The virtuous circle from Digitaldickinson on Vimeo.

I spent two days last month discussing the future of journalism at the University of Central Lancashire with a group with representatives of all corners of the UK media scene. Fascinating two days, not least for the wealth of disagreement (no bad thing).

It’ll come as zero surprise to know that the way in which journalists deal with an audience that can instantly react (and even begin steering the news agenda) swallowed much of the 48 hours.

One of their esteemed tutors, Andy Dickinson, has just posted The Virtuous Circle depicting his version of how it should work.

But in studying the words of all the hits, I failed to spot the significance of the chorus to Brown’s number. “Double your pleasure/double your fun”, he sings - a line I should have twigged was from the Doublemint gum jingle used since 1960.

Now Wrigley’s have come clean. In a press release they reveal how the song is an extended version of a new jingle for their product.

“The summer release of Brown’s smash hit, Forever, which featured the unmistakable Doublemint gum jingle lyrics, kicked-off the creative partnership between Brown and Doublemint gum”, the company announced.

“Wrigley consulted with Translation Advertising (NY) to conceptualize and identify the artists behind the jingle remakes.”

‘Conceptualize and indentify’? Reassuring to someone is still holding the flame of face-melting rock rebellion aloft.

Microsoft knows this. In fact, the public stoning of Vista means that Microsoft probably feels it; the bruises are still hurtin’.

And, for once, the planet’s most powerful software vendor has voted against self-denial in favour of… a strange form of self-justification.

I clicked on an ad today for the Mojave Experiment. Fourty seconds of loading screen later, and I’m watching a focus group (in a video frame set against a background that’s scarily similar to the Apple TV ‘wall of screens’ posters. A coincidence, I’m sure).

Middle-aged Americans of varying accent are talking to an unseen researcher, who’s asking for their view of Vista. They hate it. It’s buggy, bloated… well, you know the script by now.

Those middle-aged Americans then play with Vista. And they say stuff like ‘wow’. They say they can’t believe how good it is, how it’s incredible what it can do.

The Mojave Experiment home page asks you to stay tuned. There’s more to come, apparently.

So I watch the video, then I think at the end of it - do I hate Vista any less now? Not really. Mostly because I never hated Vista in the first place. The truth (at least in my mind) is that Vista is an evolution of XP, which was a reasonable OS at the end of its life.

Many years ago, Joe Strummer of The Clash was asked by a repoter if he hated him. ‘I don’t think enough of you to hate you,’ replied our Joe. That’s how I feel about Vista; you earn hatred by being evil, by abusing your remit. Vista does neither. It just lacks sparkle in a world where so many things glint.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Too many experiments with computer interfaces are just plain irritating.

Take Compiz for Linux, for example; no, please, do. A thousand and one oh-my-golly-wow UI tricks, including the wacky ability to ‘roll’ between four or more screens. Impressive for 180 seconds, but ultimately pointless (sorry if you’re reading this, Team Compiz, but I’ve installed and uninstalled the thing too many times).

Then today, I came across a depiction of the next generation of web browsers that didn’t sniff of geekery for its own sake.

The Aurora concept video predicts a time when browsing is no longer such a solo venture, and when the internet is truly integrated into an OS (you may think that’s the case today - watch Aurora, and think again).

Written and directed by Jesse James Garrett at Adaptive Path, the video is part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series, the aim of which is to encourage more web folk to think harder about the next big breakthrough in accessing the web.

OK, so the dialogue in Aurora is a little cheesy (sorry, Danielle and Byron), but the notion of a truly collaborative browser works. It’s something you can instantly imagine using, to the point where you’ll switch back to your Firefox or IE7 today and be p*ssed that it isn’t there.

This morning, I opened Firefox to be greeted by an all-new Telegraph.co.uk. ‘Cept it isn’t. Oh, the home page is new alright: a much better organised affair, with none of the ‘You, boy at the back - can you describe the logic behind this page?’ that haunted the DT of old. Very nice, if short on novelty.

But then you start clicking, and realise that this is what my chums in the digital media world would describe as a ‘phased delivery’. Only news has the new look; move into another section, and you’ll find yesterday’s Telegraph, complete with that persistent left-hand navigation panel (which has vanished in the new news section).

It’s the same riddle that The Guardian has been wrestling with a while now: after several years of trading, your site begins to share many of the attributes of an unexploded bomb - cut the green rather than the red wire, and…boom. The only technique that ensures you leave the room with your limbs still attached is to isolate a wire at a time.

All that aside, the new Telegraph is breathtakingly straightforward; easy to read, easy to use. In fact, I can’t find a single tricksy element anywhere in the new design. Perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing; I can feel the pain of the support team for the recently-dandified Sky News site, who are still struggling to get the potentially ground-breaking video carousel on the home page to load.

It shouldn’t be a big deal (the Delicious refresh has been circling over the runways for what seems like years now), and in some ways isn’t. There no wild and wacky shift in functionality; you save your bookmarks to the site, and see what other people are bookmarking. Simple recipe, but none the worse for it.

But in an understated way, it is a big deal - largely thanks for the design team at Yahoo. There are 101 beautiful little touches throughout the refresh, tiny tools that are wonderfully self-evident, and delightful to operate. The graphic design is good, but the subtle design of the system is excellent.

Try the three-step adjuster for the length of bookmark entries; you’ll find it top left. Nothing flash-bang, but precisely the right size and finger-clicking good to use. All good stuff - just a shame that with Firefox 3 now proving so useful as a place to chuck and reteive my bookmarks, I’m not sure I need an online service any more. For a video of the redesign’s highlights, head here.