… the New England Journal of Medicine has proved it. It was applied to a selection of regular accounts of “tricky diagnoses” in the journal, and came up with the right answer in 58 per cent of cases – probably rather better than your average GP.

Which when you think about it says something about the wisdom of crowds – they put value on the links, and Google judges that value, at least in part.

I happen at work about an hour ago to have been waiting on the phone, and flicking around idly as one does, I cleaned out my Askimet Spam folder on this site – the usual thousand-odd.

Getting home, I went to the management panel to clean up a couple of spam comments that had snuck through, and there I found, deposited in the past hour, a further 34 spam comments.

Surely everyone must have some form of spam blocks by now? Why do these things keep coming?

Meanwhile, in a lovely triumph of hope over expectation, seen outside Euston station: a “dispenser” of one of London’s proliferation of free newspapers, chasing after a jog – actually running, in the hope of the jogger taking a copy.

Surely the three afternoon papers aren’t going to survive the winter: most of the poor folk distributing them will surely be down with double pneumonia.

… to one of my earlier academic interests – which I still keep up, I’ve a review of a book on blogging, The Mirror and the Veil. As I say in the review:

Serfaty writes: “The screen … establishes a dialectical relationship between disclosure and secrecy, between transparency and opacity” (13). When I think of two of the “diary-type” blogs that I read regularly, Petite Anglaise and Personal Political, I see that as a potentially useful framework for thinking about their writing. In the first case, Petite apparently discloses all, yet she is very careful to screen her physical identity; in the second case, “Susoz” admits her difficulties in dealing with the separation of the two and makes this part of her online persona.

It was the attraction of the metaphor that took me to the book, but as you’ll see if you read the review I was otherwise disappointed. Maybe I was unduly harsh – the other three reviews there are more positive, although express some of the same reservations, but perhaps more tactfully – have a look and see what you think.

(The cynic in me notes the other three reviewers are academics…)

I have been resisting signing up to Google Talk and other IM for fear of them consuming even more of my hopelessly overcommitted time, but I’ve finally surrendered, and probably predicatably am now wondering why I was so stubborn for so long.

For communicating with a techie helping you through a new procedure, for example, it is invaluable – so quick and easy – without the inevitable waits of email.

But I suspect my use of IM will always tend towards the prosaic, and consequently not very entertaining, unlike Petite Anglais. She had her “status” as man shopping, and she sets out the conversation, which I fear some men might find disheartening. (You’ve been warned.)

I noticed the other day that Google saves all of these talks, as though they were email. The biographers of the future might have a lot of fun…

Meanwhile, you’ll find me at my Gmail address… but please forgive any faux pas; I’m still working my way through the social protocols of the new world.

Yet again, I’ve been without internet at home for 36 hours due to Orange’s inability to maintain the absolute basic – a broadband connection. They told Linksys last night that they’d fixed it after 12 hours or so (so I wasted half an hour or so checking my router), but they hadn’t. For practical reasons I can’t leave them yet, but should you be thinking about joining a UK ISP my advice would be NOT Orange.

Apologies to anyone who has been expecting me to do something, including respond to an email. I’ll have to leave for work shortly, so it will be 12 hours or so before I get to anything but the most urgent.

The prefix peta refers to numbers of the magnitude 10 to the 15th power, a million billion, and that’s what they’re talking about in the computer world these days.

Yes, it is doing my head in too – and I’m marginally well hooked into this stuff. But if you want to understand what’s happening, I’d reckon you should read this article. I’ve read it three times and think I’ve almost got a handle on it.