Digital blunderitis and some monkey business

On Wednesday the Round-Up was woken from its ruminations on how BT's miraculous transformation from lumbering, incompetent behemoth to dashing DSL dynamo was great news for Broadband Britain but bad news for writers of satirical weekly IT columns by the sound of silicon.com reporter Ben King realising he'd committed a rather embarrassing digital blunder.
It transpires that when forwarding an email to one of the sub editors with a quote from an Orange press officer he'd managed to reply to the PR instead.

Which wouldn't have been so bad had he not ended the email with the words "Sorry about this - PR man being an arse".

All the colour drained from Ben's rosy cheeks and his eyebrows jumped up and down like a pair of caterpillars having a fight.

It was that terrible moment a nanosecond after you hit "send" and the message is whizzing across the LAN (well maybe not with ours), through the Exchange server, out through the router and plinking into the recipient's mailbox when you realise what you've done.

Much like the moment in Road Runner cartoons when the bird makes a sharp right at the canyon edge and the pursuing coyote ends up running in mid-air before stopping, looking down, gulping, plummeting to the canyon floor and ending up as a little "poof" of dust.

So, in a desperate attempt to rescue his relationship with Orange's press room, Wile E Ben King picked up the phone and phoned Orange to apologise.

A gathered throng of journalists listened in awed silence as Ben tried to explain what had happened and to our amazement persisted after the press officer confessed to not know what the hell he was talking about.

At this point any sensible person would have said "Ha! Wrong number!" and hung up. But no, penitent Ben persisted and patiently explained what had happened with the help of comments like "scroll down a bit, yes, there, the bit where I call you an arse" and "Sorry about that".

To his credit the press officer took it on the chin.

But it turns out that digital blunderitis is infectious: less than 10 minutes later, the news editor to Ben's right managed to accidentally place an order for about £70 of goodies on Amazon - damn that one-click shopping technology - and even then not being entirely sure what he ordered - (If you're interested we'll let you know next week when it arrives).

Working on the principle that all things happen in threes, the Round-up whimpered, slowly withdrew his hands from the keyboard and went for a brief walk in the park before he somehow conspired to send his credit card details to Al-Qaeda-supporting pornographers.

Nobody, but nobody, messes with Swedish mobile company Telia as new CEO Anders Igel discovered to his chagrin.

The telecom operator cut off the mobile phone registered to its newly named chief executive designate because he hadn't paid his bill the company admitted on Thursday. Igel owed the company SKr2591 ($250).

A Telia spokeswoman told Reuters: "It has been closed... If you don't pay on time you get a reminder and after that the subscription is cut off."

According to Reuters, Igel was "not immediately available for comment", which is hardly surprising considering he doesn't have a phone anymore...

Hlasi Se Policie, the professional magazine for the Czech police force, doesn't have a terribly high opinion of its target audience. In fact it seems to think their preferred reading matter isn't so much The Unbearable Lightness of Being as Jana e Jan (or whatever Janet and John is in Czech).

The magazine has been giving the boys and girls in blue (or whatever colour Czech police officers' uniforms are) computer advice suitable for five-year-olds.

Take the following advice on floppy discs: "You can put the floppy disc into a bag and take it, for example, to work. The disc is a very practical aid - light and small - and therefore easy to carry around. Once you are at work you can take the floppy disc out of your bag and insert it into your computer. Unlike the hard disc, a floppy disc can be taken out of the computer which features a special button that ejects the floppy disc."

Another tip is to put labels on them so you don't get them mixed up, reports Ananova.

One officer, apparently without irony, said: "We get used to being taken for stupid but this is a bit too much."

Jiri Soukup, chairman of the magazine's editorial board, admitted the article should never have been published.

He said: "It's making really big fools out of us. It's more suitable for first-year pupils at elementary school." Most of whom can almost certainly pick up their email and program the video better than their elders anyway...

Had erstwhile poet and full-time loon William Blake written: "To see the World in a Grain of Sand/ And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/ Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/ And Eternity in an hour" in the 21st century he may well have been inspired by the infinite varieties of language contained within the subject headers of technology press releases.

The editorial team received one this week with subject header: "Checking for backdoor violations".

Doesn't bear thinking about really.

Then again you sometimes get press releases with subject headers like this old classic: "Leading Analyst Firm Recognizes Cable & Wireless as a Leader in the Web Hosting Marketplace" or the intriguingly titled "Hyundai Capital Services Aims to Increase Profitability with the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform".

Again, doesn't bear thinking about really...

And finally, nobody ever said working in a call centre is easy. You've got to deal with the long hours, the abusive customers, the workhouse mentality and don't even mention the cash.

But for 28-year old call centre worker Stuart Hammond things have got so bad he's taken to dressing up like a monkey.

On weekends, Stuart is H'Angus - the cheeky simian mascot of Hartlepool United and is now running for office in the town's first mayoral elections.

If elected he promises to give lots of bananas to local schoolchildren in lieu of milk. Bravo H'Angus! If you're from Hartlepool and have seen H'Angus in action let us know what he gets up to.

Thanks to two silicon.com readers who added identical comments to the story: "Well, it doesn't surprise me. Just goes to show if you pay peanuts..."

The Round-up will be back swinging from the news tree and scratching its rude bits next week.