Apple have officially unveiled a media centre device temporarily named iTV, that allows wireless streaming from home computers to television screens.

The iTV looks like a sleeker Mac mini and comes with a control to adjust settings. It connects to computers via Wi-Fi, ethernet cables and USB and allows users to browse through photos, music and video content stored in iTunes on a television screen.

Trailers from Apple.com can also be watched on a television screen, using the device. Steve Jobs, Chief Executive, revealed plans to sell iTV in the first quarter of the next year with a proposed price of $499.

Apple is putting itself in direct competition with Microsoft who have been trying to cross over into the home-entertainment business with products like their Windows Media Center.

A “cult” video blog on YouTube was revealed yesterday to be a fake. The blog was featured as a series of video diary entries from a 16 year old girl called Bree who spoke about aspects of her life from relationships through to religion.

The “creators” confessed in a posting that the video diaries were not genuine but a “show”. The Guardian reported that the video blog attracted millions of viewers since the first posting in May.

However inconsistencies in the entries and the immaculate finishing touches have made many doubt the nature of the blog.

The videos entitled lonelygirl15, were set in the bedroom of Bree, in a small town somewhere in America. One blog in particular, where Bree goes swimming with a friend, is said to resemble a music video rather than that of a blog.

It has been suggested by some bloggers that the video diaries were part of a viral marketing campaign for a film or computer game.

The “creators” have been coy about revealing the intention of the “show”, dismissing suspicions about the promotion of a film or reality show, as well as questions of whether a larger media company is behind the blog. Instead claiming that the enterprise is far larger than any of these speculations.

Since revealing the fake blog, many viewers have made their own video diaries, either as tributes or criticisms.

The founder of Facebook - the second biggest US social networking site after MySpace - has admitted he “really messed up” when he launched his News Feed and Mini-Feed services.

Both services allow users to view the online activities of other members. The Guardian reported that hundreds of thousands of people found these services to be “spooky and stalker-esque”.

Founded in 2004, Facebook is aims to connect university, college and high-school students.

And Zuckerberg has told users to “Calm down. Breathe” whilst the services were “evolving”.

The services News-Feed and Mini Feed had been introduced to each user’s homepage, logging each and every action performed on the website such as posting a photo or updating their profile.

However, Zuckerberg admitted that the company had failed as the company did not build the proper privacy controls.

Last month Microsoft signed a three-year deal with Facebook to provide online advertising ’services.

The Guardian have just published their annual list of influential people in the UK media. The top 100 list is comprised of different sectors of the media such as marketing, PR and new media.

The aim of the list is to capture “a snapshot of those who run or influence” the media, reflecting on their actions of the past year and their future achievements.

In first place is Mark Thompson, the BBC Director General, who has “steered the BBC through a difficult year”. Playing an important role in obtaining an agreeable charter from the government has helped Thompson remain in top position for the second year running.

Coming in second place, is Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers. Jobs, whose endless campaign of improving Apple’s iTunes includes the launch of the iTunes movie store which incorporates wireless streaming in the living room.

Other whispers of second generation nano iPods and even an iPhone ensure that Jobs is ahead of his game moving him up two places in this year’s ranking.

And in third place is Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation. Murdoch has fingers in many pies including newspapers such as The Sun, The Times and the News of the World as well as the sateliite broadcaster BSkyB.

The special report can be viewed online on The Guardian website.

Audacity is a free software program that provides a multitude of uses for audio editing. It allows users to record, edit, import and export audio material on their computers.

The benefit of Audacity is that it specifically deals with all things “audio”, such as recording live audio through a microphone or mixer, and converting recordings from cassette tapes, vinyl records or minidiscs into a digital format.

Another feature is the ease with which you can use different formats such as WAV, AIFF and MP3 amongst others. It can also remove noise from your recordings, has multi-track mixing, and is available on both Windows and Mac platforms.

The simple but effective editing tools it provides like cut, copy, delete and paste allow for powerful audio manipulation. Many podcasters use Audacity because of its availability and multiplatform support.

By virtue of being open source and such an effective audio editing program, Audacity is growing in popularity, currently receiving 30,000 downloads a day.

Reporting of the recent appalling events in Lebanon have brought into sharp focus the possibility that photos can be digitally altered for for propaganda purposes.

The photographic industry is at pains to stress it has devised easier methods to detect doctored images. For instance, the Economist reported that camera makers have created image-authentication systems, to distinguish distorted images from the originals by attaching codes originating from the data that the picture is made of.

Other specialists use methods such looking at patterns pixels make in a picture by observing intensity and texture, experts can tell whether a picture has been adjusted.

Adobe has been changed to make it easier to establish if an image has been adjusted.

No-one would deny that digital enhancement has many benefits - it’s just that safeguards are needed to guarantee future confidence in photojournalism.

Getting rid of the plethora of computers, printers and mobile phones we use then throw away is fast becoming a major environmental problem.

Up to 50m tonnes of “e-waste” are produced each year, with most ending up in developing countries such as India and China.

The BBC reported that many companies and governments are disregarding the Basel Convention, which is designed to monitor the shipment and disposal of hazardous substances created by e-waste.

Many countries now have laws in place to ensure correct disposal, making it illegal to throw used electronic equipment into landfill sites as the chemicals they contain can be toxic.

However these laws are apparently proving too costly for many companies, who are choosing the easy option - shipping old computers to countries where lower environmental standards and working conditions mean cheaper disposal costs.

In a number of developing countries, there have been reports of discarded machines being burnt. Such methods can cause environmental problems and endanger the health of workers.

A typical computer monitor can contain more than 6% lead by weight, a bio-accumulative substance that concentrates itself in the brain. Cadmium, a poisonous substance, is found to accumulate in the bone structure impairing development in the young - of particular concern in the developing world, where child labour is common. There are up to thirty-eight separate chemicals built into electronic waste, making the potential health hazards great.

The importance of disposing e-waste is very important, as many of the components can be recycled and new laws in Europe and the state of California are ensuring the industry take responsibility for the correct procedures of disposal. The Economist reported that Greenpeace has recently named Apple as one of the worst offenders as well as Motorola and Panasonic.

In the European Union, the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) monitors the use of toxic materials in new electronic products sold in the EU and in California, mobile phone retailers must take back and recycle old phones that have been sold.

Many electronic companies are offering recycling schemes and withdrawing toxic chemicals in prevention of hazardous e-waste but this is not enough according to Greenpeace, who are launching podcasts to raise awareness of the environmental issues caused by e-waste.

Television on your mobile phone is yet another technological advance that Asia has been able to sample ahead of the Western world.

Until now that is with Virgin unveiling plans to launch the first UK mobile television network, offering several digital network channels such as E4, Sky News and ITV2.

The Guardian reported that people with compatible handsets will have to own a TV licence to qualify for the service. The paper found they also face an estimated network charge of around five to eight pounds per month.

Virgin, now part of cable company NTL meanwhile has been testing the waters with digital mobile television for sometime, as has O2. Vodafone and 3 already offer their customers streamed or downloaded television services, proof they think that a market does exist for mobile television.

How popular this service will actually be in the long term is another issue - the cost has proved to be a disincentive in parts of Asia and mobile reception and battery life have also been barriers. TV is notorious for consuming large amounts of electricity.

Nevertheless mobile television is slowly advancing its way westwards even if there are serious factors that still hinder us from watching our favourite programmes wherever we happen to be.

New life is being breathed into the medium of photography. The technique of combining still images with sound helps to ensure photojournalism is at the heart of a growing digital phenomena - the multimedia slide show.

These allow photographers to present their photos in such a way that they deliver compelling storytelling: powerful images combined with narration from the people who lived and breathed the events depicted.

Magnum in motion features a series of photo essays from world renown photographers such as Burt Glinn and Steve McCurry with audio narratives of the photographers’ experiences and thoughts.

Apple’s Final Cut Pro was used to edit and combine sound with photographs which can be downloaded as video podcasts. This type of accessibility provides a new audience with an introduction to photojournalism. It also brings a new dimension to feature stories.

This series by Magnum covers a whole spectrum of topics from different cultures through to events in history allowing a variety of viewpoints to be heard.

Photojournalist Martin Fuchs calls it “interactive storytelling”, an additional way to showcase work, and to provide a better understanding of the story he is trying to tell, by providing context.

Many newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times and the Washington Post are creating multimedia slide shows on their websites by presenting the news in this format.

Mediastorm is a multimedia production studio that is passionate about “visual storytelling” and creates media that focuses upon just that. Like Magnum, mediastorm have a series of photo essays with commentary but from the subjects themselves rather than just the photographers.

With this type of personal commentary, it allows the viewer to understand more about the stories as the subject is directly leading them through their lives, shot by shot.

Onedotzero is an international film festival celebrating the use of digital technology in film on a global scale. In light of their tenth annniversary, is digital a long overdue innovation?

In an age where the whirring of video can still faintly be heard has the march of digital film progressed at too slow a pace? Onedotzero has long been promoting the use of digital for over ten years, but how does digital film benefit the film industry?

The conversion of film to digital has long been changing the way we use technology. Spanning more than ten years, onedotzero has celebrated and promoted the merging and the use of digital technology and film together by commissioning the creation of new media projects and screening them across the globe.

Onedotzero’s digital film festival is an international affair, with events being organised in numerous locations including Argentina, Croatia and Korea.

It aims to manage and promote projects that encompass a broad range of digital media including short films, interactive media and installations. With onedotzero pioneering the way forward for use of digital film and the creation of projects that use and promote digital media, why has it taken so long to catch on to the digital era?

Digital film is the new sleeker and upgraded version of all the now seemingly slower technologies, its advantages being that it can be copied continuously without any degradation of the original quality of the material and has a significantly lower cost than 35mm film.

It can also be edited on affordable hardware and software such as Apple’s Final Cut Pro, which allows the film editors to edit sound and image on a desktop computer, making digital videos more easy and accessible to everyone and as a result, digital video is overlapping into television, mobile phones and video conferencing.

The BBC reported that YouTube, a site where users contribute and share their videos, claimed that its videos account for 60% of all videos watched online in the US. The popularity of YouTube is huge indicator that the onslaught of digital media is not just a passing phase but a revolution of change in the way we use, interact and share information in our daily lives.

The use of digital film is faster, more efficient and of higher quality and its benefits are abundant.