LOCAL post offices may get a new lease of life if plans to install internet access in them get the go ahead.

The Federation of Sub Postmasters (www.subpostmasters.org.uk) in the UK is working on offering free net kiosks to those without a home computer.

The kiosks would allow post office customers to shop online, pay their bills and search for local information via touch screen technology.

YET again New Year's text messaging broke all records, with 111 million messages sent between midnight 31 December and midnight 1 January.

The new record beats last year's 102 million by eight per cent, and is twice the volume sent on an average day.

But many messages took two hours to arrive at their destination while others failed to arrive at all.

Vodafone saw a 53 per cent increase in the number of messages their service handled at midnight and O2 say 98 per cent of their messages arrived inside 10 seconds.

HIGH speed wireless access will soon be available at McDonald's outlets across the UK.

BT is working with the company to allow people to use laptops in the restaurants while munching on a burger.

Wireless access is already available in some airports and hotels, but this is the first major move of the service onto the high street.

MUSICIANS love to show how clever they are and one of their preferred methods is to sneak extra tracks onto CDs.

The Hidden Songs Archive (www.hiddensongs.com) catalogues instances of this hidden-track trickery.

The site is very thorough and offers not only the artist, song, and album, but also instructions on finding the track.

For example Kylie Minogue hid a song before the first track on her CD.

And if you know of any other instances which are not in the archive, you can submit your findings as well.