The Weekly Round-Up: 07.11.03

"Spiderman, Spiderman does whatever a spider can..." ....and more besides apparently, because the Round-Up can't imagine there's a spider on earth that could bring a sizeable chunk of London to a grinding halt.

This week a man dressed as the web-slinging superhero scaled a crane next to silicon.com's offices and took up residence atop the 200 foot structure.

In response the police closed off Tower Bridge and many of the surrounding roads and then sat around drinking cups of coffee, eating food from the catering truck and scratching their heads with a 'We get paid for this?' look of confusion on their faces.

In the process the whole debacle made it almost impossible for the Round-Up to get into work. But what could the police do? How were they to know this could happen? After all, they're not mind-readers.

Perhaps the fact that the same man did exactly the same thing just a couple of months ago should have given them a clue. Same man, same crane, same policemen, same catering truck, same cups of coffee. (Same inconvenience for the Round-Up.)

As such the Round-Up has been in the throes of some pretty serious déjà vu this week. And not just because of the repetition of this particular crane-based protest. It wasn't that long ago that David Blaine was also stopping traffic outside Silicon Towers with his own stunt above London.

However, Spiderman came down on Wednesday after six days, missing out on Blaine's record by a mere 39 days. The surrender also created an image which would cause great consternation among fans of the comic book hero - the sight of Spiderman being lead away by uniformed police officers.

You can't arrest Spidey! Oh, the shame.

A report out this week from the Consumers' Association reveals that the new breed of directory enquiries services aren't doing their jobs very well. They may have spent money coming up with innovative advertising campaigns but it seems they didn't think to invest enough in ensuring they could provide a decent service.

The Consumers' Association said 75 per cent of the services were unable to deal with simple enquiries. Each of the 16 providers was asked for three residential numbers and two business numbers which should have been readily available to the operators.

Worst of the lot was Cable & Wireless Quickcall which provided just one correct number in the tests - which is pretty poor given that users pay 35p for the privilege of being given the wrong number.

Only four services got all the numbers correct. They were One (118 811), Orange (118 000), The Number (118 118) and Share (118 499). Helen Parker, editor of Which?, said: "Problems ranged from being given a wrong number to no number at all and we were even cut off. This often poor service didn't come cheap, with call costs ranging from 20p to £1.10."

Amazingly the most expensive service, called, rather strangely, Maureen, was also the second worst - proof that you don't always get what you pay for in this life.

Also struggling with numbers this week is a silicon.com reader who took issue with the details in one of our stories. We repeated figures from the National Audit Office which claim 4.5 per cent of all cars are being driven in the UK without road tax. But one angry reader took exception to this.

"In the article you mention 4.5 per cent are at any one time cheating road tax. I would put that figure much higher. Closer to one in 20."

Yes, that's much higher, isn't it. Where do we begin with that one?

But proving he's not just bad at maths this reader then went on to prove he's also not the best neighbour - publicly shaming people in his street who don't have up to date tax - not that the Round-Up condones such a practice.

The reader suggests that if the police ever tire of watching a man up a crane they would do well to pay a visit to his street in Westham, East Sussex where it seems nobody has an up to date tax disc. So if you live in Westham, now would be a good time to sort that out. You have been warned.

Also spying on their neighbours are users of Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones. A new craze called 'bluejacking' has broken out whereby people locate other Bluetooth users in their immediate vicinity and then send them an anonymous message. The craze is made possible by the technology's ability to locate other devices with the same standard activated and connect with any within a 10 metre radius.

It's becoming particularly popular on trains and buses, with the intention apparently being to 'freak out' strangers. Typical messages would range from the sinister 'I'm watching you...' to the smutty 'I can see right up your skirt...' Typical responses would hopefully range from the obvious 'sod off' to the not so obvious 'I'm not wearing a skirt, I'm the big angry-looking dude sat next to you, you sad man...'

However, like most things there are some obvious downsides - not least the likelihood of blue-rage (which is a phrase the Round-Up just made up... but sure as eggs is eggs you can bet that not everybody will see the funny side).

Also there is the likelihood that this craze will prove very popular with marketers - which means more spam for those who don't want to turn off their Bluetooth facility. Imagine being unable to pass a shop without being sent word of a special offer within, or pass a bar without being lured in by 2-for-1 happy hour offers... actually that last one sounds quite good (though the Round-Up rarely needs an excuse to go into a bar).

And more mobile phone innovation this week, this time from Japan where a company has invented a watch which doubles up as a mobile phone... and makes the user look incredibly stupid in the process.

If you thought the handsfree kit was an innovation in making people look daft, as they walk along the street apparently talking to themselves, then you ain't seen nothing yet... as Bachman Turner Overdrive once sang.

According to New Scientist magazine the user must make the universally accepted hand gesture of the mobile phone (do it - we're all thinking the same thing...) - thus looking like they are pretending to own a phone. With their thumb to their ear and their little finger to their mouth the user will become a component of their own phone, speaking into their pinky and listening through their thumb.

The watch will convert vibrations in the bones of the hand into sound... which all seems pretty far-fetched. Speak to the hand, indeed.

(The phones also raise the concern that you could easily be mistaken for somebody mocking another person talking on their phone if you are sat opposite on them on a train talking into your hand-phone.)

One thing's for sure, the phones are certainly a lot less nickable for opportunist thieves looking to snatch handsets from unsuspecting users. So there’s one definite bonus.

Far more attractive to thieves are the mobile phones of Edinburgh residents who this week are getting used to a new parking system in the Scottish capital.

The system disposes with the need for cash, instead charging drivers via their handset. Users simply call a number to receive an ID code which they key into the parking meter.

A ticket is then printed which is affixed to the windscreen as normal. However, it's unlikely the mPark system will prove popular with everybody - though it could be a real hit with the UK's growing band of handset thieves.

While it removes the need to mess about with small change it does mean users are required to walk around with their mobile phones out - flying in the face of conventional wisdom which says car parks and busy city streets are exactly the sort of place you should keep your mobile phone out of sight.

silicon.com made that very point to the Lothian and Borders police service. But they said "it's not a great concern".

So, does this mean they believe users are safe? Far from it - they just believe users won't listen to them anyway.

A spokeswoman for the service, who the Round-Up imagined was rolling eyes to heaven in a resigned fashion, said "we know people are going to use their mobile phones out on the streets anyway" - regardless of whatever advice the police have to offer. "If we've told them once we've told them a thousand times," she said.

(Actually, The Round-Up made up the last part of that quote... but it's pretty much how she sounded.)

And finally, Microsoft this week announced a new initiative to bring virus writers to justice.

The software giant has gone all Wild West on us and is offering rewards to anybody who can provide information which leads to the arrest and conviction of the people behind the SoBig and MSBlast worms.

Even now Sherriff Bill Gates is nailing Wanted posters to fences in the Seattle area offering $250,000 per head for the varmints responsible.

It's being touted as "a return to old-fashioned initiatives".

Reading between the lines, what Microsoft is effectively doing is tempting the hacker community to rat out one of their own - and there are 500,000 good reasons why they just might be tempted.

The move fundamentally undermines the safety in numbers mentality of the virus writer and hacker community. If they can no longer trust one another then they lose a lot of their effectiveness and a lot of their collaborative shared resource.

By planting doubt in their minds, Microsoft may have just made its cleverest move to date in the security sector... albeit against limited competition from its previous efforts.

Until next week, here are some recent headlines:

Contractor defeats taxman in IR35 battle

SuSE deal is Novell's lifeline

CIO Jury: Office 2003 features fail to impress

RIP SMS: Long live bluejacking...

Leader: Microsoft to buy Google? Joking aside…

Jobs and Torvalds top Agenda Setters readers' vote