Our Children’s story podcast, Storynory, has been fairly steady at No 3 in the US Kids and Family section of iTunes for quite a while. I was pleased to take a look last night and see it had crept up to No 2, sandwiched in between Disney and Cartoon Network. Storynory genuinely has a global audience. I received an email this week from Afghanistan. A school in New Zealand asked me this week if they could transcribe the texts of the stories in braille. We have loads of downloads from Taiwan. India is creeping up on our list of territories. The truth is that everyone loves a good story, and fairy tales are universal. America provides by far our biggest audience, and a steady flow of small but nice mentions in the media. Sometimes it seems like the UK is where we are least appreciated. Perhaps the Brits like to stick with familiar brands, like the BBC… Still we don’t do too badly here. I just think there is still a bit of resistance to unfamiliar, independent producers in the UK.

Estonia might have voted for Russia in the EuroVision Song Contest, but on a political level, tensions remain high. The small Baltic state has come under Cyber Attack , with many of its Government Websites going down. It says the attack is coming from its Big Neighbour and former Soviet “brother”. Russian bloggers have told me that similar attacks take place on websites belonging to NGOs within Russia if they are organising political demonstrations.

Estonia is one of the most Online Countries in the world. Russia isn’t. Estonia has free competition - and therefore competitive prices for internet access. Russia’s telephone market is all tied up and access is expensive, and therefore elitist. But that doesn’t mean to say that Russia isn’t sophisticated when it comes to the dark side of the net. We should all look out.

The latest version of WordPress, the best blogging platform, is out.  I’ve instantly and painlessly upgraded Blog Relations’ site, and if nothing appears broken, I’ll do the same on the other blogs and podcasts we are running.

WordPress is now shooting for more regular updates - which is great because we all love new features - but I wonder if the Plugin producers can keep up with the pace.  Some strange things happened with the last version. For instance Extended Live Archives would not work with the integrated static front page feature.  And Ultimate Tag Warrior lost “tag” pages if you approved a comment lost in moderation.   These were two key plugins for WordPress users, and their authors are probably a bit out-of-breath keeping up with the latest WordPress versions.

The key feature of the new WordPress is that it integrates Sidebar widgets.  I suppose I am going to have to make the sidebar “widget” friendly.

If I was a PR man, which thankfully I’m not, Tony Blair would be my Way, my Untruth and my Light. He would be my Great Lord and my Inspiration.

His genius, I believe, was to invent political humility. Alright, it was probably fake humility, but it convinced more often than not. The quality was evident in his self-authored epitaph which he declared yesterday: “I did what I thought was right.”

There is something winning about a leader who admits he is an ordinary, fallible, mortal, who is simply doing his best. I noticed it years ago, when I saw Blair, the young opposition leader, walking around the BBC’s Broadcasting House. He was talking to a producer and a presenter, sprinkling his star dust on them, but really talking to them. Other politicians who came round were more other worldly. They weren’t rude, but they were somehow like other beings. They sort of swept in and out of the BBC. There was something regal perhaps even super-natural in their bearing.

I can tell you something about Gordon Brown. He is never going to say that he thought he was right. When Gordon is forced out to face the public, which not that often, he bangs on about how everything does IS right. He just goes on and on about his record which is not just right, but is THE BEST.

But the conversational tone, which is exemplified by blogs, is now the modern way of communicating. You can spin or not spin, but you have to talk across to people, not down to them. This is why Gordon Brown cannot win a General Election.

The question we get asked most about our Storynory podcast is “What’s your business model?” At the Bologna Children’s Book fair last week, we explained it to a journalist from The Bookseller magazine. This is what she wrote in this week’s edition:

Free digitalbooks from Storynory.

Ghost writer Matthew Lynn and Hugh Fraser are offering free digital audiobooks in line with a mission to become “the Arctic Monkeys of children’s publishing”. Their website, Storynory.com, offers free-to-download retellings of classic fairytales and Greek legends, presented by a series of characters including Prince Bertie the Frog and Tick Tock Turkey. They are hoping to launch books and other media formats featuring the characters. Some 120,000 downloads are made from Storynory.com each month.

That’s it in a nutshell.

It’s been a reasonably good time for publicity. I was quoted in Newsweek , no less, recently about our Save Christopher Robin Campaign. Unfortunately it didn’t mention Storynory directly (”Hugh Fraser on his blog”) The lesson from Newsweek is always to give a journalist a snappy description of who you are and who you represent. I should have known that, having been one myself. Silly me!

We also looking out for a mention in the June edition of Nick Jnr Magazine which has a huge circulation in the US.

You don’t need a background in business administration to be successful but the extra knowledge can’t hurt.