Real quick,

do a Google search for ZuneChannel.com. What you won't find is a result for ZuneChannel.com the website (that's here, if you're curious). What, or rather who, you will find is Gene From ZuneChannel.com. Gene's a busy man, it seems. Where ever on the web there is an article discussing the Zune, he's there. Relentlessly optimistic, fiercely protective and always polite to a fault, this man loves him some Zune, and isn't afraid to post a comment about it. Weather chiding iPod lovers for being too hard on the Zune and overlooking it's many fine features, or thanking some other journalist for spreading the Good Zune Word, Gene is out there in the digital trenches fighting the good fight.

Or, more probably, the paid fight.

Given that this man is everywhere and actually runs a site called Zunechannel.com leads me to question his impartiality. What we're most likely watching here is a thinly disguised attempt at astroturfing.

Simon Winder,

of the Sunday Herald, wrote a very interesting article on how James Bond is something of a constant in Britain, despite five decades of massive change. The full article is here but what I want to point out is his conclusion:

"It is part of the weird circularity of watching Casino Royale that here is the same character, far closer in many ways to Fleming’s intentions than even Connery (Craig looks like one of the muscular, brutal Bonds featured on the 1950s Pan paperback covers), following the same story, working for the same organisation. And yet everything else has changed. This makes Bond almost a religious figure – a sort of alcoholic, homicidal version of Jesus, a reassuring constant in a Britain that has been through so much. It is a sort of miracle that after so many books, so many movies, so many years, the same character can be rendered fresh and interesting."

That bit in the middle is pretty funny.