Only a couple of days till the inaugural conference. Aral Balkan has put together a tremendously ambitious virtual conference, delivered from multiple conference hubs and online over Adobe Connect Pro. Tickets are pretty good value. There's a stellar cast of web aficionados, talking web-tech for three days, across four tracks, covering all manner of topics. has something for everyone. If you miss a session your ticket gives you access to the recording of every presentation delivered post-conference.

Had an ugly piece of spyware sent to me the other day. It's a PDF that every time you turn a page reports back to a central tracking system, recording your every move, time spent, physical location, details of your mail client and so on. What's worse is that it doesn't even warn you that it's doing it.