Kat Slater and the man from Microsoft

It's Christmas, which can only mean two things: over-full shops (go online, it's more fun) and tacky decoration-strewn high streets.

Take Reading, for example, home of the Oracle Centre (no relation to Larry Ellison) and Microsoft UK (very much part of Bill Gates' family).

The town kicked off its festive celebrations this week, and invited a pukka, A-list celeb to flick the switch of the Microsoft-sponsored illuminations and to launch a charity appeal - Jessie Wallace, aka Kat Slater from EastEnders.

Now Kat has a bit of temper and so, it seemed, did Ms Wallace. One of her burly minders complained to a local newspaper snapper that some chap had muscled in to one of her photos and upset her. She was said to be as angry as someone who, er, has just found out their sister is their daughter. Or something.

But who was this evil-doer, this ill-mannered man? The local newspaper wanted to find out so they could 'sort it' (as they say in EastEnders). Step forward someone we'll call Pete Devery (because that's his name), none other than a Microsoft PR man.

The paper approached Ms Wallace to apologise for the debacle. But wait - what have we here? A misunderstanding?

"What did he do?" asked the concerned newspaper person. "Nothing," replied our Jessie. "He's just absolutely gorgeous."

Our villain was in fact a hero who'd caught the eye of our celeb.

Blushing Pete has been trying to live that one down all week. Ever the pro (and ever modest), he told the Round-Up: "While my colleagues find this matter highly amusing I'm rather flattered by Ms Wallace's kind comments. Christmas is a time for giving, and while the Microsoft Giving Tree Appeal aims to bring happiness to Reading children I'm happy that I've spread just a little joy around the east end."

Who said working in IT isn't glamorous? Pete - we think you're gorgeous too.

2002 has a justifiable claim to be the year of spam. In January, one in every 199 UK emails contained spam. By June, that figure was one in 36. Now? One in eight. That equates to an 11-month average of one in 14.

The US figures, which also come from MessageLabs, are even more horrifying. Its online population is struggling under a veritable deluge of spam, which currently accounts for one in three emails received.

The so-called 419 scam, in which people are told by email that they can make a fortune helping get money out of Nigeria, has been a particular nuisance.

What's astonishing is that people are still falling for it. Earlier this month, a clerk at a Michigan law firm stole $2.1m from her employers and transferred the money to her Nigerian 'contact'. Needless to say, the money disappeared and she never got her cut (and now faces criminal proceedings - presumably for extraordinary gullibility).

The UK's National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) believes there are as many as five Americans connected with the 419 scam waiting in hotel lobbies in this country every day.

And talking of stupidity, MessageLabs reckons office workers waste 10 per cent of their time dealing with spam. That's over an hour a day. If the research is accurate, perhaps the respondents should have been asked where the delete button is on their keyboards.

You may think the UK has a few telecoms-related problems but at least we don't suffer from this phenomenon: thieves ripping telephone cables out of the ground.

As the economic crisis in Argentina deepens, this is happening more and more often. Thieves are taking the copper wires from the cables, which can be sold as scrap metal. Each cable carries between 50 and 2,000 pairs of wires. According to the country's incumbent telco, around 1,715 miles of cable have been stolen in the last year. Puts the rollout of rural broadband into perspective, doesn't it?

People really, really like Macs you know. Take Mark Allen, a gay man living in New York. He 'met' a fellow Mac-loving gay man, Bryan, online, and forged a relationship with him.

As Bryan lived over 1,700 miles away in Austin, Texas, their first 'date' was a candlelit dinner - via webcam. They 'shared' a Chinese take-away, Wired told us recently.

But when they finally met in person, the whole thing fizzled out. Mark realised it wasn't Bryan he fancied - it was his Mac.

Mark said on his website: "Bryan, my cyberboyfriend, was in a lot of ways my PowerMac G3, webcam and telephone. He literally lived inside of this machine... that I myself could control like a light-switch." Speaking for thousands of men and women everywhere, he added: "He was the perfect boyfriend."

And as for this man's relationship with his computer... well, it all got a bit heated.

A 50 year-old Swedish man burned his soft parts while using a laptop.

The story, as told in the Lancet, has it that the scientist was so engrossed in his work that he ignored the slightly warm feeling developing in his lap. But after a few days, the pain hadn't gone. In fact it got so bad that he went to the doctor.

The doctor (who wrote to the Lancet with this jolly tale) found some serious damage. The laptop had caused the man's penis and scrotum to blister. The blisters popped, and then became infected.

The man is fine now, and still insists he was wearing trousers and pants while using the machine.

But can we be sure? After all, we have the example of Mark to show us just how close people can get to their computers.

If 2002 is the year of spam, October was the month of the text message. According to the Mobile Data Association, 1.54 billion (yes, billion) were sent in the UK last month. That works out at 38 million every day - a record. The total for the year so far is 13 billion.

There are a huge number of lonely vowels somewhere out there looking for a home.

Til nxt wk...