Its strength lay in a particular collective confidence of judgement, something so lacking in the Nineties chronicled by the magazine's dismayed ex-staffer John Seabrook in Nobrow. His former editor, Tina Brown, was forever looking over her shoulder at what other people were doing and shovelling up more of the same. The result was that there were far fewer of Whitney Balliett's graceful jazz pieces and, instead, endless accounts of the O J Simpson trial which nobody will look at again.Nobrow is an intermittently engaging muddle. Sassy (with allusions to Puff Daddy videos), it is also naively candid, never more so than in Seabrook's account of how - in his thirties - he was taken in hand, clotheswise, by his father, who has a Marcosian mania for suit-buying."Nobrow" is Seabrook's coining for a debased, megastore world in which PR drones boost the latest trumpery "sensation", something Tina Brown repeatedly mistook for true "buzz" Seabrook is fascinated by a world which appals him.

He was coerced into writing a long, unnecessary piece about Star Wars, but Nobrow was printed before the recent disaster of Dorling Kindersley's tie-in product, against which the public held up a refusing palm.The signs are that people will not be force-fed. Witness, say, the rejection of the New Labour "message" via Ken Livingstone, or the success of the Buena Vista Social Club. There is a taste for the genuine: for things more inspired than, say, Slab Rat, a novel about Zachary Post, a junior staffer one step up from grunt-work at a Manhattan magazine. It is the length of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop and Michael Frayn's Towards The End of the Morning combined, and one hardly need be J K Galbraith to mutter about the law of diminishing returns.There are occasional neat touches, such as "She reads the Times, for Christ sake, and the New Yorker, which in a good week I only skim" or Richard Avedon's $4000 bill for taking an airhead's passport photograph at short notice.

Yet an effort of will is required to do more than skim this account of the tangle that is office politics and sexual yearnings. Why did not a more proficient novelist advise that the first person is harder than it looks, as is the present tense; and, as for dialogue, the less said the better?. Egg, Smile, First-e - the names get more esoteric with each new online bank. But whatever the thinking behind the marketing strategy, it seems to be working. Tens of thousands of new users go online every day and the total number of customers now runs into millions. Egg, Smile, First-e - the names get more esoteric with each new online bank.

But whatever the thinking behind the marketing strategy, it seems to be working. Tens of thousands of new users go online every day and the total number of customers now runs into millions. High street banks have now got in on the act. Barclays, for example, has 720,000 online customers, and adds new users at the rate of 4,000 a day.Convenience is the key. The web liberates you from restrictive banking hours and the tedium of the lunchtime counter queue. Online customers may also benefit from high interest rates on their current and savings accounts, at least if they use internet-only banking services.Smile, the internet-only subsidiary of Co-operative Bank, pays a market leading 4.85 per cent on its current account if you are just £1 in credit. Its mini-cash ISA is also one of the most attractive around, paying 7.25 per cent.Customers going online with the larger banks, however, are less likely to see higher rates than traditional customers. The online services are an add-on to their branch network rather than an alternative, and few financial incentives are available to those who bank at home.Barclays, for example, offers a free service that allows online users to access their current account, transfer money between accounts, pay their Barclaycard bills, check statements, set up and cancel standing orders, and pay bills such as their phone or gas bill.Many of the other high street banks offer similar services.

But you may not be able to apply to start an account online, as a written signature may be required and you may not be allowed to set up direct debits.Both Barclays and NatWest allow users to access their share dealing operations over the internet.NatWest has 197,000 customers on its online service and adds another 2,000 each day. It also offers a 24-hour helpline with calls charged at local rate.Natwest does not offer credit cards and loans, but plans to introduce them soon and it is considering offering reduced prices for online customers when these services go online. It currently offers discounts of 30 per cent for travel insurance and 15 per cent for term assurance for online users.Nationwide offers full current and card-based account facilities to 140,000 users of its free online banking service.The building society now offers a full internet service in addition to its older PC-based banking service. With the PC service users are sent software to download on their computer, which allows them to access their account through a private line. The drawback of this system is that the bank must send out new software for each improvement it makes to its service. The internet, on the other hand, allows new features to be added centrally.This system is being phased out in favour of the internet. First Direct exemplifies the development of internet banking.