By GILES TURNBULL Search-engine giant Google is ten years old, and is celebrating in the best possible way - by building a birthday website. Visit Google's 10th Birthday site (www.google.com/tenthbirthday) and you will be treated to a bunch of web goodies.

By GILES TURNBULL Local councillors, often stereotyped as greyhaired old fuddy- duddys who spend all their time talking in meetings and never getting anything done, are now becoming cuttingedge blogging nerds wising up to the ways of the web.

By GILES TURNBULL Google has launched Knol (www.knol.google.com), a new service aimed at people who want to share what they know. It's a bit like writing a new encyclopedia, except that anyone can chip in. And yes, it's a bit like www.wikipedia.com, but with more control.

By GILES TURNBULL Everyone loves YouTube - except the bosses at American TV empire Viacom. Last week they secured a legal ruling that took the whole internet by surprise: YouTube was told by a judge to hand over records of which users have watched which videos.

By GILES TURNBULL TheyWorkForYou.com is one of the UK's smartest and most interesting websites, built for peanuts by a team of people (some of them volunteers) with a passion for democracy. This site takes Hansard (the official Parliamentary record) and slices up the speeches into small chunks.