This morning we lost one of the good ones. Sir Bobby Robson died at around 6.30am, peacefully, at home, and surrounded by his family. Tributes from the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and Alan Shearer say a lot more about the man than I can.

He has had a great innings, enjoying a remarkable 50-year career in football – as a player at Fulham and West Brom, and a manager at Vancouver Royals, Fulham, Ipswich Town, PSV Eindhoven, Sporting Lisbon, Porto, Barcelona, Newcastle United, and as national manager with England, and consultant with the Republic of Ireland.

As a Newcastle supporter, I knew him best for his time as Toon manager between 1999 and 2004. There were some great times, even if there were no trophies. And when his reign petered out, courtesy of a clueless generation of multi-millionaire players, it said more about the sad decline of the game than of the man himself.

A great raconteur, Sir Bobby’s regular after dinner speeches and football talk-ins were legendary – full of humour, honesty, and passion for the game he loved so much. He loved Newcastle United, too, and it must have hurt him so much to see his once-great club reduced to the shambling wreck it now is by men not fit to tie Sir Bobby’s black and white scarf. His funny and moving Lifetime Achievement Award speech at the 2007 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards is well worth another watch.

Sir Bobby seemed to be a man who had time for anyone, and his selfless charity work after his multiple cancer battles will have long-lasting effects. Through the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, established to aid the detection and treatment of cancer in the North East of England, Sir Bobby has done something more important than anything he did in football – he has saved lives.

He was working right up until Sunday, turning up at a charity match to raise yet more money. “WOW!!!! What a fantastic reception I received,” he said in a message posted on his charity website. “It was one of the best nights of my life and I can’t believe how many people turned up to support me and my charity… Thank you all again from the bottom of my heart.”

RIP Sir Bobby, thanks for everything.

Make a donation to the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation

Football Bobby Robson, Newcastle United

The Church of Scientology is currently running a huge advertising campaign across the web (and on US TV). Part of the web campaign involves serving ads through Google’s AdSense service. AdSense serves ads to millions of websites, including this one, and my TV Ad Music website, based on website content, location and other factors. That’s an AdSense unit at the top right of this page.

Usually this works out OK. I’ll write a post mentioning the iPhone or Sky TV, and Google will serve ads relevant to the iPhone or Sky TV. (And if readers click those ads I’ll get a few pennies – hooray!) But recently, particularly over at TV Ad Music, the AdSense units have been overrun by Scientology ads. This seems to be happening across the web, and some website owners are having problems filtering the ads.

Up until today, none of my websites had featured any content that was in any way relevant to the Church of Scientology. And so there was no reason for Scientology ads to appear here. Also, like a lot of other website owners, I don’t want to use my webspace to promote this organisation.

If people want to believe in a religion founded by a science fiction writer – with the specific intention of making money – and based on sci-fi staples involving past lives, UFOs and alien overlords, then I have no particular problem with that. Each to their own.

If people want to believe in a space ruler called Xenu and ancient extraterrestrial societies called the Helatrobus and the Marcabians, and that when people die their souls go to the planet Venus to be re-planted into a new body and then dumped back on Earth in the ocean off the coast of California, then that is their prerogative.

But I would rather they did not attempt to recruit members via my websites.

If you’re an AdSense user who is being plagued by Scientology ads, here’s how to block them using the competitive ad filter and the AdSense Preview Tool:

1. Find the ad URL. To block specific ads you’ll need to determine the display or destination URLs. It’s not sufficient to use the organisation’s main URLs, for example scientology.org and dianetics.org. My Scientology ads don’t show display URLs, and clicking on your own ads violates Google’s policy, so this method uses the AdSense Preview Tool, which works with Internet Explorer.

To install the Preview Tool, right-click the link below and save the registry file to your desktop. Then double-click the file from your desktop to install it. You’ll then need to close and restart Internet Explorer.

AdSense Preview Tool

Open your website and right-click anywhere on the page outside of the your AdSense units. Select “Google AdSense Preview Tool” from the context menu.

A window will pop up showing adverts that AdSense will serve to your website. Tick the Scientology ad(s) and click “Show selected URLs”. The destination ad will appear. For example, for an ad offering a Scientology video on my website, the destination was at (Google-owned) YouTube (FYI: youtube.com/watch?v=zgsFh87RCU0). Copy the destination URL, and now we’ll block it.

2. Block the ad URL. Log in to Google AdSense and click “AdSense Setup” and “Competitive Ad Filter”. Paste the ad URL into the box under “AdSense for Content filters”. You might also want to paste it into “AdSense for Search filters”. You can also add Scientology’s main URLs, scientology.org and dianetics.org, to the filter lists. Click “Save changes”.

And you’re done. Google say it could take 48 hours for the changes to take effect, but the ads disappeared from my sites within a few minutes. You can confirm that the ads have been filtered using the Preview Tool again. If the ads reappear for another destination URL you may need to run through the process again.

Like I said earlier, this isn’t an anti-Scientology issue. It’s an anti-irrelevant and/or unsuitable ads issue. I’m sure that all Scientologists are very charming, very good-looking, and not at all bonkers. All I know is I would rather have red-hot knitting needles poked into my eye sockets than ever watch Battlefield Earth…

Technology, Websites Scientology

And lo, the music industry was revolutionised: Spotify has completed its iPhone app.

“We’ve finally completed work on the Spotify app for the iPhone and sent it over to the nice people at Apple,” says Spotify. “The application should be available in a few weeks for premium subscribers.”

As the video explains, the app has pretty much all of the Spotify features we we know and love. As hinted at previously, it features an offline playlist function, which syncs playlisted tracks to your iPhone allowing you to listen without being online.

It’s this offline mode that makes the Spotify app a potential iTunes killer. Why bother downloading a track if you can stream it and cache it on your phone? Despite the potential damage the app could do to iTunes downloads, Apple is likely to give it the thumbs-up, safe in the knowledge that the Spotify app will drive more users towards the iPhone. Of course, the Spotify app won’t be an iPhone exclusive – Android and S60 versions are unlikely to be far away.

For Spotify, the launch of the iPhone app will mean a huge boost in revenue. The app will be free, but users will need to upgrade to a premium Spotify account at £9.99 per month. The vast majority of Spotifiers are currently using ad-supported free accounts, but it always seemed unlikely that an ad-supported model alone could support the company. With millions of paying subscribers jumping aboard, Spotify’s future will look a whole lot more secure.

As for the artists and record companies, the (small) amount they are paid per play seems unlikely to rise, and the app seems certain to negatively affect download sales. Some artists won’t like it, and will try to pull their music from the service. But this is the future of music delivery, and those that don’t like it are going to have to lump it.

I originally wrote about the death of the download in January.

If you don’t already have one, here’s a post on the cheapest way to get an iPhone.

If you’re waiting for the Spotify app to appear for your Nokia or other brand of smartphone, here’s how to listen to Spotified music on your smartphone via Last.fm.

More Spotify stuff:
Five ways to make Spotify even better
Can Spotify save the album format?
Where is Beatles band on Spotify?

Music, Technology Spotify