Should an alien land in front of the newsstand this week they would have no doubt about who the most important person in the UK is…it has to be Cheryl Cole.

She’s having dates with an A-List man according to Look, She can’t bear it when Ashley touches her accoprding to heat, She’s been so strong according to OK. She’s moving to LA according to Now.

And Jordan tells us, via New!, she’s not too thin she’s never looked better.

Oh, Ulrika tells Hello her third marriage is really going to last. And Kate Moss speaks to Grazia (if that’s the coverline, you can sort of guess she hasn’t actually said anything interesting).

It truly is a wonderful world we live in.

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• Dropbox: The Online Storage Solution We’ve Been Waiting For?
  (tags: storage)
• Matt McAlister » GPS device + data feeds + social = awesome service
  One of the most interesting market directions in recent months in my mind is the way the concept of a location service is evolving. People are using location as a vector to bring information that matters directly to them. A great example of this is Dash.n
  (tags: gps local location)

Sue Unerman in her Media Week column this week talks about the success of the BBC iPlayer and how it is paving the way for us to all watch TV on our laptops, and concludes

The BBC is teaching us to watch TV on our laptops. It is also arguably hastening the decline of viewing as a family. While this represents a minority of viewing in our house, and is largely programme-led (Dr Who, The Simpsons, Soccer AM), we still gather on significant occasions to watch and discuss TV shows.

Chez Waldman, the iPlayer has no role. Once the children are finally asleep, it is bad enough that we both sit with laptops while watching TV, but the idea of sitting with laptops on our laps without the TV on, and with us both watching separate things…hell, that’s practially social meltdown!

We want to believe that media is becoming more social. And in many ways it is. But with individuals able to get what they want, when they want it, there is an equal and opposite process making media into something  inherently less social.

As I sit there on the train watching The Shield on my iPod Touch, I have not only completely removed myself from my surroundings, but also carved out a bit of media consumption that is mine and mine alone.

But here’s the flip side - A few weeks ago, I saw a family of four sit down in the Starbucks in Cobham on a Sunday afternoon. They all pulled out their Nintendo DSs and  sat in silence playing  a game against  each other. Is that  the new form of family bonding?

• John Naughton: How Flickr developed into a classic Web 2.0 success | Media | The Observer
  So let us raise a glass and toast Flickr’s fourth birthday. And marvel that Yahoo was able to acquire it in March 2005 for a mere $35m - which was not only the bargain of the century, but may also be part of the reason Microsoft is so desperate to acquire
  (tags: flickr yahoo photography)
• Peter Preston: When news is free, who pays the journalists? | Media | The Observer
  Thousands of students want to be journalists - and most still want to be print journalists. But they don’t buy papers; they’re used to getting their news free: from TV, radio, the net, the freesheets. News costs them nothing, but they still plan a career
  (tags: newspapers journalism)
• ADrive Offers 50 GB Free Web Storage
  It’s certainly no secret that we love free storage around here at Mashable. So it’s hard to deny the allure of ADrive’s offer of 50 GB of free storage. That’s definitely the biggest we’ve seen yet without costing users a dime.
  (tags: storage productivity)
• The world’s 50 most powerful blogs | Technology | The Observer
  For some strange reason they seem to have missed me out…
  (tags: blogging)

• The Coming Death of Paper as an Information Storage Medium - ReadWriteWeb
  (tags: print)