* Spandex-clad rockers du jour the Darkness are about to take the States by storm. The Mercury Music Prize-nominated quintet, currently riding high in the British charts with their ludicrous retread of 1970s pomp rock, are tipped to crack America. But not because of anything so outdated as coast-to-coast tours and radio station meet-and-greets. Increasingly, record sales are being driven by music included in computer games - and the sports game giant Electronic Arts plans to include a track by the Darkness in the mass-selling game John Madden Football 2004. According to the company's head of music Steve Schnur, bands these days no longer dream of hearing their songs blaring out of a transistor radio but accompanying the pixelated computer-generated sportsmen.
*Football websites and office IT administrators alike had a busy time of it last week after the rape allegations against eight unnamed footballers became the latest case to get message boards and chat sites humming. Rivals.net disabled all 92 of its football message boards after getting cold feet about possible legal action. The move upset the users of smaller clubs' websites. Bournemouth fans, in particular, were up in arms, saying the company was "bang out of order" because they were using the board to run appeals to save the club. Perhaps more intriguing is the fact that we could be on the verge of the first high-profile web defamation case, with one player's representative threatening to sue individuals who have revealed his client's identity on electronic media.
*He's on the ball, that Iain Duncan Smith. Five years after text messaging took off, the Tories have caught up and are planning their first SMS campaign through mobile marketing specialists Aerodeon. The campaign, aimed at students, is bound to catapult the party into the hearts and minds of young voters - or not. Equally indicative of the mixed-up political times we're living in is the fact that the topic chosen for this momentous campaign is protesting against the threat of top-up fees and rising student debt. One lucky recipient will get his or her tuition fees paid for a year - and probably be condemned to a deluge of "Vote IDS" texts.
*We could soon be waving goodbye to another oddly named dotcom institution with the news that the incubator GorillaPark is having more money worries. The company, which pumped millions into ludicrous schemes during the boom, has filed for bankruptcy protection. Dutch chief executive Jerome Mol says the move is merely part of a restructuring process. The 60 staff who still work there are not so sure.
Owen Gibson is new media editor of the Guardian
