The Leveller

January 2008

To find out about the latest developments in digital media, and our comments and insights into the marketplace, read our monthly newsletter.

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News

Ask and you may erase

As social networking sites continue to push the boundaries on privacy, Ask’s Eraser privacy tool offers a welcome alternative.

Sounding the death knol for Wikipedia?

Anxious to have its fingers in every web pie, Google has ventured into user-generated encyclopedia territory.

Microsoft's cool green plan

In a bid to sell itself as environmentally-friendly, Microsoft has begun construction on a massive data centre the size of eight football fields in Chicago.

Kangaroo skates into reality

The much talked-about three-way joint venture between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4, dubbed Project Kangaroo will take off in 2008.

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Comment

Looking ahead, looking back

RSS: breaking the barriers

Advertisers and publishers need to think laterally and radically if they are to embrace the opportunities RSS offers. In the world of RSS, advertisers in fact become publishers.

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Bitesize

Stop in the Naaaame of Love

A Chicago suburb has adopted a humorous approach to curb dangerous driving habits like talking on mobile phones and listening to iPods while driving. Second stop signs were installed beneath the regular ones at 50 intersections.

Convergence on CoIP

Forget VoIP, it’s so 2007. Enter CoIP, Yahoo!’s new patented combined video, voice and text communication tool.

Jay Kay flexes digital muscle

Jamiroquai, the disco, funk and soul band have definitely figured out digital marketing.

Offset your divorce?

Divorce is the worst thing for the planet says recent research by Michigan State University, based on the 46% of marriages which end in divorce in the US.

Of grooves, keitais and Shibuya

As European women shopped online in a pre-Christmas binge, their Japanese counterparts did it virtually with their grooves (currency) at Chipuya Town on their Keitais (mobile phones).

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The Numbers Page

iPhone tops Google 2007 global search list

In Google’s annual Zeitgeist roundup of most popular search terms for 2007, Apple’s iPhone hardly surprisingly topped the list.

Top 10 UK retail sites

Auction site eBay continues to dominate the UK’s digital retail market attracting more than 22 million unique users representing 68% of the country’s web users according to comScore.

Europeans now sophisticated internet users

The Danes are the most sophisticated users of the internet in Europe, according to a Eurostat survey: Internet usage in 2007, Households and individuals.