoured for weeks that Yahoo is planning a major re-organisation and maybe this slew of senior execs are jumping before being pushed.

Mr Sterling ventures "The company has been through a number of re-organisations in the last year and perhaps there is a big of re-org fatigue."

And this all begs the question when will Jerry Yang walk the plank? He might have just celebrated one year in office as CEO, but it's looking pretty doubtful there will be a second anniversary.

The decision by so many high profile senior managers of the company to quit "is akin to a parliamentary vote of no confidence in Jerry Yang" says Mr Sterling.

Shareholders for their part will get to exercise their voice at the annual shareholders meeting on the 1st of August. It's certainly gearing up to be a rip roaring occasion.

And if any departing staff are unsure where to next hitch their wagon, they would do well to have a look at the full page advert that Microsoft has posted in the San Jose Mercury News.

The ad informs prospective employees "There are now very few companies that remain truly committed to defining the future of search and online advertising. Microsoft is one of them."

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The people at Mozilla, the organisation behind the open-source Firefox browser, are punching the air and claiming a world record. They reckon there were 8.3 million downloads of Firefox 3 within 24 hours of the launch, and they've asked the Guinness Book of Records to put them in the book along with all those strange types who hold their breath underwater for 15 minutes or sit in a tub of baked beans for days.

But not everything went to plan - first the servers just could not cope with the traffic, leaving many potential downloaders fuming, and then a security firm announced that it had discovered a flaw that left the browser open to attack.

So, I suggested to the president of Mozilla Europe, Tristan Nitot, not quite the triumphant launch that you were hoping for?

"Way better than our wildest expectations," he countered.

What about that security problem?

"No piece of complex software is without a security issue," he told me, before suggesting that it was a curious coincidence that the flaw, which is also present in Firefox 2, had come to light on the very day of the launch. He was keen to stress that it would be remedied very quickly and that users were not at risk because the firm which discovered the breach in Firefox's defences was not going public with the details of how it might be exploited.

But seeing as security was one of the big selling-points for Firefox in its battle to break the near monopoly of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, where does this leave the browser wars?

Mozilla says those eight million downloads gave Firefox 3 alone a 4% share of the global browser market - and Tristan Nitot says that by Thursday afternoon that had risen to 6%. Now many of those will be existing Firefox users but it looks as though this latest version has provided the "big push" Mozilla was seeking.

An independent web research institute, Xiti, said in March that Firefox had just under 30% of the European browser market, so this week's efforts should have taken it above that level. There are big variations though - in Finland and Poland, Firefox has around 45% of the market, in the UK the figure is under 20%.

Tristan Nitot says that, unlike Internet Explorer, Firefox puts a lot of effort into producing local versions - it's available in Catalan and Basque for instance - and that gives it an edge in smaller countries. There is no Welsh version yet, but Sebastian told me I was welcome to have a go, perhaps not realising my shortcomings in both coding and language.

My experience so far with Firefox 3 has been that it is both stable and fast, though one big disappointment is that two of my favourite add-ons, a TinyUrl creator and Google Browser sync - which enabled me to synchronise bookmarks across different computers - are not yet working on this new version.

Microsoft has responded to the innovations in Firefox, with Internet Explorer 8 coming soon, and Tristan Nitot says he's happy about that because it means Mozilla has improved the browser experience for everyone. No doubt Opera fans will be rushing to point out that their browser beats all the others into a cocked hat. But whichever browser you use, we now have a far more competitive and innovative market than five years ago. And that has to be good news.

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If you crave a job in Silicon Valley and think coming to work for one of the premier companies like Apple, Google, Yahoo or Microsoft will result in untold riches and happiness, then think again.

Let's get to the money part first.

Engineers at Google rake in an average of $113,000 (£58,000) including compensation, while over at Microsoft and Yahoo it's around $106,000 (£54,000). The penny pinchers in this equation are Apple, who pays its engineers a measly $89,000 (£45,000).

Still I suppose the Apple crew do get to work on some of the coolest products on planet earth, and I am guessing they get a good employee discount to boot.

All this information is courtesy of workers at these firms who have anonymously lifted the lid on the sacrosanct topic of their wage slip. And they are sharing this with the world via a new website that has just recently gone live called Glassdoor.com.

The aim of the site is to provide information about everything from career opportunities to management culture and from salary to what the boss is like.

Jerry Yang, post-Microsoft, is having a tawdry time in the approval ratings. To date he scores a dismal 46% compared to his nemesis, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, at 55%.

The mission, says Glassdoor, is to "bring more transparency to the workplace so that everyone has the information needed to make better career decisions."

I think if you are a top notch engineer considering a move to Silicon Valley you would be mightily depressed by these salaries. So perhaps in this case, ignorance is bliss because it would allow you to go to a company with real conviction demanding the heavens.

On the other hand, I guess human resources will love it because they can keep expectations low.

But hey, it's not all about the dollars and cents. What about career satisfaction and development?

Let's look at what is being said about Google, which comes out top in survey after survey as one of the most desired places to work.

One review is titled "Awesome culture, bad management". Another says "Fun at first, frustrating in the long run". Uh oh!

Someone else carps that "Google is deteriorating at the edges" while someone else really goes for the solar plexus by noting "Google: an elitist's playground". Ouch!

There are positive reviews but they aren't as much fun as, say, that last posting from a past employee which goes on to say: "If you enjoy your individuality and time alone, Google is not the place for you. Google pushes a highly 'Googley' atmosphere, which is something akin to what the Brady Bunch would be if they lived in Communist Russia.

"People are encouraged to have Googley attitudes, wear plastic smiles, and not to question the infallible nature of the executive management group."

Okay, enough vitriol! But, man, don't you just love reading this stuff? And that's why Forbes has dubbed the site "Workplace porn".

It's car crash rubber necking at its best.

But love it or hate it, it seems to be a runaway success if the numbers are to be believed: 32,000 reviews covering nearly 7,000 companies from people in 165 countries and 1.2m page views on day one.

Impressive stuff, but should we care? Well, that rather depends on whether or not you are looking to work at any of these companies. CEO Robert Hohman, formerly President of Hotwire, makes a good point for the need for Glassdoor.

"Google serves up 15.4m sites with reviews for the iPhone, yet I can't find a good site that can tell me what it's really like to work for Apple."

He can now because the reviews of Apple vary from "Awesome company" to "Dead end career".

The issue of course comes with trusting what you read on the site. Mr Hohman claims that every effort is made to verify the anonymous reviewers are bone fide and that actually "We're rejecting one or two out of every 10 reviews because they violate our community guidelines in some way, are clearly bogus, or it's someone trying to post duplicates."

Hm, that seems quite high to me and given the recent volume of reviews, it might seem wise to read some of the extremely gushing or caustic ones with a healthy bit of scepticism.

And just to prove it's not all about negativity, the company is actually offering reviewers $500 for the most thoughtful posting.

The winner first time out is someone who works for Netflix and writes that the company is all about "Freedom and responsibility. You're treated like an adult. You're part of a pro team that is highly functioning. You matter."

As for advice for senior management, the reviewer writes "I have none. Senior management is fantastic, smart, focused and led by example."

Now, depending on how cynical you are, you are either looking up Netflix's phone number or asking for someone to pass the sick bag.

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Is the UK good at games - by which I mean the likes of Grand Theft Auto rather than the 100 metres? The answer is definitely yes - this has been the birthplace of some of the great games franchises including GTA.

So why then are games firms in such a grumpy mood about the challenge of doing business in the UK? What's their beef? Too little government support and too few smart people who want to work in the industry.

Well I've yet to meet an industry that isn't holding out its hat for a government bung - but surely the games business can't have a recruitment problem?

The trouble, as I found out on a visit to the Ubisoft Reflections studio in Newcastle, is that there is a mismatch between the demands of the games industry and the skills of the eager hordes of aspiring employees now emerging from university games courses.

At Ubisoft's studio atop a funky office building overlooking the Tyne Bridge I found just what I'd expected - a roomful of young almost exclusively male staff (one woman in a team of 107) who looked as though they spent just a little too much time on the Xbox or PS3.

But when I talked to them I found that advanced computing and mathematical skills, rather than just a love of games were the key to a job here. True, those who worked in games design and animation (they set to work turning me into a character in their new Driver game) were more likely to come from an arts background, rather than being programmers.

But the engineers who actually make new games work on ever more advanced consoles now need high-level programming skills. Craig Braithwaite, who interrupted his work on programming the movement of characters inside a car to talk to me, was one of the lucky few to emerge from a university course and get a job in the industry. But he said his course had been tough, full of maths, and anyone who wanted to make the grade had to knuckle down.

The industry's Games Up? campaign believes most games courses just aren't fit for purpose. The campaign doesn't use the term "Mickey Mouse" to describe the 80 odd computer games degree courses at British universities - but it's clear most are regarded with contempt. "They're designed just to get bums on seats," according to Ian Livingstone, the creative director of Eidos.

At Northumbria University they do run a serious computer games engineering course and require aspiring students to have an A-level in maths. Dan Hodgson, who runs the course, told me that puts many off - and the decline in the study of maths and physics at A-level is a headache when it comes to finding suitable applicants.

There is good news in all this. For years, young people who have been lectured about the importance of studying maths and physics have responded with some justification that the decline of British industry means there are no decent job prospects for graduates in those subjects. Now there is a thriving and exciting industry crying out for their skills. As the Americans say, just do the math.

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Ever wanted to find a new way of annoying fellow passengers on the train? Well try shouting "Hi, I'm on the video!" very loudly at your mobile phone. That's what I've been doing for the last couple of hours on a train from London to Newcastle.

Why? Well it seemed a good place to conduct an experiment. I've been toying with all kinds of mobile and web video applications over the last year - from Flixwagon to Qik, from Seesmic to Ustream. None of them seemed to deliver the combination of flexibility, ease of use, and acceptable picture quality that I was seeking.

Then I read a post by West Coast uber-blogger Robert Scoble claiming Kyte was the one that was going to sweep all others aside. Now I'd tinkered with Kyte last year and lost patience but when I returned to its site I found that it was boasting a whole new platform with the promise of delivering video from anything from a webcam to a mobile phone - with easy viewing also available on mobiles.

After downloading the application onto my mobile phone, I had a go with posting some video - the trouble was that it only seemed to deliver a 20 second chunk before stopping. So I went to Twitter and posted "Not sure about kyte.tv." Such is the power of the social web that a PR man was emailing me within hours to tell me just how wonderful Kyte really was.

Hence the trial. As we left King's Cross, I began trying out four different mobile video solutions. First Seesmic - with a video recorded on my laptop's webcam and then uploaded via the free wi-fi on the train. Then I began to punish the mobile phone - and my fellow passengers - with short video messages using the Flixwagon, Qik, and Kyte applications I had downloaded onto the phone previously.

Both the Qik and the Flixwagon applications promise "live" streaming of your video - rather risky when you could be brained by an irate bystander midstream - but in practice "live" means a delay of a couple of minutes while it chugs across the 3G connection to the web.

At the moment, the Kyte application allows me to record a short burst, then decide whether to upload it - though apparently live streaming is in beta testing right now, and according to Robert Scoble, will sweep all other applications aside.

So what do the results look like? Well as I write from the train I'm not entirely sure, though you should be able to judge by following these links on Seesmic, Flixwagon, Qik and Kyte.

The quality and usability of all of these services still has a long way to go - though more sophisticated handsets and improving mobile bandwidth are helping - but the big question concerns the audience. Why would anyone want to watch dodgy bits of video of my train trip - or your walk with the dog?

The answer can be split into two - the micro and mass audiences. As these tools become common it may become as normal for you to broadcast video of your journey home to your loved ones as it is to shout "I'm on the train" right now - dreadful prospect though that is.

But there is also great potential to combine mobile video with tools like Twitter to enable anyone at a newsworthy event to broadcast to a mass audience. Last night, for instance, I was keeping up with Euro 2008 on the journey home by searching Twitter messages containing the word "Austria".

Now if a Twitterer in the crowd had been using one of the mobile video applications I could have also received an instant video playback of the goal. Which raises all sorts of questions for professional broadcasters...

I must now put away my mobile and let my fellow passengers get some peace - but do let me know what you think of the likes of Kyte, Qik and Flixwagon, and whether you think we'll all be broadcasting from our mobiles within a couple of years.

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Facebook has made it to number one in the world's social networking league. That at least is the verdict of comscore, which says that a year of extraordinary growth has pushed Facebook ahead of MySpace in terms of users.

Which may come as something of a surprise to those who got excited about all that poking and scrabbling during a brief flirtation with Facebook last year - but thought it had gone the way of the hula hoop and CB radio.

As someone who got heavily - perhaps obsessively - involved in Facebook a year ago, I can't help noticing that it seems to have gone very quiet lately. I still use it quite regularly, but many of the 400 or so people in my personal network seem to have given up on it, with most of the tech crowd heading off to Twitter instead. A day ago I sent a poll to all of these "friends" asking them whether they were still around and whether they visited Facebook more than once a week. So far only a handful have responded, which suggests that either they have left Facebook, or that they are bored witless with pointless polls.

But a better indication may be that only around a quarter of my friends have updated their Facebook statuses in the last 24 hours, whereas a year ago there was a ceaseless flow of "news" about their activities. Like all journalists, I tend to extrapolate from my personal experience - but I think in this case I'd be wrong. While the middle-aged media folk in London may have moved on to something else, it seems Facebook is still growing in popularity amongst the young.

When I visited Dundee University last week, a student told me it was still seen as an indispensable part of campus social life. But it's the rapid spread of Facebook amongst young professionals in countries like India which has helped it to the number one spot. One US blogger is questioning whether these users are as valuable to advertisers as networkers in America - where MySpace is still well ahead - but I don't imagine Facebook will be too fussy after a year which has seen it become a global brand.

MySpace is responding today with a revamp of its home page - out next week - and is promising what it calls "a summer of innovation". It sounds as though the network has heard the calls for a cleaner, less complex interface, with a promise that you will be able to change the look of your profile with one click.

But it seems to me that the social networking scene is settling down into separate camps. The very young are with Bebo. The music crowd is still on MySpace. The obsessive technophiles are on Twitter - latest Tweet from one sad West Coast blogger: "I have 3,500 unanswered direct messages. Please do not send more." But the mass of students and young professionals seem to be gravitating towards Facebook. It may be "over" in the coffee-bars of Islington, but from Manchester to Mumbai, Facebook marches on. All it needs to do now is start selling serious amounts of advertising - which may be more of a challenge.

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The Yahoo soap opera seems to get a new plotline every week and is in danger of moving from melodrama to farce. To recap for latecomers to this romcom:

"Previously on "The Search for Love", Microsoft fancied Yahoo, which played hard to get, and flirted with Google. Microsoft walked away in a huff, only for Yahoo to say it had been hasty, and might well have walked up the aisle if only its suitor had been a little more generous. Then Microsoft said it might be interested again after all, although only in a more "open" relationship."

But tonight came sad news for friends of the star-crossed lovers. "Yahoo and Microsoft no longer speaking" was the headline on one technology blog. Yahoo put out a statementrevealing that there had been an irretrievable breakdown. Microsoft had said it was never ever going to marry Yahoo - and Yahoo had no interest in a more limited relationship, involving handing over search because that "would leave the company without an independent search business that it views as critical to its strategic future."

Instead, though, Yahoo appears to be throwing itself at Google. In the latest enthralling episode, just hours after the Microsoft break-up, the two firms announced a new advertising partnership. Jerry Yang's company explained: "The agreement enables Yahoo! to run ads supplied by Google alongside Yahoo!'s search results and on some of its web properties in the United States and Canada. The agreement is non-exclusive, giving Yahoo! the ability to display paid search results from Google, other third parties, and Yahoo!'s own Panama marketplace." So, let's be clear, just because we're getting into bed with Google, it doesn't mean we're not free to play the field.

I'm not so sure that the competition watchdogs are going to see it that way. Alarm bells were already ringing on Capitol Hill over Yahoo's "limited" trial in April of Google's technology, with talk of congressional hearings. And the Microsofties are keener than ever to paint themselves as minnows in the world of search advertising faced with Google's 800lb gorilla. "We only have 4% of the search market, so we just don't compete," said one.

Harsh words too tonight from sources at Microsoft about why they lost all interest in buying Yahoo. "It's an underperforming business whose staff are all heading for the hills," was the gist of the message from Redmond.

Wall Street seems to agree. Yahoo's shares fell more than 10% after the collapse of the Microsoft talks - though the market closed before the statement about the Google deal. And it's hard to imagine that advertisers will see the Yahoo/Google love-in as a happy ending. It's corporate lawyers who will be sending flowers to the couple - they can expect plenty of business as regulators around the world start asking searching questions about competition in online advertising. Tune in soon for another episode, but be warned, there could be tears before bedtime.

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If the names Solid Snake, Liquid Snake, Big Boss and Raiden mean anything to you then I'm guessing today is an important day.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots hits the shops today as a flag bearer for the PlayStation 3 console.

The game hasn't launched with the marketing hype and blitz of titles like Halo 3 or Grand Theft Auto IV, and I'm guessing that hardcore fans of the series are probably thankful - the franchise has tended to attract a more cerebral player over the years.

There was a decent sprinkling of fans at the San Francisco launch, reports Kotaku and a modest crowd in Tokyo, according to Famitsu.

PS3Fanboy has some photos of creator Hideo Kojima at the New York launch in Times Square.

But it's been interesting to see how expectations for the game have become slightly dampened over the course of the last few months.

Once held up as an example of how the PlayStation 3 was going to revolutionise gaming, even the title's creator Hideo Kojima has seemed a bit more pragmatic about his achievement. He even seems to suggest that the PS3 itself constrained his vision, which may be why Sony itself has not tried to extract a marketing dividend for the console from the game's launch.

Review scores for the title have been modest, with lots of eight out of 10s.This perhaps reflects the game's high barrier to entry.

Gamerankings.com, says the average score for the game is 92%. I don't trust aggregators by and large - but I will say that the two outlets I place my trust in habitually - Edge and Eurogamer - both gave it an 8 out of 10.

If you haven't followed the intricate twists and turns of the plots then you are going to struggle. Metal Gear Solid is so complicated it makes an episode of The Wire look like Balamory. The plot does span six games and about 20 years, to be fair.

Here's some of the reviews:

1Up - A

These parts are also a stark reminder that video games have a long way to go before their narrative comes within spitting distance of the best Hollywood has to offer. Fans of balletic violence will be in heaven watching the gloriously rendered mayhem on display, but those who prefer solid acting and effective emoting are likely to be disappointed by the game's uneven performances and scripting.

Edge - 8/10

The cutscenes here are sure to invoke that thousand-yard stare, two in particular coming perilously close to the 90-minute mark.

Eurogamer - 8/10

Flawed, intractable, unspeakably tedious at times, and yet blessed with incredible production values, imaginative design, and a brilliant, brave willingness to think and do the unexpected and impossible.

The fact there are two almost 90-minute cutscenes seems, to my mind, a touch absurd.

There are those who argue that video games can be that mix between films and interactivity - but I prefer something a little more subtle that Kojima's offering.

More than six years ago reviewing MGS 2, I wrote: "Computer games should be about interaction and not just passive viewing. If you want to watch a DVD movie on your PS2 you can simply rent one."

The games industry may have upped the polygon count in the intervening years but Metal Gear Solid 4 still feels like a long way from the breakthrough game that will deliver on action, narrative and interactivity.

Despite all those reservations I am very much looking forward to sticking my copy of MGS4 into the Playstation 3 - not least for the opening sequence.

As all MGS fans know, no-one does an intro sequence quite like Hideo Kojima.

All together now: "Da da daaaa, da da da da daaaa, da da daaa, da da da daaaaa....."

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I always look forward to my copy of Edge magazine flopping through the letterbox.

It's one of the few sources of intelligent games journalism, and I've always loved the attention to detail in the physical design - although I've felt their legendary cover images have been a bit less tantalising of late.

Amid the game reviews, previews, columns and features I've always enjoyed the small bits of editorial - because it's often here you'll find the soul of the magazine.

This month's text asks whether action games are really, truly evolving. The magazine previews Killzone 2 and reviews Haze, while the back of the magazine looks back to 1942 and Commando.

Its point - articulated more eloquently than I do here - is that the basic thrust of these games, killing things, has altered little over more than a decade.

While attempts at making narrative more mature (Haze) and the production more cinematic (Killzone 2) have undoubtedly succeeded is the point of these games really changing, or advancing in any way.

I was asking myself that question as I played Gears of War for the first time; I described it at the time as 3D space invaders, and I stand by that.

From the look of Gears of War 2 the formula will change little - and the "on the rails" elements of the trailer make me more worried than ever.

But there are plenty of action games which buck the trend: at midnight tonight Metal Gear Solid 4 hits the shops in the UK.

I was a huge fan of the original game and its sequel but ever since the series has become a preposterous pseudo-cinematic affair, with more to watch than to actually play.

Surely there must be more to action games than the two extremes represented by Gears of War 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4?

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"Are the BBC right to GIVE hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of free publicity to Apple?" Just one of the complaints about our coverage of the 3G iPhone over the last 36 hours, which was seen by a few people as excessive. Well, my main job is to focus on mainstream TV and radio news outlets - and I haven't breathed a word about the story so far.

But I have been asked to address the complaints on the Editors' Blog - please go and have a look.

It's always difficult to know where to draw the line on coverage of new products - and we have plenty of vigorous discussions here about it. But here's a question for the critics - if we had completely ignored a story which was the talk of Twitter and all the tech blogs, and which generated huge traffic to our site, would we have retained much credibility as a supplier of technology news?

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"Amazingly zippy" is how a very gaunt-looking Apple CEO Steve Jobs billed "one of the most amazing products I have ever been associated with."

That product in case you didn't know is the newly announced 3G iPhone which hits stores on 11 July for the knock down price of $199 (£100).

The 3G and GPS element of the device has been much rumoured and expected, and latterly talk of a price reduction began circulating. After all the hoops and hollers at the World Wide Developers' Conference in downtown San Francisco died down, the big talk in the corridors of the Moscone Centre was about the new lower cost of the device.

Among the comments I heard from some of the 5,200 developers who had swarmed here were "incredible price", "unbeatable", "awesome price", "blew me away" and "affordable".

The visuals that Steve Jobs showed off to the faithful were tantalizing. Surprisingly he didn't flash one around on stage and attempts afterwards to persuade the Apple PR bods to let the BBC get their hands on one were met with a kind of stunned surprise.

However at a briefing with iPhone honcho Greg Joswiak, I did get my sweaty mitts all over one, but just for a short period.

The new model looks the same as the old, though is thinner in part and has a slightly smaller frame around the screen making it appear bigger. The 8 gigabyte version comes in black whereas the 16 gigabyte version also comes in white, and they are both plastic backed as opposed to chrome.

The reason for the new backing is to help with reception because Greg says there are 10 radio bands, bluetooth and wi-fi in there.

During his keynote address, Mr Jobs demonstrated the difference between the 3G version and the 2G version when it comes to download speed.

Opening a rich graphic and text page from the National Geographic website took 59 seconds on Edge which is part of the "old" iPhone architecture, while the 3G version took 21 seconds and wi-fi takes 17 seconds.

My play around with the device was shared with another half a dozen journalists and my try out certainly seemed to live up to the hype. It was quick to download and the page was easy to see and read.

It's hard to comment on the claims about battery life obviously because, surprise surprise, no one would let me take it home and test that out. However Apple state that there is 300 hours of standby time, five hours of 3G talk time, five to six hours of browsing, seven hours of video and 24 hours of audio power.

I think the really interesting part of the new iPhone is the apps store, which will also be available on 11 July. At the conference, a whole slew of new applications were unveiled and I managed to play with some more than others.

I have to confess Sega's Super Monkey Ball had me hooked, much to the chagrin, I fear, of the Apple PR team. But what's a girl to do when she is trying to get her Super Monkey Ball through the hoop? I was total rubbish and kept falling off after about 10 seconds but, hey, I loved it.

The graphics are really clear and bright and the movement of my monkey was dynamic. Tilting the phone to move my character was my downfall. I just wasn't very good at it.

I have to confess a 3D adventure game called Kroll also had me beat. In the time I had I just didn't manage to master very much in the way of getting the characters to move around the screen and actually do something. The images again were really rich.

I was also impressed by the quality of images for a medical application called Modality. It's aimed at medical students and presents graphics of the human body. But what is cool about this is that you can learn on the hoof.

The developer Dr S Mark Williams said that a medical student told him he had learned five new brain terms while simply waiting in line for a latte.

Now that's the kind of learning I am all over.

Another cool app that I got to explore was called Band by Moo Cow Music and allows you to make music on your iPhone. I only tinkled the ivories and that was to Do Rae Me... nevertheless Mr Joswiack said he was impressed! It had undoubtedly been a long day for him.

The brains behind this music app is an English guy called Mark Terry who actually works for an insurance company and developed it in his spare time. This is meant to demonstrate to developers how easy it is to develop for the iPhone because it's the same tools that Apple uses internally.

The sound on all the apps I tried was clear and pretty impressive.

The camera is essentially the same as the old iPhone at 2 megapixels and is what it is - but many people will be disappointed because this was one feature of the phone that universally had people clamouring for an upgrade.

Questions to Greg Joswiak about refunds for anyone who has just recently bought the old iPhone were met with little sympathy as he pointed out that news of the 3G version was 'hardly the best kept secret in the world".

However, there may be some solace for those who feel duped into shelling out for an already has been item, because Gizmodo is reporting that AT&T in the States says it will let people swap them out for a new phone and a new two year contract.

Greg did admit that Apple has stopped making the 2G version and is on track to hit its 10 million iPhone sales target for 2008.

At the end of the day weeks and months of speculation have resulted in creating an amazing marketing maelstrom for Apple and ensuring the iPhone is the gadget du jour.

But let's not forget it is just a phone. Something that was met with near gasps of incredulity when I actually voiced such a comment to one of Apple's crack PR team.

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The Steve Jobs keynote is not just a big deal for Apple watchers; today's expected launch of the second generation iPhone is also a big deal for Twitter.

The much-hyped tool for micro-blogging/threaded conversations has received a lot of flak in recent weeks due to ongoing outages and reduced functionality.

There has been talk of users abandoning their Twitter accounts and migrating to rival services like Jaiku and Friendfeed.

The former chief architect of Twitter, Blaine Cooke, even threatened to quit using the service because of constant outages.

The Apple conference today in San Francisco is sure to be a test for the Twitter servers and in an attempt to prepare for the load, and to win back user support, Twitter's bosses have posted a blog entry addressing the issues:

During the event, we are expecting approximately 10 times our normal daily traffic so we've made some plans to accommodate this dramatic surge. We've moved much of the load off our database by utilizing more memcache, employing more read-slave servers and by fixing some bugs for improved efficiency.

Given Twitter's decision to publicise these steps, I hope for their sake the service doesn't fall over...

Lots of tech blogs will be covering the keynote word for word. You can follow it at Engadget, Gizmodo and Macworld amongst others.

Our very own Maggie Shiels is also at the conference. She'll be filing colour and reaction to the Technology pages.

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We've travelled a thousand miles by air, road, and rail - and by Billy Mackenzie's boat across the loch from Arnisdale. We have been entertained in homes, student rooms and offices, and hooked ourselves up to broadband everywhere from a Scottish hillside, to a speeding train, to a shopping precinct in Milton Keynes.

So what have we learned from our broadband journey this week? First, that there really is a digital divide between town and country, with rural broadband users typically getting a slower connection. And don't expect country dwellers to be any more phlegmatic about an inferior broadband service than they are about the closure of the local post office. After 36 hours without broadband or a mobile phone connection in Arnisdale, I was tearing my hair out (not a very time-consuming activity) so I can sympathise with anyone who is trying to work from home in those circumstances.

We've learned that mobile broadband is really taking off enabling you to get online just about anywhere - but its providers risk falling into the same bad habits as the fixed line companies who tantalise us with promises of speeds that can never be achieved.

It's become clear that the broadband industry needs to find a better way of measuring and explaining line speeds to its customers. We ran a crude but simple test on the site, downloading a 10mb video file wherever we went. For the record, the fastest time achieved was about 2 seconds on Dundee University's fibre network, though the Virgin Media 50Mbps home we visited was a more typical environment and there it took just over five seconds. The slowest was at our hotel in Glenelg, with a time of 4 minutes and 10 seconds...though one of the mobile dongles gave up without ever completing the download.

Some firms seem to think that broadband speed is only an issue for a minority of geeks. Well guess which subject has attracted more comment on the BBC's website than any other in its history? Over 60,000 people came and shared their experiences this week, more than twice as many as on the previous hottest topic.

And I've learned more about what can be achieved by a small well-focused team prepared to try the latest technology to get on air. Usually when I go live on television, a large satellite truck rolls up, a dish is pointed at the sky - and we're on air very quickly, at some considerable expense. But this week we have gone live from every location simply by plugging into a broadband connection. It has been very hairy at times, we've fallen off air when a computer crashed, but it has usually worked - and the BBC has saved a sizeable four figure sum as a result.

And all that has been thanks to Neil Drake, the cameraman, editor and engineering wizard who has got us on air, and to Jonathan Sumberg, the immensely creative producer who has held everything together, surviving on about three hours sleep a night, and only occasionally favouring me with a frank assessment of my performance and dress sense.

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I've been travelling around Broadband Britain with a whole lot of clutter in my suitcase - three phones, two computers, an SLR camera, three USB mobile broadband dongles, a digital radio recorder and two microphones. But buried in my bag are two lengths of cable - one traditional twisted pair copper telephone wire and one fibre-optic cable,

I've brought them along as visual props for my television pieces. TV is a very literal business and with something like broadband there are few pictures to convey the transition from a network based on copper, which is nearing its speed limits, and one based on putting fibre right into the home.

Mind you, last night when we visited a home where they were trialling Virgin Media's "up to 50Mbps" broadband, I was surprised to find that souping up the cable network to more than twice its current speed did not involve putting fibre into the home. The last link is still a coaxial cable with copper at the core - it's a new standard called DOCSIS 3 - digital over cable apparently - which is making everything go a lot faster. So maybe copper isn't finished yet.

What I didn't pack was any aluminium cable, which would have been useful in Milton Keynes yesterday. The city's telephone network, built in the seventies when the price of copper was sky-high, has an awful lot of aluminium in it, which makes it pretty useless in terms of delivering broadband.

So Milton Keynes, a new town, is trapped in the 20th Century when it comes to the high-speed internet - which is why the fixed Wimax network we were there to cover is an attractive option for some residents with no other way of getting broadband.

We used the Wimax network to do a live broadcast - which we thought might be a world first until we discovered that my colleague Alistair Leithead had broadcast live from Afghanistan via a Wimax network set up in Kabul. For developing countries with shaky fixed-line telephone networks Wimax is quite a useful way of getting broadband. How amusing that this applies to Milton Keynes too. Perhaps the city would like to twin with Kabul?

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Did they know we planned our Broadband Britain tour for this week? Ofcom - the media and telecoms watchdog has just published its broadband speed code - and revealed that it's right in the middle of the biggest study of speeds ever undertaken in the UK.

Yes, even bigger than our exercise this week which attracted more than 30,000 people in just a few hours on Tuesday - evidence of what a hot issue this is for anyone who has a broadband connection.

The code is voluntary, but with companies accounting for 90% of all broadband connections signing up, it will effectively become the standard which any firm will need to adopt if it is to be taken seriously by consumers. So how tough is it?

Well it concentrates not so much on the advertising of broadband as on the point when the customer signs on the dotted line - or, more likely, clicks on "accept" on a website. The ISPs will now be required to provide customers with "an accurate estimate of the maximum speed that line can support." So what happens if that estimate turns out to be too optimistic? Well they'll then have to offer customers "the choice to move onto a lower speed package" - which I suppose means a cheaper deal.

Ofcom says it will be monitoring ISPs' behaviour closely through techniques such as "mystery shopping" and there's the threat of a statutory code if they don't shape up.

So will this instantly put an end to the confusion? Will those people who have been angry and disappointed that they are only getting 2Mbps on an "up to 8Mbps" deal now be satisfied? Probably not, because, as far as I can see, the code does nothing to stop ISPs labelling their products in the same "up to a zillion megs" way they always have. If your neighbour tells you he's getting a "20 meg line", you'll be annoyed if you can't get that speed too.

As we have seen, broadband speed can be difficult to measure and can change like the weather on a Scottish hillside from one moment to the next. Perhaps broadband packages need the same kind of colour-coding you now get on cereal boxes, with red, amber and green telling you just how nutritious it is going to be.

Ofcom has installed monitoring equipment in over 2000 homes to measure their broadband speeds and says that will mean tens of millions of speed tests. That should provide a more accurate picture than we have been able to give with our simple snapshot test.

Then perhaps the regulator will have to move onto the advertising of mobile broadband. We have been trying out 3g dongles from three different mobile networks in a range of locations - including on Arthur's Seat overlooking Edinburgh yesterday afternoon. Up there, we downloaded our 10mb test video file from the BBC website in just over a minute - quite respectable.

I am now a convert to mobile broadband - it is great to have a back-up when, for instance, you can't get into the hotel wi-fi. But don't get too excited. "Up to 7.2Mbps" sounds brilliant. But I have never got more than about 1Mbps - and as I write in a hotel in Peterborough, I'm getting something much slower than that.

Mind you it's faster than we got from the wi-fi on the train south from Edinburgh last night. Our hopes of doing a historic live broadcast from the train via broadband were dashed. But then the train company makes no claims about the speed of its internet connection, and offers it to passengers for nothing.

The broadband firms have now agreed that they will give their "passengers" much clearer information about real speeds. Perhaps they will end up blaming a poor connection on leaves on the line, or the wrong kind of snow.

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Seriously it is just not becoming for grown people to get so so so worked up about a phone.

There is less than a week to go before Apple guru Steve Jobs saunters on stage at the Moscone Conference Centre in downtown San Francisco and puts an end to the frenzy that has ensued for weeks and weeks about the latest edition of the iPhone.

Don't shoot me but I admit that I have added to the hype by reporting on the hype. And here's some more.

The internet is simply awash with real or fake photos, depending on what you want to believe, is the new 3G iPhone. Case makers have already been turning out cases based on these photos apparently.

One fabulous rumour is that the iPhone has already shipped and is waiting under guard, presumably armed and dressed from head to toe in black, at some warehouse in Fremont in the East Bay.

But then that is also countered by another claim that the iPhone is sitting in a factory in Taiwan. Or the rumour that it hasn't even been made because there is a shortage of parts. Quelle Horreur!

There are also claims the new phone will have 3G, won't have GPS, will have GPS, will/won't have Bluetooth, will be thinner, fatter, dearer, cheaper, have more plastic, more chrome, be blacker, no wait red and definitely cooler than any other darned product on the planet.

And just in case you are not convinced that the new 3G phone is on its way, stop the presses because the news is that an advert for this much anticipated piece of mobile gadgetry was shot at the Apple store in Manhattan.

Apple blogs were alight with gossip and convinced by their supposition because the iconic cube store had never closed before except for two other times when the company launched the original iPhone and OSX Leopard.

So how does that affect the rumour that Apple admen built a full size replica of an Apple store on the Warner Bros lot to film an advert for the Apple Developers shindig next week?

Oh I nearly forgot my favourite favourite rumour du jour...that Steve Jobs has sworn to never again wear black polo neck sweaters and jeans that don't fit. Sacre bleu what is the world coming to?

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Suddenly, I know how Dr Who feels. Yesterday afternoon I was in a phone-box in Glenelg pumping coins into the slot as I used 20th Century technology to talk to my bemused boss in London. (Anyone remember "Press Button B"? I do, I'm afraid). Now, after some rapid time-travel in the telephone box (oh, okay, the producer Jonathan drove us for five hours on windy roads across the Cairngorms) we're in 21st Century Dundee.

This is one of the UK's most digital cities, with a thriving cluster of games developers - it's where Grand Theft Auto was created more than a decade ago - and high take-up of broadband and 3g phones.

And it's soon to become a centre for ultra-fast broadband. A small company called H20 which specialises in laying fibre-optic cable through the sewers has decided this is one of the places which could become what it calls a "fibre city", along with Bournemouth and Northampton.

H20 has already worked with Dundee University to give it a fast network, and this morning we tried that out in a hall of residence on the campus. It's quite a few years since my student days and the accommodation has come on a bit with en-suite bathrooms and lager on tap through the water system (or did I imagine that?).

But it's the level of connectivity which has really moved on. I wrote my essays in longhand, typed out articles for the student paper on an ancient typewriter, and made calls home from the college phone-box once a week. Today every student has a laptop - and can be online from their rooms at lightning speeds via H20's fibre network, getting access to teaching materials, or maybe watching YouTube.

We tested it, and got speeds hovering between 35 and 45Mbps. And when we tried our timed download of that 10Mb video file, we came up against a problem - it was so fast it was just about impossible to time, though we think it downloaded in under 2 seconds. Back in our Glenelg hotel, where they generously let us hog the broadband line in their office, the download took over four minutes.

So is fibre-through-the-sewer the way forward? It's the hefty bill for digging up Britain's streets which frightens the telecoms industry as the debate about our need for a nationwide fibre-to-the-home network gathers pace, with memories of what happened to the finances of the cable television pioneers fresh in many minds. But H20 says its system means few if any road closures and cuts the bill for installation by as much as 80%.

Now H20 will be a wholesaler and will have to persuade ISPs that they need to offer these kind of speeds. With a pretty vicious broadband price war underway, many may be sceptical about whether they can persuade customers to pay more for higher speeds - though H20 claims there should not be much of a premium.

But one thing is worth remembering after our coverage yesterday of the urban/rural speed divide in Britain. H20 can cut the cost of bringing fibre to cities where there's the right kind of sewer system - but in the words of one of its executives 'we don't go into septic tank territory". So fibre-to-the home is coming closer - but fibre to the farm may have to wait awhile.

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The holy grail in the world of technology is achieving optimum battery power.

In the go go go lifestyles that so many people lead today, the ability for our pdas, ipods, smart phones, mobiles and notebooks or laptops to keep powering through the day is crucial. But the truth of the matter is that we are still connected to the wall socket and the battery life on all our fabulous gizmos just doesn't go the distance.

And all those little extra things we do to preserve the battery like dimming the backlight and powering down when not in use really doesn't make that much of a difference.

Well now the graphics company Nvidia thinks it has the solution to all these annoying problems in the shape of a 'complete mobile computer on a chip' called the Tegra.

The official launch of the new processor took place at the Computex show in Taiwan, but execs at the Santa Clara company gave the BBC a look at the thing in action before showing it to the world.

Michael Rayfield who is Nvidia's general manager for mobile business told me "Clearly the future is about visual computing. As screens get larger that's what we do for a living and the thing they really need is extreme battery life and none of the solutions to date have allowed that."

And he basically said the shrunk down laptop known as a notebook just doesn't cut it in providing productivity functionality along with entertainment functionality. In other words the marriage between an iPhone and the BlackBerry.

"Notebooks have done a great job of being mobile computing devices, they are highly productive and are very powerful. But they are basically a dehydrated laptop and you can't get very far from a wall outlet. They run for a couple of hours and you need to plug them in or if you run them longer you trade functionality."

To drive his point home he did a simple comparison test. The Tegra versus the Diamondville low cost mobile chip designed by Intel.

Size is all in this battle for the mobile internet devices space.

Michael pointed out some facts and figures. The Diamondville is a three chip solution which is just shy of 2000 square millimetres. Tegra is a single part at 144 square millimetres.

This is vital maintains Michael because it means the Tegra has "the flexibility to fit whatever shape device I want from an ipod to a regular media player to a tablet or mobile phone."

Next comes the real killer app. He claims playing a video on a Diamondville or Atom driven device will give you four hours of screen time versus the Tegra's 26 hours. For powerpoint or viewing files its one hour against 10 hours.

"We are 10 times smaller and last up to 10 times longer. It's a full internet experience. You can search the web, work on your powerpoint document, listen to your favourite music and watch videos" explains Michael.

"It's all about doing everything for a full day on a single charge. You've got all day power."

Next up was Stuart Bonnema, the comany's technical marketing manager with a gizmo to test the amount of power each device was using.

Doing nothing, the Diamondville was chewing through 10 watts of battery power with the backlight off. When Stuart fired up a movie, Cars in this instance, the number of watts went up to 13.

For the Tegra, it burned one watt just sitting there and 1.3 watts playing the Hancock movie. And that was showing a 720 pixel movie compared to just standard def on the Intel chip.

Now I know this all sounds like a huge advert for the Tegra but the thing was pretty impressive in action. The picture quality on the Tegra eight inch screen compared to the notebook's four inch was a world apart. And so was the action.

On the Diamondville chip, the movie juddered as it tried to upload the code and play the action scenes. In part it semi froze and jumped frames. The Tegra try out went smoothly.

"The thing that has kept the mobile internet device between a cell phone and a notebook computer from being successful in the past is that there hasn't been a good architecture to build around it" says Michael Rayfield,

He says the company has invested a lot of money in the Tegra which was built from the ground up with the help of between 500 and 600 engineers who worked on it for exactly 365 days.

"The sky's the limit on this next computer revolution" an enthusiastic Michael told me.

He reckons devices armed with the Tegra processors will be on the market in time for Christmas with a base asking price of $199 (£100).

And there will be a lot of competition among companies trying to dominate this space.

Intel's boss Paul Otellini agrees a lucrative market awaits valuing it at around $40 billion in a couple of years. His firm, which is the world's No 1 chipmaker is planning to update the newly launched Atom chip next year with one called Moorestown.

Also entering the fray are Via Technologies of Taiwan which will soon release its Nano processor aimed at the same market, as will Eee Pc, Qualcomm Inc, Texas Instruments Inc and Samsung Electronics.

And all of this is great news for us the consumer. With more competition not only are we likely to end up with a high grade device, but also one that we can afford.

Let battle commence.

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Our Broadband Britain tour is underway - and we're in Arnisdale, an idyllic village in the North West of Scotland. This is one of the few places where BT will still not supply a broadband connection - it is nine miles from the nearest exchange in Glenelg, and the copper cable just won't bring the signal that far.

But if you want to know just how important a service broadband has become, this is a great place to come. The people here have been making an ever louder clamour about their desperate need for a faster connection.

People like Rick Rohde, Anna MacKenzie and Jenny Munro. They all work from their homes in this remote community, where a trip to the supermarket means a two hour round trip. Rick, an American who settled here as a crofter thirty years ago, is now an academic working with colleagues in South Africa. Jenny is a graphics designer who needs to send and receive large files. And Jenny, who trains health workers, needs to keep in constant touch with colleagues across Scotland.

They have all gone to extraordinary lengths to get connected, Rick sailing across the loch just to pick up his e-mail, Jenny driving nine miles along a steep and narrow road to her mother-in-law's house just to send e-mails, Anna having to make a similar journey with her graphics files.

But broadband is now coming to Arnisdale through something called the Tegola project. It's a kind of home-brewed concoction, beamed to a series of masts around Arnisdale from a college on the Isle of Skye. But this is not a commercial operation - it is funded by Edinburgh University and the University of the Highlands and Islands, and, by the sound of it, would be pretty pricey if sold to residents at a realistic rate.

What it does deliver is pretty scorching speeds - downloads at up to 10Mbps, and pretty fast uploads too. I sat directly next to one of the masts, and managed to download the 10Mb test file we have placed on this website in just 16 seconds, a new personal best.

By contrast, back in Glenelg, I used the hotel's BT broadband connection, and it took over four minutes to download the same file. By the way, do try this at home - and map your results for us.

There is a Scottish government plan to bring broadband to places like Arnisdale by next Christmas, probably using similar technology to the Tegola project, with a few really remote homes being served by satellite. But even when that arrives, you can bet that the people here will soon be looking with envy at the 20 or 50Mbps connections that are going to be available in some other parts of Britain.

So what have we learned on day one? That just because you live in the middle of nowhere your need - or desire - for speed is no less than that of someone living in a humming metropolis. And that satisfying the desire for ever faster internet connections right across the UK will be a challenging and expensive undertaking, with pressure on everyone from BT to local government to put their hands in their pockets.

Later today, we start driving to Dundee for a glimpse of our high fibre future. And, after a couple of days in stunningly beautiful surroundings, only marred by a dearth of mobile phone and broadband connections, it will be quite a relief to be able to get online with ease once more.

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I'm writing this in a hotel with a view across to the Isle of Skye, borrowing a slow broadband connection in a place where there's no mobile phone signal and the local phone-box is my only other means of communication.

It's the starting point for our tour of Broadband Britain, which gets underway on TV, on radio and online from today. The aim is to assess the speed and state of broadband at the moment - and take a look at the technologies which could promise faster speeds and more mobility in the years to come.

From this remote place, where they struggle to get broadband at all, we travel to Dundee on Wednesday, where they are being promised a high-speed connection by fibre-optic cable laid through the sewers. Then we travel south by train, trying out mobile broadband, and arrive on Thursday in Milton Keynes, where some residents are using Wimax to get online. Our last stop on Friday is Ebbsfleet in Kent, where BT will start laying 100Mbps fibre into homes in a new housing development later this year.

Along the way, we'll be testing speeds wherever we go using a couple of methods, and we'll be inviting you to join in - look out for the test page on the BBC website which goes live on Tuesday morning on the technology pages.

We will also be trying wherever possible - and this is what is making me just a tad nervous - to use broadband to send all our video and audio back and to do our live broadcasts. With me are top producer Jonathan Sumberg and cameraman/editor/engineer/general miracle man Neil Drake, seen in the picture trying out some of our equipment at BBC TV Centre before we left.

Our trip comes at a time when the debate about whether Britain needs faster broadband - and who should pay for it - is getting more heated. We hope to shed some light on the present and future state of Broadband Britain.

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