Xbox-itis

The erstwhile online bookseller polled 3,000 game-playing types, and discovered that a whopping 74 per cent of those who planned to buy an Xbox as soon as it hit the high street yesterday were going to stay at home to celebrate.

A further 20 per cent were thinking about it. Of the 74 per cent who definitely intended to play truant from the big school of work, 46 per cent said they'd pull a sickie, while 26 per cent are a bit a bit more honest: they plan to tell their employers that their absence was all Bill Gates' fault.

Gates gets the blame for a lot of things (and rightly so: did you see his appearance on the 200th episode of Frasier? Instead of taking advantage of an opportunity to come across as a rounded human being with a sense of humour, Gates decided to turn it into a stomach-churning advert for Windows XP.)

Err& where were we? Yes, the Xbox launch is already under a small cloud (a bit like Perkin in the Flumps), with US games developers alleging that Microsoft is strong-arming retailers into promoting Microsoft-developed games in preference to their own. How? By threatening to limit console supplies if the retailers don't play ball. Which is very unlike Microsoft.

The developers are also concerned that the online gaming aspects of the Xbox will force people to access Microsoft servers, even if they're not playing Microsoft games.

Gates refutes all the allegations of course. And if it hadn't been for that Frasier appearance, the Round-Up might even have believed him. Hello Bill, we're NOT listening&

Best whisper this one quietly, but there are a few signs that the UK government (and in particular the e-envoy's office) is getting its online act together. First, it announced this week that the UK Online portal will soon be available via digital TV (and a bit further down the line via public kiosks and mobile phones).

Obviously the government wants to promote the joys of digital TV, because it really wants to switch off analogue transmissions as soon as possible (probably 2010) so it can flog the spectrum and rake in some more cash.

Nevertheless, a pat on the back is due: all we need now is for the cable companies to catch up with the breadth and depth of Sky's interactive services and a few more people might be able to access UK Online (NTL, are you listening?) It might be nice if they didn't go bankrupt as well (err& NTL, ITV Digital, Telewest, are you listening?), which again explains some of the government's pro-digital rhetoric, but still: well done.

Then there came the announcement that the Cabinet Office is just days away from publishing a new e-voting XML-based standard (se http://www.silicon.com/a51976 ).

The standard doesn't address the security and authentication issues which are likely to dog any e-voting scheme but again - this is a step in the right direction.

And it's timely too: a report released on Thursday by Touch plc shows that 87 per cent of the electorate would like to be able to vote online using their home or office PC in the next general election. (Only 59.4 per cent of eligible voters bothered to go to the polling booths last time round).

Could it be that the government's specially appointed 'net gurus' are getting the message across? You can keep up-to-date with the three e-musketeers - Alan Hansen, Honor Blackman and Lisa Riley - here - http://www.letsallgeton/gov.uk/news .

Ms Riley's latest report is rather curious. She got herself a laptop recently, and quite likes it. "I realised I could use it to keep in touch with people," she says, "especially mates abroad. It's good because a) it's free and b) it's fun."

Excuse me? Free? It's one rule for B-list celebs, one rule for the rest of us (to paraphrase Mike Gatting).

And finally from the land of e-politics, it must be said that Anwar Choudhury, director of technology for the Cabinet Office, made a slight tactical error when announcing the new e-voting standard in London this week.

At the end of his speech he asked the audience whether they thought the government was likely to hit its target of making all services available electronically by 2005.

After a moment's pause to let the tumbleweed cartwheel gracefully across the stage, a chorus of mumbling - or was it sniggering - was heard at the back. Middle. And front&

You may have seen a few stories this week about email now being more popular than the humble letter. NetValue issued a press release on Wednesday claiming 550 million emails were sent and received by British homes in January, compared with 228 million letters handled by the Royal Mail for British households in the same month.

Alki Manias, managing director of NetValue UK, said: "This is a real milestone for email. Although only widely available to the public since 1995, the email has surpassed hundreds of years of domestic Royal Mail services in a few years. We live in a fast-paced world and people want instant communications. Unsurprisingly, email now is in favour of the traditional letter."

Hooray for email, etc. But let's not get too carried away here. The death of the letter has been enormously exaggerated.

Last year, 19 billion items of mail were sent in the UK - 81 million every day (except Sundays). That figure is growing at two to three per cent every year, according to the Royal Mail. (Indeed, a spokeswoman for the Royal Mail isn't sure how NetValue came up with its stats in the first place: "Whichever way they cut it, the figures don't fit with anything I recognise," she told the Round-Up.)

The real point here is that email is used for different forms of communication than the letter. Which is blindingly obvious really.

Still, these spurious surveys give us all something to think about, so keep 'em coming.

The Round-Up will not be coming through your letter box next Friday.