The silicon.com Weekly Round-Up: 14.03.03

Wallace and Gromit eat your heart out: some UK boffins have invented a pair of genuinely clever trousers.

Researchers at ICI-owned Quest International and Woolmark have together developed something called micro-encapsulation. This is the science bit: micro-encapsulation enables minute droplets or particles to be incorporated into fabric. The fabric may not be just for trousers, of course, but why spoil a stupid opening sentence by adhering to the facts?

According to the Daily Telegraph, early trials of this giant leap forward in textile manufacture have been successful.

'But what's the use of this?' I hear you cry. Well, the treated garments can cover up nasty niffs (including sweat and tobacco). They can even repel insects. And men - women will be falling over themselves to get their hands on your legs thanks to the pheromone-infused Farahs under development (OK, we made that one up. The rest is true though).

Shibani Mohindra, new business development director at Quest, told the Telegraph this week: "Until now, textiles have only utilised the senses of vision and touch but a new way of looking at the impact of senses on our lives - 'sensism' - will revolutionise the textile industry."

Not quite true: smell often acts as a handy guide for men to tell when their socks/pants need washing. But a more fragrant world is a happier world. No doubt about that.

Meanwhile, still in the land of textiles, Benetton is planning to weave radio frequency identification (RFID) chips into its clothing in a bid to make its supply chain management more efficient. Employees of the company will be able to scan entire boxes of items from up to five feet away, a vast improvement on bar code technology. The chips will also act as anti-theft devices, make bootlegging more difficult and give the company detailed information about customers' buying habits.

For example, as Wired said this week, the technology could enable Benetton to store your purchase profile; if you were to go into a shop and buy something, the shop assistant would be able to access your records and say 'Last time you were here you bought a lurid pink jumper. We have a natty pair of green trousers that would go nicely with that. Would you like to see them?'

But can you see Big Brother peeping out between the gaps in the changing room curtains? Anyone with an RFID receiver would be able to locate Benetton clothing wearers wherever they happened to be. That includes companies that might want to sell them something.

Richard Smith, an internet privacy and security consultant, told Wired that the development put him in mind of a scene in Minority Report, in which Tom Cruise enters a department store and is greeted by a personalised billboard advert. But in Benetton's brave new world, the diminutive Christian Scientist's clothing would be used to identify him instead of his eyeballs. Smith said: "It's going to be a really bad idea for a company to hide a small radio chip in its clothing. Clearly, those tags need to be deactivated at the cash registers."

But as that will take away some of the potential of the technology for retailers such as Benetton, it's about as likely as Wallace giving up cheese for Lent.

Staying with the subject of cheese (and that's certainly the first time that sentence has been used in the Round-Up), this year's Comic Relief campaign comes to a head today (Friday), and Robert Miles from Hull University's Department of Computer Science is doing his bit for charity. We're told Robert has become something of a campus legend over the years for imparting his computer knowledge to students in the form of poetry.

And by the time you read this, he will have delivered a 40 minute poem for Red Nose Day. And the title of this work? "The Microsoft .Net Infrastructure and its impact on the Cheese Industry."

Let's hope his students give Comic Relief lots of their beer money. To enjoy some of Rob's past efforts, see http://www.lectureinrhyme.com. More information on Comic Relief can be found at http://www.rednoseday.com.

As Benetton wants to put chips in your clothes, Samsung is keen to put a microphone in your ear. The company claims its device is the first 'earbud' headset to contain both a transmitter and a microphone. The latter picks up the sound of the user's voice via his or her head, filtering out some 90 per cent of background noise. The earbud will be available later this year in both a wired and a Bluetooth version. The latter could allow mobile phone users to conduct a call without having to hold either a handset or a microphone to their mouth. So we can all confuse the hell out of each other by appearing to announce loudly to fellow commuters on the train that we've left work and will be home in 30 minutes. Modern life eh?

Games consoles could become the entertainment centre of the modern home, if you believe the hype. They are tipped to end up as a combined hi-fi, video recorder, DVD player and net access device, driving up broadband uptake in the process as little Jimmy and Jemimah log on to play multi-player games with their mates from down the road (or across the world). But there's a hitch in that vision.

We got an email from a reader in Northern Ireland this week, whose son is an avid Xbox gamer. Our man ordered a cable modem and signed up for an internet connection from NTL so his lad could network his console. But he couldn't do so: NTL said that he had to have a PC as well. He didn't. That may seem a bit daft: after all, there are lots of console users who aren't PC owners, and there will be an estimated 25 million Xbox Live/PlayStation 2 users in the UK by the end of 2006. Why do you need a PC as well?

Bill Goodland, director of internet at NTL, told us: "The key issue here is provisioning. For example at present broadband customers have to fill in screens on their PC and wouldn't be able to do that with their console only. We are actively looking at the possibility of providing a console-only broadband connection but have nothing to announce as yet because we need to do more research in this area."

Telewest highlighted another problem. A spokeswoman said: "Once a connection is installed it would be very difficult for us to work out what's wrong and fix faults if a user doesn't have a PC. But I can tell you we're certainly looking into it as there is obviously a huge market for online gaming."

BT Openworld is a little more reluctant to dip its toes into these waters. Chris Jones, head of partnerships for the company, said: "We've done our homework and the reason for not offering console-only broadband is that the majority of Xbox users have PCs."

Our original story prompted this rather impassioned response from a Mr Andrew Whitney.

"Yet again the so-called broadband companies have completely failed to anticipate demand for an obvious dimension of the platform, i.e. online gameplay of the type represented by Xbox Live and others.

"I am simply aghast at the senior officers running these companies, and their lack of foresight. How can they have been taken by surprise by something that has been so obviously, and noisily coming for so long? What do these guys *do* all day long? They are obviously so out of touch with their markets that they have no business being in the job.

"Doubtless they are also the first to complain about the state of the industry/their stock options, when opportunity is staring them directly in the face.

"It really bothers me that the UK economy is being held back by an entire class of incompetents running these companies. The same bottom set, 80s throwback big corporation donkeys were telling us there was insufficient demand for broadband just over six months ago, and look what happened when they actually made a little bit of it available and let a few people know? Now they are probably trying to put their engineers on skateboards to get them round quicker. That is if they've heard of skateboards.

Very poor show... Sincerely, etc.

"PS. A Boolean Google search of articles including the words "Xbox" AND "broadband" returns 153,000 articles, English only, in 0.48 seconds. You don't need to be a visionary to get a handle on the zeitgeist these days. Maybe BT Openworld and NTL just don't feel Microsoft is worth keeping tabs on, from a proposition-planning perspective."

Funny how nearly everything comes back to Microsoft these days, isn't it? Not sure whether that's impressive or scary. We're off to cogitate on that one over a Jacob's water biscuit and a spot of Gouda.

Until next time, here's some more news...

Xbox hackers 'game on' once again

'Bandido' to be extradited from Oz as part of piracy probe

Talking washing machine puts CeBIT in a spin

2003 IT budgets remain 'anaemic'

Virus warning: Deloder targets password idiocy