Back in the Seventies, Monty Python lampooned the Special Branch in a well-know sketch in which Inspector Harry "Snapper" Organs announces that he keeps track of the whereabouts of notorious criminal "Spiny Norman" by reading the colour supplements (in the Sunday newspapers). That is the inevitable image conjured up in my mind by a tiny item of news buried away in today's Daily Telegraph. Investigators are using Facebook to track the whereabouts of suspected war criminals in Darfur after they had been indicted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Leaving aside the comic overtones of the leader of the Janjaweed having Facebook Friends, and his profile featuring "Which Dictator are You?" along with all his favourite songs, holiday photos, humorous videos posted to his wall, etc., there is a serious side. That is, how much can anybody find out about you? The answer should worry you and explains why investigators are looking on Facebook in the first place.

Viral marketing is the old-fashioned "word of mouth" concept, wired-up and electrified for the Internet Age. Compare a Mexican Wave with the old game of Chinese Whispers and you'll see the difference. It's not a message being passed down the line one person at a time, it's a tidal wave that spreads and rushes across a crowd. Think of all those emails you see from friends and colleagues passing around the latest joke or outrageous video. Have you ever forwarded one? They spread like a virus, and when they are deliberately created to promote a product, that's when they become viral marketing. How can you do that for your business?

A new approach to standard email phishing scams has been reported targeting senior executives in California, coining a new term in the process - whaling. Whaling, then, is for phishing scams that target big fish. This particular email appears to come from a court in California and includes the target's name, company, and phone number to give it an air of authenticity. There are some useful lessons we can all pick up from this.

For an object lesson in how to exploit the Internet to maximum effect, you can't do better than this small hotel on the island of Corfu. On the face of it, it has every obstacle to overcome. It is only a two star hotel, it has no restaurant, no swimming pool, no car parking, it is in a small town twenty minutes to the south of Corfu town itself, it is on the "wrong" side of the island so far as the beaches are concerned, while the bigger hotels on Corfu are slashing their rates and sucking all the business away from the smaller hotels.

Mark founded Cyberpoint back in March 1995 when he realised how important the Internet was to become, and he has been fully vindicated in that confidence.