Another option is to make much greater use of the Wikipedia. For example, a Google search for "KitKat" turns up two results from Nestle's own websites, a BBC article -- and the Wikipedia. As it's unlikely we could persuade Nestle to include a trade union campaign on its web pages, editing the Wikipedia page to include information on the dispute would be a great idea.

A year ago, I don't remember why, I found myself on the Amazon.co.uk page selling Microsoft Excel. I posted a one-sentence review which read "Why would anyone pay over £170 for a piece of software which does nothing more than OpenOffice.org does -- and OpenOffice.org is completely free of charge?" And then I forgot about it.

But recently I found that someone had left a comment on my review. It read "This is so true - I dowloaded OpenOffice on reading this and it is very good, converts all your old word or .xls files and is easy to use with the same functionality of Office. Plus I am quids in as was about to spend £180 on Excel. Major mistake if I had done that!"

Reading this made me think that if we can use Amazon to promote free software, we can probably use it to promote trade unions and workers' rights. In fact, Amazon has for many years included social networking features such as user profiles, reviews, commenting, rating and voting systems.

Unions need to carry the fight to get our message across not only in the well-known, obvious places like Facebook (some of which are fads and will eventually disappear) but also in the arenas where millions of Internet users spend their time -- including such sites as Amazon and the Wikipedia.

Unions need to find a way to cut through that noise and reach their members. Members need an alternative to the spam-filled, overflowing inbox. Everyone needs messages to be brief and to the point.

Twitter may offer a solution.

Once you've signed up to the service you can sign up as a 'follower' of an individual or organization, and receive those short messages, which are called 'tweets'.

The real power of Twitter is that it's platform-independent. You receive those messages where it's most convenient for you. That can be through your own Twitter page on the web, or it can be as text messages to your mobile phone, or via the Instant Messager of your choice, or through an RSS news feeds.

I have to confess that when Twitter was launched, I was told about by a friend in the Netherlands. I didn't get it. It struck me as being just one more time-waster. It turns out that he was right and I was wrong. Now I think that Twitter offers real potential for campaigning organizations like unions.

Though launched for one specific purpose (to tell your friends what you're doing) Twitter was quickly adapted by campaigning organizations for our own purposes. I'm reminded of Meetup.com, designed as a dating service but now widely used by political campaigns.

The Hillary Clinton campaign began sending out 'tweets' and eventually had over 4,000 followers. The Barack Obama campaign did the same thing and got 44,000 followers. That says something about the success of the two campaigns in using new technology.

Twitter is used by the American Red Cross for get out short messages regarding natural disasters. Nasa uses Twitter to stream news from the Mars lander. (Followers of Nasa's tweets were the first to learn that ice had been discovered on the red planet.) Mozilla used it to provide updated on the launch of the new Firefox web browser.

One of the most interesting uses of Twitter occurred when a young American activist visiting Egypt was arrested while covering anti-government demonstrations. While in police custody, he used his mobile phone to send off a one-word message to Twitter: "Arrested." (Posting Twitter messages from one's mobile phone is incredibly simple.) His friends, who were following his tweets, immediately began making phone calls and sending out emails. He was released from custody.

LabourStart launched its Twitter service in June 2008. We were initially aiming to solve one particular problem: How do you send out short text messages to phones in different countries, free of charge? Within a few hours, over 100 people -- most of whom had not previously used Twitter -- signed up to our group. By the time this article appears in print, we expect that number to exceed 1,000.

Unlike the other social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, Twitter need not be a time sink. We encourage people to sign up and become 'followers' of LabourStart, and to ensure that our messages are delivered to their mobile phones.

But we don't encourage people to amass hundreds of friends, as one tends to do on other networks -- because you don't want too many text messages pouring into your phone. (You can instruct Twitter to only send messages from certain accounts to your phone and read the others online.)

The idea is not to add one more way to receive junk mail, to contribute to information overload. What we are trying to do is cut through the background noise, and to create a new delivery channel for important information and campaigns -- in very short bursts. Twitter may be the solution we were looking for.

But lately, some ISPs have begun complaining that there's a growing cost to treating the massively-expanding traffic on the net equally. They're arguing that companies should be able to pay to give their content priority.

Net neutrality is the "principle that all Internet traffic be treated equally -- regardless of subject, origin, destination or application type," according to the Canadian union. NUPGE is joining a broad coalition in Canada and globally which is battling to preserve net neutrality, and to get governments to pass legislation to guarantee it. Unfortunately, that coalition includes few trade unions, even if unions have much to gain from keeping the net neutral.

(In some cases, unions have taken a stand against net neutrality -- most notably the Communication Workers of America, which accepts the arguments made by employers.)

Meanwhile, Barack Obama says that federal rules ensuring net neutrality would be high on the agenda during his first year in the Oval Office.

At a recent conference in London, American ISPs made their case, with Jim Ciccione of AT&T calling for companies to be able to exercise "network management" (which is code for no net neutrality). It turns out Mr Ciccione was preaching to the converted.

Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett recently attacked the principle of net neutrality branding it as "bollocks". His company has over 3.6 million customers, making it the UK's second largest ISP. He said that Virgin is already in talks with unnamed content providers about paying to have their content delivered faster than others. He specifically warned that public service broadcasters like the BBC (not to mention unions) who choose not to pay for faster access to Virgin's subscriber base would end up in "bus lanes", effectively having their content delivered to consumers at a lower speed.

And Virgin is not alone. Simon Gunter, head of strategy at Tiscali, another major ISP, said that "it could be time for a new pricing model." Neil Laycock, the chief executive of Plusnet, another UK ISP, says bluntly that "net neutrality is a pipe-dream".

Government bodies in the UK, including Ofcom and DTI, have not committed to defending the principle of net neutrality. Speaking in 2007, Ofcom's director of policy development said that "the European regulatory framework allows us to deal with any issues that may arise," dismissing the need for any efforts to be made in the UK. In light of what ISPs are now saying -- and doing -- this strikes me as being overly complacent.

Perhaps it's time for British unions and the TUC to follow in the footsteps of Canadian trade unionists and campaign in defence of net neutrality -- before it's too late.

The most chilling statistic is this one: people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year. As he explains, "a 40-year-old user will take 8% longer than a 30-year-old user to accomplish the same task. And a 50-year-old user will require an additional 8% more time." Nielsen says that this occurs "mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties".

This matters for trade unions, as the average age of our members is considerably higher than that of the general population.

I saw some of this myself at a recent training session I ran for trade unionists from a dozen Asian countries. Each sat in front of a computer screen and all of them had computers back home.

When I asked everyone to go to a particular web page it took approximately ten minutes for the entire room to get on to the same page. I found that about half the people had difficulty locating and filling in the address bar in their web browser. Others were challenged by the notion of scrolling down a page.

And the average age of these unionists was considerably lower than that of the typical British trade unionist.

Nielsen predicts that over time, this age differentual will disappear as increasingly people will have been using the net for much longer periods of their lives. But for the next decade or so, it's critical for those who design and manage websites aimed at trade union members to take this research into account.

The only way to know for sure if your website is useable, Nielsen says, is to test it with real users. I wonder how many of our unions actually do that.

In looking over my reviews, I see that I posted a one sentence review of Microsoft Excel a year ago. Here's what I wrote:

"Why would anyone pay over £170 for a piece of software which does nothing more than Open Office.org does -- and OpenOffice.org is completely free of charge?"

Nearly a year later, someone posted a comment on my review (I didn't realize you could do this). It's worth repeating here:

"This is so true - I dowloaded openoffice on reading this and it is very good. converts all your old word or .xls files and is easy to use with the same functionality of office. plus I am quids in as was about to spend £180 on Excel. Major mistake if I had done that! Great post Eric."

One more convert to free software -- won over by a review on Amazon. I wonder what else we can use Amazon reviews for?

After all, when we think about dictatorships in the world today and the struggle for democracy, we usually think of political and spiritual leaders, writers, intellectuals and others before we think of the workers. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Dalai Lama have become household names. For some of the larger and better known human rights organizations, workers' rights have long been seen as a bit of a footnote -- though there is some evidence that this is now changing.

While most of us will be vaguely familiar with key international human rights documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), most human rights campaigners will have difficulty naming the eight core conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) which lay out what are universally recognized workers' rights -- such as the right to form and join a trade union and to bargain collectively.

Everyone remembers the central role played by independent trade unions in bringing down Communist rule in Poland and triggering the collapse of the entire Soviet empire in the process. But my guess is that few are aware of the key role being played by trade unions today -- unions which find themselves on the front lines of what amounts to a fight to the death with dictatorships. Those dictatorships are often far more severe in their repression than the Polish Stalinists ever were.

The role of unions in the battle for freedom in Zimbabwe was made even more dramatic by the remarkable action of South African dockers. Following the recent elections in Zimbabwe, members of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union refused to off-load weapons from a Chinese ship, weapons which were bound for Zimbabwe. The union members did this in the face of their own timid government, which to its shame has failed to act decisively in support of the people of Zimbabwe.

In Iran, most people see a battle between "reformers" and hardline fundamentalists, or perhaps are aware that Iranian women and dissident intellectuals are in a constant battle for rights. Few, however, will know of the central role played by Iranian unions -- unofficial, independent unions not controlled by the regime. There have been strikes and demonstrations around the country, often mobilizing thousands, but the most extraordinary story has been the fight of the Tehran bus workers for union recognition and improved pay and conditions. When those workers brought Iran's capital to a halt with what amounted to a general strike a couple of years ago, the regime reacted with savage repression. The union leader -- Mansour Osanloo -- has been repeatedly jailed and has become a symbol, perhaps the symbol, of the struggle for a new society in Iran.

Iraqi unions play a central role in the efforts to create a democratic and secular society in their country and have paid a heavy price for their efforts. There are many decent people in Iraq risking their lives every day, but unions may be unique in their ability to reach across ethnic sectarian divisions and unite Iraqis in the fight for a better future. They are certainly doing what no political party in that country has been able to do.

The same story is repeated everywhere dictators rule: unions, and sometimes unions alone, stand on the front lines against vicious repression. In China and Vietnam, extraordinary large-scale strikes have rocked the foundations of the Stalinist regimes. Unions in Burma, Eritrea and Belarus have been targetted repeatedly by the dictators in an effort to crush independent thought and action.

As George Orwell might have noted, the hope -- if there is any hope -- still lies with the proles.

This is not how the far Left sees it, however. When I've launched an online campaign that focussed attention on violations of workers' rights in places like Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Burma, Iran and Belarus, I am often sent emails by comrades eager to point out that in supporting workers in those countries, I'm somehow supporting George Bush and the neo-conservatives.

The knee-jerk anti-Americanism here is so powerful, that sometimes people find themselves defending regimes they know almost nothing about (Eritrea? Belarus?) simply because they heard that America might not be fond of this or that particular dictator. My enemy's enemy must be my friend -- and the workers be damned.

On the other hand, if you can find a regime which is backed by Washington and in which trade unionists are denied their rights or even killed, you can get the entire left on your side. What this means in practice is that when right-wing death squads kill trade unionists in Colombia, it gets considerably more attention and support from the left (and unions) than when Ba'athist or Al-Qaeda death squads kill trade unionists in Iraq.

Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of trade unionists do not share the view of the totalitarian left.

Global campaigns in support of embattled trade unionists are bigger than ever before. Earlier this year, the International Transport Workers Federation staged a huge global day of action in support of Osanloo and jailed Iranian union leaders. Their affiliates on every continent, in dozens of countries, and in Muslim countries as well, took to the streets to demand freedom for their Iranian brothers and sisters. A delegation of trade unionists from Indonesia travelled to Iran and attempted to meet with their jailed comrades.

Amnesty International is taking an increasing interest in workers' rights, adopting a number of jailed trade unionists as prisoners of conscience. Recently when Amnesty launched an urgent action in support of one of the jailed Iranian unionists, it turned out to be their biggest, quickest mobilization ever. Clearly there is a lot of public support, certainly within the unions, for international solidarity.

All this is going to prove to be particularly difficult for what remains of the totalitarian Left. Defending Mugabe or the Iranian mullahs is getting less and less popular. The heroism of trade unionists who risk their lives (and in many cases, give their lives) in the battle against these dictatorships inspires thousands.

There's an opportunity here to build a great global coalition, anchored in the trade union movement, allied with traditional human rights groups and pro-democracy campaigners, that struggles to create a better world. In that world, the promises made in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- including "everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions" -- could become a reality.

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When I began, I wrote a number of updates for my blog with titles like 'Linux: the first nine days' or 'Day Eleven: The experiment continues'. I think I was amazed that it could go on like that, day after day.

There were probably two reasons for my own surprise at how well it has gone.

First, I'd had a bad experience using Linux in 2002. And second, I hardly knew anyone who used Linux on their desktops. (I still don't know of a single trade union anywhere that has moved over to open source -- unfortunately.)

After one year using Linux, I can say with confidence that I'm never going back to Windows.

Keep reading ...

I purchased a very inexpensive Dell laptop with Ubunu pre-installed for a family member and the replacement for my broken Palm handheld is the new Asus eee ultraportable -- running Xandros Linux. So we're now a three-Linux household.

The only computer around here not running Linux belongs to my son -- and he uses his entirely for gaming. (Yes, I know that he can play 'World of Warcraft' under Linux by running Wine, but ...)

One of the great things about the move from Windows to Linux these days is that for many of us, it's completely pain free, with no learning curve to speak of.

For example, the applications I use day in and day out -- my web browser, my email client, my calendar, my task list, my spreadsheet, my processor and my Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) client are all cross-platform. They are the same ones I'd be running on Windows.

I've often felt that if you could get Windows users to do what I had already done and move over to Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and Lightning for their web, email, calendar and task lists, to Open Office for spreadsheets and word processing, and Skype for Internet telephony, you were nearly there. You could then sneak into their offices when they weren't looking and install Ubuntu instead of Windows -- and they'd never know the difference.

Of course the argument would go -- if Linux is no different from Windows, why bother to make the change?

So I'll repeat some of the thoughts I had back in May 2007 which are still valid today -- and some new ones.

Linux saves me money. I don't pay for a great email client or an office applications suite or anti-virus program. And it didn't cost me anything to get Ubuntu Linux at all. I haven't spent a penny on software all year.

Linux keeps my computer secure. I don't have to worry about viruses, trojans and so on. It's not just that Linux has so small a market share that virus-writers don't bother. Linux is also inherently more secure; it has a more secure architecture.

Linux keeps my computer up to date. Every morning, Ubuntu automatically updates my computer with the very latest software. If there's a security problem in, say, my email program, it's taken care of the same day. In Windows, there's nothing remotely like this. If you use Windows and there's a security problem with, say, Adobe Acrobat Reader or Apple iTunes, you have to get your updates from those companies individually -- it's not built into Windows. Nearly every Windows PC I've seen runs old, outdated, insecure software. But every version of every program I use is the very latest one -- the most secure, fastest and feature-rich versions available.

Linux erases the boundary between my home PC and my websites. The directory structure, the code I'm writing, everything on my home PC is now very much like the Linux-based websites I've been building for more than 10 years. It's even allowed me to write little Perl scripts on my own PC and run them through my web browser. I feel at home on my own PC just as I do when writing code for the web.

Linux gives me the opportunity to participate in a great human project -- the writing of open source software. As you learn more about the software you use, you visit the project pages, the blogs and wikis, and learn about the plans to improve all the code you use every day, you cannot help but want to be part of it all, to make your contribution. I think I'll learn XUL this afternoon -- a way of writing Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird extensions. It sounds like fun.

I have some friends who now run Linux on their desktops and have purchased Asus eees. But I look forward to the day when institutions I work with -- especially trade unions -- take the decision to move away from expensive, insecure, buggy software marketed by the Microsoft monopoly. I'm sure those unions will discover as I have that once you've made the switch, you won't ever look back.

I'm speaking about ultra-portable, ultra-light laptop computers.

A year ago, if you wanted to buy a truly portable computer, you'd be looking at a Sony Vaio, for example, weighing in at a couple of pounds. And it would have cost you something like $3,000. Even Apple's latest laptop, the MacBook Air, costs $1,800 in its cheapest configuration.

But in the last six months a new breed of tiny, powerful laptops has become available for $400.

A 90% drop in the price of a tool that can be so useful to unions is something that should make us sit up and take notice.

I would say there are three reasons for the sudden fall in the price of very light, small laptops.

The first is the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. This, the brainchild of tech guru Nicholas Negroponte and endorsed by the United Nations, aimed to produce a net-connected laptop for $100. Mass production began in November last year. The first laptops are already in the hands of school children in developing countries. If you can create a fully functioning laptop computer for $100, it's kind of hard to make the case that the lowest priced laptops should cost ten or twenty times that much money. The OLPC has changed the way the industry and consumers think about laptop pricing.

The second reason for the fall in price has to do with changed perceptions of what people want and need in a laptop. For many people, such a computer will be their second machine -- keeping a desktop or heavy "desktop replacement" laptop for most of their work. That being the case, the new ultra-lights don't need massive hard drives. You won't be storing your entire music collection and your digital videos on one of these. In some cases, you can get rid of the traditional computer hard drive entirely, as Asus has done with its hugely popular "eee" range of $400 mini-laptops. (They've sold 1,000,000 of them in the last six months.) The "eee" uses a solid-state memory component rather than the traditional hard drive. This means that they can work faster, are more robust (fewer parts to break), and cost less.

A third and final reason for the emergence of the sub-$400 PC is the rise of Linux. The Asus eee and other models run on variations of this free, open-source operating system. Most people who buy computers don't realize that they're paying for Windows when it comes pre-installed on their computers -- and it can cost hundreds of dollars. Simply replacing Windows with Linux can cut the cost of a laptop dramatically, as well as increasing its speed, power and security. (You don't have to buy an anti-virus software package either.)

So what does this mean for our unions?

If we accept the idea that computers can be useful tools (and I think most of us now buy into this), we have an opportunity to arm our organizers, activists, officials, and staff with tiny, light, powerful laptops that will give them Internet access, email, the web, word processing, spreadsheets, databases, and just about everything they need -- for a fraction of what these things used to cost. (The Asus eee comes with Skype as well, and a built-in web-camera. You can do free videoconferencing on this $400 machine.)

Many union staffers, officials and activists do not have computers at home -- they rely on desktops in their offices. (And many of them are not allowed to do union business on the company's machines.) Some have access only to older desktops which are limited in what they can do. Some have laptops that are portable only in name -- huge, clunky machines that are so unpleasant to carry around that one tends to leave them on the desktop.

Asus has produced the first successful sub-$400 laptop. They've been followed by HP with its Mini-Note (slightly more expensive, at $500 - but with a larger screen and keyboard). Dell has just announced that it too will be manufacturing its own cheap ultra-portable. The price is going to fall, and the models will become more powerful. The best and cheapest of them will run variants of Linux.

This is not good news for Microsoft. But it is potentially great news for us. Giant corporations don't really need very cheap laptops -- for years now, businesses have been able to afford laptops for their managers and others. But for unions and other organizations, the price has been a deterrent. No more.

Imagine a union where everyone had the very latest software, in a light, portable powerful laptop. Where everyone had wireless net access and wasn't chained to their desks. It's a change as dramatic as the invention of the portable, battery-powered radio a few decades ago -- or more recently, the mobile phone.

It's the morning after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. It now seems pretty clear to everyone that Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee for President. The question now is -- what can we do to ensure that he defeats John McCain in November. And not only defeats McCain, but defeats him decisively.

We need more than a Democratic victory in November -- we need a landslide. We need huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. We can only achieve that if we have the kind of unbeatable team at the top that unites the party and the nation.

It's obvious that Hillary Clinton is not going to be Obama's running mate. Obama has to choose from among many outstanding Democrats, including some who ran against him in the early primaries, to find a great Vice Presidential choice. But one man stands head and shoulders above all the others as the obvious choice: John Edwards.

John Edwards set the agenda for all the candidates in the early stages of the primary battles. He came up with the first and best comprehensive health care plan. He raised the issue of poverty as no leading politician has done for 40 years. His charisma, his abilities and his appeal to those voters Obama must win in November are beyond dispute.

An Obama-Edwards ticket in November is the Democratic party's best chance of winning a resounding victory. If you agree, please visit http://www.ericlee.info/edwards4veep and sign the form there. (That address will soon be http://www.edwards4veep.org.)

We'll make sure that Obama gets this message loud and clear from the many Democrats who we're sure agree with us.

But for the last ten years, I've been working on PCs (until a year ago, Windows-based PCs) and have no experience with programming them. I did learn Perl, which I use to write short programs (scripts) on Linux servers for websites. But I've found no easy way to write a useable program on my PC.

I've long thought it would be wonderful if I could use a language I know (Perl) on a platform I use (the PC) and get back to the stage where I was a decade ago, writing programs to meet my needs.

As of yesterday, that problem is solved. I have just written my first application (a small group of programs) -- a powerful task list (to-do list) manager. I am now using this instead of the various programs I have used in the past, such as the Gnome To Do list, KDE Kalendar, and web-based lists such as Remember the Milk, TaDa List and so on.

First of all, there's a wonderful Mozilla Firefox plugin call POW -- that's short for Plain Old Webserver.

Once you set it up, which takes five seconds and no technical skills, you can run Perl (or PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, or Python) applications on your PC -- and the interface is your web browser.

As I am now using Ubuntu Linux as my operating system, and I knew that Perl came pre-installed.

Seconds after setting up POW, I had the classic "Hello world" program running and a few minutes later, a rudimentary to-do list. It couldn't have been easier.

The fantastic thing about this is the ability to create completely customized software, including all the features I want, no matter how crazy, and not including the stuff I don't need.

I've now got a very powerful, customized task list running in my browser (in fact, it's my browser's home page) and am looking forward now to writing other applications.

Thanks to David Kellog for creating POW.

I've been using web-based tools for years to do several tasks which many of us probably still do with pen and paper – or on desktop PCs.

There are many web-based to-do lists, including Ta-da and Remember the Milk; some of these will integrate nicely with Google Calendar.

Another key time management tool is time-tracking software. This is essential if you are working for more than one employer or working on more than one project. There are several excellent web-based choices such as Harvest , but my own preference is the free Toggl.

I keep my address book on Highrise, from the same company that offers Ta-da.

The advantages to unions of using the web for to-do lists, calendars, address books and time tracking include reduced cost (the software is free) and continuous upgrades (you're automatically using the latest version). As you are downloading nothing, there is no risk of viruses. And as the software sits on a remote server and not on an individual PC, several staffers can share a single machine. Those who spend time outside the office can access any of these sites on other computers, or on their mobile phones.

I meet people sometimes who don't even keep a to-do list on paper, which I find strange. Some people keep everything in their heads, including phone numbers. For the rest of us, managing our personal information online is a great tool for time management. And the better we manage our time, the better we serve our members.

As with most things, after a while it became more work than I had time for, so I asked one of our senior correspondents, Derek Blackadder from Canada, to take on the job of ensuring that we had fresh photos on our front page, at least once every week.

Little did I know that Derek would turn this little project into what may be the largest collection of union photos on the web.

We're using the photo-sharing service Flickr and the collection is located at http://flickr.com/groups/union/

Anyone can contribute photos, though Derek has asked that all submissions should be photos “of work, trade union actions, and trade union members”. He also invites those submitting photos to let him know if they would be appropriate as a LabourStart photo of the week. (We may have to go daily if we're deluged with suggestions.)

This week's photo on LabourStart is typical of the kinds of things we've shown recently. It's a photo of Arab and Jewish women celebrating International Women's Day in Tel Aviv. In a march organized by WAC-Maan they wanted to draw attention to the 81% unemployment rate amongst Arab women in Israel. They're carrying a banner reading "Open Jobs for Women in Agriculture". That's not the kind of photo you'll find on the cover of Newsweek, but it's exactly the kind of image – trade unionists leading the fight for a better world – that we want to see more of.

You might say that getting 286 trade unionists to contribute their photos and amassing a collection of over 2,400 images is not really that impressive considering that LabourStart regularly mails to tens of thousands of people and does huge online campaigns in support of workers' rights. But here's the thing – we never publicized the Flickr group to our list.

We never asked people for help. People have been joining the union group on Flickr probably because they have seen our photo of the week and clicked on the little link there. Or maybe they were already using Flickr and stumbled on our group. (After all, millions of people use Flickr for their personal photos.)

In other words, the growth has been spontaneous and unplanned. People want to share their photos, and want others to see – not just read about – what their unions are doing.

A glance at some of the work submitted to the group reveals this deep desire to spread the word using photos. The biggest contributor is someone at the NDU, a union in New Zealand, who has posted no fewer than 692 photos to the group. Another New Zealand union, Finsec, is responsible for some 124 photos. Blackadder himself has contributed 130 photos. And a user calling himself “Karl Marx” is responsible for 153 photos. And no, I don't think it's that Karl Marx; this one is based in Taiwan.

The potential of this group is enormous – if without any real publicity it has already grown so large, what happens when we start talking it up? We'll have at our disposal a fantastic resource for anyone doing trade union work – for education, communication, campaigning. Need a photo for the newsletter, leaflet or website? You'll find something here.

I encourage all those who read this to check out the group, and to submit their own photos. Spread the word!

A glance at how those unions are using the Internet in support of the day of action reveals just how far we have come in a few short years.

In addition to the website, the ITF has also launched a Facebook group in support of the day of action. It has produced a short film which is viewable online, both on their website and on YouTube. There are numerous campaign materials available for download, including posters. There's a mailing list you can sign up to get updates.

The ITF and ITUC have brought in allies, too. Amnesty International is fully involved in the campaign and aims to mobilize its hundreds of thousands of members in support of jailed Iranian unionists. LabourStart has launched an online campaign to send protest messages to the regime in Tehran, at www.labourstart.org/iran.

The ITF and ITUC seem to have made a checklist of basically everything you can do online, all the tools that are available. And they've crossed them off their list one by one -- mailing list, social networking site, online protest messages, YouTube videos, and so on.

It seems such an obvious thing to do -- to utilize every tool available -- and yet many unions stop far short of this, and seem happy to use only one or two of the tools used in this campaign. This might make sense if any of this was costly, but it's not. The problem is almost certainly not cost, but a lack of awareness.

The effective use of the new tools by the ITF and ITUC should serve as a model for unions anywhere that want to campaign effectively online.

Robbie is a Roomba household robot, a product of the iRobot corporation, and something I've wanted to own for a long time. It costs about the same as a decent vacuum cleaner, so I thought -- what the hell.

I bought Robbie home on Friday and charged it (him?) overnight. Yesterday, I set Robbie loose in my carpeted bedroom, went out to do errands, came home and found the robot had shut itself off -- and the floor clean. Wow.

This morning I cleaned the robot's brushes -- it comes with a special tool to cut the hairs which have gotten entangled in the brushes -- and set it to work in our living room, which has a wooden, not carpeted floor.

When Robbie begins to work, it makes a kind of trumpeting charge sound, which is very cute.

I didn't realize that iRobot had further "humanized" it by having it call for help when there's a problem.

Robbie got tangled in a cord -- actually a very thin wire that served as an FM radio antenna -- and stopped, and called out with fairly loud beeps.

I went into the living room when I heard this and didn't see the robot anywhere.

I was tempted to call out -- as one does for a cat or dog -- but I'm not yet totally insane.

Then it beeped again and I realized that it was underneath a piece of furniture, a place which (to be completely honest) I'd never vacuumed before.

It had shut itself down. I removed the bit of wire, placed the robot back on the ground, and it resumed work.

As I write this, it's cleaning the rest of the room.

For those of you who own, or have used, dishwashing machines or any other machine that does household chores, you may be asking yourself what's the big deal. Machines have been saving us work and time in our homes for many years now.

The difference is that this a robot -- it behaves with a kind of intelligence. As you watch it start in a room with a spiral search pattern, as it maps out the room, you realize that it's not like one of those battery operated toy cars that simply goes around in circles.

Robbie pauses when it spots a particularly dirty location and stays there, going around in circles until its sensors tell it that he spot is clean.

The company says that Robbie will also know to stop at the top of a flight of stairs and not go tumbling over -- I haven't tested that yet, and with a jealous cat in the house, I'm not sure that I will.

After one day of use, I'm delighted to have Robbie here.

And I wait eagerly for iRobot's next product -- whatever it will be. (A robot cook would be nice, or perhaps just a robot that likes cleaning toilets? Or maybe one that nags teeenagers to clean their rooms or eat vegetables?)