But it’s those skittish, unpredictable qualities that made them screwball comics for a YouTube age. The box-surfing cat, the kitty on a Roomba, the cat eating gyoza — the Internet pumps out new adorable cat videos every day, many of them comic gems that rack up millions of viewers, their sheer simplicity and nuclear cuteness enough to make serious filmmakers soil themselves with envy and futility. (Have I seen “Che”? I have not. Have I seen “Cat with a bag on its head?” Uh, yeah: Like 10 times.)

Cats are the most popular household pets, but it took the ubiquity of video cameras (and help from the Japanese, who have never been shy about their feline fetish) to turn them into bona fide stars. Cats are creeping villains aquiver with menace. Cats are bungling Keystone Coppers whose best plans are always foiled. Cats are dicks. Cats are nauseatingly, almost criminally cute.

“The internet is the best thing that ever happened to cats,” said one commenter at the video-sharing site Videosift, following a clip in which one kitten faces off against a litter of puppies in a “Matrix”-type satire.

Actually, cardboard boxes and string are the best things that ever happened to cats. But the Internet is one of the best things that ever happened to cat people.

Why we all love Cats!

For what it’s worth, I didn’t mean to be a cat person. I grew up with a healthy, sneering disdain for the painfully middlebrow antics of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” for the “Hang in there!” posters of kittens clinging precociously to a tree limb. But there was this orange tabby, and blah blah blah, and suddenly my clothes are covered in stubborn fur. Thing is, to be a cat person is something of a private affair.

We don’t meet at the park and throw sticks. We don’t parade our animals down the block or stand around, chatting awkwardly while our pets sniff each others’ rear ends. Whatever your cat does — the way he curls up like a croissant and snores, the way he pads frantically about the bed at 4:30 a.m., paw to your face — is largely between you and the torn furniture. Which is another reason I think cat culture erupted online, the same reason people get pets in the first place: It’s nice to know you’re not alone. Other people’s cats do this stuff, too.

There’s also probably a heavy Venn overlap between cat people and Internet pioneers. Cats’ biggest online boost — the anthropomorphized lolcats that launched their own “catois” — began on a message board for geeks and obsessives called 4chan, the same warped and merry pranksters who brought us the RickRoll. Posting cat pictures has long been a bloggers in-joke — Friday catblogging, Caturdays! — where exhausting 10-hour cycles of generating new copy screamed out for some kind of silly, mindless relief by the end of the week. “What’s funny in this cramped, airless apartment? Ah, yes: The cat.”

Cats are Easier to make fun of

And, it turns out, cats are a brilliant blank slate. “Cats are easier to objectify — ask the ancient Egyptians!” says Jason Kottke, who runs the influential site kottke.org. Cats, therefore, “are easier to make fun of, especially if they act in ways that run counter to cat-like tendencies, which they do in so many popular cat memes.” And so we have Cats Who look like Hitler. We have Pirate Cats.

We have Kittens I Have Killed (not to be confused with Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves). There is just plain weirdness like Stuff on My Cat and Wii Kitty and Purrcast, an audio file that is exactly what it sounds like. There is a whole Pacific Ocean of content — from the gold standard Cute Overload to more recent additions like the new live-stream Kitty Cam — devoted to the no-duh reality that cats and kittens are, well, crushingly adorable. In fact, I would submit that cats and kittens might outnumber porn at this point.

“You’re probably right about that,” says Scott Lamb, a senior editor at the trend-spotting site Buzzfeed. “That might be for the very prosaic reason that producing anything involving kittens is just so much easier than producing porn.” After all, we’re a nation of shutterbug narcissists, and cats are the closet thing at hand. “Panda ownership is not so common,” he says, “but perhaps if it were, panda videos would be even more popular.”

Pandas are nice. But do they make a nom-nom noise when they drink? I don’t think so.

Rather than stretch this out over several articles, it seemed like a good idea to provide solutions to common problems in Photography all in one informative list. Please be sure to ask any questions if you’re having problems not mentioned here!

Having worked in both dysfunctional “in-person” teams and distributed teams that were highly effective, I’d say that Suster’s opinion is probably not always true, though it is hard to argue with his point that building a startup is easier if everyone works from one location, particularly because it is so difficult to establish a company culture within a distributed team. I also agree with Suster that it’s more important for certain team members to be present and available in the office — such as the CEO and CTO — than others.

However, thanks to the Internet, working in a distributed team is easier now than it ever was before. Technologies such as video conferencing, IRC and IM, and collaboration software, like Yammer and Socialtext, are helping to bring distributed teams closer together. And not only are the tools that that we use getting better by the day, but our knowledge of how best to use them to work effectively is improving, too.

So, given that many of our readers have personal experience of working in distributed teams I thought I would post an open thread asking for your opinion: Do you agree with Mark Suster’s view that “in-person” teams are more effective than distributed teams? If so, can technology (such as collaboration apps, VoIP and video chat) ever bridge that gap for distributed teams?

Eight of the companies won prizes from various national media (i.e. TechCrunch Japan), and there was one big winner (an e-book publishing platform called Puboo). But here are thumbnail sketches of all of the companies that presented at WISH 2010.

The Stoke-On-Trent native told the audience he had fond memories of visiting Blackpool as a child. “I used to come here as a kid for New Years and all the way through the summer,” he said. “On the Pleasure Beach, up the Tower and in Jungle Jim’s.”

His American wife Ayda Field watched from the side of the stage, and cheered along with the crowd when Rob revealed Blackpool to be the perfect honeymoon destination.

“I thought it was the best place to take my wife on my honeymoon. She loves Blackpool. She has been on the Pleasure Beach, she has had some chips, she is loving it,” Robbie said. The couple married at Rob’s LA mansion on August 7.

The singer, whose latest single, Shame, is a duet with Gary Barlow, fielded questions about the song’s lovey-dovey video. “Yeah, Gary Barlow is my boyfriend,” he joked. “People are saying that the video is very gay, I cannot understand that.”

The festivities in Blackpool also included a ‘switch on’ concert with performances from Alesha Dixon, Olly Murs, Gabriella Cilmi and new boyband The Wanted. Robbie didn’t perform.

Strangely, however, the vegetarian lunatic who wrote all this guff has no specific advice for older people who have not yet got themselves a Stannah stairlift on wheels. The three score and tenners who still have a car. I do, though. And here it is. Get a bloody move on.

I want to make it absolutely plain at this point that I have no beef against the older generation. They fought Hitler. They invented coal. They made a quarter of the world pink while eating nothing but cabbage. And I’m grateful for all that. But if we delivered your meals on wheels at the speed you drive, you’d end up with botulism.

There are no depths to which my shoulders will not sink when I happen upon a spotlessly clean Peugeot – and it is almost always a Peugeot – that is being coaxed along the highways and byways by someone whose ears are so big he can use them to pick up the shopping channels.

Of course, the poor old chap is in no rush. He has spent his life relentlessly dodging Nazis and diphtheria. He has worked his fingers to the bone for 40 years. And now he’s retired, he can slow right down. Potter to the potting shed. Take his time. Relax.

Hmmm. If you are Japanese or French, then this is undoubtedly the case, because you will live until you are a hundred and forty-twelve. But here in Britain, the average life expectancy for a man is 77. So, if you are 70 now, there is no time to lose.

No really. If you only have seven years left, that means the Reaper will be dropping round for tea and buns in about 61,000 hours from now. You therefore shouldn’t be wasting time by pootling to the garden centre at walking pace. So come on, grandad. The clock’s ticking. Pedal to the metal. Or you’ll be in your flowerbed before the plants you bought.

I was particularly distressed by a piece of geriatric driving last weekend since it was my eldest daughter’s first leave-out from boarding school and I wanted to be there on time. Unfortunately, she has made it crystal clear that I am never – never, d’you hear – to pick her up in any car that is even slightly flamboyant or flash. Nothing with four-wheel drive. Nothing with only two seats. Nothing with a big snarling engine. Nothing yellow. And as a result, I was tootling up the Fosse Way in a placenta red Fiat Bravo.

It was the sporty version, I’m afraid, but even so, it simply didn’t have enough oomph to get past the inevitable Peugeot. Which meant I arrived at the school late. Thanks, Mr Molehusband. I hope you have a big-end failure very soon. And because you chose a Peugeot, you probably will.

And speaking of unreliability . . . I honestly cannot work out how Fiat is still in business. British Leyland failed because it made rubbish cars, essentially for the home market. And yet – somehow – Fiat has been doing exactly the same thing for years but is still with us.

But back to the vehicle. Mitsubishi says the new Pajero is better for the environment than its predecessors. Mitsubishi says that hexavalent chromium, lead, mercury and other environment-loading substance levels have been substantially reduced. All new Pajero models also reach Japan’s three-star emission ratings, which means emission level are 50 percent below the Japanese 2005 Emission Standard requirements.