The health minister has announced all Irish pubs and restaurants will be smoke-free from January of next year. As one who really does have a bad smoke allergy, I can hardly wait. It's the main thing that keeps me out of pubs and ruins the pleasure of eating out (just try to be an elegant dinner companion while surreptitiously blowing your nose...). I never thought I'd see the day they'd make this decision. And as I posted a while back, the majority of Californians in a recent independent, statewide survey -- including bar owners -- overwhelmingly support what was initially a controversial ban on smoking in bars (a margin of 75% of bar owners in favour, compared to 47% at the start).

New Biz on the Blog: the Guardian's Jim McLellan has a piece today on the business use of blogs and turning blogs into a business. A good read:

Indeed, the anarchic fluid nature of blogging may deter most business people from entering the field. Those who are keen point out that most blogs will remain personal, driven by obsessions and enthusiasms. Most won't make any money.

But as blogging goes mainstream, thanks to the likes of AOL, they plan on playing a careful game. "Ninety-nine per cent of bloggers won't make money," says Blogads' Henry Copeland. "But when we've got 10 million bloggers a couple years from now, I'm confident that 100,000 of them will be uniquely valuable to advertisers."