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This weekend saw the start of the live X Factor shows in which contestants who survived boot camp got the chance to prove themselves in front of a live audience. The same can be said for a few advertisers too as they took advantage of large audiences to launch brand new TV campaigns. Whether you are a fan of the show or not, the commercial breaks proved to be a hot bed of entertainment in themselves.

The amount of time spent watching linear commercial TV channels in the UK during January to June 2011 increased to a new record for the period, according to a Thinkbox.

The average TV viewer in the UK watched 18 hours, 9 minutes of commercial linear TV a week (2 hours, 35 minutes a day) during the first six months of 2011, according to new figures from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB). This is an increase of 48 minutes a week (7 minutes a day) on the same period in 2010, and an increase of 1 hour, 47 minutes a week (15 minutes a day) on the five-year average for the period.

After weeks of tears, embarrassing auditions and several groups being formed ditched and then reformed - winter finally arrived on Saturday night with the first of the X Factor live shows. There was much to discuss about this weekend’s extravaganza, but perhaps one of the most interesting things is that for the second year running, dairy Brand Yeo Valley has decided to launch a new advert for its yoghurt that runs only during the show’s ad breaks. Last year, Yeo Valley focused on rapping famers, this year they debuted a new dairy themed boy band “The Churned”. Whilst the genre has changed, the premise remains similar, as the ad plays out like a music video with songs that are downloadable online.

Following the sad death of Apple co-founder and digital innovator Steve Jobs luminaries including US president Barack Obama and Microsoft founder Bill Gates all paid tribute to his memory. And yet still, his legacy was not enough to reach one Facebook friend, who posted:  “Who is Steve Jobs and why are people filing up my newsfeed with posts about him?”

Of course, this comment flies in the face of the advertising activity of Jobs’ company over the last 12 months, during which £36m was spent on advertising its products (Source: NMR). Jobs himself is credited with guiding Apple from the brink of financial ruin to one of the world’s most valuable companies with a market value now estimated to stand at £227bn – thanks in part to the development of the Apple iPhone. 

With Apple appearing increasingly vulnerable, Amazon have made a play to enter the overcrowded tablet market – after the embarrassing failures of Research In Motion's Playbook and Hewlett Packard's untitled, never-produced device.

The Kindle Fire (and new "Kindle Touch") were launched on the 28th of September and, while it lacks the horsepower of the Apple behemoth (which is 2.7 inches bigger), it promises just enough features to make it a worthy purchase. 

Last month, a team from MEC Manchester that included Dan Alderson, Dan McNicholas, Simon Price, Laura Sweeting, Anton Kirkpatrick and Ben McKay took part in a 140-mile coast-to-coast cycle ride to raise money for Elise for Life. They were joined by friends, family and a few people from Global Radio and have so far raised more than £2,800.

This total is still going up, so first of all we’d like to say a big thank you to all those who were kind enough to donate… it really helped the team get up some of those hills! 

It was a difficult, eventful and ultimately rewarding time for all involved – and here, Dan Alderson takes us through the highs and the lows of the 3 days in the saddle.

At 10am on Thursday morning, a team of 14 MEC employees and friends will set off from the beach in Whitehaven in Cumbria in an attempt to cycle all the way across the country to Tynemouth on the North Sea - an epic 140-mile ride across the country over three days.

The role played by the mobile internet in our daily lives has been highlighted by a new study published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this month.

England's opening match in the Rugby World Cup was watched by a peak of 4.8 million viewers on ITV1 on Saturday September 10^th – an impressive start given the inconvenient scheduling times for UK-based fans.

The micro-blogging web phenomenon Twitter now has over 100 million active users across the world, according to its chief executive Dick Costolo – suggesting its popularity shows no signs of fading any time soon.