The Weekly Round-Up: 24.10.03

"What have you got there Thommo?"
"Postcard sir..."
"From whom?"
"Doesn't say sir. It just says it's from Dover..."
"Dover... by golly, you know what that means Thommo? He only bally went and made it... Ginger made it back to Blighty..."

...and so ended literally dozens of war films. Ginger would either have tunnelled under or jumped over the prison camp's perimeter fence and made good his escape to the White Cliffs.

But this kind of propaganda is 60 years old... surely the Round-Up is losing its topical edge - I hear you cry.

And that's my point... sort of. You would have thought the age of these films would mean they are pretty well-known by most people. But not so. Prison guards in Belgium, for starters, clearly aren't aware of the subterranean escape route favoured by prisoners.

Because if they were they wouldn't have allowed one techie inmate to make a robotic digging machine while serving his sentence.

Jo Lernout - one half of the convicted speech recognition duo Lernout and Hauspie (remember them?) - has spent his time in prison creating an army of robotic Guinea pigs - the burrow-digging rodent of choice for many a child.

But of course Lernout wasn't really looking to escape the prison with his band of cyber-cavies, he was merely creating a child's toy which should be out in time for Christmas. (The RRP will be £60 according to Ananova.)

While other Belgian inmates were spending their time growing their mullet, getting indistinct tattoos and keeping tight hold of their soap on a rope in the showers, Lernout was creating Gupi... this year's Buzz Lightyear, perhaps? And who said crime doesn't pay?

Those of you with long memories will remember that the terrible twosome of Lernout and Hauspie were convicted in 2001 for their fraudulent parts in the demise of the eponymous company.

At the time L&H had run up crippling debts of $500m and appeared to have developed a worrying fondness for 'creative' book-keeping.

But the reformed Lernout has moved on to pastures new and put all that behind him. He was quoted this week as saying of his new toy: "Gupi has a memory of his own, can walk on a table without tumbling over the edge and makes sounds of approval when being cuddled."

So pretty much like a normal Guinea pig, only more expensive. (Though a lot less likely to die if left wrapped-up under the Christmas tree for any length of time.)

And while we're in the low countries and talking animals - in what is slowly turning into the Round-Up's first ever Animal Special (which sounds like an episode of the Muppet Show*) one Dutch webmaster has launched a truly strange website, called Marryyourpet.com - which pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin, encouraging visitors to marry their pets.

Matilda, the site's priest (I can't believe I'm writing this) who's a bit of a whiz with the one-liners, says: "So you've found your partner for life, the only thing is - he's an animal. Not just that he leaves hair in the bath and has abominable table manners but that he really is an animal..."

(Didn't see that one coming. The Round-Up cracks the funnies round here Matilda. Just back off, OK?)

She goes on: "No matter. What's important is that you're happy, not their facial hair or how many legs he's got. So go on, if you really love him and you're in this for life, isn't it time you married your pet?"

The site (which you can expect to see on Eurotrash anytime soon I'd wager) offers invaluable advice to people looking to marry their pet and predictably it has become a bit of an overnight sensation - with people logging in to find out just how strange it really is. 'Very' is the answer - so save yourselves the trip.

However, included on the site is a photo gallery of previously wed couples and there's a prize (which may or may not be a silicon.com mouse mat) to the first person who can tell us what this chap Peter has married.

(*Also returning to the Muppet thing, while we're identifying creatures, if anybody knows what Animal was meant to be (eg Kermit was a frog, Miss Piggy was a pig, Fozzie was a Brighton and Hove Albion player) then email editorial@silicon.com remembering to include the name of your favourite Muppet - which will be revealed next week... for the record the Round-Up's favourites are Stadtler and Waldorf.)

Anybody thinking about taking their dog down the aisle may worry about what the future holds for the relationship. After all, affection is one thing but what would you talk about?

Problem solved, because in another development this week one barking inventor has created a mobile phone which will translate exactly what your dog is trying to say to you. Just imagine: (...and this joke will work better read aloud...)

"What can I get you boy?" ...
...
...
...
...
"Sausages!"
"Why the big pause?"
"Because I'm an Alsatian..."

(pause/paws.... geddit? OK, perhaps it's just not funny.)

Called the Bow-lingual (which is worth the fee in itself) the device consists of a wireless microphone attached to a dog collar, which picks up your pooch's barks and translates them for their owners.

Then using software called Bow-Lingual CONNECT you can convert those yaps or barks into text and expressions through voice pattern recognition, which will be displayed on your mobile phone's screen. It can detect six canine feelings: happy, sad, frustrated, on-guard, showing off and needy.

Alternatively you could just look at your dog:
Lying on the floor looking sad: it's sad.
Bouncing around wagging its tail: it's happy.
"Get off my leg": It's frustrated
Standing by the front door growling and barking loudly: It's on guard
Performing tricks: It's showing off
Begging at your feet and pining: It's needy.

Simple really.

Though Vodafone was convinced of its worth - or more likely its marketability - and is to start offering the service to subscribers, initially in the Far East, where there is traditionally a bit more of a market for this kind of thing.

As far as grabbing one's attention goes, there are few headlines as appealing to a technology news service as "Microsoft in drug running scandal" - which we've so far resisted using on the site, mainly because it's just not true. A close second, however, is what happened earlier this week.

Let the Round-Up explain. On Tuesday Microsoft launched Windows Office 2003 and presented it to the UK press at an event in central London. There the company put its new software through its paces, showing the gathered hacks "just what this baby can do..."

Apparently Office 2003 enables greater collaborative working and, to prove the point by way of an example, Microsoft ran through a presentation about how the suite could improve the running a fictitious business... a supermarket called 'Howard Marks'.

At this point silicon.com's roving reporter - who clearly had a misspent youth, which we'll now gloss over - and a few equally quizzical faces about the room wondered whether Microsoft was aware that over here Howard Marks is a very real person, best known for his illustrious career as a drug runner and professional pot-smoker.

But it appeared the US giant had no idea... cue lots of references to how Microsoft Windows Office 2003 could "improve Howard Marks' supply chain management" and how it could better manage the procurement of raw materials. Oops.

Moving on to the subject of website data and personal information, the presenter even started talking about Howard Marks' "special cookies..." at which point our reporter had to leave the room and laugh heartily in the corridor.

And finally, after all that talk of recreational drug use the Round-Up has a bad case of the munchies. Time for some doughnuts I think... and where better to get them than the offices of wireless email specialist Research in Motion - the company behind the Blackberry.

Things at Blackberry are going well at the moment but internal talk of the company's success is very much a 'no-no' - in fact anybody found discussing the company's share price (which when tracked over a six month period looks like one of the harder climbs on a mountain stage in the Tour De France) is severely reprimanded.

The punishment? They must go out and buy doughnuts for everybody - all 5,000 RIM employees.

And on that sugary note the Round-Up will take leave of you once more for another week. All there is left to do is point you in the direction of the new-look silicon.com.

The site's latest incarnation is - we believe - its best to date and it's something which we have worked on around the clock for the past few weeks. We hope you like it... we do it for you, which is why we have resurrected the Reader Comments function and included polls. We want to know your opinions on what we cover.

Let us know what you think. Email us at editorial@silicon.com or contact us via the site.

In the meantime, here are some recent must-read stories:

New worry about MSBlast sequel

MIT bows out of controversial RFID tag research

Online ad revenues booming

BT's big bundle of broadband and wireless

Where the growth of IM will take your business