One of the big issues facing the music industry at the moment is how does it work out who are the most popular musicians around? Working on the premise that the download chart will go the way of CD and record sales charts (as fewer people pay for music), it is clear that we need a new chart that maybe counts online streaming, band's fan pages views and more.

Well, The Next Big Sound might just be the template for the charts of tomorrow. It is a very clever site that lets you find out how popular bands are online. It does this by collating plays, views, fans, comments, and other data for almost half a million artists across major online properties, including iTunes, Last.fm, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.

It might sound boring, but believe me it is hugely entertaining and completely addictive - just input your favorite bands and away you go. It is not only fascinating to see if Lady Gaga is bigger online than our very own Florence and The Machine, but you can also compare four bands at a time - which is great for old geezers comparing obscure indie 80s bands etc. It is also interesting to note that the bands that generate the most comments and posts aren't always the ones that get played the most.

The only annoying thing about it is that it doesn't seem to let you save results. Def check it out though.

Gizmodo has just pulled off one hell of a scoop. The site has got its mitts on the Courier, an innovative new device from Microsoft that just might bit the kit that makes the company cool.

Apparently in its late prototype stage the Courier is a booklet (and not a Tablet) style PC which sports a pair of seven inch screens. They are multi touch and are designed for writing flicking and drawing using a stylus. There's also a sophisticated user interface, wireless facilities and an integrated camera.

In short it looks much more like what we'd expect from Apple than the crew in Seattle.

Gizmodo will have more on the Courier over the next few days. It'll be very interesting to see what kind of reception the Courier gets. It certainly looks very cool.

Interesting piece over on www.oled-info.com about how much money you will save with a 'green' TV. It has picked up on research from an Israeli newspaper that shows if you buy a Samsung 40inch green LED TV it will take over 166 years to offset the difference in price over a conventional LCD screen.

The newspaper has made the calculation, assuming that you watch 4 hours of TV a day. It has worked out that Samsung's 40inch LED TV consumes almost half the amount of electricity when compared to normal 40inch LCD TVs (95Kw/h vs 175 Kw/h). This works out a little over a dollar a month in terms of electricity savings. But the cost of the set is more than double. Would be interesting if these results are replicated in the UK but they probably are quite similar.

All TV makers are now offering green or eco TVs. Usually they still sell their normal TV, and the new green model is offered at a premium. Some use LED technology to reduce power consumption, and some use ideas like an optical sensor that knows if you leave the room and shuts down the screen, or an 'eco-mode' button that reduces brightness by 20%. But it seems that while they might save energy, they make little financial sense right now.

Via Oled Info

So who is the most popular Briton on Twitter? Stephen Fry with his old pal Wossy close behind? Well no, there are some new, interesting and controversial names at the top now.

If you check the figures on Twitterholic you'll see Coldplay are the most popular micro blogging Brits by some distance. Last time I looked they were homing in on two million followers and had the likes of Miley Cyrus and Lance Armstrong in their sights. Coldplay's Twitter feed is an excellent example of how a brand can use social media to engage with their fans but as Coldplay are a band not an individual they don't count in my list.

Those rules also mean the next Briton on the list, Pete Cashmore, is out of the running too. The Scottish fella, who spends much of his time in San Francisco at the moment, is the brains behind Mashable, which these days is quite possibly the world's most influential tech blog.

So the first genuine Briton is none other than Lily Rose Allen who today will probably become the first Brit to pass 1.5 million followers on Twitter. She is currently in a mini spat with Chris Moyles, who in spite of thinking himself a big noise in the micro blogging world has only around 300,000 followers.

So Lily has top spot but who is bubbling under? Well the surprise package is singer songwriter Imogen Heap, who shot up over the summer while tweeting about her new album Ellipse. Unlike a lot of celebs she quite often follows back - and at the time of looking was logging 35,000 other tweeters as opposed to the 56 people that Lily Allen follows.

The other one to watch is a BBC presenter who has a Twitter following that Moyles can only dream about.

Richard P Bacon's rise to the top of Twitter tree hasn't been as meteoric as say Wossy, but he is steadily on his way to becoming the most popular Briton on twitter.

Self proclaimed minor celebrity Bacon hosts Radio Five Live's late night programme where for the last nine months he has mercilessly plugged Twitter and his own feed. To his credit Bacon was one of the first BBC radio presenters to realise that Tweeting is a fantastic way of interacting with an audience. So he will often use his feed to ask his listeners questions, plug the guests on the show and encourage fellow tweeters to express their opinions.

Bacon recently passed the one million followers mark, which ironically means that he now has more followers than listeners to his show. He is also well clear of other BBC celebs like Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross.

There's an interesting question mark over who actually owns Bacon's Twitter feed. In amassing over a million followers Bacon has become very influential on Twitter and is a gatekeeper to a huge and very receptive audience. Now just suppose he were to leave the BBC, he could be in a position to endorse brands etc on his feed for which he could potentially charge an awful lot of money. There has been a lot of noise recently about how much a Twitter follower is worth and so far no one has come up with a convincing formula. However an audience that large, that engaged and that accessible is a an ad person's dream.

Yet we shouldn't forget that the main reason why Bacon'sTwitter feed is so popular is that he has plugged it so relentlessly on his show. Also that Twitter is a privately owned company which will one day make its owners a lot of money. Further I have never ever heard Bacon say that 'along with Twitter other micro blogging services are available.' Isn't that BBC policy?

So do we the licence payers really own that feed, or does it belong to Richard Bacon? And what would happen to the BBC endorsing Twitter if suddenly the micro blogging service started peppering its pages with contextual advertising? If Twitter continues to grow these are questions that will soon need an answer.

Nintendo's popular DSi handheld games console is to be made available in several new colours and with additional pre-installed applications from next month.

Available in Metallic Blue, Light Blue and Red as well as standard black and white from October 23, the DSi will also boast a host of new features as standard including Flipnote Studio and a Facebook feature. The Facebook feature will allow users to post their photographic creations straight to their Facebook profile in order to use image manipulation tools in the Nintendo DSi Camera.

Flipnote Studio enables users to make notes on their Nintendo DSi or get creative and animate their own mini-movies. Those using their Nintendo DSi to access the Nintendo DSi Shop through the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection before March 31st, 2010 will also receive 1,000 Nintendo DSi Points for free. Users can then use these points to download exclusive games and/or applications called Nintendo DSiWare.

Officially launched earlier this year the A2B Metro electric bike is now available from several retailers including Harrods (via Cycle UK concession), Selfridges (via Bike Republic Concession) and EV Stores Electric Vehicle retailer on London's Park Lane.

Also new to the A2B range, is the A2B Hybrid. Designed to complement the energy you put into your ride, its torque sensor detects your pedal power directly boosting your effort with Ultra Motor's direct drive electric motor power.

The A2B Metro recommended retail price is £1999.00 and the A2B Hybrid recommended retail price is £1799.00. Dealer details can be found on the Ultra Motor website www.ultramotor.com/uk

The A2B Range from Ultra Motor will also be showing at the London Cycle Show, Earls Court which is open to the public from 9th-11th October. The London Cycle Show's commuter test track will provide visitors the opportunity to trial the A2B Metro.

I love the Finis SwiMP3 player. It's fantastic for relieving the boredom of swimming up and down the pool and sound quality underwater is surprisingly good thanks to its use of bone-conduction technology.

Humans normally hear through air conduction, but because there is no air underneath the water, Finis claims that bone conduction provides the clearest sound quality possible. Instead sound vibrations are transferred from the cheek bone to the inner ear, giving the swimmer much better sound quality. Certainly audio quality is much better than other underwater MP3 players I've tested including Speedo's much cheaper Aquabeat.

There's just one small problem, the 256Kb model I've got can only fit around 45 songs on there. But now Finis has upgraded the SwiMP3 with 1Gb memory - enough for up to 200 tracks I reckon. Finis claims that a single USB charge of the lithium ion battery can last up to 10 hours, enough for even the most exhaustive of swimming workouts (unless you are swimming the channel that is). The SwiMP3 is compatible with MP3 and WMA files.

Joystiq has what it is billing as an update on the next generation of the Wii. According to Yoichi Wada--president of Square Enix, the biggest Japanese game house the next-generation, high definition Wii will offer the same capabilities as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, while adding a brand new motion controller. We'll apparently get out mitts on it in 2011.

Wada also had a pop at rivals Microsoft and Sony telling the FT "Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine. Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small,"

It is easy - just go here for deets of the latest posts and a whole lot more

Accessories firm Exspect has unveiled four FM Transmitters for hooking your iPod, iPod Touch or iPhone to your home speaker system or in-car stereo. All Exspect FM Transmitters are compatible with every FM radio and boast several features as standard, including a large LCD display, full range frequency between 88.1MHz - 107.9MHz (handy in big cities where frequencies can get very crowded), auto-memory of the last frequency used, and an auto-off feature to ensure your power consumption remains as low as possible.

To preserve the battery life of your Apple device, all Exspect FM Transmitters come equipped with a mini USB port, a mini USB cable and an in-car charger. Exspect's flagship device, the Intelligent FM Transmitter also features a Radio Data System (RDS) facility, which shows the current track being played on your device directly onto the stereo's display. Sounds quite a natty feature.

Available now from HMV, Play.com and other leading retail outlets, there are four Exspect FM Transmitters ranging in price from £29.99 for the entry level model (EX153) to £49 for the EX156 with Intelligent FM Transmitter.

Buy Exspect products from Amazon

HTC might have been squirting out Android phones like there's no tomorrow, but it hasn't yet forsaken the Windows Mobile platform. In fact there's some real innovation in a handset called the HTC Leo which has been featured on the web for a while now. Today's update is that Greek site Techblog has managed to get a quick hands on with it.

Essentially the device has three main selling points; firstly it has a large 4.3 inch touch screen - that's bigger than almost all its rivals. Secondly it runs a 1Ghz processor which is also faster than its rivals and is designed to make the most out of the new Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system.

Also on board is HSPA connectivity for super fast data connection speeds, a five mega pixel camera, microSD card slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and a 3.5mm earphones jack.

For me Noel Edmonds lost the plot sometime after the Multi-Coloured Swap Shop ended in 1982 (not that I'm suggesting for one minute he is mad of course, I know how litigious he can be). So to hear that he's launched an iPhone app for his belief in the crazy-sounding philosophy of Cosmic Ordering is no real surprise.

Perhaps more of a surprise though is that he thinks people will pay £1.20 for it. I guess these are probably the same people who check their star signs in the newspapers and really think that one twelfth of the population act in exactly the same way and have the same experiences each day. Apparently, according to today's Metro, Edmonds used to keep a record of his cosmic orders on 'small scraps of paper - not the ideal way to keep a record of such an important part of one's life." Quite, my thoughts exactly.

Apparently the 60 year old has attributed the revitalisation of his career to his new mindset which encourages people to think positively about the goals in life. "The cosmos exists solely to help those who want to help themselves. It is an incredibly powerful force and a wonderful friend," he said.

To find out more about Cosmic Ordering click here.

Crap Apps

iBubble Level £0.59 - A spirit level in your phone - what could be better than that? I don't know; an actual spirit level. The spirit level is a genius invention, this is most certainly not. It's only really any good if you calibrate it to within an inch of its life, which is such a laborious process that by the time you've done it, you'll be within an inch of your life, and that shelf will still be squint and you'll realize I should have spent a pound on a real spirit level.

Fake Calls £0.59 - An application that 'simulates fake calls' to give you 'the perfect excuse to get out of an annoying conversation'. Here is my tutorial on how to do exactly the same thing without having to buy this piece of crap. So, you're in an annoying conversation with Ian, from accounts, he's talking about talking his love of adult pop-up books (no not adult like that, adult like subject matter) "Yeah I've just got this new one, it's the Maisons of the Dordogne." At this point take your phone out of your pocket and say the words, "Sorry I need to take this." Then leave the room, he'll assume it was on silent. No need for Fake Calls just good old fashioned cunning. Next week - whistling to hide guilt.

iFart £0.59 - Farts are funny! Proper funny - ones that come out of your bum. Not ones that come out of your phone. You also don't have to pay for the ones that come out of your bum - not a penny, especially not 59 of them.

Back in July we gave you the heads up on the revival of that massively popular mobile - the LG Chocolate Phone. Well we now know a little more about the lower specced version of the phone thanks to a video on YouTube.

The phone is a slider handset with a 2.4inch screen, five mega pixel snapper, HSDPA and a widget hot key for adding news, weather etc.

No news yet on a UK launch.

Preview pic from Slashphone

** we'll be closing this survey at midnight tonight, so get to it now if you haven't filled it in

Fancy a INQ1 mobile available on the Three network? You know the cool slider phone that has fantastic integration of Facebook, Skype, Windows Messenger and even Last FM?

Well we have a trio to give away to Tech Digest readers. To have a chance of winning all you need do is fill in the survey that we cooked up in collaboration with technology giant Qualcomm.

We just want to know a bit about you, the gadgets you own and intend to buy and what you think will shape the future of mobile devices.

We'll be randomly choosing three winners when the survey ends on September 21st

So what are you waiting for?

Click HERE to take survey

Small print is below

1. The prize is three INQ phones given to three winners
2. Only open to UK residents, over 18 years old.
3. One entry per person.
4. Promoter reserves right to disqualify any entrant deemed to breach T&Cs.
5. Prize subject to availability and at the discretion of Promoter.
6. Promoter reserves right to cancel/amend prize draw at any time without prior notice, or substitute prize with that of equal/greater value.
7. Prize non transferable.
8. No cash/credit alternative will be offered.

One of the big hits of 2009 as far as blogging is concerned has been Posterous. The easy peasy platform has won over both hardcore bloggers and newbies with its mix of a genius bookmarklet - that makes grabbing content from any web page a cinch - and the option of creating a post by email.

There are however several areas where Posterous is lagging behind its rivals and one of these was the ability to customise a blog layout. Up until last week every Posterous blog had the same layout and colour scheme. Well now Posterous users can add their banners, choose from different types of layout, adopt a theme and even create their own themes via HTML and CSS.

There are several other areas where Posterous needs to innovate to get ahead of its rivals, but for me at least it remains my favourite blogging platform.

Incidentally Posterous' rivals haven't been standing still. Typepad, which has been around for donkeys, recently added Posterous type features (the bookmarklet and posting by email) and we'll look at this and see how it compares with Posterous and its rival Tumblr later this week.

The big issue in UK media at the moment is how to make money out of online content. Currently most sites rely on advertising to generate income, but it is now clear that the money from those banner and flash things just isn't enough to fund most newspapers. Plan B, as outlined by Rupert Murdoch, is to charge readers to look at the sites. So the Sunday Times will go subscription only very soon and other newspapers may follow. There's also talk of a micro payment system being created whereby you pay a small amount for each bit of newspaper content you read.

But will the British public cough up for something that has been free since the dawn of the web? Well according to a survey commissioned by Paid Content UK and run by Harris Interactive, apparently not

Asked if their favourite news site were to charge three quarters of people would simply switch to an alternative free news source with just five percent of readers prepared to commit to paying for the site.

The survey also concludes that younger, poorer and lower class readers are more likely to pay the subs than older, richer and posher ones. There's a regional bias too with people in London and the south east more likely to pay a subscription than those in the north and west.

"This does not look like good news for a pay model in a competitive environment," Andrew Freeman, Harris' senior media research consultant told Paid Content. "As long as free alternatives exist, consumers will turn to them for their daily news information, meaning heavy losses in terms of audience figures for those that charge. "

Media for free

British consumers do have a point too, for even if every major British newspaper charges for content they will still have places to go.

The two things that will make it very tricky for media organisations to charge for content are -

1 Blogs. Walled content gardens could actually spark a renaissance in blogging, especially when coupled with tools like Posterous (which works incredibly well with Twitter), as bloggers simply cut and paste (either physically or intellectually) subscription content from media sources and publish it freely.

2 The BBC. At the time of writing the corp is still going to offer all its content for free, so readers can still access one of the world's premium news sources for nothing. It makes paying that few quid each month to The Guardian looks a lot less appealing.

There is some debate about whether the next government will curtail the BBC's online ambition, but this remains to be seen.

But we pay for TV...

It should be noted that many Britons who were very opposed to the idea of paying for subscription TV quite happily now pay for Sky and Virgin Media. Also 5% may sounds like s small figure, but it would generate a substantial amount of income, probably much more than the media companies are getting via advertising.

So what about you? Would you pay for The Guardian? The Mirror? Or even the Sport?

After last week's flurry of mobile phone launches things have been a little quieter in the tech world. As ever though there has been a slew of innovative gadgets and interesting apps.

Here then is this week's top five tech movers and its biggest loser

Click on the image below to kick things off

So there's no Beatles on iTunes and the Fab Four have so far resisted the lure of Spotify, which makes we7's announcement this morning that it actually has some Beatles tunes on its site a bit of a coup. According to Music Ally streaming/download start up has hatched a deal with Sir Paul McCartney to include his live versions of a load of Beatles classic. So while there's no Strawberry Fields or any other John classics, we7 users can stream Hey Jude, Eleanor Rigby and Yesterday and even embed them on other sites too

"The Beatles are everywhere today with the release of their newly remastered work and the launch of Beatles Rock Band - but to date, their catalogue has not been made available through any legal online music services," says CEO Steve Purdham. "we7 listens to what our users want and as a result, we're giving them the chance to listen to the best line up of classic Beatles tracks sung by Sir Paul himself. You just need to hit the play button!"

Every now and then Medion surprises us with something really rather interesting, and today the company has hit the jackpot with the very intriguing TOUCH X9613.

Essentially the TOUCH X9613 is a 24inch HD resolution screen/TV, but it also includes a integrated Windows PC as well as audio facilities, Blu-ray and a DVD. It is controlled in interesting ways too with users able to access apps using either touch or voice. The unit also comes with its own avatar called Laura, who can help guide the user through the various applications and features.

As well as its primary entertainment style facilties the TOUCH X9613 can also be used for sending emails (users either tap on the screen or use the accompanying wireless keypad) or access sites like Facebook though a dedicated interface.

There's loads of room for content too with the device sporting a huge 1Tb hard drive.

Other specs worth mentioning include Medion's Photo Viewer for looking at images, a digital TV tuner, a two mega pixel webcam and microphone, Bluetooth, an Intel Core 2 Quad processor Q9000, NVIDIA GeForce GT240M graphics card and 4GB of DDR RAM.

It'll be available by the end of the year. Alas there's no news on price yet.

There was time not too long ago when if you bought a pair of hi-fi speakers you almost certainly bought British. Unfortunately many of the British speaker makers have scaled down their activities over the last few years and cheap, but often good quality speakers from the Far East, Europe and America, have mopped up some of their market share.

So it is good to see that there are still British speaker companies doing interesting things. Like Ferguson Hill, which this week announced the arrival of two new products - a home theatre system and a mid-sized version of the company's signature horn shaped speaker unit.

The FH009 Home Theatre set up pairs a class A integrated amp that is compatible with any audio out enabled device. It comes with horn speakers that can be wall mounted or free-standing and are made from transparent acyclic. It will sell for around £800.

The FH010 is a cut down version of Ferguson Hill's FH001 high end speaker system. It comprises four speakers (two bass speakers and two mid-high frequency horn speakers) and can be used with music servers, hi-fi systems and TVs.

It will be on sale soon and is priced at £6000.

Click on the pic below to look at some rather cool lifestyle shots of the speakers in situ