Jeff Jarvis has long suggested that, to do well online, you should do what you're good at, and link to the rest.

And yet the Daily Mail online continues to do pop.

First, it tries to cover The Ting Tings filming an Adidas commercial (sorry, "pop video"). Despite having to prod its readers about why they might care about these Thing Things:

The upcoming indie group were seen in their element last month as they performed a duet with Estelle at the Brit Awards.

Bringing their edgy style to the stage, it saw the band and Estelle segway between their hit That's Not My Name with her song American Boy.

The Ting Tings formed in 2004, but burst onto the music scene in May 2008 after their album We Started Nothing claimed the top spot in the UK charts.

So, that's an "indie band" somehow "in their element" playing a mainstream industry event in a mash-up with Estelle; the Ting Tings and Estelle apparently riding a self-balancing personal transportation device between two songs (and what about the third track they played?) and a band reaching number one before "bursting onto the music scene".

You'd think that the Mail might be on safer ground with U2. But not really:

U2 find a street that DOES have a name - it's theirs and it's in Manhattan

The whole point of "Where The Streets Have No Name" is about wanting to go to a place where the streets have no name. Which would suggest that finding streets with no names isn't a problem for them.

The 3AM Girls might be pleased to have discovered that this years supposedly-surprising collaboration is going to be The Ting Tings and Estelle. It's the common Brit organisers trick of making the less-well-known act double up with someone a little bit more familiar, so they can have the credibility without losing too much of the ITV audience during the three minutes they're on.

But could they just tell us? Oh no. They went for a joke first:

We're sure to be Gavin' a laugh at this year's Brit Awards - especially with Gavin & Stacey funnymen Mathew Horne and James Corden hosting the annual music extravaganza.

Sometimes, you do wonder if they've got a bet on to see at what point an editor might intervene, don't you?

In an age when even the US government is nationalising banks, perhaps it's unsurprising that the Mobos have been given out in a fair-shares for all way, with Estelle and Leona Lewis getting two prizes each.

It probably doesn't matter over much who got which, but Estelle got best UK female and best song (American Boy) while Leona took best album and the in-no-way-consolatory best video prize.

Dizzee Rascal took the Best And, Honestly, He Wasn't The Only Bloke We Could Think Of For The Shortlist UK Male Award.

Chris Brown turned up, and thus qualified for Best International Artist.

The Mobos web site hasn't been updated with details of the any of the winners. Can't they find anyone to take a laptop along?

Besides being an embarrassing episode, costing the artist hundreds of sales, and suggesting that Warners bosses don't have a clue what they're doing, pulling Estelle off iTunes nearly had another consequence for Warner Music Group: Idolater quotes the Hits Daily Double claims that Apple warned Warners that if it wanted to play games like that, iTunes would drop all promo slots of WMG product. This is probably an experiment that Warners won't be rushing to repeat.

There's nothing worse than making a big, flashy exit, only to have to creep back in a few minutes later and try and pretend nothing happened.

Having made the bemusing decision to yank Estelle's album from iTunes to see if not having it on the biggest music retailer would help sales, Atlantic have quietly returned the album hoping to stop the resulting sales plummet.

Once again, the Mobos have announced their shortlists without bothering to actually publish the list on their own website, which - along with the news that Mel B and the Run from Run DMC will be presenting - suggests that even the MOBOs don't really take themselves seriously anymore.

Amongst this year's nominations for best music of black origin prizes are Adele and Duffy.

Which makes it a little more bemusing that the MOBO chief executive has a pop at Britain for not treating our black artists properly:

How about making a start by not using the awards designed to correct the white-artists-only bias of the Brit Awards to honour exactly the same white artists that the Brits fawn over.

Estelle, the Telegraph reminds us, was complaining about this very thing back in March:

That's going to make things a bit frosty at the prize-giving, then.

Inspired by Kid Rock's success, his label decided - bemusingly - to pull Estelle's six month old album from Apple, too.

How did that work out, then?

Estelle's single plunged 26 places on the Billboard chart.

But the album - did that benefit?

Not really - that tanked over 100 places down the album chart.

Another smart move by the music industry, then. Well done, guys.

Emboldened - or emstupidened - by the sales of Kid Rock's album without appearing on iTunes, the majors are once again trying to pressure Apple into letting them dictate the retail terms for iTunes.

Atlantic have pulled a four month old Estelle album from iTunes as some sort of statement - although since not even major label bosses would believe that Kid Rock's album sold because the kids liked the "not available on iTunes" cachet, it's hard to see what the point is.

The labels dislike that Apple allows cherry-picking of tracks rather than bundling the rubbish fillers up with the few decent songs. This, though, explains why the non-appearance of the album on iTunes didn't overly hurt Rock's sales - had it been available there, people would have just bought the single and left the sludgey gloop of the rest of the record unwanted on the virtual shelves. Rock could probably have sold a million more copies of the single through iTunes, but it's unlikely he would have shifted many full sets of tracks from the album session.

Actually, I'm thinking we should encourage the labels in this new pursuit - for what better way of having it flagged that nobody would want most of the tracks on an album than deciding it's not worth bothering letting people buy them individually. The sticker might say 'not on iTunes'; it could be read as 'stick to the single - or wait for Now That's What I Call Music'

We've kind of forgotten the aim of the Mercury Prize - beyond promoting a now-defunct telecommunications company, of course - because we're sure nobody would have set out to create a prize like the one they've ended up with. That said, this year's shortlist actually functions as a useful guide to just-off-mainstream British music in the last twelve months, if you accept Adele as being, you know, slightly edgy, and with the proviso that there's no reason why Rachel Unthank and the Winterset should be locked away in some rock genre.

Once again, there is a disappointing shortage of black artists - Estelle apart - and the British Asian scene is ignored completely.

The shortlist in full:

* Adele - 19
* British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
* Burial - Untrue
* Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
* Estelle - Shine
* Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim
* Neon Neon - Stainless Style
* Portico Quartet - Knee-Deep In The North Sea
* Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - The Bairns
* Radiohead - In Rainbows
* Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
* The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement

If I was a betting man, I'd be doing a blog about greyhounds. Nevertheless, given the ability of Mercury judges to have a great shortlist and still crown a Richard III, we'd guess Elbow will carry the day. We're cheering for Laura Marling, though.

We're increasingly fond of Estelle, who has tricked Kanye West into promoting a child's drink on his new album:

To be fair, hot Ribena used to be the treat we'd have on winter mornings when we were very, very small. We were decades ahead of the loop, we were.