The new improved Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro is now open for business. The opening match last weekend featured England and Brazil in a battle where both teams led for part of the game and eventually settled on a 2-2 draw.

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I'm a regular reader of the Gringoes.com website. It's a magazine for foreigners living and working in Brazil and the downsides of being in Brazil are a regular theme of articles and discussion, particularly in the associated Facebook group where readers can vent their opinion openly...

I was recently invited to attend a Wilton Park round-table discussion titled "Applying soft power: the Brazilian and British perspectives" in São Paulo. Wilton Park is a think tank funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to explore policy issues that affect the UK...

The death of Margaret Thatcher has been quite unlike that of any public figure in living memory. The debate about financing her funeral had started long ago so it was only to be expected that there was going to be some diverse and extreme views when...

How often each day are you truly disconnected from the internet? If you have a smartphone then it's probably not very often at all.

If you take a flight then it's likely you might have to endure several hours without social network updates - though many airlines are...

Peter Hook believes that the truth about Joy Division, the legendary post-punk band he formed, remains unknown. Much has been written about the band and their influence on English music culture, but Hooky has now followed up his popular history of The Haçienda club...

British film fans cherish Ealing in west London. The leafy suburb is home to the oldest film studio in the world - a studio that is still seeing active use today on many British movies and TV shows, such as Downton Abbey. The

Suede have never been to Brazil and as their car meandered slowly through the Pinheiros district of São Paulo towards the Queens Head pub this morning, they might have wondered why they are here now. The area is being extensively upgraded, with new roads and facilities...

Dr Sue Black is an internationally-known computer scientist. She is is a Senior Research Associate in the Software Systems Engineering group in the the Department of Computer Science at University College London and a Senior Consultant with Cornerstone Global Associates.

Dr Black visited Brazil...

How did you watch the London Olympic and Paralympic games? Did you follow the coverage on TV offered by the BBC and Channel 4 or were you watching on a phone or iPad, catching video clips offered up from various social networks?

London 2012 was the first Olympic...

British people have been enthused by the Olympic games and are searching for those long-forgotten trainers - inspired to exercise by the wall-to-wall sport on TV - according to a feature in the latest issue of Time magazine.

And why not? 2012 has been a bumper year for...

Sometimes the line between patriotism and nationalism can seem paper-thin. When I stood in the crowd at the Rebellion punk festival in Blackpool last month, the St George's flags and swastikas were clearly visible, yet the same crowd roared with approval when a Jamaican, Usain Bolt, won the...

The first time volunteers were used at the Olympic games was at London in 1948 so it's only appropriate that at the London 2012 games over 70,000 volunteered to help out. Olympic volunteering is coming home.

The 'Games Makers' have staffed the venues, directed the public...

Do you remember the fear of chaos in London before the Olympic games? The transport congestion and lack of hotel availability? It was predicted that enormous lines would snake around train stations forcing commuters into a 45-minute wait just to get onto a station platform.

The horror stories and recorded...

As the London Olympic games approached, much talk was of the Olympic Athletes' Hub and how athletes would be more connected to their fans than ever before thanks to social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

But the social media story that has dominated the media in...

The historic neighbourhood of Ealing was rocking last night as 250 bloggers joined together to celebrate the latest Ealing Tweetup - better known as #ealingtu to users of the social networking service.

I started the Ealing Tweetup three years ago as a meeting where a few...

What is it about being British? We go and invent all the best sports in the world and then give great sportsmen like Andy Murray a hard time about whether he is more Scottish or more British - or ever going to win at Wimbledon.

All eyes on Friday were on the Facebook IPO with analysts and investors still undecided about whether it makes sense to value a company with revenue of under $4bn at $104bn.

And one of the key questions is how Facebook will increase the amount of revenue they earn...

Last week I was presenting some social media disaster stories at a conference hosted by the customer care people Teleperformance. You can guess at some of the brands I talked about - when I asked the audience to suggest a few ideas of online disasters they called out...

The Damned were always a little different to most punk bands, with singer Dave Vanian possessing the kind of voice many crooners would kill for and guitarist Captain Sensible being a skilled musician. Contrast this to Paul Simonon writing chords on his...