It’s a concept that’s been around for many years in varying forms. But unlike the purely online communities most of us are familiar with (chat rooms and bulletin boards), social software is designed to link people in real life. Perhaps the most obvious application is online dating. Sophisticated software engines look for similarities between people’s profiles to find their perfect match. If the people literally and figuratively “click”, a meeting

It’s Britain’s fastest-growing offence. Right now, someone could be hacking into your files to steal your identity or squander thousands on your credit card. Bad enough for a private individual, but big businesses can lose millions, along with sensitive data. And what’s worse, with their corporate reputations to protect, no one is in a hurry to tell the world about it. So how can cybercrime be tackled? When Stephanie Pountney

In Vienna this summer intelligentsia met for Open Cultures, a conference for the self-proclaimed cultural wing of the open source movement. There, geeks, blogging writers and academics discussed how the death of capitalism was slowly being brought about by the proliferation of free information and content online. Proponents of free software, and by implication free content, believe this will level the playing field. Since software you pay for entails expensive