The move has lead to criticism of HP’s strategy, when the Mac has such strong affiliation with the show and is seen to be the brand for ‘creative’ and ‘arty’ types.

Reaction has tended to fall in two camps: HP’s strategy will fail either because 1) product placement has become passé and easy to overlook 2) because the inclusion of HP’s products is an obvious marketing ploy.

Whether or not people will see Carrie using an HP Laptop and immediately want one, remains to be seen. But SATC is bound to be a huge blockbuster giving HP much wider audience exposure. SATC has always been associated with high fashion and has a reputation for trendsetting, which can only be a positive association for the brand.

The announcement that it will be appearing in the SATC film has alone generated a lot of attention for the brand with much discussion online, particularly on Twitter. Is it really a clever move on behalf of HP or a case of misplaced marketing spend? Let me know what you think.

IT PRO -Boffins detail uber secret encryption breakthrough
A team of researchers claim to have made theoretically perfectly secret data transmission an everyday possibility.

IT PRO – Volcano shows off cyber criminals’ spelling skills
Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano has been causing problems for all kinds of people, but cyber criminals have unsurprisingly jumped on the news surrounding it in their attempts to lead users to malicious links.

Total Telecom – US teens push up text messaging in US
Text messaging has eclipsed the telephone call to become the most frequent form of communication among U.S. teenagers, and girls send more than twice as many messages as boys, according to a new study.

Total Telecom – Mass smartphone adoption threatens operators’ profits
The rising uptake of smartphones threatens to damage the profitability of operators, according to a new report published on Tuesday.

Information Age – HCL boss slams “old boys’ network” in UK public IT

CEO of Indian outsourcer says competition for government IT contracts throttled by dominant suppliers. The chief executive of Indian outsourcing company HCL has criticised public sector IT procurement in the UK, which he says is disadvantaged by the dominance of an “old boys’ network” of established players.

CIO – Google is blocked in one in four countries

Google’s services are blocked or censored to some degree in one-fourth of the countries where it operates, the company said on Monday.

So if you were woken up at dawn by a loud and unexplained noise it was probably the sound of millions of gay men exploding with glee about this. You see, among we “gentlemen who can’t catch” this is big news. The Beyonce/GaGa collaboration is the Donna Summer/Barbra Streisand moment of our times – except clearly better because Telephone contains 0% Barbra “she-gave-the-spare-a-in-her-name-to-SATAN” Streisand.

Telephone smashes two of pop music‘s biggest stars into a hugely expensive 10 minute face-off  video that is – in the words of the northern hairdressers who will still be dancing on tables to it at their Christmas parties in Jongleurs -  “proper mental”. GaGa herself has suggested it’s a post-modern critique of today’s “always-on” communications culture. Personally I think it’s more like a cross between Prisoner Cell Block H, Thelma and Louise, Faster Pussycat Kill Kill Kill and (bizarrely enough) Nigella Lawson‘s Forever Summer.

It’s also an example of something that’s been rarer than Siberian tigers for some years now: the event pop video. Whether you blame the internet or, like me, Jennifer Lopez, record company promotion budgets have been in tailspin for years now. The days of the Fugees blowing millions on helicopters to drown out the sound of an Enya sample are long gone, and instead we have the Girls Aloud approach to music video-making. This is where you secure your production budget by shaking out the sofa cushions for spare change.

Lady GaGa, however, has changed this – at least temporarily – by being a good Christian and “rendering unto God what is God and to Caesar what is Caesar’s”. Wise to the fact that a truly great pop video is both an artistic and commercial statement, Ms GaGa justifies the astronomical production costs of videos like Telephone by selling product placement space within them to the highest bidder. This is why Telephone might amaze you on one level, but also make you want to buy a Virgin Mobile and go to Subway for your lunch.

Purists may object but, hell, Lady GaGa cannot live on latex alone. Besides, anyone who persuades Beyonce to use a four letter word and poison her boyfriend has to be doing something right.

No brand Tshirt available at zazzle.com (see what I did there?)

I love this comment, which appeared in The Guardian on Monday and highlights the problems that broadcasters might face if The Department for Culture, Media and Sport goes ahead and relaxes the rules that ban advertising within the fabric of a programme.

The change in regulation would be a move designed to help UK broadcasters survive the slump in advertising revenue (although many would argue that the reverberations caused by media convergence  classify this as less of a ‘slump’ and more of a ‘shift’).

Rebecca Front’s quite hilarious, but there is a serious undertone. The British Medical Association and National Union of Teachers are concerned that unhealthy products could be marketed by stealth in popular shows. Personally (selfishly?), my own concerns are that the high quality of British broadcasting might be compromised if script writers constantly have to ram cans of pop and athletic footwear into productions.  How would the ladies of Cranford have coped?

You only have to refer to this list at BrandChannel to see that product placement is by no means a new phenomenon; we’re subjected to it all the time.  But as a big fan of the odd cosy period drama, I worry that a change in regulation could mean that we see a less diverse range of genres being made – and that would make me sad.