Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, doesn’t need any more awards. However, I’m giving him the MediaMaster award this week. No, not for book sales, nor DVDs, nor even MP3 players. It’s for Amazon Web Services. It may not appear to be much of an innovation, but it is one of the first serious appearances of “cloud computing”. In short, it provides an enormous, cheap, data centre for software developers, meaning that they don’t have to have expensive hardware in their offices any more. It will no doubt be sending shivers around the boardrooms of companies like HP, and could make Amazon far more money than books ever will. Nice move, Jeff.

I always thought that Coldplay and the Arctic Monkeys were Gordon Brown’s favourite bands. At least, that’s what he said last year. But now comes a claim from Robin Gibb, one of the two surviving BeeGees. He told The Times “Gordon listens to our music every day. He said, ‘Your music is absolutely timeless’. Gordon likes our music and I like Gordon.” He added “The Prime Minister likes our songs because they talk about human relationships and human experience, and reach out across the decades”. That’s enough for me to give Mr Gibb the MediaMug award this week. OK, I now have an image of Gordon striding around the corridors of number 10 singing “Tragedy” at the top of his voice. Makes sense, actually.

By Alan Stevens, Media Coach www.mediacoach.co.uk