The Weekly Round-Up: 29.10.04

soz, but ur son hs bn xpelled :-( atb the Hdmastr

News reached Silicon Towers this week of a young lad from Cheam Common School in Surrey expelled by text message, after the headmaster was unable to contact his parents any other way.

So, having exhausted telephone, post, carrier pigeon, town crier and we presume sky-writing, the headmaster sent an SMS message to the boy's mother, giving her the bad news, which may or may not have been similar to the one above, which was entirely made up by the Round-Up (though hopefully there was at least one smiley in there).

The mother of the 10-year-old said: "I was shocked that the school would send me a text message about something like that."

The Round-Up imagines she probably would have been. Though she didn't explain what kind of text messages she would expect and accept from the school.

Still on the subject of mobile phones - and wrongdoing to some extent - there's long been talk of 'killer apps' (as opposed to 'killer abs' for anybody who watches the home shopping channels) - those applications which will take technologies from novelty, nice or niche to must-have.

In terms of moving the mobile phone on from voice and simple text there have been a number of innovations brought in with a view to shifting more expensive handsets and driving average revenue per user - or ARPU as it is known in the hushed tones of cash-amorous mobile marketing types (not to be confused with the Apu - man who runs the Quick-e-Mart in "The Simpsons").

WAP arrived to widespread criticism and gave the press lots of scope for rhyming headlines (think about it). Then came the camera phone and picture messaging to far greater success but such innovation still hasn't moved things on a great deal.

But step forward Yamada Denshi, which has indeed come up with the killer app.

The X-Ray vision camera phone can take pictures through clothing. Hallelujah.

The Round-Up is not making this up (Click here for more on the invention.)

The phone has apparently taken particularly good (we assume 'good' in terms of image quality) pictures through black bikinis, which would appear to lend themselves ideally to this voyeur-cam technology.

But like all good innovations this was literally stumbled upon by accident. Denshi, the creator of the Peeping Tom Cam, was actually working on night vision technology - for taking snaps in the dark (which still smacks a little of potential naughtiness).

The Round-Up won't go into the lengthy science of this (partly because it really doesn't understand it), but the infrared passes through some types of clothing more easily than others. As such it is as though the clothing is not there. Cue all sorts of 'X-ray vision' comments...

The Round-Up suspects it is very unlikely this feature was discovered as a result of a customer complaint.

"Imagine my outrage when I bought a new camera phone and while in the course of playing with it at the beach I noticed I could see through bikinis."

Yeah, right.

Did somebody say 'Form an orderly queue outside Carphone Warehouse'?

Unfortunately for any would-be smutty-snappers the cameras are only available in Japan. (No, never, who would have thought?)

The fact that the black bikini discovery has become common knowledge suggests voyeuristic Japanese users weren't just trying this out on their elderly relatives when they chanced upon the discovery - which could admittedly provide some nasty and unexpected results.

Anybody taking a sneaky peak through another person's clothing may also start to notice the same thing up their sleeves (assuming they are looking at their arms - which let's face it they won't be).

The world is being flooded with a deluge of spam email advertising fake Rolex watches, suggesting there is a roaring trade in such items and reminding us all that it will be very difficult to stop people responding to spam email and will therefore be very difficult to cut down on the volumes of spam being sent.

Natasha Staley, information analyst at MessageLabs, said the campaigns are largely aimed at "the chav generation" - meaning the fake-Burberry and costume jewellery-wearing 'chav' masses for whom a fake Rolex really would be the ultimate status symbol, innit!

(Click here for more.)

And now a quick joke:

Q. What do you call a chav Eskimo?
A. An Inu'innit.

Moving on. The Rolex spam campaign kicked off in earnest last week and Rolex is now the most common brand appearing in spam email - even outstripping the 'little blue pills' - which trigger some of your spam filters if we use the word (rhymes with Niagara).

But while a pill for curing male impotence is talked about quietly and isn't the kind of name you shout from the roof tops, Rolex has considerably more to lose by seeing its valued brand become synonymous with unsolicited email.

(Click here for more.)

But sympathy for the timepiece tycoons is thin on the ground. One silicon.com reader, Mark Splinter, wrote: "Ahh poor Rolex, my heart bleeds for them. Imagine spending all that time making ridiculously over-expensive trinkets for Fat Cats and drug-dealers and then having some upstart ruin your brand with spam. It must be hell for them, I bet they are crying into their gold-plated cornflakes."

Excellently put, though we would like to add that we have no way of proving, and no reason to suspect, that Rolex targets "drug dealers". Though we should be safe - the Rolex lawyers probably have a lot on their hands what with all those spam email doing the rounds.

Another reason for the explosion in the amount of Rolex-related spam is the approach of Christmas, according to Staley. Given it's nearly November and the shops are already advertising their Christmas product lines this seems a reasonable assumption.

After all, nothing says 'I love you, thank you for making this a special Christmas' more than an illegal watch and the subterfuge inherent in giving somebody some fake merchandise, bought from a dodgy website.

And with Christmas fast-approaching let's not forget the true reason for celebrating the occasion.

Christmas parties - and now is the time to start planning.

A timely survey out this week, which polled a fairly impressive 16,000 people, revealed that the IT and media sectors throw the best Christmas parties and London is the party capital of all Christmas.

So, by that rationale any IT media company based in London must throw far and away the best parties - and if the Round-Up could remember any of the last few it'd be able to comment.

(Keeping with the 'chav' theme, one PR company has already sent out invites for its chav-themed Christmas party, which is being held on 18 November - which is one way to get around the December diary congestion.)

On average 73 per cent of London-based companies spend more than £200 per head. In Wales things aren't so good - with 100 per cent of respondents admitting to a party 'budget' of less than £30 per head.

The survey also went on to expose some incredible revelations.

Most people... wait for it... like "free booze".

Get out of town!! Who would have thought the old 'loudmouth soup' would be a hit with the Brits.

However, public sector workers wouldn't know - with 100 per cent of respondents saying there was no free booze laid on (though possibly because they were aware of the potential for tax-payer backlash if they did admit to it).

Meanwhile in the media industry 87.5 per cent of respondents said they were practically swimming in free booze come Christmas - which sounds vaguely familiar. It's all coming back now.

And when lawyers aren't fighting to preserve the integrity of their watch-maker client's brand values only half of them get to celebrate Christmas with free booze - the poor lambs, they must have to delve into their vast personal fortunes just to buy a drink. And Tiny Tim Cratchit thought he had it tough!

And the survey goes on. The boast of the charity sector was that it was the only source of arrests last Christmas - with do-gooders seizing upon the seasonal excuse for a little mischief.

And what was IT's claim to fame, the Round-Up hears you ask...?

A shoe-splattering 42 per cent of techies admitted being sick at their Christmas party.

(You may remember this one from the archives - which remains a benchmark for out-of-control parties.)

Still on the subject of partying. In the past the Round-Up has been a little mocking of the PR industry - or more precisely some of the press releases it puts out. So heaven only knows why the silicon.com editorial team received an invite to the PR Week Awards - the industry's back-slapping shindig, presided over this year by Stephen Fry who achieved a level of irreverence that the Round-Up can only aspire to.

Fry could hardly contain his excitement to be hosting such an event and went on to variously liken PRs to the devil and other less flattering social pariahs. Which all seems a little harsh but so familiar is the PR industry to nodding and grinning, whatever the provocation, that Fry's words actually brought applause and laughter.

While a number of companies in the public sector, running some improbably named campaigns, walked off with some of the night's big awards the technology sector was also well-represented.

Congratulations to HBL Media, and their client the aforementioned MessageLabs, who walked off with a top gong for raising the awareness of email phishing scams.

(Clickhere for more.)

Also congratulations to another tech sector PR type, Kath Pooley at Lewis who scooped one of the individual awards for 'Young Communicator of the Year'.

Well deserved awards both.

Meanwhile, at the Mobile Data Association Awards later in the week - presided over by Smokin' Barry Cryer - Hans Snook, ex of Orange, won 'Outstanding achievement of the past 10 years' recognition and O2 - to the surprise of some present - took away 'Best operator of the past 10 years'. Or something like that.

But Fry or Cryer? Is the PR industry really that seductive - or just willing to pay more?

But before this all gets a little too nicey-nicey let the Round-Up take a slight swipe at one PR firm - if only to balance out the above niceties.

A press release circulating this week began: "Researchers at anti-spam specialist Sophos have reported a significant increase in the last week in the number of spam emails trading on the name of the luxury watch manufacturer Rolex."

Sounds interesting. Sounds familiar in fact. This release was put out the day after silicon.com first ran the story.

Where do they get the ideas for these releases? And so timely as well.

But it's not all the fault of the PR industry. Some publications don't help - like the national newspaper which ran a story about cyber-terrorism-style denial of service attacks this week. It made for great copy but what it had in sensationalism it lost in credibility.

The piece quoted a security company which has been largely discredited by the trade press and the wider industry for its tendency towards 'end of the world' predictions. But then the piece had to quote this company really, because most other email security companies denied there was any story there.

And all this from 'The best daily newspaper on the world wide web' - who would have thought.

Interestingly enough this is the same national newspaper which earlier this month accused silicon.com in its pages of being "trashy" and "not letting the facts stand in the way of a good story". Which, funnily enough, we deny.

The Round-Up is now going to climb down from its high horse for another week. But take care out there - and don't believe everything you read in the papers.

That said, hope you enjoy this week's selection of news:

Exclusive: Pro-Linux report sexed down by government

Betting websites blackmailed with child pornography

Students in hot water for file sharing

Blunkett presses on with compulsory ID card plans

Microsoft gives away software...

Apple takes iPod to The Edge