What should we wear, how we should behave and where should we go? The site gives a thorough, some would say exhaustive, analysis of how Tara P-T got where she is, where she goes and advice on the social niceties that so many of us forget in our clamour to find out which parties the newly six-packed and single Hugh Grant is attending. Always smell good, have clean fingernails and don't ever tell dirty jokes And shop at Top Shop. Oh well, that's a start. It's who you know...The gossip columnists had a field day last week following the demise of Lady Victoria Hervey, the latest It girl, and Seb Bishop, co-founder of search engine espotting 's courtship. But Bishop, as he showed me his team of 35 housed in the former Truman Brewery in London's Brick Lane, was keen to point out that who you know has definitely been important in building a successful internet company.As he introduced various relatives and friends of his "ex-girlfriend" ("not that ex-girlfriend" he smirked), it became apparent that everyone in the room knew each other, through blood, work or happening to just live down the road from each other It seems to work. The search engine was the first in the UK to offer a paid-for-placement business model where the advertisers bid to appear higher up search engine results, and only pay when a customer clicks through to their site. Already, this cost-per-click model has attracted 3,500 advertisers, including Amazon and Go, and the company has formed partnerships to appear on affiliate websites such as Easy Everything and Ask Jeeves.Espotting claims to perform 70 million searches a month and is about to break even after just seven months in business.

Online advertising has recently taken a severe blow in terms of spend and confidence, a fact that has knocked many dot s ­ whose businesses depended on ad revenues ­ off their perches. A business model that sees advertisers paying only for the traffic they receive seems to be a timely addition. Familiar ringtonesThe only other major paid-for-placement search engine in the UK, US-based GoTo believes that our obsession with mobile phones is out of control.Having measured 120 million "family" searches (ie those not of an adult nature), since its launch, the company claims that "ringtones" is the single most-searched-for term on the site. This is followed by car, job, holiday, car insurance, flights, chat room, chat, cheap flights and, wait for it, Big Brother (just a matter of weeks before the arrival of Big Brother II and the website is still strangely blank).It's perhaps a reflection of human nature that we have this global resource, we can talk instantly to people on the other side of the world and we can find out anything we like about every subject. And yet all we want is for our phone to make an interesting ring to impress/annoy people on the bus.

It seems we are all as inherently sad as those people who in the 1970s decided that to have a doorbell chiming Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was an amusing and witty reflection of what went on behind closed doors.lisa.simmons haynet . When WAP phones were introduced, they promised to revolutionise mobile communications. With a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) phone, you could send and receive e-mail, access the Web, check movie listings and book an airline ticket. That was the theory, anyway.As we all know, WAP phones have been something of a flop, thanks mostly to the long download times for accessing information on them. Now the mobile phone industry has realised that people would rather be playing games on their mobiles than surfing the Web or sending e-mails, and they are investing a lot of time and money into developing games that can be played on a mobile handset. The mobile telecoms giant Nokia is developing 50 to 60 such games, internally and with third parties, according to Graham Staffor, senior manager for business development.

"We recently announced a deal with Oxford Software for a number of board games, we have the wireless online rights to 12 Infocom text adventures ­ including The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ­ and a deal with Net Entertainment for a number of gambling games."Nokia is not the only mobile phone player to be involved in games. Kamar Shah, games marketing manager at Orange, said: "We are in negotiations with many top mobile game developers and publishers, one of them being Rage Software, who are developing an exclusive WAP game for us called Airlock." The games developers themselves are producing a wide variety of titles. Warthog/Digital Bridges, for example, has licensed old Scott Adams text adventures on WAP. Peter Macfarlane, Warthog's business development manager for mobile platforms, thinks the Adams titles, which were last seen on the ancient Sinclair Spectrum, are a potential winner."The beauty of the Scott Adams titles are that they are quite compelling game 'stories' while being suitable for the relatively limited technology currently available via WAP," Macfarlane explains.Mobile games developer Ludiwap's thriller "In Cold Blood" is the first joint release of a PC and WAP game that, with WAP in mind, has been translated into 10 languages ­ including Lithuanian.

"Our next big release will be a WAP game called Signal Failure ­ a parody on London Underground travel," said Ludiwap's Thorsten Burkard.Eidos, the games company that made Lara Croft a household name, has also been active in mobile games development, and will provide Nokia's Mobile Entertainment Platform with five titles over the next two years. "The first title to go live will be WAP Gangsters, based on the popular PC title," said Simon Protheroe, Eidos technical director.There's a feeling of the pioneer spirit, that we are on the brink of a new age of mobile gaming, that sets hearts racing. However, due to its limited technical specifications and less than sparkling graphical display, it's also the source of a few initial disappointments. Orange's Kamar Shah, though, is convinced mobile games will be big "This is the case with every new platform," Shah said "Developers need time to learn about WAP and how to push it. Software will be more compelling with time."WAP's principal strength is its mobility You carry it around with you at all times. Coupled with SMS (Short Messaging Service to annoy your friends during play) or WAP Push (where information is given to you when something interesting happens in the game), this gives games designers an amazing new gameplay tool.The next big shift in mobile telephony will be WAP over the GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) system.