The Weekly Round-Up: 17.06.05

"The people who are selling these tickets on websites are miserable wretches who are capitalising on people's misery."

Those were the words of Bob Geldof describing the profiteers who have put their free tickets to the Live 8 concerts on eBay this week.

Nice to see everybody is firmly focused on the key issues at the heart of the Live 8 campaign.

In fact the whole eBay-Live 8 scandal became incredibly messy this week. First Sir Bob started sounding off about the people trying to make money from the free concerts, then he laid into eBay, accusing the sites owners of being "electronic pimps".

eBay retorted by standing its ground, citing free market rights and saying the tickets, which were changing hands for up to £1,000, are no more special than a pot of jam won in a village fete tombola. No laws were being broken, they added.

"A ticket to the Live 8 concert is no different from a prize won in a raffle and what the winner chooses to do with it is up to them," they said.

Well, to say Geldof didn't take that well would be an understatement.

Although eBay offered to donate its profits from the sales to the Live 8 charity the outspoken Irishman was having none of it.

"What they're doing is capitalising on the misery of millions," he is reported to have said.

"Although they have offered us their margin I don't want it. They can shove it up their arse. It's just pimping.”

Nice image Bob. Say what you think... don't hold back now.

"This makes eBay nothing more than a virtual ticket tout," added the patron saint of angry causes. "It has no respect for the poorest people on our planet. It's disgraceful."

Eventually eBay was forced into a U-turn after Geldof had called for a worldwide boycott of the auction site and urged internet users to do whatever they could to cripple its site.

That course of action saw users making impossible bids for items on the website. Some users were bidding up to £10m for Live 8 tickets, with clearly no intention of honouring the sale, thus invalidating the auction and undermining the eBay model.

Those selling the tickets also became subject to abusive emails from the rest of the eBay community.

Even the government got involved, prior to eBay's surrender on the issue, with the minister for music (the Round-Up knows what you're thinking, and yes there apparently is one) getting involved and writing to eBay calling for a ban on the sale of Live 8 tickets. He probably already has his ticket sorted.

In a final twist to this slightly unsavoury saga eBay, not to miss out on the final word in this controversy, has suspended the accounts of all the vigilantes who sabotaged its auctions in support of Geldof.

Live 8 also made it into the record books this week following an overwhelming response to its SMS lottery for tickets. More than two million people applied for the free tickets via text message, charged at £1.50 per go.

Craig Glenday, editor of Guinness World Records, said: "The Live 8 text lottery has had an unprecedented response and we're thrilled to be awarding them with a Guinness World Record - especially as it's all in the name of charity."

Isn't that lovely?

But, the Round-Up hears you say, two million messages at £1.50 each... why that's £3m - where has all that money gone?

It's a good question and one mobile phone operator O2 was very quick to answer, pointing out it won't be making any money out of the text frenzy. Oh no, not one penny.

In fact the company claimed the whole process would set it back a tidy amount in the region of £250,000.

And after all this huffing, puffing and texting it's probably worth reminding everybody that behind all this scandal and rhetoric is the very serious issue of third world debt relief. Just in case you'd missed all that among the hundreds of feet of column inches written about the peripheral issues this week.

Also spare a thought for those poor souls who will be giving up their Saturday on 2 July to endure performances from the likes of Joss Stone, whose only contribution in life worthy of note was when she mistakenly called the former Boomtown Rat organising the Live 8 event 'Gandalf' rather than Geldof.

Nice touch. You toil your whole life to save a continent of nearly one billion people from famine, disease and poverty and then one jumped up idiot of a pop star who wasn't even born when your were pondering your dislike for Mondays lacks the good grace not to confuse you with the wizard from Lord of the Rings.

Makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it.

Less worthwhile was a press release issued on behalf of a smaller auction site which was clearly looking for any opportunity for a bit of coverage.

They issued a statement saying they hadn't been contacted by Bob Geldof.

Genius.

Also, still on the subject of 'charidee' the Round-Up and a team of colleagues from silicon.com are once again gearing up to tackle the 3 Peaks Challenge.

This year we are doing it in aid of CARE International and we'd really welcome your help in hitting our first fundraising target of £5,000. You can donate online and we appreciate anything you can spare.

There are thousands of great reasons why you should give to CARE and hopefully our efforts and your generosity will go a small way to making a big difference in some of the world's poorest regions.

Already we have some thanks to offer. Our friends in the PR industry over at Lewis, Brands2Life, Pleon and Bamboo have so far contributed generously, as have a couple of IT companies - thanks go to content filtering specialists Clearswift and the excellent business broadband ISP Lumison who have also helped us kick off the fundraising.

Though we've still got a long way to go (not least of all in actual mileage terms, up and down the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales during one manic 24 hour period on 16 and 17 July) so please dig deep and encourage anybody within your organisation to do likewise.

Moving on, the website of the Financial Times was caught up in accusations of trying to cheat the rankings on search behemoth Google this week after it emerged there were invisible links on its pages to personal finance service Moneysupermarket.com.

Following a tip-off from a reader, silicon.com found several instances of white links on a white background, just below some side panel text on the FT's Your Money sections pages.

Such 'link spam' tactics mean the links are invisible to web surfers but are quickly picked up by search engines and with the FT likely to be regarded as a trusted source in Google's eyes, such a referral placement can do wonders for a company's Google ranking.

It's worth noting there is nothing amiss with the relationship - in fact Moneysupermarket.com claims to be an affiliate of the FT - but the use of invisible links is ethically questionable, claims Ken McGaffin, CEO of Linking Matters.

After being contacted by silicon.com the links appeared on the FT and a spokeswoman claimed there was no underhand attempt to cheat Google. It was simply an oversight.

"This was a genuine error and we corrected it as soon as we were made aware of it," said the spokeswoman in an email to silicon.com.

The spokeswoman explained the link was on the site as a value-add on an ongoing commercial partnership with Moneysupermarket.com.

She added: "It was created without proper awareness of the Google guidelines that prohibit such links and was created so as to not detract from the existing partner presence on the site."

"As soon as this situation was flagged the links were immediately made visible so as not to contravene the guidelines."

She assured silicon.com it was "a one-off incident which will obviously not be repeated".

"We have no interest in underhand activity towards search engines - we wholeheartedly support ethical practices in this area and apologise for any confusion caused by the hidden links error."

We'll let them off, this once.

Speaking of things cropping up in strange places - and taking that scenario to illogical extremes - news broke this week of the theft and subsequent reappearance of a Dalek.

The Dalek had been stolen from storage at the improbably named Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset.

A ransom note was sent to the owners which read: "We are holding the Dalek captive. We demand further instructions from the Doctor."

Frankly the Round-Up suspects it is medication, not instructions, they need from a doctor, rather than the Doctor.

However, a week later the Dalek turned up on top of Glastonbury Tor apparently unharmed.

How it got there is a mystery but the owner of the caves, circus impresario Gerry Cottle, insists it was not a publicity stunt.

Like you need publicity stunts when you own a cave that's called Wookey Hole.

The Round-Up is pretty sure he has heard every conceivable lewd Star Wars joke you could ever come up with.

If Cottle is telling the truth, and we must assume he is, the Round-Up suspects the finger of blame should probably be pointed at drunken students from nearby Exeter University.

"How drunk were we last night?"
"Look, Johnny stole a traffic cone - how riotously original of him."
"You know what... I've a nagging recollection of stealing something else but I can't quite think what..."

It is certainly a step up from the usual staples of undergraduate thievery such as anything which isn't actually nailed down on or around roadworks or building sites.

And finally, though not a million miles from talk of student living, the Round-Up was alerted to an interesting blog close to its own heart this week.

Ever wondered whether it's possible to live on nothing but Guinness? Sure you have. Haven't we all but very few have ever put it to the test despite widespread claims about all the goodness that can be found in a pint of the black stuff.

The experiment, which was only run for a week, is now over but throughout the past week regular readers of the blog have been treated to a blow-by-blow account of the experience, often in unnecessarily graphic detail:

Following a very detailed account of a nasty incident in the toilet, the blogger, known as Burty, wrote:

"Cracked open Guinness number one for the day. With the first pint gone, I went back to the toilet again...."

This was something of a theme throughout.

"I was praying it wasn’t going to be like this for the rest of the week. Another disturbing image, my urine resembled Irn Bru. It was a bright orange."

However, Burty persevered with his week long trial and came to the following conclusions, after around 50 pints of Guinness (or a Friday night out if you're Johnny Vegas).

Positives:

1) The weight loss (also know as slowly dying of hunger, if the Round-up might be so bold)
2) You can't drive anywhere (the Round-Up is glad to hear it)
3) A good excuse to go out
4) It does actually stave off hunger

Negatives:

1) Visiting the toilet is NOT at all pleasant
2) The hunger pangs - they only come once or twice a day, last two hours, but it's extreme hunger
3) Your urine resembles Irn Bru (yes, we got that - stop banging on, already)

All of which has given the Round-Up a bit of a thirst, so on that note it's adieu for another week. Now read some news.