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UK web use hits all-time high in July

Another high-water mark for the UK last month. The number of Britons online reached its highest ever level in July with 31.8 million unique visitors flocking to the net, many in search of last-minute holidays in the sun, from the looks of it. The summer season usually sees a lull in net usage. Not so in 2007, the year summer never arrived.

Rumour-watch: the Google G-Phone

Another week, another rumour about Google's long-anticipated 'Google-phone', another swathe of technology sites sharpening their digital knives at the prospect of... well, not very much really.

Yesterday Business Standard, an Asian business journal, published a story which claimed that Google was a mere fortnight away from the "worldwide launch" of its much heralded, much discussed Google-phone.

Are virtual shopping baskets bigger than real ones?

How much did you spend on those groceries you bought online from Tesco a couple of months back?

£50? £70? Can't remember? We need an answer now, so give it your best shot.

It may seem trivial, but the holes of memory that are shown up in a Q&A like this – a daily problem for market researchers – go to the very heart of one of the stories the news sites and blogs alike got most excited by this week: how much we shop on the internet.

On Monday, IMRG, the body which represents internet retailers, announced that online shopping had risen to an all-time high in July of £4.2 billion – up from £2.34 billion in the same month a year ago.

This, the IMRG said, could be attributed to the poor weather, and the fact that more and more retailers had better websites enticing us to 'add to basket' and 'proceed to checkout'.

As a teaser in its press release, the IMRG casually dropped in that high street sales in the same period had only totalled £5 billion - the implication being that online might be en route to surpass the high street.

Many papers reported the story with relish. 'Rainy July pushes online sales past £4 billion' trumpeted the Guardian. 'Online sales set record in July' said the BBC.

Was the comparison fair, though? And to what extent could we be assured IMRG's figures were accurate? After all, eAbsinthe.com apparently does a bright trade in specially slotted Absinthe serving spoons in the UK. Had they been included?

Germans aim to build laptop powered by body heat

Face it, batteries just aren't very reliable, I type with gritted teeth as I spy the rapidly dwindling battery power indicator on my MacBook. And, as we learned recently, lithium-ion batteries have a tendency to overheat, triggering expensive recalls from Nokia and Sony in the past year. Perhaps the researchers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute, the same group that brought us the MP3 audio format, have found a solution: a new method of drawing electrical current from our body heat that could some day power laptops, mobile phones and gadgets.

As workplace e-mail overtakes the phone, is office interaction doomed?

E-mail has surpassed the telephone as the most popular workplace communications tool, NetworkWorld reports, citing a new Datamonitor/Dimension Data survey. That probably comes as no surprise, unless you're a chief exec who has the secretary "handle all the e-mail". What is a bit of a surprise is how e-mail has become the overwhelming tool of choice, suggesting that in the workplace of the future we'll have less face-to-face and over-the-phone interactions with our colleagues than we do today. The researchers regard this as a worrying development.

Microsoft pipped in Beijing Olympic race?

Some confusion this week about whether the organisers of the Beijing Olympics had taken a swipe at Microsoft, or not.

Reports surfaced in the past couple of days that Lenovo, an official supplier to the Beijing Olympics, was to ship the majority of its computers to the games with XP, rather than Vista, installed.

This - the chairman of Lenovo, Yang Yuanqing, suggested, in remarks that were taken slightly out of context - was because the Olympics needed stable technologies and "if it's not stable, it could have some problems."

Implication: Vista was unstable.

Cue a series of rather unflattering (for Microsoft) headlines, including 'Unstable Vista Dumped for Olympics', 'Windows Vista Snubbed by Olympics organisers', 'Vista loses Olympics race', and, perhaps the most inspired, '2008 Olympics to run on XP'.

Is this what the internet looks like?

The web consultancy Information Architects Japan has produced a map of the internet, based on the Tokyo Subway plan (click on the image for a larger version).

There are, it seems a few in-jokes for those who know Tokyo: "Yahoo! is in Ueno, a nice place but nothing is going on there," while "Skype has conquered a place that doesn't exist", according to the people who designed the map.

There's more information, and the option to buy posters or download screensavers featuring the map at the iA website.

The environmental cost of chat sessions and the paperless office

The rise of the paperless office, online banking, VOIP calls and e-commerce is not as green as you might think. The demand for electronic services is creating a boom in the construction of data centres to store and process these digital details on countless computer servers, and the need to keep these server farms cool and always-on is having a noticeable effect on the power grid.

According to a recent report by America's Environmental Protection Agency, America's data centres require more power than all the television sets in the 50 states, combined. Put another way, the energy consumed is equivalent to 5.8 million homes – that's a lot of Amazon orders and Skype chat sessions. Put in monetary terms, it's $4.5 billion (£2.2 billion) worth of electricity consumption per annum, says Greenbang.com.

Al-Qaeda's pixels popped?

There's nothing like a tiff between image processing experts to put a few extra pixels in your Monday.

Last week Wired.com ran a story in which a computer scientist claimed he could establish whether al-Qaeda had altered a video prior to posting it on the internet.

Neal Krawetz said he had written a program which would enable investigators to establish whether a background had been added to disguise the true location in which an al-Qaeda video was recorded, and, if the image had been altered, which editing software was used. (Of limited significance, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless.)

A video by a prominent al-Qaeda spokesman posted last year, had, for instance, had a desk, computer and some books added after the original recording, Mr Krawetz said.

A computer security expert at Cambridge University last week took issue with Mr Krawetz's claims, however, claiming that his analysis was flawed.

14 months of fame ends: Fake Steve Jobs is unmasked

The 'fake Steve Jobs', blogger/satirist/Apple irritant, has been unmasked. The New York Times put an end to the ruse on Sunday, publishing the identify of the blogger who claimed over the past 14 months to be blogging the innermost thoughts of the mercurial Apple CEO. So, who is "Fake Steve"? A Valley insider? A shareholder activist with a dodgy iPod? Nope and nope. He's Daniel Lyons, a 46-year-old Forbes tech editor who, evidently, holidays in Maine, owns a necktie, and has never met Jobs face-to-face. In fact, he tells the Times, he has zero sources within Apple. "I had to go out and get books and biographies to learn about a lot of the back story,” he says. His secret leaked out when he sought out a book deal to cash in on his faux-Jobs persona.

Live football on your mobile

Men torn unhappily away from their television - or the pub - on a Saturday afternoon have long stolen quick glances at their mobiles to keep up to date.

Now the football-hungry gazing under the table could become more lengthy; Sky has announced deals with some of the major networks to carry its sports channels as part of their mobile TV services.

From next Saturday, all the matches shown on Sky Sports 1, 2, and 3 will be available live on Sky Mobile TV, and another service - '24-7 Football' - will show goals and other highlights immediately after every Premier League and Champions League game.

Both services cost £5 a month each, and do not require the customer to be a Sky subscriber.