Oh what a wicked Web we weave when first we practice to rush through 7 days on the internet (or '7doti' as we love to call it) ahead of the Christmas Party. But hey, we've got SO much to tell you that it would be criminal of us to linger around talking about unicorns or making up stage plays anyway.
Let's start with this week's biggest UK news and the fact that Virgin Media has finally unleashed its 50Mb broadband on the public. Virgin actually told TechRadar they could have introduced 100Mb broadband and that they weren't 'capacity constrained'.
Of course, we should point out that VM does NOT condone illegal file-sharing of any kind and that kind of bandwidth is purely so the whole family can get online (little Jonny on his Xbox, big sister Lucy on Facebook and any other cliché you can think of). Honest Guv'nor!
Just like Sting and/or The Police we hope that the Russians love their children too – or else the Moscovite that copyrighted the sideways 'winkey smiley' ;-) will be tracking them all down individually and asking for their pocket money. Superfone and its president Oleg Teterin claim they own the rights to reproduce ;-) and similar derivatives like :-) and :) in spite of their being in public use for at least 15 years.
PC Plus' Richard Cobbett considers the tendency we have of becoming quickly used to (and even, if we admit it, slightly bored at times of) technological marvels such as Google Earth. Web apps which only a year or two ago almost blew our brains out of our ears with their sci-fi awesomeness.
If you are reading this using Internet Explorer 7 then you may well be worrying about being one of the 2 million estimated victims of an exploit that Microsoft is working round the clock to fix. Fortunately most of TechRadar's users are on Firefox so you can all sit there smugly and play with your add-ons. And it also looks like Microsoft has been swift to respond to this security threat, which an official fix releasing today.
Vodafone should be applauded for its credit crunch friendly PAYG USB modem released this week, with 1GB of data limit (and no time limit) for surfing the web on the go costing you a mere £15. An essential bag up for your manbag, if you are not on a dongle contract already. Or, of course, you could just pop into your local Pret A Manger and hook up to their new, free Wi-Fi.
Finally comes the choking news that one in five teenagers post naked photos of themselves online. The survey, conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com, showed that nude videos had also been posted, and when adults are included the number rises by over 30 per cent. Interestingly, TechRadar reckons that four out of five adults using the internet are seeking out photos of naked teenagers. Neat.
