· Good to see that, despite being on the verge of multi-millionaire status, Google founder Serge Brin has not allowed the moolah likely to result from the company's £9bn float to affect his sense of humour. Search for the man himself on Google and you'll find that he sits in the category Society, Subcultures, Geeks and Nerds. Self-awareness is a positive character trait - as they might say in Google's Californian home.

· Diary was glad to hear that Paul Myers, chief executive of online music service Wippit, has finally made a breakthrough in his bid to sign a major label. Despite his service being embraced by the independent sector early on, Myers has not been shy in detailing his frustration with the majors who, for all their brave words, have been slow to sign up. It's encouraging to hear rumours that EMI has finally taken the plunge. Hopefully, that will persuade the other majors to follow suit. And, though it's heartening to see Wippit getting somewhere, it doesn't stop Myers signing off his emails with the following Hunter S Thompson quote: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

· In other music download news, Diary hears that music portal Playlouder is eager to enter the increasingly crowded download space. It too has brokered deals with the indies and hopes to have the majors on board soon. Playlouder, which was praised for its Glastonbury streaming in recent years, is planning to be the first music service to launch with a legal peer-to-peer model.

And, in an innovative attempt to stand out from the crowd, the service will be bundled with broadband access, with the file-sharing network limited to subscribers to the ISP.

· ITV signed a deal last week with BSkyB to allow it, finally, to start signing interactive advertising deals - three or four years after everyone else has been doing it.

While this is good news for the interactive advertising community - at last their campaigns will have the critical mass to get a decent number of responses and attract heavyweight advertisers - Diary can't help feeling that ITV's approach to PR for this momentous event wasn't all it could have been. Surely announcing their news to the press in one of the most dramatic and bloody weeks in the network's history wasn't necessarily the best policy? But when Diary pointed out that just maybe there were one or two more important things going on in the boardrooms of Carlton and Granada, the incredulity on the other end of the line had to be heard to be believed.

· Owen Gibson is new media editor of the Guardian