You may well have heard of The Guild, a World of Warcraft themed 5-10 minute TV show on Youtube. But have you heard of A Good Knight’s Quest? These are just two of our top 5. Hopefully you’ll leave enlightened and interested, having learnt of a few new ways to waste your time.

1) No list of Internet Television Series would be complete without The Guild which was first broadcast in July 2007. It covers the adventures of a guild of players taking part in an MMORPG. The story is narrated by Codex, the healer of the group, played by Felicia Day. It won 2 Streamy Awards this year, 3 last year, and is seen by many as the best series on Youtube.

2) Equally popular, is our second choice Chad Vader. The main character is the younger brother of Darth Vader, shift manager at a grocery store called ‘Empire Market’. Many of the lines are lifted directly from the films, and any Star Wars fans should take instantly to this recycling of their franchise in a more modern day setting, which is also one of ‘George Lucas Selects’ from 2007.

3) The Black Dawn is a post apocalyptic multimedia experiences set in Los Angeles. A mysterious plague falls and there are only 13 survivors, all of whom are college students. Every step of the way there are clues to discover and puzzles to solve, as every episode gets you closer to the truth. It’s also being developed into a feature film and should hit our screens sometime this year.

4) A Good Knight’s Quest : Started by Escapist Magazine, this web-series focuses on a Princess who arrives through an Xbox 360 video game, having been freed by the protagonist, only to discover that she is being followed by our enemies from the game. Will they make it through, and who will reach the crystal first?

5) Ninja Babes from space : Although this series ended quite some while ago it’s always been one of my favourites. Take a really popular idea, and put it completely out of context. Surprisingly it works rather well. If the title isn’t self explanatory well then… We’re in trouble.

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In media circles, the question over whether money can be made from teens has been a growing dilemma that now has money being poured into research and marketing in an attempt to address an important problem: more than 8 billion minutes are spent on facebook and similar sites every day, 50% of facebook’s 300 million users log in every day (and teens are still the majority of users), and yet the web is failing to squeeze a drop out of us.

Facebook makes its money from advertising – a large part of this comes from page and group owners paying to advertise on users’ home pages and throughout their facebook browsing, generating “joins” and thus publicity. Another part comes from large and small firms looking for hits to their websites, for instance Coca Cola, a major advertiser. However, the click through rate on adverts is abysmal, reckoned by surveys and statistics at between 2 and 10%, and I suspect the lower end is accurate. In fact, many of the advertisers probably just advertise because they can afford it and simply feel they should in order to be comprehensive in their strategy, not because it yields gains.

Elsewhere around the web, we don’t pay for anything. All content teens view is free, social media is free, gaming online is frequently free, news is free. Not only are these millions of sites viewed by teens failing to charge, but they simply can’t charge – the multitude of similar websites would overwhelm, and the teen would just hop across overnight. (Facebook became the new Bebo in a matter of months, a huge migration).

It is partly because the current generation of teens don’t appreciate the differences between web content: because they can see what they want in several locations and ways, teens frequently fail to comprehend that some things are worth paying for: just as others will pay more for a quality daily than a cheap tabloid. Where young people do spend a vast amount of time on the internet, they fail to comprehend the value of what they see and use.

Facebook will certainly never make money from teens, however. Social Networking is a fast changing model, and facebook has to remain sharp even to keep users on a free model – if they introduced subscription fees, millions would simply migrate to a similar platform, and start afresh: it wouldn’t be favourable, but it would certainly appeal more than giving money to facebook. Platforms like Google’s network Orkut and Russia’s vKontakte are big, similar social networks (vKontakte is a facebook clone), and moving across there would take a little time and effort, but could be done.

What facebook has to do is simply remain popular and stay with the trend (or make it). After five years of facebook use, my facebook database of connections, photos, groups and activity is fairly big – if Facebook can keep me for another five, then they will have me totally dependent on my information store. Then, they can start charging me, and I will have to pay.

Thus by forcing dependence on sites, the internet can, potentially, make us pay. But that’s going to be damn hard to do. Our online identities are fragmented over so many sites that we would have to have them on one solid platform for total dependence: google are having a shot at this – they’re cloud is huge with orkut, wave, docs, gmail providing the necessary elements for life online – but they don’t appeal to the teens of today. Facebook also wants to make itself the gateway to the web, but the current facebook model has mutated into something so ugly and so full of rubbishy apps and games that to cut it back to something useful that could act as a cloud is nearing impossibility – change on facebook is generally greeted coldly.

So, can the internet make money from us? Not at the moment, no, but one day? Quite likely with the evolution of social networking happening as I write…

The new Olympus line of micro four-thirds cameras (cameras with interchangeable lenses, like a bulky DSLR, but much much smaller) imitates the old film line of Olympus cameras. Hence, it looks really, really cool.

The Pen in all its glory.

The Pen’s slimline, leather and brushed aluminium white body is the sexiest thing since its film forefather when it comes to cameras. The camera is also at the cutting edge of fashion when it comes to cameras, keeping slim for the young who like flashy super-compacts, but meeting the new craze for having a camera with changeable lenses, and, crucially, more manual control of what your pictures look like.

The back of the camera has lots of easy to use controls as found on a compact camera, but with manual controls too. There’s HD video too, and image stabilisation built in, so you can take photos even when its getting a little bit dark. There are also four creative modes that allow special effects like ‘soft focus’ and ‘pop art’ for a bit of fun. There’s a 12.3 megapixel live MOS sensor too, so you could print them the size of a small elephant comfortably. Here’s a link with some history behind the line

The back with the LCD and controls

The camera can come with a sexy white carrying case and an even sexier flash, but the camera is expensive (but worth it) at £550 roughly. But that shouldn’t stop you. Make the leap. Please. It’s the best camera for the mass market to appear in the last three years.

Less than a month after the Apple Keynote Conference with the release of the new iTunes, new prices for most of the line, and Snow Leopard OS.X, Apple has dropped another long awaited product into its store. The iPod Nano, gadget of the young mum and fitness freak, has been re-released in more colours, with FM radio, and with a video camera.

So…the nitty gritty. The new iPod has been released for £115 for 8gb and £135 for the 16gb one, so basically it’s a grand deal and we would definitely go for the 16gb version for only 20 bob more. Bargain.  Oh, and it will give you 24hrs of listening and 5hrs of video. Apparently.

The iPod has an FM radio too, the first on any iPod or iPhone, which alone will be a much loved feature. However, in addition to the radio is DAB-like live pause, enabling you too, as the name would suggest, pause Radio 1 (or Radio 4 if you’re a trendy old person who happens to be reading EchoBlog…unlikely).

Our new best friend of an iPod also has something called Genius mixes, which uses the power of genius to automatically play playlists of music similar to your favourite tunes (choons?) while your jogging. Or windsurfing. Or getting immensely drunk (you know it).

Oh…the iPod will also be your best friend during your long distance runs and marathons. Yep, that’s right, it’s got Nike + iPod and an inbuilt pedometer, so you’ll know how far from home you’ve gone, and how many Krispy Kremes you’ve burnt off while listening to your pumping beats.

Basically, the iPod Nano is the same iPod nano, but much much cooler, with cooler colours, a really sexy video camera, and a slightly bigger screen. We probably forgot to mention that but it does.