A quick update on the problems with updating the ranks of books. Amazon seem to have mostly fixed the problem. For the past week I've still seen the occasional update that didn't run through completely, but it's effectively back to normal.

I'll be keeping an eye on things to check that it doesn't recur.

From this year's ETech (Emerging Technology) conference, this is an illuminating presentation which looks into our energy usage and how we might resolve our energy needs with the problem of climate change.

It's been a while since I announced my latest research project, the controllable electricity meter, and although I haven't written any more about it (apart from the occasional comment on my twitter feed) behind the scenes it has been steadily progressing.

For the past day or so, we've been seeing an intermittent and annoying problem with Amazon.

When updating the ranks for all the books being tracked by Booklert, the Amazon service to find out the rank is sometimes reporting an error - meaning that each hour a few of the books don't have their rank updated.

It isn't always the same books, and sometimes more fail than at other times. So far we haven't been able to work out a solution to the problem.

The ranks reported for any book will still be correct, but at times they could be a little out of date.

Hmm, from that last blog entry it looks like I've been off biking for a couple of months! That's not the case, although I did have a great time in July and really enjoyed seeing some of Tuscany, Naples and the Amalfi coast. We became quite adept at working out how to throw our bikes and all our luggage onto and off of trains, and even managed to rack up about 200 miles of riding.

Because Booklert and tedium are well tested and carefully written, they don't require a lot of attention on a day-to-day basis. For the next three weeks I'll be taking advantage of that, and heading off for a well-earned holiday and doing some fairly mad cycling and sight-seeing round Italy.

The bike is laden with panniers and a tent, and we've got the train booked to take us to the start of the first bike route near Genova...

As a result, I'll be checking email a bit less frequently than usual. If you need an urgent response then give me a call on +44 7710 036866.

Russell Davies is an author. He's been experimenting with ways of promoting his book, but wasn't sure of the best way to measure the results. The book's rank on Amazon seemed the best measure of its popularity, but he'd have to remember to check it regularly. Surely that's something a computer could do for him...

Y is for You.

I'd like to say that I deliberately left the hardest lesson till almost last, but it was just how the letters fell. To be honest, when I was sketching out how an A-Z might look I chose something completely different for Y. But that other word didn't feel right, which is why this entry is late - I've been fighting against writing it as it didn't seem worth writing about. Maybe W should have been for "wait", as sometimes your brain wants to cogitate some more on a project before throwing the right answer your way.

Anywhow, we're not here to talk about me; let's talk about you...

As part of the new not-just-talking-about-to-do-lists approach, let me introduce the latest research project here at MCQN - The Mazzini Project.

For a while now I've been thinking about how we green all these old houses that most of us live in. One of the ideas is to help people visualize where their energy is being used. Then they can see where any is being wasted, or work out whether it's worth replacing old appliances with something newer.