You can't transfer email addresses between ISPs. Do you really think PlusNet wants to [or is even able to...] handle your old ntl email address?? If you want to keep an email address, either get your own domain or get a webmail account somewhere.

Speaking of which, I have 50 gmail invites. Use the comments or the contact form.

Now some people seem to think that this will end the scourge of comment spam, where people [or, more to the point, machines...] post 'comments' in weblogs that are nothing more than link-filled ads aimed at manipulating Google's page-rank algorithm by artificially increasing the number of links to the spammer's web-pages.

Problem is, not only will many not install the software necessary to allow these new controls to work [it ads a rel="nofollow" attribute to anchor tags...] but it still won't stop spammers posting crap to people's blogs. MT-blacklist is as essential as ever...

WRONG.

We know, as there is plenty of empirical evidence to back it up, that

1. the longer you have been on-line, the more likely you are to be comfortable with the net and therefore shop online


2. that the longer you have been online the more probable it is that you have broadband

We also knew that #1 was true several years before we knew that #2 was true, and that there is no evidence that #2 invalidates #1.

But we also know that the BBC tends to re-write press releases as news stories, rather than thinking about them in any great depth, so we can surmise that, as usual, they have got it utterly wrong once again.

It is nice to know that a MP has recognised that things are cheaper for the [relatively] rich, a fact that has been true in the UK for a very, very long time. But then this MP has probably spent too long reading the BBC's online news, where the digital divide is only something that happens in the third world.

Speaking of BBC Online and its juvenile attitude to digital inclusion in the UK, this particular article must take the cake. Calling those who aren't online "refuseniks" is about as patronising as you can possibly be. Could it be that many of those who aren't online can't go online because they can't read...?

For more on the wonderfully backwards British attitude to learning and literacy, you need only go here.

And don't forget MarsEdit too...

Despite all the governmental rhetoric about the importance of 'broadband Britain', it is very noticeable that we aren't seeing increases over 512k download speeds in standard home packages... announcements like Cox's recent increases in download speeds are unheard of in the UK.

While the UK broadband market may appear to be competitive, with some inexpensive basic connection packages, most of these accounts come with very low monthly transfer quotas: many broadband consumers are still [efffectively] paying per megabyte download fees.