The Weekly Round-Up: 27.05.05

"Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart and..."

...we all know what comes next... which may well have been what AC Milan's players thought after the third Liverpool goal in six minutes hit the back of the net and an air of inevitability sank in.

The Round-Up appreciates this isn't the most tech-relevant way to start this week's newsletter but it would be remiss to address the events of the week without talking about the incredible events in the Champions League Final.

And on a tenuous level there were certainly tech angles there as anybody who tried to send a text message after the final penalty of the shoot-out will attest.

The Round-Up watched the match in a pub near Trafalgar Square and frankly at one point it would have been quicker to go steal a pigeon, train it, write a message on a piece of paper and send it by winged courier than rely upon networks severely crippled by 'never doubted it for a minute' type texts or those demanding humble pie from half-time gloaters.

(That paragraph will betray the fact the Round-Up actually knows nothing of racing pigeons or pigeon fancying but please don't pull us up on this.)

Yesterday there will have been many people waking up to disbelief when hearing the morning news. The Round-Up has already heard from a number of people who admitted to turning off their television at half time with a 3-0 drubbing suggesting the second half was irreparably stacked in Milan's favour.

But Liverpool of course, as they find space for their fifth European Cup trophy, are back on top after a gap of some 21 years and for many of their fans it will feel like being back in the glory days.

And alluding to the mobile phone industry - did somebody say tenuous already - it wasn't just Liverpool reviving 'the way we were' this week.

Vodafone launched a phone that is distinctly retro in its design and functionality. It's aimed at older age groups who don't want to worry about 'new-fangled' functionality such as 3G, MMS, MP3s and WAP.

'Vodafone Simply' pretty much does what it says on the tin. It offers, simply, voice and text from Vodafone on a very simple rather lumpish phone, designed with one eye more on current cordless phone handsets than on the raft of clamshell, flip-top, twist and turn, tiny form factor mobiles.

But not everybody is all that impressed. Some silicon.com readers have already pointed out they'd quite like such a phone, which also comes with a no-nonsense tariff, but say they are put off by the associations already being made with the 'blue rinse brigade'.

A little like incontinence pants, things intended for the elderly aren't normally something the rest of us are queuing up to start using before our time.

Among the critics of the scheme is handset retailer Retrofone.com - speaking of 'does what it says on the tin', which sells retro 'fones' (bleugh) online.

Retrofone claims, quite rightly it may be argued, all Vodafone is doing is offering handsets that for all intents and purposes have been available for years.

And except where the awfully contrived spelling of 'fone' in the name is concerned, who are we to argue with Retrofone?

The Round-Up's favourite handset is still the first one bought, back in 1999. Made by Panasonic it was simple to use, text and voice worked well and it was big enough not to lose and small enough not to feel like a burden to lug around all day.

There have even been times in the past few years - when the Round-Up has been 'between phones' due to various mishaps and one light-fingered Burberry-wearing git - when this phone has even been resurrected. And it has worked brilliantly, if a little briefly due to the limits of late 90s battery life.

Retrofone offers many of our favourite handsets from yesteryear and upon quizzing by the Round-Up ('Yes, but battery life is rubbish on old phones isn't it?') was even quick to point out half a dozen phones from days gone by which match or better the talk time of the Vodafone Simply handset made by Fisher Price... er, sorry... by Sagem.

So well done Vodafone and Sagem, you've reinvented something we all had gathering dust in our desk and kitchen draws already.

But even the simplicity of text is not without its complexity. Just ask Romanian football manager Lucian Popa. Continuing the football theme, Popa has become the latest person to suffer the misfortune of being sacked by text message, according to a story on Ananova.

The message read rather quaintly (the Round-Up assumes in Romanian rather than English): "As of tomorrow we are giving up on you. Your attitude has been bothering us and it would be better if we went our separate ways."

Nice turn of phrase. "We're giving up on you."

Even more unfortunately for Popa when the message initially arrived from the chairman of his club, ASA Targu Mures, he was expecting praise. He was slightly wide of the wide.

It's clearly been quite the week for dramatic turnarounds in fortune.

For, also rescuing victory from the jaws of the defeat is the Millennium Dome.

The latest twist in the chequered life of the Charlton cash cow is that it now finds itself rebranded as 'The O2' following a deal with the UK mobile phone operator. (O2, obviously).

O2 is set to lose its high-profile sponsorship deal with Arsenal and clearly the operator is looking to plough its marketing cash into another venture in the capital.

The Dome - as was - is set to become a 23,000 capacity concert and event venue under new ownership, suggesting the wilderness years for this largest of white elephants may soon be coming to an end.

And speaking of events (though slightly less sexier ones than rock concerts), far be it from silicon.com to criticise a fellow tech title but there was some interesting coverage out of the annual IT Directors Forum this past week.

The event took place aboard the cruise ship Aurora, somewhere out in the middle of the Channel - just out of 'swim for the shore' distance.

Now, the Round-Up is sure many of you have been at events where a speaker might run some fairly quick fire questions past attendees in the audience.

"Let's see a show of hands..." - you know the sort of questions.

What follows is often a pretty quick and cursory count...

"That looks like about 80 per cent of you..."

or...

"That looks like many of you up the back missed the question and several others of you aren't going to bother putting up your hands whatever the question..."

It can be an interesting, if informal basis for kicking off a discussion and waking up the audience but it's not exactly scientific. Very few publications would write up such random stats.

And even fewer would put it as their front page lead if they did so.

But one title did. Though they did a pretty passable job of making it sound like a more official and slightly more credible piece of research... even bumping up the actual number of around 350 "senior UK IT leaders" present to a more impressive sounding "500".

The research in question proved beyond a doubt that something like 80 per cent of assembled delegates, including press and marketing types, with an interest in a variety of IT issues were able to raise their hands in the air when asked "Will the UK economy take a turn for the worse?".

It further went on to absolutely nail down the fact that approximately 70 per cent of delegates who hadn't by accident kept their hand in the air from the previous question and hadn't not heard the question also believed spending on services from IT providers will rise over the next two years.

They know who they are... we'll not embarrass them further.

This week silicon.com also had somebody at the seventh annual SAS fraud conference in central London where the closing session promised to unveil how it would be possible to cheat and defraud your way to Ferrari ownership.

But you don't want to know about that...

...oh, you do?

Agreed, it sounded promising. Our man on the ground at the event certainly expressed his suspicions that it was the last event on the agenda for that very reason. ("Keep 'em keen.")

(As an aside, the event was hosted by broadcast journalist and newsreader Nicholas Owen - not to be confused with Nick Owen of Anne Diamond fame - whose mobile phone went off during the morning session... nice touch, especially given his own pleas to the audience to turn off their phones.)

But back to that Ferrari, a 360 Modena Spider for what it's worth. (And what it's worth apparently is £112,000... which would set you back repayments of £1,499.66 per month for 96 months at a rate of 6.5 per cent with Tesco... to use the arbitrary loans provider picked by the presenter.)

Without encouraging you all to go out and defraud a Ferrari dealership all you'd need to commit the fraud that delegates were walked through is a mobile phone with a camera... and access to a database of sensitive information... such as that enjoyed by a bank worker, to use the culprit in the instance demonstrated.

That was all that was used to obtain said desirable sports car, in silver, in case you were interested. There was a waiting list for the first choice of red and fraudsters tend not to hang around on waiting lists, increasing the chance of getting caught.

At least they didn't get the colour they wanted... so you see... crime doesn't pay.

For the record the event took place at the Hilton Paddington Hotel - "the best connected hotel in London"... or so it claims. The silicon.com staffer in attendance assures us this had more to do with its proximity to central London and the Heathrow Xpress than to the connectivity many of us look for in our daily lives.

3G signal on your data card... you'd be lucky. Mobile signal... if you stood very still in a very specific spot.

They should probably update that claim to fame to meet the 21st century expectations of the modern mobile worker.

And finally. This weekend officially sees the end of civilisation as we know it. Even the most desperate to cling onto their youth and keep au fait with the pop charts will surely declare 'enough is enough' when a ringtone crashes into number one this weekend.

Not a tune which has become a ringtone but a ringtone which has become a tune, of sorts.

Worse still it is the most mind-drilling abomination which appears to have taken up residence on UK television and has made commercial programming unwatchable.

If you haven't suffered yet... where have you been? The offending ringtone is 'The Crazy Frog' and frankly whoever came up with it will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

The backlash starts now. The Round-Up urges all mobile operators to block downloads of this offensive ringtone and urges all silicon.com readers to email the Advertising Standards Agency at: enquiries@asa.org.uk with the following message:

"Please, please, please make the 'Crazy Frog' adverts go away and end the nightmare for me and thousands of others. I would more merrily listen to my own teeth being drilled with a rusty screw tip than endure one more repeat of that advert.

"Please, I can't promise it won't push me over the edge. Don't let that forever be on your consciences."

According to a survey conducted by ITV of 15,000 GMTV viewers, 44 per cent of the British public like the tune. The Round-Up thinks that speaks volumes about ITV's viewers, which, coupled with the threat of hearing that ad, is a final compelling reason to take some pliers to the remote control and permanently remove the '3', '4' and '5' buttons.

Until next week, enjoy the sunshine...