Mike Butcher TechCrunch Europe As

Britons have always played a role at the cutting edge of technology however who is actually wielding the influence today? Whether internet entrepreneurs, developers or politicians, we wanted to bring at the same time the most influential living Britons in information innovation.

In compiling this list, the Telegraph's research team considered several different types of influence. Some of the people on this list are included because things they did several years ago are on the whole influential today, others are on the list because of their current role. Some are on the list because of specific achievements or milestones and a few are included because of their potential influence. We hope the list will provoke debate and welcome suggestions for those we have missed out in the comments.

50: Suw Charman-Anderson Consultant and blogger The 24th of March 2009 was dominated online by one theme: women in research. Ada Lovelace Day, a project conceived by Charman-Anderson, a freelance consultant, and inspired by Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, assistant to Charles Babbage and the world's first computer programmer, saw 2,000 bloggers and broadcasters contributing to a world-wide conversation.

46: Ajaz Ahmed AKQA Ahmed is co-founder and chairman of AKQA, the world's largest independent digital design, research and marketing agency. His customers include global brands just as Nike, Coca-Cola, MacDonalds and Fiat and his agency's work - which includes the design of the XBox 360 menu system - helps to define the online faces of the corporate world.

45: Steve Garnett Salesforce.com Chairman for the EMEA region of salesforce.com, the leading cloud-based customer relationship management company, Steve Garnett is one of the biggest proponents of software as a service. The success of salesforce and the rise of cloud computing and Saas is to a large part down to Garnett's technology and work.

44: Tanya Byron Psychologist and Government adviser Though like as not best known for her strict, no-nonsense approach with youngsters on The House of Tiny Tearaways, psychologist and parenting expert Tanya Byron was the perfect choice to head up a Government report on the impact of the internet and video games on children. The Byron Review, published last year, was roundly praised for its balanced view of the perils, pitfalls and positives presented by the digital age. Among some of Dr Byron's key recommendations was a greater involvement and engagement by parents in the online lives of their children, and a review of the video game classification process in the United Kingdom.

43: Iain Dodsworth Developer, Tweetdeck Twitter has been the focus of much attention over the past year and its success has led to a variety of Twitter customers. One of the most successful and highly regarded is Tweetdeck, from developer Iain Dodsworth, who has spent more than a decade in innovation, working for the likes of the BBC and Sky.

41: Richard Moross Moo.com Richard Moross is the man who made business cards cool. As the founder and chief executive of Moo.com, he's turned on-demand stationery printing in to an art form, allowing Moo clients to personalise their business cards, greetings cards, and nearly everything else in between. In an age of Bluetooth and email, the old-fashioned business card may have been an unlikely candidate for a renaissance, nevertheless having struck deals with the likes of Flickr and Bebo to allow people to easily import photos and information from their social-networking site on to a card, Moross has shown that the digital age and the printed press can happily co-exist. Not bad for a debut business venture.

39: Michael Birch Founder, Bebo During all the talk these days is about Facebook and Twitter, neither would be here were it not for the likes of MySpace and Bebo. Michael Birch, along with his American-born wife Xochi, launched Bebo in 2005 and it quickly became the hot online destination for teens. Whereas MySpace was all about music, Bebo was all about video, carving out a niche for itself as the go-to site for original content and commissions generated exactly for the web. The Birches sold Bebo to AOL for $850 million in March 2008, making a tidy profit and ensuring their place in the internet pantheon.

37. Baroness Greenfield Scientist A biologist to put it more exactly than a technologist, Baroness Greenfield after all holds the country's attention when she holds forth on the effects of research on impressionable young minds. Her remarks to the House of Lords in February, asserting that attention deficit disorder-like symptoms might result from children being exposed to relationships that are 'devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance', were widely reported as a refreshingly sceptical voice. She might so then be wrong, however that doesn't mean she isn't influential.

35: Mike Magee Founder, The Register and The Inquirer Magee co-founded The Register in 1994 and along these lines brought a sarcastic, tabloid-style of journalism to the IT sector. Arguably an influence on the snark-heavy tone of tech blogs, Magee has since gone on to launch The Inquirer, which he sold in 2006 to VNU, publisher of Computing and IT Week, however remained as editor. Afterwards leaving VNU in 2008, he set up a third IT news site, The IT Examiner.

33: Mike Butcher TechCrunch Europe As the editor of TechCrunch Europe, Butcher is an influential figure within the start-up scene, giving nascent companies their first media coverage. Butcher has been an internet journalist since the early 90s and over the last two years he's built TechCrunch Europe into a strong partner for the main site, TechCrunch.com.

30: Felix Miller and Richard Jones Co-founders, Last.fm When Last.fm launched in 2002, it laid the foundations for a revolution in the way we listen to music. Last.fm was based on the Audioscrobbler platform, designed by Richard Jones, which could recommend songs a person might enjoy based on their listening habits. Last.fm became one of the hottest online properties, and Miller, Jones and the rest of the Last.fm team struck deals with all the major labels, enabling users to stream music over the internet for free, as then as pay to download their favourite tracks. Last.fm was as well a pioneer of social integration, allowing users to embed their Last.fm profiles in to other sites, just as Facebook. Even though the Last.fm team sold the business to CBS for $140 million in 2007, the work of Miller, Jones, and their co-founders has paved the way for similar services, including Spotify and We7.

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