Recently I wrote about the closure of free video-hosting services at both AOL and Brightcove. I suggested that no free hosting service can be relied on to be around forever, or even a year from now in the current economic crisis.

Today the Daily Telegraph reports that social networking sites, such as Facebook, face a ‘data cost crisis’, as advertising revenue declines from a position that wasn’t exactly lucrative in the first place.

Research by the consultants Deloitte suggests that the cost of storing electronic data ‘has soared to more than $100m (£68m) a year for larger sites, as users increasingly want to upload memory-hungry photos and videos’.

A marvellous Colgate toothpaste ad from the early 1980’s based on ‘Baggy Trousers’ by Madness.

And here’s a version for the US market with some of the same kids. But with every trace of Britishness and most of the Madness imagery removed it doesn’t quite ‘get it’ and ends up looking like a dog’s dinner.

The population of Greater Manchester has been voting to decide whether a congestion charge should be introduced and the result is expected this evening. Motorists would have to pay if they crossed either of two rings around the city at certain times of the day. (more…)

Talking about slow cookers, I’ve been looking at some modern ones on the Argos website. The odd thing is they seem to use more electricity than the Tower models from quarter of a century ago.

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It seems that Woolworths is in trouble and could call in the administrators within days unless it can secure a rescue deal.

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AOL is to close its user-generated content site on 18 December.

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‘At a computer conference in Alexandria, Virginia, Stefan Savage, a computer security expert who led the “Sneakey” project, surfed the photo-sharing website Flickr and found pictures that clearly showed peoples’ keys, even if personal information in the shots had been blurred out.

In one demonstration, the team cut duplicate keys after analysing images taken on a mobile phone. In another, they used a telephoto lens to take pictures of a set of keys on a cafe table from the roof of a university building.’

The Guardian: Copying keys from photos is child’s play

The Independent reports that some species of insects and invertebrates have declined by more than 80% in recent decades.

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The urban art of Joshua Callaghan: the man who can turn street objects invisible.

‘An ancestor of Monty Python’s famous Dead Parrot comedy sketch has been found in a joke book dating back to Greece in the 4th Century…

[The ancient gags] have been published into a multimedia online e-book, which features video of veteran comic Jim Bowen bringing the old jokes back to life in front of a 21st Century audience.’

BBC

One of the old jokes:

‘Someone needled a well-known wit: “I had your wife, without paying a penny”. He replied: “It’s my duty as a husband to couple with such a monstrosity. What made you do it?”‘