Companies are keen to follow the trail blazed by Internet sites like Facebook and Wikipedia, where hierarchy and protectionism have been pushed aside as the sites' owners hand over power to their customers, drafting in users to create innovations on the product.

CNN: Orchestral maneuvers in the boardroom

Western Europe's employees are also better wired: every new member-state is below the western average for internet penetration, and all but Estonia and Slovenia trail on e-government scores.

ECONOMIST: The brainpower famine begins to bite

The Tahoe Rim Trail Association has online bulletins about trail conditions, kept up-to-date by hiker reports, so a few minutes on the Internet would have informed me that we were in for up to 5ft of snow as the trail ascended above 8, 000ft.

BBC: Lost in paradise

The company describes a digital shadow of the trail an individual or company leaves behind on the Internet during the course of personal work or business.

FORBES: Find The Data Lurking In Your Company's Digital Shadow

Your browser leaves a trail of data behind it, revealing where you have been, which Internet service provider you use -- in some cases even your name and e-mail address.

CNN: ASIANOW - Asiaweek | Technology | Pulse

As Obama took to the trail in Michigan on Monday, the state's Republican Party released an Internet ad needling him over his decision not to campaign in Michigan during the primaries.

CNN: Obama's path to presidency goes through Michigan

Internet engineers also complain that RRP uses the Secure Sockets Layer protocol, which doesn't provide an audit trail for resolving domain-name disputes.

CNN: Is domain name system vulnerable to slamming?