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Toy retailer ToysRUs has paid $5.1m (£3.6m) for the Toys.com domain name. The amount has surprised onlookers and hints at a deeper commitment to online retailing for the toy giant. It is believed to be the biggest payout for a domain this year but has some way to go to beat the $14m paid for sex.com in 2007 or the $9.5m paid for porn.com. UK domain name seller Sedo said it had seen prices halved for .co.uk domain names since the economic downturn started to take hold.
It took just four weeks to organise – but thanks to the power of social media, today 20,000 people in 185 cities are hoping to raise £700,000 for charity. Amanda Rose, the founder of Twestival, took time out from her last minute preparations to speak to Sky News Online. “The Twestival is a Twitter festival, put together by volunteers. “It’s bringing people who met on the web together offline, to meet for a social cause, in over 185 cities across the world.” Twitter is a microblogging website that allows its users to communicate with each other in short, snappy text updates.
It has grown from a small network of San Francisco web entrepreneurs in 2006 to a major global network, boasting Barack Obama, Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross among its most popular users. And, through the power of online networking, over 1,000 volunteers across the world from Beijing to Brighton, Dallas to Dhaka will be hosting Twestival events.
The aim is to raise £700,000 for charity: water, which helps bring clean drinking water to people in developing countries. It is an idea Amanda and her co-founders had last September, when a group of Twitter users met in London to socialise and raise money for a local homeless charity. The event was a great success so they decided to have another go, and were blown away by the response.
You will not know their name, you probably do not know their film – but Oscar-nominated British directors Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes are hoping the next 72 hours will change all that.
They describe their animated short film This Way Up – a slapstick tale of father-and-son undertakers on a cursed journey to a funeral – as like “Morecambe and Wise in hell”.
Do you have a million and one things to do in a day? If your anything like me your desk is covered in bits of paper, reminders and post its. The genius’ over at Culture Code had the same problem and unlike myself they thought of an amazing way to solve the problem… ‘Things’.
‘Things’ is a lightweight mac application to keep your day ticking along nicely. Have a look, give it a trial and let me know what you think!
We all knew Big Brother was watching, those of us in the UK are the most spied on people on earth. Now it’s not just ‘Big Gordon’ watching, its ‘Big Google’! Forget your friends knowing everything about your day through Facebook status updates now everyone can see your location 24/7. The latest innovation by Google could let users track the whereabouts of friends, children or even cheating partners.
The Latitude service has been added to Google Maps on some types of mobile phones (iphone not included sadly) and BlackBerrys.
Users appear as a small dot on a map, allowing friends to instantly find out where they are.
“Now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend, or take comfort in knowing that a loved one’s flight landed safely, despite bad weather,” Google said in a blog post.
Personally I think Google just want to know which St.Arbucks I visit most 
Coffee, chocolate and Facebook are the most common addictions among Britain’s under-30s.
3,000 young people were asked which substances and habits they spent the most money on, those they had previously attempted to cut down on or give up, and the modern impulses ruling lives in 2009.
Coffee topped the list of their 10 most common modern addictions, followed by chocolate consumption and then Facebook in third place.
They replaced common vices of drugs, sex and cigarettes – which did not even make the top 10. Vanity was a more traditional popular vice, with beauty products scooping fourth place.
Here’s the complete Top 10