Cosmopolitan magazine has launched its very own blog awards – and Witch Tech has made the shortlist.

If you appreciate all the latest tech news, comment and reviews here at WT, please show it and vote here for Witch Tech to win.

Please? Vote here by the 18th August.

Here are some of the things it does:

• Browse and search for articles to publish
• Post articles (or ‘Save to Drafts’) directly from your ‘Posts’ admin panel
• Automatic check-in and replace to make sure you have published the most current version of the article

But there are some rules to abide by. Some of the Guardian guidelines include:

1. Changes. You mustn’t remove or alter the text, links or images.

2. Key. If you don’t have a key, get one
at Guardian Open Platform. It’s required. If you do have one,
don’t share it or use it anywhere else.

3. Ads. Articles come with ads and performance tracking embedded in them. As above, you mustn’t change or remove them. You can, of course, use your own ads elsewhere on your blog, too.

4. Deletions. Sometimes but very rarely The Guardian have to remove articles. When that happens, this plug-in will replace the Guardian content within your blog post with a
message saying that the content is not available anymore.

A “Mumsnet election” was coined after the political parties turned to Mumsnet for support in light of the upcoming poll. The online community site, Mumsnet, has grown increasingly powerful, successfully campaigning against the sale of padded bikini tops for young children in Primark with their ‘Let girls be girls’ campaign earlier this month. It was also reported that Asda turned to the community site to review their children’s clothing products.

The growing power of the mummy blogger has led to the first CyberMummy conference being organised to hit London’s Earl’s Court 3rd July 2010.

The CyberMummy conference is a one-day event, bringing together a range of mummy bloggers from influential longterm bloggers to newbies just starting out to share ideas, learn the latest blogging techniques, bone up on technical expertise and discover how to work effectively with sponsors.

Confirmed speakers and blogstars include India Knight, BlogHer, Google, Wife in the North, Laura lee Davies and Liz Jarvis.

You can even take part by nominating one of your posts for the Crowdsourced Keynote, a final session in which a selected group of attendees read their best posts.

SeeSaw is a new online TV streaming service promising to find ways of making watching the box easy and fun. They’re looking to recruit testers for their Beta site to provide feedback and suggestions that will, ultimately, shape the future product.

SeeSaw is set to become a hugely popular online entertainment site; so this is great opportunity for a sneak preview before its general release.

The test period will begin week commencing 25 January and last for two weeks. You should receive your login details via email on or before the 29 January.

If you’re interested in being one of the first to use the service, please send your name and email address via Witch Tech email with email subject: SeeSaw Beta test.

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, as well as other online news portals act as link aggregators, identifying links that are of interest to be read and passed on. Linking to this content – and referencing it with a headline, short quote or summary with attribution – is standard practice for users of the Internet. Email and social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn are often used to share links.

This has recently come into question as heads of large media corporations, among them Rupert Murdoch of News Corp and Gavin O’Reilly of Independent News & Media, have accused search engines and link aggregators of stealing content. They have ventured to suggest that publishing headlines and short excerpts, widely accepted as permissible under the law, should be made illegal. The Government’s new Digital Economy Bill is also cited by the campaign as a potential threat to information sharing freedoms.

One solution to media owners’ concerns is to establish a method of obtaining permission to use links. While this would protect media content being given away for free via the internet, it would stifle the current freedom to link to and share information freely.

Currently, getting the latest scoop is as easy as linking out to a national broadsheet’s website from your blog. We must not forget that newspapers are vital to providing the influx of information that we are so desperate to protect. Journalists need paying, after all.

Clearly the problem of supporting journalists financially to report the news and protecting the free flow of information from pay-walls still remains unsolved. But while online copyright needs to be maintained, the solution to financial issues shouldn’t come at the cost of the freedom to create, circulate and follow links to online content.

Huddled underground, in an old Victorian public toilet, a group of geeks gathered last night to be part of the first technological happening of its kind in the UK’s capital: Ignite London debuted in Shepherd’s Bush’ s Ginglik Bar (a public toilet in a previous life).

It wasn’t just the free beer (courtesy of Box UK) that enticed geeks away from their computer-action-stations; Ignite London attracted a reputable line-up of speakers – and audience members alike (with rumours of a BBC Three talent scout lurking). WIRED UK’s Editor-at-Large, Ben Hammersley kicked off the evening with a 5-minute talk on Renaissance sex masters: The Sex Lives of the Great Renaissance Masters: How the Old Masters and Their Mistresses Changed Art (after admitting, no, he didn’t know what editor-at-large meant either). Things were getting off to a good start.

Ignite started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Radar and Bre Pettis of Make. Since then hundreds of five minute talks have been given across the world. Besides Seattle, Ignite communities thrive all over the world – in Portland, Sydney and NYC  to name a few. The idea is simple: presenters are required to stick to a strict format of 20 slides, each of which changes automatically after 15 seconds, making each presentation is exactly 5 minutes long.

But why is watching five-minute presentations so popular? As our host, Andy, said, we are bombarded by information on a daily basis. So much is vying to engage our short attention span, therefore, form is important.

An event Twitter feed was projected onto the venue wall, recording thoughts about the night in real-time. Audience members were actively encouraged to tweet throughout (even if it was anti-social to your neighbouring audience members); the person who tweeted the most even got a prize: umm, well done (?) @smannion.

Throughout the event, there were history lessons about the year 1794, political commentaries on Italy’s lack of democracy and Brazil’s climate change responsibilities, a military monstrosity in Operation Paul Bunyan by Alby Reid – as well as a celebration of design ideas, a controversial exploration of the relationship between austism and creativity – and even a little Sideways Thinking.

Oxford University PhD student, Matt Baker, got the crowd holding their stomachs and laughing  – out of amusement and digust – at his talk, Diarrhea & Dodgy Doners: What’s Special About Bacteria (My Dirty Doner), performed with a brilliant rap-poem. Expertly delivered. Much audience appreciation (especially so by @EmVicW who confessed, “Am a little bit in love with matt baker after his #igniteldn turn. Despite knowing too much about his bowels.”) The BBC’s Research and Development bod, Nicky Smyth, gave an interesting talk on Analogue World Design Patterns: A Look at User Behaviour too.

All in all, the evening’s talks were of a more philosophical nature than previous Ignite events I’ve been to elsewhere (with talks on how to make paper aeroplanes and surviving zombie attacks in Cardiff). The Guardian’s Chris Thorpe gave a thought-provoking talk about learning to “be” in a networked world; director of nowhere and co-founder and managing director of beyondnowhere UK, Matt Clarke asked us to, “Practice blending passions with talents” in his talk about Human Energy (also concluding by wishing us all “fantastic lives”) and J.K Tina Basi gave a whirlword guide to surfing the net as the path to enlightenment (using words like ‘koan’ and phases like ‘arrest the thinking mind’). Heavy.

Clearly, London geeks are thoughtful, soul-searching, sensitive types who use technology as a way to reach out in a quest to understand the world around us. But then again may not – a tweet from last night: @FridayHere Chips, chips, chips in the loo. Chips in the loo in London. #igniteLDN #Ginglik

Wired UK's editor-at-large, Ben Hammersley, snapped munching crisps before his opening talk.

The event was organised by Amy Thibodeau and Dan Zambonini who also write for The Januarist.

Tackling the tech-stereotype front on, the London Nude Tech Calender shows geek-chic stripped bare.

Featuring 24 new media entrepreneurs in their best birthday suits, 2010 promises to give the tech scene a sexy shake up. Better still, all proceeds go towards raising funds for Take Heart India, a charity focused on IT education projects for blind and disabled students in India.

The calender launches tonight at the Velvet Room at Sway, London. For a sneak-peek of who is featuring starkers, here are a few of the starring faces:

The famous Paris kiss from the 1950s.

The film, titled ‘Kisses from Paris’, was shown at a launch in the Tate Modern’s East Room last night. “It took me a day,” said Attal to the Guardian’s Janine di Giovanni. It follows a young couple’s journey around the unseen and unexpected sides of the city. Being aimed at young travellers who do their booking on the internet, the campaign is a viral one involving a network of selected bloggers and social networking sites.

There has been an emerging fashion for creating short films to promote brands: Dior launched The Lady Noire Affair featuring Marion Cotillard and Viktor and Rolf put out a film for their Spring 2010 collection for Paris fashion week. Now Paris Ile-de-France hope their edgy three minute film can help refresh Paris’ appeal. With Rufus Wainwright providing the soundtrack, coupled with sophisticated snapshots of Parisian life and young love, how can you not be seduced? You decide:

Attal was chosen to direct the film after the Paris Tourist Board saw his five-minute film about New York as part of the New York, I Love You project.

Kisses from Paris is part of a larger online campaign, called ‘You, Me and Paris Makes Three’. One feature of the campaign will allow ssers visiting the Paris Tourist board’s website to declare their love and customise their favourite Parisian scenes with their chosen one’s photograph.

Paris, New York, wherever you may be, a lot of love – and advertising – is spreading online.

Now, placing all the 3D pairs of glasses in line on my shelf, I feel I’ve developed an obsession. Not only are 3D glasses a ridiculous accessory for a fancy dress themed night out (too much like beer goggles – even before drinking), the different types of 3D tech means they’re not recyclable. I’m not going to enjoy watching Channel 4’s 3D week with my ‘Up’ glasses.

But as I made a special trip to Sainsbury’s to retrieve my free pair of Channel 4 week 3D glasses, I found myself grabbing the pairs of cardboard 3D glasses with both hands and lining my coat with the cardboard gimmicks. Perhaps it’s not the glasses though. It’s more likely my awe of 3D. Cinema has boosted its sales by creating a reason to still go, as the Independent reported today.

3D technology enjoyed a golden age in the 1950s.

It’s not often I gasp out of sheer wonderment. But I did when I caught a glimpse of the Channel 4 advert advertising 3D week. Gosh, 3D is trendy stuff. Indeed, according to TechRadar, Sky has indicated that it will launch a 3D channel in 2010 and James Cameron’s Avatar promises to expand the genre of 3D cinema beyond animated films.

At the premiere of Christmas Carol last week (did I just drop that in there?), the screening provided proper weighty 3D glasses. Not cardboard throwaways, oh no. 3D is sticking around as long as the Odeon can make the most of their investment in posh 3D glasses.

While 3D cinema has bursted onto the screens as a new phenomomen, Channel 4’s 3D week is a blast from the past. Being retro anaglyph tech, the channel say, “We are inviting viewers to celebrate 3D on TV. We’re not talking state of the art IMAX technology here, but some good old fashioned fun”. 3D is new and old. But to be enjoyed all the same.

The week, running from 16th – 20th November, will show various 3D programmes. The line-up has been released. TechRadar rounded up their hot picks:

- The Queen in 3D

(Monday 16 November, 9pm)

Story of film makers Bob Angell and Arthur Wooster, who created the 3D colour newsreel of the Queen during her Coronation year they named ‘Royal Review’.

- Flesh For Frankenstein

(Wednesday 18 November, 12.40am)

3D version of Paul Morrissey’s macabre, wacky 70s take on the Frankenstein story, starring Udo Kier and Joe Dallesandro.

- Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert

(Date/Time TBC)

Miley Cyrus and her alter ego Hannah Montana take to the stage in this spectacular 3D concert taken from her sell out 2007 and 2008 North American tour.

- Derren Brown Presents The 3D Magic Spectacular

(Monday 16 November, 10pm)

Leading performers dazzle the audience with incredible trickery, while amazing archive footage features performances of some of the world’s greatest magic tricks

Also shown in 3D will be the horror-show that is Friday the 13th Part III and a clip show of the greatest ever 3D moments.

Go to www.channel4.com for more details.

To find out where the nearest Sainsbury’s to you is to collect your 3D glasses,click here.