“Starting December 4th, Wikipedia administrators noticed a surge of edits from certain IP addresses. These IPs turned out to be the proxies for the content filters of at least 6 major UK ISPs. After some research by Wikipedians, it appears that the image of the 1970s LP cover art of the Scorpions’ ‘Virgin Killer’ album has been blocked because it was judged to be ‘child pornography,’ and all other attempts to access Wikimedia foundation sites from these ISPs are being proxied to only a few IP addresses. This is causing many problems for Wikipedia administrators, because much of the UK vandalism now comes from a single IP, which, when blocked, affects potentially hundreds of thousands of anonymous users who intend no harm and are utterly confused as to why they are no longer able to edit. The image was flagged by the the Internet Watch Foundation, which is funded by the EU and the UK government, and has the support of many ISPs and online institutions in the UK. The filter is fairly easy to circumvent simply by viewing the article in some other languages, or by logging in on the secure version of Wikipedia.”

From Slashdot. Interesting to note that whilst Orange is not on the list, they are blocking access to the article on Wikipedia.

Welcome to the invisible UK firewall that we didn’t tell you about. I think that’s much more worse than the China firewall.

Microsoft have teamed up with ad agency Crispin, Porter & Bogusky to help it launch a line of graphic tees brilliantly dubbed “Softwear by Microsoft”.

Several of the shirt designs were handled by long-time respected artist Common. Microsoft says of the campaign: “[Softwear is] a clothing line that taps the nostalgia of when PCs were just starting to change our lives.” This latest addition to the “I’m a PC” campaign will find its way to US stores on December 15th. No word if there will be a European launch.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/softwearbymicrosoft/

James Kendrick over at Gigaom have written an excellent guide telling us 5 different things to consider before purchasing a netbook. I recommend that you head over to Gigaom and check it

Check it out over here.

If you liked that, you can also check out 10 Ways To Trick Out Your Netbook for Free here.

Recently I was informed about a great community called SocialSpark. SocialSpartk is a blog marketing network that connects advertisers with bloggers through an online marketplace. Advertisers can purchase blog marketing as sponsored posts or blog ads. Bloggers, like myself, can make money blogging by either placing ads on blogs or writing blog reviews.

Blogs are an absolutely fantastic social tool that allows people to become their own news agency, their own technology magazine, their own point of interest for a subject they love. I personally find blogs very useful. When I first created this blog, the whole world of blogging was completely new to me. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort learning more and more about effective blogging and, although I have a lot still to learn, I believe that I’m providing a useful service on the internet. It’s also great fun!

Now I love the idea of advertising on blogs, but only if the ads are completely relevant to the blog style and content. It’s no good having paid advertising for cosmetics on a technology blog. I’ve had a good luck through the members on SocialSpark and whilst I find that the majority are using the services correctly and efficiently by having relevant ads and content, there are quite a few members that are just spamming their own blogs with ads and paid reviews that do not compliment each other or provide a useful service to their readers. After all, the readers are the most important thing.. right?

You may notice that I have been running a small advertisement for Yazsoft on the right. Yazsoft are the creators of as awesome download manager for Mac OS X called Speed Download. For advertising this product, Yazsoft have very kindly provided me with a free license for Speed Download. I consider this a very fair deal. It saves me a little bit of cash, provides me with a great product and provides Yazsoft with some well deserved exposure. As my blog features technology news and articles, I fully believe at this ad is relevant and correctly targeted.

Occasionally I will be posting small advertisements on the blog as part of my membership with SocialSpark. But I will make sure that they are completely relevant to the blog content and my readers. Once I start running them, I would really love to hear your feedback on this! Please leave a comment.

One last thing. I have changed the “Tweet This” to a more suitable button that allows you to tweet the post, bookmark, or post it to social networking websites. I’d love to hear your feedback on this also.

Thanks guys. It’s a real pleasure to have you all visit my blog!