According to a survey conducted by Sky Broadband, today is the poorest day of the year for us Brits. What is it with Sky? They’re always poised and ready to remind us just how dreadfully gloomy January is – remember the story they issued back in 2005 as part of the Sky Travel publicity campaign, where British psychologist Cliff Arnall created a scientific formula to explain why the third Monday in January is the most depressing day in the year – now known as ‘Blue Monday’.

I’ve only just got over last Monday, now to be told that I’m skint as well as depressed?!

I’ve looked into this a little further and discovered another five (un-scientific) reasons to why we should hate January:

1. Detox/diet – nothing but faddy diets and detox regimes, when let’s be honest all we really want is sausage & mash and a mega bar of Galaxy chocolate
2. Celeb workout – Davina’s doing it, Coleen’s done it, even Hannah Waterman’s got one – is no-one safe from the invasion of spandex clad c-class celebs?
3. January sales – at no other point in the year would you consider that item to be a good, well-thought out purchase
4. 6 week month – we’ve been eating nothing but own brand baked beans on toast for the past three weeks
5. Vogue – the fashion pages are filled to the brim with bronzed models sashaying round in SS’10 collections, yet it’s only +2° outside

Computing.co.uk – Latest music file could succeed the MP3

Norwegian technology company Back is to launch a new digital music file which will have additional content including lyrics, news updates and images embedded.

BBC – Engineers can learn from slime

The way fungus-like slime moulds grow could help engineers design wireless communication networks. Scientists drew this conclusion after observing a slime mould as it grew into a network that was almost identical to the Tokyo rail system.

IT PRO – Only five per cent of emails reach inboxes
Spam accounts for 19 out of every 20 emails sent, and ISPs aren’t doing enough to combat it, according to the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA).

The Daily Telegraph – Shares sale to net Google founders $2.75bn each

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are dipping into the Google cash register for a little pocket money. The co-founders of the search engine leviathan each plan to sell five million shares over the next five years and at the current price they will have another $5.5bn (£3.4bn) or $2.75bn each in the bank by 2015.

The Register – Brits left cold by mobile internet

More than three-quarters of Britons don’t use their phones to access the internet, a study has found. Worse, almost 40 per cent of smartphone owners – the very folk you’d expect would want to surf the web on the move – have never done so, or gave it a go once but won’t do so again.