The Weekly Round-Up: 30.09.05

We all remember our first pay cheque - that feeling of taking an important step towards financial independence and getting a foot on the lowest rung of the ladder. But few of us - the Round-Up begrudgingly including itself here - will get the chance to remember or even receive, let alone spend like a madman, our first ever million dollar pay cheque.

But there are a great many people who do clear that much each year of course and this week saw Microsoft bosses Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates join that high-rollers club.

However did they cope until now?

Of course the most surprising thing about that fact is that Gates and Ballmer didn't pass that milestone some time ago and that neither is among the top few thousand earners in the US.

After all, Ballmer and Gates run one of the world's richest companies but to date they have always shown great restraint when it comes to their salaries, perhaps aware that they have billions in the bank anyway and that salaries as such are a drop in the ocean.

In fact a number of their peers famously survive on wages of just a nominal $1 per year for exactly the same reason.

But you can't stand in the way of progress and this past year Gates and Ballmer made a rather neat $600,000 in salary and $400,000 in bonuses - hitting the $1m mark right on the money.

Microsoft told the SEC in its report filing: "Their salaries are significantly below competitive levels elsewhere."

It's true, they could certainly both earn a lot more money playing professional sport or starring in a sit-com but the Round-Up isn't quite sure what the world might have done to deserve either outcome.

The SEC filing also revealed that Gates and Ballmer aren't even the best-paid staff within Microsoft, by quite some margin.

However, they are by far the richest - as was shown by the publication of the latest Forbes rich list this week.

In fact Bill Gates is once again the richest man on the planet, with a staggering $51bn accrued over the years.

The Round-Up imagines it's been a long time since Gates looked at the prices on a restaurant menu and was left juggling the old 'starter or pudding?' dilemma. Or stared through a hole worn in his underwear and thought 'I can probably get another couple of wears out of them before having to buy a new pair'.

Gates' former colleague and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen still charts third on the list with a bank-busting $22.5bn - although he's just been overtaken by Chelsea football club's Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich who added a cool $13bn to his fortune by selling his Sibneft oil business this week - while Big Steve Ballmer weighs in at a not-too-shabby $14bn in 11th place. (The Round-Up imagines he too has never pondered, or even lingered, over starters or desserts.)

But Ballmer's good friends at Google are closing in fast on the old guard and arguably have a little more time on their hands to hit the heights the Microsoft triumvirate have reached.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of the internet search giant are each worth $11bn, thanks to their successful IPO which rocketed them up the list to 16th spot.

And what's more they are only 32.

But are they happy?

Probably.

While billions of dollars may help to pay the bills and put the kids through school, Ballmer, Gates, Brin and Page will all have been kept awake with anticipation on Monday night ahead of the announcement of a far more prestigious and coveted list...

That's right... silicon.com's sixth annual Agenda Setters list.

The list names the 50 individuals most likely to shape business and society through the use of technology over the coming year, as judged by a team of independent industry experts.

Past winners have included Apple boss Steve Jobs (2003) and Rupert Murdoch (2002) (and look what's happened to them since).

In fact an Agenda Setters placing is even becoming something of a CV feature. silicon.com knows of at least one high-profile CEO who included his top 10 listing last year in his corporate biography.

It's just a shame he fell like a concrete kestrel from the list this year.

'But who won?' the Round-Up hears you cry in fevered anticipation. Step forward Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.

(For the full 50, including individual profiles and detailed commentary on the major trends this year, click here)

Among those big names on the list are a new breed of lesser-known Agenda Setters such as the people behind break-through trends such as podcasting and blogging.

But it seems their message isn't getting through to everybody.

A survey of hairdressers, taxi drivers and pub landlords - who presumably were picked due to a crass and unworthy 'common-as-muck' stereotype on the part of the researchers - has found that the average man and woman on the street cares little for the neologisms of the high-tech world.

Blogging was actually commonly confused with dogging - the sexual practice of car park voyeurism - by respondents. And as for podcasting don't expect that to crop up in conversation as your driver cuts up the London traffic, or as Tracey puts the finishing touches to your bubble perm, any time soon.

The tabloid-friendly term "happy-slapper" - and no, we're not still talking about the hairdressers but rather the practice of assaulting somebody while recording it on a video phone - did find favour with the pint pullers and their peers.

According to research carried out by somebody with far too much time on their hands (or possibly just somebody who was getting a taxi from the hairdressers to the pub when a lazy idea came to them), 56 per cent of respondents knew what happy-slapping is, compared to the 70 per cent who are oblivious to blogging and 90 per cent who might respond "what-casting?" when confronted with podcasting.

A spokeswoman for the compilers, ad agency DDB London, told Reuters: "Our research not only shows that there is no buzz about blogging and podcasting outside of our media industry bubble but also that people have no understanding of what the words mean. It's a real wake-up call."

Or it shows, incredibly, 30 per cent of a rather patronisingly hand-picked demographic are, despite the crass assumption they know nothing of such things, aware of blogging even though it is not something they would necessarily come into contact with on a professional level. (By the way, have you seen the Newsdesk Blog launched by silicon.com this week?).

Out of interest, the Round-Up asked a small selection of pub landlords (who just happened to be in the vicinity of, well, their bar... and the Round-Up) whether they had heard of DDB London.

A staggering 100 per cent of respondents said they hadn't.

So, is that a wake up call for the folk at DDB London? Does that show "there is no buzz" around their company beyond their own sense of self-importance...?

Perhaps.

One phenomenon of the tech world which will be lost on nobody - not even taxi drivers - these days is eBay. But membership of the internet auction giant is not all plain sailing as one German pensioner will admit. Though sailing is involved. Sort of.

Horst Lukas from Iserlohn in Germany was alarmed when goods bought via the website started turning up for him, including 12 bicycles, four boats and a luxury caravan.

So what had happened? Had Horst perhaps had a crazy night on the strong German lager and come home and bought a load of strange items, which he'd forgotten the next morning? Not at all, he assures the authorities.

After some investigation Lukas found somebody had stolen his credit card details and had gone on a one night shopping spree during which the perpetrator also bought dozens of tickets for rock concerts as part of a £270,000 splurge.

As pranks go, it's a new one on the Round-Up but as criminal acts go it leaves the Round-Up wondering whether the perpetrator hadn't actually intended to change the delivery address to benefit from these ill-gotten gains.

Understandably, Lukas was thoroughly unimpressed and complained to eBay Germany who agreed to cancel all transactions but not before the poor pensioner had been roundly abused by the sellers of the items which he dutifully returned but who assumed he was messing them about.

And finally, a heart-warming tale of Darwinism-defeated from the newswires. There are fresh plans afoot in China to breed those stubbornly-intent-on-extinction pandas with a little bit of help from modern technology.

The people running a breeding programme at a nature reserve in central China claim it is beneficial to know when the pandas are 'getting it on' but don't really want to stand there gawping - because apparently that puts pandas off their stroke.

(No kidding, the Round-Up is pretty sure that with the exception of the aforementioned 'doggers' this is probably true of many, if not most, animals - people included.)

So in order to get around this the staff at the China Academy of Science's Institute of Zoology have designed a $660,000 GPS system to monitor the pandas and work out when two appear to be within intimate proximity of one-another.

"Tracking them with advanced technology and observing their sex activities might help us find ways to avoid their extinction," said Wei Fuwen from the Institute.

Interestingly, this is actually the second project involving endangered animals being aided by GPS that the Round-Up has heard about in the past week.

While the Round-Up accepts the vast population of kangaroos in Australia aren't collectively endangered, those who jump in front of oncoming cars and lorries are certainly not long for this earth.

Drivers are apparently now being given the chance to spot kangaroos on their GPS devices to limit the risk of hitting one thanks to the tagging of large numbers of the spring-loaded marsupials. (Admittedly the scheme is more for the preservation of cars than roos but the principal is the same. At the risk of sounding as though all research for the Round-Up is conducted down the pub, the source of this story was a genuine Aussie, at the bar... so it may be a tall tale, though we hope not - please tell us if you've heard differently.)

And while the Round-Up wishes the best of luck to everybody involved in both schemes, it really does wonder whether the China Daily had to use this picture of two pandas who quite clearly weren't put off by the presence of humans. Or cameras, for that matter.

On that bombshell, the Round-Up will take its leave for another week. But until then, here's some news...