I'm looking forward to heading up to Edinburgh next month. I'll be in town from the 18th to the 26th of August, and plan to catch parts of all the festivals that are on. The film festival has become the main reason for me to make the trip, but I'll drop in on the Fringe, International Festival and Book Festival too. The ifest is a great idea, but seems very very quiet. I got no response from an email I sent them almost two months ago.

I'll spend the last two days at the TV Festival. As a technology specialist I've often described the purpose of my visits to the TV festival as to 'find out what the industry gets' about the effect of the online world on their medium. There has rarely been any new information. This year I hope things will be different. The organisers promise to be more focused on technology-driven changes. A new annual lecture, called 'Futureview', will be introduced. This year it will be delivered by Janus Friis, co-founder of Joost and Skype.

Jeremy Paxman is delivering the centrepiece of the festival - the MacTaggart Lecture. He should provide an interesting view of the changes underway given his disdain [flash video] for viewers contributing content.