Google has a "next generation personal communication device" in testing, according to a document held by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Google is asking for permission from government regulators to break with convention and test its new device outside its labs.

Instead it wants to put the prototypes through their paces on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi networks in the homes of 102 Google employees.

The testing, which is for the purpose of assessing the "throughput and stability of the home WiFi networks that will support the device" will be done by employees in Mountain View, Los Angeles, New York and Cambridge (Massachusetts).

Google's own

The document submitted to the FCC says that Google itself is the manufacturer of the device which is "in the prototyping phase."

It may be something that never makes it into our own homes, but Google has been steadily diversifying its efforts in a way that could see it in every corner of our lives.

For instance, it has been increasingly making steps into the world of physical rather than virtual product offerings, firstly with its takeover of Morotola, but also with its futuristic AR Glasses project.

It's also expanding into the world of the ISP, laying its own fibre-optic network in Kansas City.

India's online Microsoft store has been hacked, exposing the names, email addresses and passwords of its users, which were stored as plain text.

Chinese hackers Evil Shadow Team have taken credit for the hack, posting up a message saying: "Unsafe system will be baptized" and a link to the group's blog.

Microsoft Store India is not run by Microsoft, but by an Indian company called Quasar Media.

It appears that the Microsoft Store India stored user passwords as plain text, making it relatively easy for the hackers to get hold of sensitive information once they had gained access to the site.

Password refresh

The information released included the email addresses, passwords and full names of site members, so if you happen to be one of them it would be a good idea to change your password immediately.

The site's owners appear to have regained control, as the site now simply bears the message: "The Microsoft Store India is currently unavailable. Microsoft is working to restore access as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

Google is rumoured to be preparing to launch a new cloud storage service called Google Drive.

The internet giant already is already a big player in the cloud space with services including Google Docs, so it's almost surprising that it isn't already offering cloud storage to users.

The rumour comes via the Wall Street Journal, which can only be as exact as "weeks or months" when it comes to an expected launch date.

Meanwhile, it describes Google Drive as a free service that will charge consumers and businesses a fee if they want to up their quota.

Doin' it like Dropbox

That business model is nothing new, being exactly how rival services like Dropbox and Microsoft Skydrive do it.

A cloud storage service from Google has been on the cards for a long time, with its GDrive project being cancelled as far back as 2008.

In fact, it already offers 1GB of free storage to users of Google Docs, Gmail and Picasa Web Albums. This can be upgraded to between 20GB (US$5 per year) to a mind-blowing and wallet-crippling 16TB ($4,096 per year).

However the current offering lacks some of the dedicated backup and sharing features of rivals like Dropbox, likely to be addressed by Google Drive when it arrives.

Google has set up a program to accurately assess how people are using their browsers, including exactly which sites they visit.

As an incentive to take part, the company is offering participants a US$5 Amazon voucher when they sign up, and another every three months.

That trickle of Amazon vouchers is set to dry up after a year, with a current maximum of $25 in vouchers stated by Google, though that will be re-evaluated later if it decides to continue the program.

Furthermore, an Ars Technica reader has flagged up that Google has been offering members of Knowledge Networks, a survey and market research company, the opportunity to take part in a more lucrative, but more invasive scheme.

Black box recorder

While the basic $5 every three months setup uses a Chrome browser extension to send web surfing habits back to the Google mothership, the Knowledge Networks participants will be sent a Screenwise Data Collector.

This black box is a Wi-Fi-enabled router that monitors the "household's web access", but excludes "other devices" like game consoles.

For this more comprehensive monitoring program Google is offering $100 for signing up and $20 every month for up to a year.

It looks like Google has stopped taking signups for the basic program, while the more lucrative one is open to just 2,500 Knowledge Networks members.

Would you want to hand over your browsing habits to the big G for cash? Let us know.

Microsoft has partnered-up with a British-based child protection group to launch a new version of Internet Explorer to keep kids away from unsuitable content.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) agency's version of IE9 allows parents to use a handy 'Jump List' which will block inappropriate websites, depending on the age group selected.

The free version of IE9 features all of the literature from CEOP, which offers a guide to parents and carers with a view to protecting youngsters, and one-click access to sites like thinkuknow.co.uk.

Peace of mind

Microsoft's UK Internet Explorer boss Gabby Hegerty says the new software will give parents a little more piece of mind - if they can keep them away from Chrome and Firefox, that is.

"At Microsoft we always want to provide our customers with the tools to enjoy the web safely and securely," she said.

"The internet has become a central part of everyday life for adults and children, from learning and communicating to working and playing online.

"As the leading browser provider, it is important we make the appropriate safety information available and build in features to our software which provide families with peace of mind online."

The CEOP-tailored version of IE9 is available to download from the Thinkuknow website free of charge, but you'll need to have Windows 7 installed.

Having kickstarted the Data Liberation Front movement inside Google, and as an advisor on open source matters, Brian Fitzpatrick knows the inner workings of the search giant very well indeed.

We caught up with him at OSCON in Portland, Oregon.

Linux Format: How did the Data Liberation Front come about inside Google?

Brian Fitzpatrick: It came from a number of things. I guess it first started when I graduated from college, and I couldn't take my email with me. And when I got to Google, I did open source stuff for a year and a half, or two years, and we were asking: "What else can we do in the Chicago office that's philosophically equivalent to open source, but not necessarily open source?"

I talked to a lot of people, and we were told to always focus on the user. I thought, 'I'm not going to be the guy to make Google the next two billion dollars – but what can I do that's going to make a big difference?'.

So I saw that we're getting to a point where big companies have a lot of data – where people are storing data in other companies. We don't need another kind of lock-in in the world, right?

The way I saw it was, Google never locked users in for search. Why do you use search? Is it because you have a two-year contract? Did you buy a piece of hardware to use it? No! If you don't want to use it, you just use another search engine. Who gives a damn?

The way we keep you as users is to make it better. Rapid innovation, rapid iteration. So we thought, 'If we make it even easier for people to leave our products, we're going to be forced to iterate even more quickly, and make our products better'. Everybody benefits from that, right?

Users benefit from it, and we benefit because we're competing really fairly. I mean, as an engineer, I'd much rather build a better product than build bigger walls around a product.

LXF: Kind of unusual...

BF: Well it is unusual, but the thing to remember is that, today, we're in an unusual world. Fifteen years ago, if I had told you, "In 2011 there's going to be a global distribution centre that costs almost nothing to send things on," what would you say? You'd be like, "Oh come on! Is it teleportation?"

But here we are in 2011 with the internet. It's a game-changer – it has changed the game in so many ways. And this is another one. It's really easy for people to switch software, and it's really easy for people to try new software.

And that's great – people who, in the past, have been very afraid of computers embrace them. They'll try new things really quickly.

LXF: Was the Data Liberation Front scratching an itch within Google – like engineers wanting to move data around in their own projects?

BF: Sure, as an engineer I don't want to waste my time schlepping bits from one place to another. If it's easier for you to take it out, it's easier for you to get it in. We want to go both ways on that.

I think a lot of people misunderstand why we do it. I think they understand why we do open source – they say, "Oh, Google wants everyone to think they're nice and cuddly." But the fact of the matter is, it's good for our business. It keeps us competitive. If we start building bigger walls, and leave our products to lie fallow, what's going to happen? Some start-up who really wants our customers is going to come and build an amazing product. Any other competitor can do it, and they take our users away.

LXF: It must be a hard thing to pitch to the bean counters, and the people controlling all the money at the top…

BF: I was a little reticent at first, thinking, 'Am I going to get fired?'.

LXF: So it was you that actually pitched the idea then?

BF: Sure. The first time I went and talked to Eric Schmidt about this, he said: "Why are you in here talking to me about this? Why aren't you out there doing it?" So off I went, and when everyone found out about it, they found it fits in with our mission and our philosophy.

I want to live in a world, and in the internet, in the future, where things are open and it's easier to move from one place to another. We're still very early in the life of the internet – a lot of the ways we deal with data are very specific to implementations. If you were to rent an apartment, and they said you can't take anything out when you leave, would you stay there?

LXF: If it was a really good apartment!

BF: Really? You'd leave all your family photos, wedding pictures? Would you check yourself into prison, automatically? People do this all the time with their data! That's the way I see it.

LXF: It must've been a pretty big technical challenge, if you were going from a standing start. Like with Gmail…

BF: Gmail is pretty big, but say that something is a "technical challenge" at Google and it's a little dicey, right? Because we're going to index the entire web, right? And we're going to serve up ads faster than you can sneeze. That's a technical challenge!

I would say there have been a lot of challenges in getting going, but those are about integration and doing things securely. Finding ways to build on APIs if they exist, or building new APIs if they don't exist.

LXF: Does it affect the way that new products at Google are designed, to actually incorporate the Data Liberation aspect?

BF: People are thinking of it sooner and sooner. People used to think about it after launching a product, and now people are thinking about it before launch. And teams have been reaching out to us to say, "Hey, how do we do this right?"

LXF: Do you see that becoming an official policy one day at Google? Like, if you make a new product there must be a way to get the data out?

BF: Well, I hesitate to make something an official mandate or policy, because when you come up with a policy there are always situations where an exception is worthwhile. My belief is to make it more part of the culture, so that it's something that people are voluntarily doing. They're thinking, 'This is something I want my product to have'.

So I'm not big into setting firm policy unless I feel there's a real danger to something or someone. For some products, depending on how fast they're iterating, it's easier to get something at launch.

LXF: At the moment, on the Data Liberation Website you get a list of products and methods for getting them out. Is the idea to move them all into Google Takeout, so eventually you have a big tarball that you download?

BF: I'd like to see everything in Google Takeout – we'll see if we can get there; that's a lot of work. But it's your data, and you should have control over it.

My thought beyond that is, people tend to mis-trust big companies – Google gets a hard time because of the whole 'Don't be evil' thing, but I'm glad of that. I'm glad that people hold us to a higher bar. People don't think of other large companies and say, "Oh my god, they treated me poorly!" No, they say, "They treated me poorly, and that's what I expected."

LXF: Our lives are in Google...

BF: Right. So if you say, "I don't trust Google," or "I'm not happy with the direction they're going," or whatever, you can take your data – your trust – and go somewhere else with it.

LXF: How popular has it been? Do lots of people use the service?

BF: Not a lot of people – we've been liberating data for years, and it's sort of like an emergency stairwell on a building. In the case of a fire drill, you take the stairwell out, but every day you use the elevator.

So it's not something that people use frequently, but the response we've got from users when they've heard about it is astounding. People have been really excited about it. They see it as a commitment – putting your money where your mouth is, so to speak.

Week in Tech: Facebook soars while others struggle

All hail the new king of tech! After months of speculation, Facebook's becoming a public company: the social network will be looking to raise $5 billion later this year in a share offering that could value the firm at as much as $100 billion.

As you might imagine, founder Mark Zuckerberg was in triumphant mood. "You're all my bitches now!" he crowed, announcing a host of new features that will share your most shameful secrets with everybody you've ever met and everybody the people you've ever met have ever met.

Okay, he didn't, but he did write a letter.

"You're all my -" Only kidding. His letter explains that, despite what you might think, Facebook was never about money. It's all about bringing people together. Facebook "was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected." Also, we've always been at war with Eurasia.

Facebook's IPO will make Zuckerberg very rich, but what will it do for the rest of us? Kate Solomon says everything's doomed. DOOMED!

"Going public will mean it has to answer to outside shareholders who don't give a hoot about Facebook itself as long as the revenue comes flooding in," she says. "You might not notice it at first, you might not notice it for a year, but as far as Facebook goes, the glory days are behind us. It's all downhill into corporate doom and marketing speak from here on out."

For now, though, Facebook's star is in the ascendant - but other tech empires appear to be crumbling. Sony's latest financial results reported a whopping 24% decline in consumer sales, mainly due to poor TV sales, and reduced its forecasts for sales of digital cameras and PS3s.

Sony has also announced a new king: CEO Howard Stringer is being replaced by current acting vice president Kazuo Hirai.

Amazon profits slump

Maybe Sony should take a leaf out of rising tablet star Amazon, whose massive tablet sales have been achieved through the clever tactic of allegedly losing money on every sale.

Amazon's in it for the long term, which is just as well, as its latest figures aren't brilliant. The firm sold twice as many Kindles in 2011 as it did in 2010, but profits have slumped.

The firm is being cagey about how many Kindle Fires it's sold, too: while analysts suggest the number could be as high as 6 million, Amazon's keeping schtum. It's not being very precise about its future either: in the first quarter of 2012, Amazon says, it'll either make a profit of $100 million or a loss of $200 million. Or maybe something else. Who knows? Not Amazon.

Could fixed-line ISPs' empires be next in the firing line? Probably not, despite bright ideas such as Three's brilliantly named Web Cube. Instead of a traditional broadband connection with minimum contract terms and phone line rental, the Web Cube uses Three's network to deliver a Wi-Fi access point that isn't tied to a particular building.

The Web Cube isn't particularly fast - 10Mbps is a potential maximum - but then, it seems our fixed line broadband isn't much better. Telecoms watchdog Ofcom says that many of us are getting crappy connections instead of blistering broadband speeds.

Part of the problem, it seems, is us: we're not all taking advantage of the fastest services around. "More than 4 in 10 broadband consumers remain on packages with speeds of 10Mbps or less even though many of them would be able to get a higher speed at little or no extra cost if they switched package or provider," Ofcom says.

Even when we do switch, though, we continue to get considerably less than the speeds ISPs tell us we'll get - the UK average has barely cracked 7Mb, whereas the average speed advertised by ISPs is eleventy billion Mbps.

Google has been fined for unfairly taking advantage of the dominant position of Google Maps by giving away the service for free.

The internet giant has already been pulled up by French authorities for sniffing out personal data while taking pictures for its Street View service.

This time, Bottin Cartographes lodged a complaint against Google France and Google Inc, claiming that its actions constituted unfair competition.

A French commercial court upheld the complaint and ordered Google to shell out €500,000 in damages and interest, plus a €15,000 fine.

Does Google plan to charge?

The French company concerned distributes the same mapping services as Google Maps, but charges a fee. It claimed that Google's plan is to get ahead by undercutting the competition until it is in an unassailable position.

Bottin Cartographes' lawyer, Jean-David Scemmama said, "this is the end of a two-year battle, a decision without precedent."

"We proved the illegality of (Google's) strategy to remove its competitors... the court recognised the unfair and abusive character of the methods used and allocated Bottin Cartographes all it claimed. This is the first time Google has been convicted for its Google Maps application."

A Google France spokesman responded, saying, "We will appeal this decision. We remain convinced that a free high-quality mapping tool is beneficial for both Internet users and websites. There remains competition in this sector for us, both in France and internationally."

Audio recording and sharing site SoundCloud has released a new feature call Story Wheel to celebrate reaching the 10 million users milestone.

The Story Wheel feature hooks into Instagram, allowing users to create a slideshow of Instagram snaps with a voiceover from SoundCloud.

SoundCloud founders Alex Ljung and Eric Wahlforss have made their own Story Wheel that briefly tells the story of SoundCloud and says thank you to its users.

The Story Wheel slideshows "project" the square Instagram pics within a scene including a projector on a table to complete the effect.

When will it end?

Like a real slideshow, there's no telling how long it's going to last, and no way to pause or rewind it – you're at the mercy of the Story Wheel's creator.

Story Wheel was created by two SoundCloud employees at a hackathon last year, and is the latest product from SoundCloud Labs which showcases experimental projects.

After launching in 2008, SoundCloud only just passed the five million users mark last year, indicating just how fast the growth of the service has been over the last six months.

On top of reaching the 10 million users milestone, over five million official SoundCloud apps have been downloaded and there are over 10,000 apps in development on SoundCloud's open platform, including ones that integrate with professional music software Pro Tools and Cakewalk.

It's not just music that SoundCloud deals in, either, as its content has been labelled with over 3.3 million tags, with audio from books and lectures to bloggers and journalists.

If you're interested in making your own slideshow, head over to storywheel.cc and start narrating your own show, just spare a thought for the person who might end up watching it.

The week the web went dark

This week, the internet turned black: high-profile sites including Wikipedia went into mourning mode to protest the controversial SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy legislation in the US. As Chris Smith explains, "The Stop Online Piracy Act, and Protect Intellectual Property Act currently being debated in the US Senate would give content providers the right to have websites shut down if they believed they were infringing on copyrighted material."

The blackout attracted widespread support from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg - although not so much support that Facebook actually took part in any protest - but not everybody was entirely in favour: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo posted that "closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish."

There's no doubt that the protests have been very popular, but our columnist Gary Marshall sparked a furious debate when he worried that the bigger picture was being missed.

"SOPA's been shelved and PIPA will no doubt suffer the same fate, but these are tactical withdrawals, not outright surrender," he writes. "They'll be back with new names, and new language, and the same old supporters, because that's what's been going on for more than a decade.

"Copyright industries want the net regulated, and they're willing to spend huge sums to make it happen: SOPA is a battle, but the lobbyists are waging a war."

Victim of a treaty

One victim of that war is Richard O'Dwyer, a 23-year-old student from Sheffield who faces extradition to the US. His crime? Allegedly profiting from linking to - not hosting, but linking to - dodgy downloads of TV programmes.

The alleged crime didn't happen in the US and his servers weren't located in the US, yet O'Dwyer may be "bundled onto a plane and sent to America, with its famously pleasant prisons and scrupulously fair and incorruptible legal system", as Marshall describes it.

O'Dwyer isn't a victim of SOPA - that's US-only - but of the extradition treaty between the US and UK, a treaty that both Nick Clegg and David Cameron promised to amend should they gain power. The treaty was set up to fight terrorism, but it's now being used by US copyright owners to go after people in the UK.

It's a classic case of mission creep, where laws end up being used for very different things than they were originally intended - and mission creep is a key concern among critics of our Digital Economy Act and the US's SOPA and PIPA. If a law can be used for something, they worry, it eventually will be.

While everyone from Joe Punter to President Obama slams SOPA for going too far, in the UK the Film Policy Review Panel reckons Britain hasn't gone far enough and that the Digital Economy Act needs to get some teeth. Marc Chacksfield explains:

"The UK's Film Policy Review Panel is seemingly fed up with the government dilly dallying over the Digital Economy Act (DEA) and its anti-piracy proposals, asking for measures to be put in place 'as soon as possible'... according to Ofcom, the controversial 'three strike' plan won't come into effect until at least 2013 and that is only if it gets approval."

The worrying thing about the copyright debate both here and in the US is that it's becoming increasingly polarised, and in the coming months it'll get even more so: copyright industries believe they should be protected from the internet, while internet users believe it should be protected from the copyright industries. SOPA - and over here, the Digital Economy Act - do appear to give disproportionate weight to the concerns of big businesses rather than ordinary internet users.

Part of the problem, Marshall argues, is that politicians are only hearing one side of the story. "While we're outside shouting slogans, The Man is inside, whispering sweet nothings into politicians' ears," he writes.

"That lobbying isn't generally coming from supporters of internet freedom." The answer, he suggests, isn't just about protesting; it's about "supporting the EFF, and the ACLU, and the ORG, [and] lobbying your elected representatives... we need to do better, because the best way to fight bad laws is to stop clowns from getting into power in the first place."

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Facebook has opened up its Open Graph platform to 60 new partners including Ticketmaster, Urbanspoon and RunKeeper.

The Open Graph system pulls data into Facebook from other apps and social networks.

From now on, Facebook is open to all public app submissions, meaning we should see plenty of activity as developers get to grips with the new functionality.

Rather than just liking, sharing or commenting, users now have a whole host of app-specific actions which can be fed into their timeline.

Dwayne "cotched" at "Jimmy's crib"

Facebook explains the idea by boiling it down to "user–action–object". For example Kate (user) ran (action) an 8.7km route (object) or Marc (user) cooked (action) pilchard custard (object).

Each app can specify its own actions which, somewhat worryingly for the English language, could well lead to some interesting uses of verbs and creation of new, app-specific ones.

Mike Vernal, the Facebook Platform's Director of Engineering has told The Verge that Open Graph "mashups" will also be possible, allowing information exchange between apps for more sophisticated behaviour.

For example, offsetting the calories logged by a food app with ones burned during exercise.

Some of the apps are already available to add to your Facebook timeline – you can check them out here.

Google is experimenting with smartphone-based authentication to log into Google accounts on high risk public computers.

Designed to prevent unscrupulous types with keylogging software getting hold of your passwords in internet cafes and on other shared computers, the system uses onscreen QR codes which are scanned by a smartphone to log in.

Open sesame

Google has codenamed the feature "Sesame", which we imagine is more to do with Ali Baba and less to do with Big Bird and pals.

Users who navigate to a special login page, then scan an onscreen QR code with their phone will find they are then simultaneously logged in on the computer as well.

It's a variaton of Google's two-step verification scheme which uses a numerical verification code sent to your mobile in addition to the usual password.

After a brief trial, Sesame has been pulled for now, but Google's Dirk Balfanz has posted:"We always work on improving authentication, and try out different things every now and then. We're working on something that I believe is even better, and when that's ready for a public trial we'll let you know."

We'll keep our eyes peeled.

Multiple users may soon be able to make the most of the same Netflix account by way of numerous Facebook log-ins on the same subscription.

That's the dream of Netflix's chief product officer, Neil Hunt, who revealed the project to TechRadar during a private interview at the streaming service's UK launch.

One of the benefits of Netflix is its recommendations engine, which offers supremely personalised genre selections based on how you've rated other films (for example, "critically-acclaimed visually-striking cerebral films" and "wacky foreign comedies" or simply "exciting crime films").

Those wacky 'foreign' comedies just slay me

But if you're sharing an account with the rest of your household, these could become diluted quickly by your cohabitants' personal (some might say terrible) tastes.

We asked Hunt what the company was going to do about that and he offered us three options; predictably option one was to buy two subscriptions and option two was to just make do. But option three sounded a bit more promising:

"The third answer is that we certainly have ambitions to provide to the multiple individualised personality profiles."

By individualised personality profiles, we're pretty sure he means 'people'.

"One of the models that I'm contemplating is that maybe if you connect two or three different Facebook accounts to one subscription, then you can kind of say 'Okay, I'm Kate, these are my signals or inputs [ratings and preferences]'.

"And maybe when you launch the thing it says, 'Are you 'Kate' or are you 'boyfriend'?' And you choose and you get your personal presentation."

Great, sign us up. Or get back to us when it's ready, which sounds as though it may be quite far in the future:

"There are a lot of issues to solve with that. But it's sort of a point that we see [Netflix] as a work in progress - it's not finished, it's not done," explained Hunt.

"We have lots of work to do in lots of areas, in personalisation, in social stuff, in developments like that.

"But the fact that most of these user interfaces are essentially delivered in HTML, even to the smart TVs and games consoles, means that we continue to extend week by week, month by month, to deliver new features, to deliver new capabilities, and we have goals and ambitions for that kind of stuff."

Despite appearances, not everyone is nor wants to be on Facebook; we're sure Netflix will make provisions for these people in their multiple-personality strategy.

Netflix came under fire at launch for its seeming requirement for users to connect their accounts to Facebook, although the company later clarified that this is not actually the case.

Feedair has launched the Feedair Friend digital ticker display with Wi-Fi connectivity and LED display.

The small, aluminium-bodied device is USB-powered and sits neatly on a desktop, ready to provide updates from your digital world.

Its 147 dot matrix LED display could be just the thing to separate out the important notifications in your life, or maybe just add another information channel vying for your attention.

The data it displays is controlled via an app for iOS and Android phones. With this app you can manage what Feedair calls vidgets (visual widgets) via the Feedair Vidget Bar which sorts messages into 20 different categories including social networking and financial services.

Remember. To. Buy. Milk. Stop.

Tweets, direct emails and calendar alerts can also be displayed, though we're not sure reading a whole email on a one line display is our idea of fun.

"Digital distractions and overload are common among CE enthusiasts, so we set out to simplify and organize media updates in an at-a-glance, cohesive manner," said Feedair founder Simon Milner.

It's speech bubble form factor is certainly cute, and with Feedair actively developing its range of widgets some new and interesting ways of receiving everyday information could be just around the corner.

The Feedair Friend comes in a blue, silver, black or pink and will be on sale from Feedair's websitein March for around US$50.

The best of the web

Groundbreaking websites are all around us, and if you believed every company that positioned itself as the latest, greatest thing, you'd have an awful lot of bookmarks in your browser.

Sites come and sites go, but it's rare that one makes enough of an impact on your life to revolutionise how you use the internet.

But occasionally sites come along that offer a genuinely new way of finding, storing or curating stuff on the web. We've put together a list of 20 websites we think could let you use the internet in a way you haven't done before, save you time, make you money and let you enjoy yourself in the process.

We've found new sites that offer functionalities not found elsewhere, but we've also included a few that have been around for a while, but have really come into their own in recent years. We may have highlighted them because they are about to come out of beta, or because they have just matured into popular and interesting tools worthy of an introduction if you missed them the first time around, or a re-evaluation if you didn't.

What we do on our PCs is moving increasingly to the cloud, with free storage and utilities becoming the norm. We like to think we've found the sites that can help you get the best web services available to make your online life as pleasurable as possible.

The breadth of services online means you really can change your life using the internet. With the websites we've covered you can discover new music, set up your own radio station, play the latest high-end games, book holidays or bring down a corrupt corporation, all from your web browser.

Then there's the social side, where we've discovered sites that enable you to use online pinboards, create compelling stories from social media, share free music and even write your autobiography, all of which can help you find a new way of expressing yourself, or find others who are interested in the same thing as you.

Whether it's keeping aide-mémoires, finding images and notes, solving problems using crowd sourcing or automating admin tasks, we reckon we've got a site that will change your web browsing habits forever.

1. Ifttt

The whole point of computers when they were first introduced to the workplace was to automate tasks to make humans' lives easier. Complex calculations could be done in seconds, freeing up the human operators to concentrate on more cerebral matters. Nowadays, it's the computers themselves that are creating more and more menial and repetitive tasks that keep us away from the important things in life.

These range from keeping up with social networks and backing up photos and documents to weeding out the important emails from the morass of special deals from shops and reminders about internet services you signed up to five years ago.

Wouldn't it be nice to cut through all that and make the internet work for you? For it to do these tasks automatically, or tell you when something happens that you are genuinely interested in?

What if every time you uploaded a picture to Instagram it was automatically backed up to your Dropbox account? Or if the release dates for new films magically appeared in your Google calendar? Wouldn't it be good if, when you were 'working from home', you got a text message letting you know when your boss had emailed you? Yes? Then Ifttt is for you.

'Ifttt' stands for 'if this, then that'. This type of command is the basic premise behind most programming languages. The Ifttt website enables you to link commonly used services and devices (or 'channels', as it refers to them) and arrange for an action to occur on one service when certain conditions have been fulfilled on another.

These channels include a great variety of common tools - social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, photo services including Instagram and Flickr, note-making apps such as Evernote and Instapaper, and even phone-based services such as generating text messages and making calls.

Each of these channels can be connected to another, and when triggers are applied to them - say 'every time one of my tweets contains a certain hashtag, back it up to Evernote, the note-making tool' - it will carry them out automatically, saving you time and helping you stay organised.

If you feel your programming skills may not be up to the task, there are 'recipes' so you can get commonly used linkups and apply them to your own services. It's deceptively simple and powerful, and as more services are added it could revolutionise the way you use the web.

2. Diaspora

Back in April 2010, four computer science students from New York University were so unimpressed by Facebook's lack of privacy controls that they decided to create their own decentralised open source social network.

To do this they tried to raise $10,000 on kickstarter.com, but the idea of a more controllable network was so popular that by June they had raised over $200,000. This caused a flurry of media interest that talked it up as the next big thing and then, as so often happens, it was quietly forgotten. Since then it has gone through a buggy alpha developer build and is just about to appear in beta form. So why are we championing it as a new way to use the internet?

Diaspora was built as a reaction to the privacy issues of Facebook, and these issues are still a worry today. What's more, with the latest changes to Facebook (such as the forced implementation of the Timeline) taking even more control away from the user, maybe it's time for a site that's described as "the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network".

Diaspora wants to make privacy key to social networking - it doesn't plan to share any of your information. You control every aspect of your Diaspora experience, without having to wade through pages of settings to keep your profile secure.

You can also control what you see and how you see it. Diaspora came up with Google+'s Circles before Google did - except it calls them Aspects - so you can choose to share your posts and photos with only those groups of friends you choose. It also enables you to integrate other social networking services, including Twitter and Facebook. It's a truly open social experience that puts you back in the driving seat.

Some people are saying Diaspora is too late to the party, and it's certainly true that it's been teasing us with the beta version for a while. But if you value your privacy and want to control how your data is seen by others, it's likely that you'll end up on Diaspora in 2012, even just to give it a try - if its developers can manage to get it out of beta in time.

3. Evernote

Although it calls itself a note-making site, Evernote can be used for much more than that. In short, Evernote lets you quickly create a searchable database of all your interests and aide-mémoires, whatever form they take - from photographs and audio clips to screenshots and webpages, Evernote will keep it all for you, and has some clever little tools to let you find them again.

For example, if you want to upload a picture with some text on it, Evernote has OCR (optical character recognition) technologies built into it, so those words are automatically analysed and added to its database. This means that any archived pictures of people with name tags, slides from important presentations or screenshots of useful websites are only a text search away.

You can also search Evernote's database by the date on which the note was created, or by the tags you use to label your data. You can organise your notes and photos into Notebooks, keeping similarly themed information together in the same place. If you're worried about the sensitivity of information you are placing on Evernote, you can encrypt notes to make them as secure as possible. You can also share notes or notebooks with others so you can collaborate on projects together, making it a handy business tool too.

Another handy feature of Evernote is the web clipper. This website extension lets you save the HTML of a webpage as a note. Instead of bookmarking a site, you save the info on that page, future-proofing yourself against the web page disappearing from that site.

Much like services such as Dropbox, Evernote will also sync all your information between any of your web-enabled devices, so the same notes and information are accessible whether you're on your work PC, on your phone or using a laptop on the train.

Evernote syncs automatically each time you turn your device on, so it all happens in the background without you having to think about it. It also changes the way it works slightly according to whether you're using it on a desktop PC, phone or tablet so that its functionality suits the platform. For note-taking on the go, Evernote may mean you never forget or lose anything again.

Read our full Evernote review

4. ChallengePost

What's the best way to find the answer to a problem? Ask as many people as possible until you find the perfect solution, of course. How do you get people to take the time to solve your problems? Simple, offer a reward for the best solution.

This is what ChallengePost does. It offers challenges from companies, charities and even governments to see if the public can help solve them, usually for a cash reward. It's a clever idea: crowd sourcing offers the best way to get as many perspectives as possible.

Creator Brandon Kessler came up with the idea after seeing a blog post that offered $100 to anyone who made a program that would run Windows on a Mac. Other people also had the same problem, and added to the prize fund to the tune of a staggering $14,000. A programmer soon came up with a solution to the challenge, which he wrote in three days. Kessler was so impressed with the idea that he decided to create an eBay of challenge-based problem solving and hired the blog post writer as his chief of product.

Once created, ChallengePost soon picked up high-profile clients, including an app developer contest for the City of New York and a healthy eating campaign headed up by Michelle Obama. ChallengePost has also been named the official online 'challenge platform' of the US Federal Government.

The site clearly works; setting something as a public challenge can lead to a lot more people getting involved, creates more awareness of the problem, and often generates innovation in a way that isn't usually possible using more conventional methods.

It isn't just the financial reward that motivates people either - acclaim or just a recognised need to solve a problem seem to be just as powerful, often leading to solutions involving a lot more work than the reward would normally warrant. It seems ChallengePost is encouraging altruism simply by making people aware that the problem is there.

So, a website that challenges you to make the world a better place and rewards you for sharing your ideas or fully-fledged concepts? If this isn't the future we'd like to be part of, we don't know what is.

Websites for learning

5. Open Yale Courses

You can now study Yale courses from the comfort of your own home. The Open Yale Courses website provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by lecturers and scholars from the university.

The courses cover subjects from evolutionary biology to Spanish and Portuguese, with the course materials available to anyone who wants them.

The courses are available to download in video, audio, and text formats. You can even download them from iTunes.

6. Instapaper

Increasingly we find ourselves dismissing online text longer than two paragraphs because it takes up too much time to read. Instapaper thinks it has the answer.

This service enables you to save web articles with the click of a 'read later' button, and assembles them into a newspaper-like sheet for you to read when you have time. You can also email links to it, or use it in with Google Reader.

It's rare that we get the chance to appreciate great writing, but with Instapaper's ability to save up to 20 articles in an easy-to-navigate grid format, you can catch up on all the fantastic articles you've been missing out on.

7. Storify

Currently in beta, Storify is here to enable you to tell stories using social media. You can create a story from any content that is online and publicly available, be it posts, photos or videos.

Storify's search interface enables you to drag and drop media and text to your story, keeping their metadata in the process so you don't need to quote sources. You just order the elements and add text to give background information or context.

You can edit and add to a story after it's published. The results can be quite compelling.

8. WorldWide Science

WorldWide Science is a search engine that hopes to make sharing scientific knowledge as easy as possible.

Developed by the US Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), WorldWideScience is a simple website that combines national and international scientific databases and portals into a one-stop shop.

It also enables real-time searching and translation of material from all around the globe. This means that any researcher, scientist or curious member of the public can search the site and read it in their native language.

9. Openleaks

Openleaks is an off shoot of Wikileaks set up by defectors from the original site, but without any political leanings that may colour how the whistle-blowing information is seen by the general media.

It is also not interested in publishing the material itself - it just wants to be a mechanism that enables users to upload documents safely and anonymously so they can be shared by the Openleaks community.

Once a document is uploaded, it's added to a database so it can be shared with organisations such as local support groups, newspapers, NGOs and labour unions, who can publish it themselves.

Websites for entertaining

10. Grooveshark

Grooveshark's music service is web-based and easy to navigate, and you can be listening to music you like within seconds of opening the site. You don't even need to log in - you can just search for a song and play it. The search even autocompletes with popular artists and songs.

If you do log in, you can save playlists of other people's songs or upload your own. You can also follow other users and comment on their playlists.

There may be questions about Grooveshark's legality, but it insists it is doing nothing wrong, and is paying artists for the use of their songs.

11. OnLive

With OnLive, cloud gaming is a reality. The service requires no discs, hard drive space or high-end components, enabling you to play on devices such as laptops and tablets.

The grunt comes from OnLive's servers, which it upgrades every month with the latest graphics cards and extra RAM. Basically, you play remotely via the internet.

Press a button and the command is sent to the OnLive servers, which interpret the command and send pictures to your screen showing the result. If you have a good broadband connection, your gameplay should be lag-free.

Read our full OnLive review

12. 8tracks

Do you remember the days of making a mixtape (or even CD) for your friends with a special note or image in it? Well, 8tracks has taken that premise online.

Positioning itself as a hand-crafted radio station, 8tracks enables you to upload or search for the music you like to create compilations at least 30 minutes long (or about eight tracks' worth).

You can then add a description and pictures to your compilation and share it with other 8tracks users, who can rate and comment on your mix.

13. Deezer

Deezer is another music site well worth tuning into. It's been around in the US for a while and already has over 20 million users, but it plans to open its 13 million licensed tracks up to 130 more countries, including the UK.

Deezer is determined to be a legitimate, licensed music site, supporting musicians and others who earn a living from music. It's easy to dismiss as just another streaming service, but it has big plans.

Deezer's founders feel that MP3s have robbed people of the feeling of browsing your shelves and listening to complete albums, and want to restore the lost art of music curation to the masses.

Websites for work and networking

14. Kickstarter

Got an idea that you think would work, but don't know how to get the word out and start raising funds? If so, Kickstarter may be a good place to start.

Whether you're an artist, designer, filmmaker, inventor, musician, journalist or explorer, Kickstarter can provide you with a no-risk way of seeing if your idea is good enough to get patronage from a wide variety of interested parties.

Simply say what you want to do, how much you want to raise and by when, and if you hit your target by the deadline you have set, you get the money to fund it.

15. 3liveshop

Phone operator 3 has mixed the high street with the convenience of online shopping. Well, in Sweden at least, where the 3liveshop trial was carried out.

You ask a real person questions about the product you want to buy via video chat, and not only can they answer in real time, they can add details to the chat screen such as images of the product, or details of talk plans or your online shopping basket.

It's powered by bespoke Flash multi-touch technology - you can see part of the assistant's desktop so they can drag and drop images and info onto the screen.

16. Join.me

How often have you tried to explain how a website works to somebody over the phone, only to find that they are lost, two pages behind, looking at the wrong menu? Wouldn't it be great if they could see what you were doing on your desktop?

Before join.me came along, the best way to do this was to take your laptop to them or send a series of screenshots by email. Now you can let up to 250 people share your desktop from anywhere in the world.

It's ideal for training, product demos andPC support, because you can let others see your desktop from any web-connected device.

17. Pinterest

Pinterest is a way to keep an online pinboard of the beautiful things you find on the web. It also enables you to browse and draw inspiration from the collections of others.

If you see something in somebody else's collection that you admire, you can pin it to your own collection, or just comment on it. It's oddly addictive, but has some real world uses too. People have used it for design inspirations when planning to refurnish a room, or to collect ideas for a wedding.

With millions of people giving it a try, Pinterest is already proving a compelling way to share ideas.

18. Rapportive

Like Xobni for Microsoft Outlook, Rapportive helps you make sense of the people you interact with on Gmail. Once installed, it simply adds their information to the side of email messages where the ads would normally appear.

It can pull in information from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, Flickr and MySpace among others, so if they use the same email address on all these services you can get a lot of information about your email contact all displayed in the Gmail window.

Now you never need to admit to forgetting a business contact again!

19. Hipmunk

As anyone who has ever tried to compare flights will tell you it's a confusing business. Different airlines have different costs, flight lengths and changes, and trying to keep track of it all to work out which flight is the best for you is nigh on impossible.

That's the problem Hipmunk was created to solve, and it does it very well. Enter where you want to go and when into its search engine, and Hipmunk will organise all the available flights in a simple timeline.

This shows you the difference in cost, the difference in airport changes, or the actual times of the flights in one glance.

How much are Twitter followers worth? That's the question that will be asked by a Californian court after a former employee of news and reviews site PhoneDog took his followers with him when he changed jobs.

MadDog didn't take too kindly to this, especially as he changed the name of his account from @Phonedog_Noah to BBC was criticised for letting nearly 60,000Twitter followers go when political correspondentLaura Kuenssberg joined ITV.

Laywers have warned that such issues need to be written into employment contracts.

It's been a Google-y kind of week, with a strong emphasis on Android: just yesterday Android boss Andy Rubin took to Google+ to share some impressive numbers.

An incredible 700,000 Android devices are being activated every day, bringing the total number of Android devices in circulation to around eleventy billion - and in case you're wondering, those figures don't include re-activations such as second-hand bits of kit. "We count each device only once," Rubin says.

On the subject of devices, is Google planning its own Android tablet? Could be! The tech exec best suited to a job as a Scooby-Doo villain, Eric Schmidt, dropped heavy hints about a forthcoming Google slate.

"Noi nei prossimi sei mesi contiamo di mettere sul mercato un tablet di altissima qualità," he said, in Italian, because he was in Italy at the time. According to our Translate-O-Meter, that means "In around the next six months we will market / bring to market a tablet of the highest quality."

According to Gareth Beavis, "a Google-Motorola branded tablet with the most advanced Android OS on there would be a real head turner. However, a partnership with someone like Samsung or HTC would also be highly beneficial, as there's no certainty that the Moto-Google deal will go through, and certainly not in time to bring a tablet to the market in the first half of 2012."

There's no doubt that Android's doing exceptionally well - it cracked the 200 million device mark last month and the rather spiffy Ice Cream Sandwich is slowly making its way to recent devices - but not everything is happy in Android land.

Ice Cream nightmare

The promised Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Samsung Nexus S, the first device to get Google's latest OS, has been postponed mid-update.

What's going on? According to Google community manager Paul Wilcox, if you can't see the update, "this is likely the result of Google pausing the update in your area while we monitor feedback". We powered up the Translate-O-Meter, again, and apparently it means "something got borked".

Given that 2011 was already full of highs and lows for Google, you'd think things might calm down for Christmas. Nope! In the latest instalment of everybody in the mobile industry suing everybody else, Android and its allies have found themselves under legal attack.

This week it was HTC's turn, with the firm ordered to change how its phones handle clicks on contacts or face a ban on selling its handsets in America.

As if that wasn't bad enough, BT decided to sue Google over Android (and Google Maps, and Google Music). As Patrick Goss reports, "BT has accused Google of infringing on a range of different patents – including 'service provision for communications network', 'navigation information system', 'telecommunications apparatus and method' and 'storage and retrieval of location based information in a distributed network of data storage devices."

Our cantankerous columnist Gary Marshall is worried. "Manufacturers can barely say 'Look! A new Android thing!' before somebody clobbers them with a lawsuit," he says, arguing that Android is beginning to resemble a frog in a pot: "It thinks it's doing just fine, but the temperature keeps creeping up. By the time it realises it's being boiled, it's too late."

Marshall reckons that Android firms will be hoping the Google/Motorola deal gets the green light from US and EU regulators, enabling Google to threaten rivals with Motorola's enormous patent portfolio. "It's the tech equivalent of nuclear powers' Mutually Assured Destruction," he says. "If you fire at us, we'll fire right back until there's nothing left but cockroaches."

Highs and lows for Google in 2011

It's been a funny old year for Google.

While Android conquers the world, Google TV can't even conquer a branch of Comet and for every increase in market share there's a corresponding increase in regulatory scrutiny.

From social networks to mawkish movies, these are our pick of Google's 2011 highs and lows.

The Highs

1. Ice Cream Sandwich

Android has come a long way from its early incarnation as a BlackBerry-esque OS: these days it's an all-singing all-dancing Ice Cream Sandwich extravaganza. We think ICS is brilliant and can't wait for it to roll out across existing Android devices.

2. Android phones

Apple may have the mobile market's money, but Android's got the eyeballs: in November, Android accounted for a massive 52% of the smartphone market. That's some 60 million smartphones compared to 17 million iOS ones.

3. Google+

The launch of the Google+ social networking service was a triumph, reaching an incredible 25 million users in a matter of weeks. Facebook took three years to reach the same figure.

4. Market share

Despite Microsoft's best efforts, Google's market share continues to rise: ZenithOptimedia reports that Google's global share of the search market has risen from 72% in 2006 to 85% today.

5. Google Maps

The latest Google Maps for Android introduces a feature that makes us feel we're living in the future: maps of indoor spaces such as airports and shopping malls that even know what floor you're on. It's a little stroke of genius and very Google.

6. Google Music

Google Music has been warmly received and delivers an Android equivalent to Apple's all-conquering iTunes Store. It works really well on Android tablets.

7. Bletchley Park

Google's helping to fund the restoration of Bletchley Park, the World War II base of computing hero Alan Turing. Google head of communications Peter Barron says, Bletchley Park's code-breaking work "was probably the most inspiring and uplifting achievement in scientific technology over the last hundred years."

8. Chrome

Google's browser is more popular than Firefox, with 25.69% of the global browser market. That represents extraordinary growth: in November 2009 Chrome had market share of just 4.66%.

9. Ad spots

In 2011, Google spent more money on sales and marketing than ever before: according to Kantar Media, Google spent four times more on TV ads in the first half of 2011 than it did in all of 2010. Ads such as "Dear Sophie" are designed to make us think of Google as our big pal rather than Big Brother, and they're working: according to Ace Metrix, Dear Sophie was particularly popular among women "who rated it extremely highly for likeability, attention, change and relevance".

10. Ad sales

Google's business is advertising, and that business is good: the firm's share of the global advertising market has increased from 34.9% in 2006 to 44.1% today.

The lows

1. Google Wallet blocks

Google Wallet is Google's play for the lucrative mobile payments market, and integrates both NFC-based contactless payments and online checkouts (formerly Google Checkout). However, US phone network Verizon has dealt it a major blow before it's even off the starting blocks: it won't allow the Google Wallet app on Samsung Galaxy Nexus phones until Google proves it provides "the best security and user experience". In entirely unrelated news, networks including Verizon are working on a mobile payments system.

2. Google TV

Google TV partner Logitech took an $100 million bath when nobody bought its Revue set-top box, and while Google is committed to the project it's been a dud so far.

3. ChromeOS

Remember ChromeOS and Chromebooks? You can probably forget about them again: DigiTimes reports that combined sales to date are barely 30,000 units, which is tech-speak for DOOOOOOOOOMED!

4. Google+

We're putting this in the downer category because while the initial numbers were impressive, the amount of time people actually spent using the service plummeted within weeks of the launch. As the LA Times notes, "Google+ has been fighting declines for most of its nearly five-month history". Google is connecting pretty much everything to the service to boost traffic, but so far Mark Zuckerberg isn't weeping.

5. Google Labs, Wave, Buzz and Health

Dead, dead, dead and dead respectively. Since Larry Page took over as CEO, there's been a bonfire of underperforming projects. What on earth will we do without Google Knol?

6. Booksellers

Amazon and Barnes & Noble have taken Android, fiddled with it and released their own versions on their own tablets with their own app stores - and many pundits predict they'll account for the lion's share of low-end Android tablet sales. That's bad news for Google, because those devices don't come with Google's apps or payment system. Google's effectively done the development work without getting anything in return.

7. Android patents

Incredibly, Microsoft makes more money from Android than it does from Windows Phone. The reason? Patents, which enable Microsoft to charge Android manufacturers royalties. Google's patent lawyer for one isn't too happy about that, and claims that patent suits are "being used to hinder innovation".

8. The redesign

Google's spent a lot of time this year redesigning its various services, and we think the results are mixed: Reader looks worse, and search now suffers from minor niggles such as blanking your search field when you click from Web to News. Even Google doesn't seem convinced by its new look: after introducing a black bar across the top of the screen, Google announced that it was going to get rid of it again.

9. SOPA and India

Google - and other internet firms - faces increasing pressure to censor content. The US Stop Online Piracy Act would force Google to delist sites accused of copyright infringement, while in India the Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal has urged firms including Google to block offensive material and content that might offend some Indians' religious sensibilities.

10. The EU

The EU is gearing up for a major anti-trust investigation of Google amid allegations that the firm's algorithms unfairly penalises rival companies. A similar investigation by the EU of Microsoft took more than a decade and cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of pounds.

Google has unleashed the latest version of its Chrome web browser, which offers multiple user accounts.

Chrome version 16 allows you to sign-in to a number of different accounts, with each hosting its own set of bookmarks, history, add-ons and web-apps.

Switching between the accounts is easy thanks to an in-browser tab, which could prove ideal for households with a single computer.

Not a 'private browsing' tool

However, the feature is not yet designed to safeguard your personal data as once you're signed into your account it's easy for other users to access it by simply switching tabs.

So, unless you trust your family explicitly, it's probably not a good idea to think of this as a private browsing feature. It really isn't.

Google says on its Chrome Blog: "Keep in mind that adding new users to Chrome isn't intended to secure your data against other people using your computer, since it just takes a few clicks to switch between users.

"We're providing this functionality as a quick and simple user interface convenience for people who are already sharing Chrome on the same computer today.

"To truly protect your data from being seen by others, please use the built-in user accounts on your operating system of choice."

Of course, the other advantage of signing into your Chrome profile is that your own apps and add-ons can be accessed from whatever computer you happen to be using.

When Steve Jobs refused to allow Flash on iOS devices, he argued that HTML5 could do everything Flash did.

He wasn't being entirely honest - the reality distortion field was strong that day - but ultimately Apple won and Adobe didn't; HTML5, not Flash, is the technology that's transforming the web. So what exactly is it, and what does it want from us?

What is HTML5?

HTML5 is the latest version of Hypertext Markup Language, the code that describes web pages. It's actually three kinds of code: HTML, which provides the structure; Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which take care of presentation; and JavaScript, which makes things happen.

What's so great about HTML5?

HTML5 has been designed to deliver almost everything you'd want to do online without requiring additional software such as browser plugins. It does everything from animation to apps, music to movies, and can also be used to build incredibly complicated applications that run in your browser.

There's more. HTML5 isn't proprietary, so you don't need to pay royalties to use it. It's also cross-platform, which means it doesn't care whether you're using a tablet or a smartphone, a netbook, notebook or ultrabook or a Smart TV: if your browser supports HTML5, it should work flawlessly. Inevitably, it's a bit more complicated than that. More about that in a moment.

What does HTML5 do?

We've come a long way since HTML could barely handle a simple page layout. HTML5 can be used to write web applications that still work when you're not connected to the net; to tell websites where you are physically located; to handle high definition video; and to deliver extraordinary graphics.

When will HTML5 be finished?

HTML5 is an evolving standard, so it's a bit misleading to talk about when it'll be finished. What's important is that HTML's features - such as the aforementioned geolocation, web apps, video and graphics can be used now, provided your browser supports them.

Do I need an HTML5 browser?

You've probably got one already. All of the big name browsers - Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, Mobile Safari and Android's browser - support HTML5, but they don't all support the same things.

Firefox generally supports the widest selection of HTML5 features, with Chrome and Safari following shortly afterwards, but as we said HTML5 is an evolving standard and the latest versions of each browser more than cover the basics. If you'd like more detailed information on browser support, the excellent Caniuse.com provides a detailed breakdown of what supports what.

SKYDRIVE: Microsoft has rolled out support for HTML 5 in Windows Live

What's the problem with HTML5 video?

The HTML5 standard supports video, but unfortunately nobody could agree on which format(s) to support - and that means that different browsers support different HTML5 video formats. There are three main ones: Ogg Theora, which is supported by every browser bar Internet Explorer (Safari support requires a manual installation); H.264, which is supported by everyone but Firefox; and VP8/WebM, which is supported by everything (although Safari and IE require manual installations). In January, Google announced that it would eventually remove H.264 support from Chrome. If you're thinking "blimey, that sounds like a right mess," we'd agree with you.

Will HTML5 replace Flash and Silverlight?

In some ways it already has: iOS devices don't run Flash, and many video websites have either moved from Flash to HTML5 video or at least offered HTML5 as an option. However, as HTML5 doesn't include digital rights management (DRM) technology to prevent copying, many content owners prefer proprietary, DRM-friendly formats such as Flash or Silverlight. For example, UK video site LoveFilm is dropping Flash - but instead of HTML5, it's moving to Silverlight.

Although Adobe has announced that it will stop developing the Flash Player for mobile devices Flash is also used for considerably more than just showing video, so it's not going anywhere in a hurry.

What tools do I need to create HTML5 websites?

Purists would say that you don't need any tools - you can write HTML5 code with a biro and a bit of paper if you wish - but others prefer tools such as Adobe's Dreamweaver, which gained an HTML5 pack in 2010. Adobe is also readying Edge, a dedicated HTML5 animation tool that promises to make it easy to create Flash-style animation.

Where can I see some HTML5 demos?

The cunningly named HTML5demos.com has some good demonstrations, along with a key showing which ones work in which browsers, while the excellent HTML5rocks.com has both demos and code samples for designers and developers. Google has put together an HTML5 video player for YouTube , and Apple has put together an HTML5 showcase on Apple.com. Our favourite, though, is the interactive film Chris Milk made for Arcade Fire's We Used To Wait.

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