Not just a tool for the terminally nosey, Google Street View also allows nostalgic web users to travel back to more innocent, happier times - i.e. the heady pre-recession days of Summer 2008 when the photos were taken, and when Zavvi, the Pier and Woolworths still ruled the high street.

Gordon Brown’s now infamous YouTube address on MPs' expense reform might now seem, bizarrely, to remind us of happier times...

Of the 11 short films Google commissioned to promote its Chrome browser, more than half appear to have been conceived in an opium dream”, writes Zachary Rodgers at Clickz.com.

Of all the most innovative, not to mention useful inventions of the digital age, a cat flap which posts automatic pictures of feline intruders to Twitter is definitely at the top of the list.