Pssst. Wanna buy the Internet? No, no, straight up. Alexa is offering to sell its bi-monthly Internet crawl on disk. ‘The crawl is over 60 Terabytes in size, spanning over 3.5 billion unique URLs. This is larger than Google, and approximately 4 times larger than Altavista’s published size. Please send a stamped addressed envelope stuffed with used notes and a 1.44MB floppy disk, to….

Oh dear. Hear that sound? It’s the sound of the BBC bosses back pedaling furiously. It looks as though the lawyers have convinced the BBC hierarchy that placing all of its programme archive on line for free is not wise. So now apparently the ‘…BBC will not open up all of its archives online…it says it will only open up content which is deemed to be otherwise unprofitable or non-commercial.

The Downhill Battle site is a rallying call for a defense fund to help fight off the RIAA prosecutions for music piracy. ‘We see the Defense Fund as a real opportunity for people to rally around everyone who’s been sued and help end the record industry’s campaign of intimidation and bullying.’

Here’s a real repository of online slime, the wasniceknowingyou.com site. ‘We’re happy to do the dirty work for you if you want to kiss goodbye to your boyfriend or girlfriend. All you have to do is register for FREE to dump your ‘ex’ and then meet all the people who are newly single !!!’ Shudder!

A 6 year old boy has just passed his GCSE exam in computing? Whoa!!! ‘”He didn’t realise he was taking the exam because I didn’t want to push him or anything.’

MIT at it again, with more research into body worn computing. The MIThrill Vest (geddit?) looks kind of scary actually. At least I think so.

Sanyo joins the tapeless video camcorder bandwagon with its new DMX-C1 model. The Xacti – as it’s known to its friends – features 3.2 megapixels, takes VGA sized movies at 30 fps which is not bad, and claims to be the smallest of its type in the world. It also records 30 minutes of footage on a 512 MB SD card, which again ain’t shabby. Expected price – about $600.00. Quick, sell your camcorder. No wait, sell your camcorder manufacturer…

No doubt we will see many more weird hands-free car attachments for mobile phones coming onto the market now that the law is clamping down on talking while driving. But will they all have to look as strange as this Car Baby? ‘To make a call, turn your Car Baby on and tune your radio to the correct radio frequency. Then simply place the call. Hear your callers through your car speakers!’ Hmmm…no word on how your callers hear you,…

The one thing that we don’t see in the excellent Lord of the Rings movies are any shots of Frodo consulting these route maps. A little bit of an oversight on the part of Mr Jackson, non?

Why are corporate suits so…er…well so unimaginative? Example No.34928. Chrysler Daimler has just released a new road safety awareness program called Road Ready Streetwise to help youngsters become more aware of the dangers of driving (or should I say the dangers of driving badly?). But what do they do? Choose a cheesy set of grinning yoofs to promote it, and instantly make it totally unappealing to most teens, who just wanna be cool. Much better to license a variation of…

Got time? And a yen for a new ringtone for your precious mobile handset? Then hie thee to the MrTones.com site where you will find free instructions on composing tones for a heap of tunes in all genres. You’ll need nimble fingers though! Arf! Lazy folks can skip that step and simply pay for a download.

The Planet Wide service is very cool, especially if you’re a travelling soul. Scan-Me is a service which scans your snail mail and then forwards it to your chosen email address. Follow-me simply bundles up your ordinary mail and posts it to any worldwide destination you designate. Unfortunately Aussie only at the moment.

Trouser semaphore – for communications in the modern age. Hilarious! Check out the demo movie!

Take one SUV, add FM tuned audio through the car stereo, a digital projector and DVD and an inflatable 50 foot screen. Result – a 21st century drive-in theatre! Is it comeback time? Thank goodness for the retro popcorn though!

For the musician in your life – the Fender Table. Strats or Teles.