Todays fairly hefty news is confirmation of rumours that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo.

Can't say it's the biggest surprise in the world, Yahoo was formerly the internet's favourite showpiece but in recent years has taken a good beating from Google, and Microsoft has been royally annoyed by Google expanding it's services into email and desktop software - pretty much monopolised by MS to this point.

We'll have to see what happens - my guess is given the valuation, timing and stalemate of Yahoo's current position, it'll be an offer they can't refuse. 

While Lisa dined out on croissants and hearty English fare yesterday, I quaffed a few glasses of complimentary red with the cream of Bristol media society... dahling! 

It seemed that everyone had turned over the same leaf, with a collective decision made to be sociable and 'get out there'. 

Goldbrick House's champagne bar was heaving with an eclectic mixture of folk representing the entire spectrum of media.  I met cameramen, post production crews, an artistic dance director and a lovely illustrator amongst others, whose lengthy job titles prevent me from mentioning them here.  What they all had in common, however, was an open, friendly approach - cooperation rather than competition seemed to be the order of play here.

Bristol Media are doing a great job of providing a link between disparate arms of the well established media body here in the South West - I'm looking forward to the next event in February.

For those of you averse to the relentless march of technology - beware!

Microsoft intends to enforce an automatic browser update from IE6 to IE7 via Windows Server Update Services from February 12th 2008.  The company explain that this move was prompted by security concerns.

Anyone wishing to stick with IE6 must take the following precautions to avoid the automatic update:

"Specifically, administrators who have set WSUS to automatically approve Update Rollups will need to disable the auto-approval rule before Feb. 12 to prevent IE7 from infiltrating their infrastructure. After that date, they must synchronize the update package with their WSUS server and then switch the autoapproval rule back on."

Source: InfoWorld

As a follow-on from the last post - this may prove to be just the start of an online drama craze:

SAVE THE WORKERS

If this does indeed present the thin end of the wedge then we may be watching all our favourite actors online in five years time... and all demand 100Mbps!

Apparently the UK is lagging behind our European counterparts in areas other than fine wine and healthy lifestyles.  Plans to give new-build homes super fast cable connections are only in the initial stages, while many existing homes can't expect to enjoy speeds similar to the continent until 2020.

Opinions are divided over the 'best' way to speed up connections and by 'best' I mean 'cheapest'.  H20 is pushing for fibre optic cables, laid through sewer networks, to produce speeds of 100Mbps at a cost of £15bn. BT are reluctant to move entirely away from DSL copper cables, as a mixture of these and fibre optics will only set them back a mere £5bn. 

Questions over who will want to use these higher speeds seem to have forgotten the impact YouTube has had in the past few years, ignored the increase of online TV consumption and played down the increasing numbers of online gamers demanding higher definition gaming services.  Every time a provider has offered larger bandwidth and faster connections we lap it up and I can't see this trend abating...

So the big announcement at MacWorld yesterday was the MacBook Air - the new laptop from apple that's no wider than 0.76 inches and weighs in at 1.3 kgs. Truly designed for the wireless world, there's no CD or DVD drive and it also features a custom, smaller chip from Intel. It'll set you back £1200.

MacBook Air is the latest in a series of gadgets and fun stuff released by Apple annually, and the BBC have a good article on stuff from previous years. 

After ten years or so working on Windows, I made the switch to a Mac Mini last year, and I probably wouldn't go back now. Despite the various rib-tickling comments from PC-using friends and colleagues, the Mac OS feels more intuitive and secure, and if I'm honest it just looks a lot nicer. Mac minis are popping up all over the office now, there's one in the meeting room and they're even creeping into the technical team. 

Looks like Wikipedia is next in line as Google continue to trample over everyone on the Internet:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7144970.stm 

So if you're any expert on something - anything - just let Google Knol know.....good luck