The Weekly Round-Up: 14.10.05

The Round-Up comes in for more than its fair share of criticism in Silicon Towers for not taking its turn making the tea.

Clearly the Round-Up's colleagues think a newsletter like this writes itself (which with the strength of material this week was almost the case).

The rift between the doers and the non-reciprocating drinkers in the department tea round (which admittedly is more of a semi-circle) reached crisis point this week when half the team declared itself independent of those who don't play fair by the system.

It was like the American War of Independence all over again... starting, as that conflict did, with a falling out about tea.

Help is at hand, though, to make the tea round enough of a novelty so as to make the chore far more appealing. Enter the SMS kettle.

By sending a text message to the special PG Tips kettles (though we presume the water is good for coffee, Horlicks or even hot chocolate) the sender can switch on the kettle and start the process from the comfort of their desk (assuming they don't have to walk to the kitchen anyway to fill the kettle and are favouring a far less eco-friendly approach of keeping the kettle filled to the brim.)

That last point illustrates a number of the failings here - such as you still have to go and make the tea, get the mugs off the draining board, find the tea bags in the cupboard, add the editor's two (that's two) sugars and carry the mugs back.

In fact, the only thing it alleviates is the opportunity to miss five minutes of work and chat to colleagues while the kettle boils.

So not that much fun at all.

Speaking of tea, another Chinese obsession is reaching epidemic levels at the moment causing genuine concern among medical bodies.

Internet addiction in China is now at such levels that people are actually dying due to the fact they are not eating, sleeping or drinking while surfing the web.

Hats off to the BBC at this point for finding a picture which looks more like an internet drugs den than an internet café.

But incredibly the addiction has a lot in common with the more traditional symptoms experienced by substance abusers.

Wang Yiming, 21, told the BBC: "Friends were telling me that I was on the net too long but I thought: 'It's my life, I can do what I want'. I became a real loner, was withdrawn and wouldn't listen to anyone."

It would be alarmingly easy to swap the phrase 'on the net too long' for 'taking too many drugs' without changing the sense or severity of the statement.

If people weren't dying you'd assume it was a bad joke of the Brasseye variety.

Moving on, a couple of ill-considered nuggets from the PR world this week.

silicon.com editor Tony Hallett received an envelope this week with a CD inside. Printed on the case, none-too officially were the words Microsoft HRD Hardware.

... no note, no explanation - just a CD. We believe it was a genuine mailshot but to the Round-Up that sounds like a good way of spreading something pretty nasty, should there be anybody out there with an axe to grind against silicon.com or Microsoft (and let's be honest there must be a few people who fit that description - or who fall into both camps).

Funnily enough the only thing the CD was put in was the bin.

Speaking of security - a revelation from Virus Bulletin in Dublin last week, which occurred too late to make the Round-Up last time, saw David Perry from Trend Micro laying into the media. The more eagle-eyed among you may think Perry's anti-media stance is somewhat at odds with this picture.

(Clue: It's all about the boast on the PowerPoint screen behind him.)

But back to those PR blunders. Second of which this week came in the shape of this heartfelt invite (also known as a shameless attempt to make a client feel important by filling his diary when he's in town): "I would like to offer you a meeting with Enterasys Networks' CEO as he will be in London and has singled out Silicon as the team he would most like to brief."

Wow, we thought, not just *a* team he would like to brief but *the* team he would *most* like to brief. He 'singled us out' no less.

Of course, upon reading an invite such as this the finely-honed BS detectors on the silicon.com editorial team tend to kick in. But on this occasion they weren't needed, as the insincerity of the invite was exposed in the very next sentence.

"He is happy to meet up with you at VNU."

For those who don't know (and frankly, why would you?), VNU is a rival company who publish some less high quality IT and business news. As such they would probably be unlikely to let the team here use a meeting room.)

This email had clearly already been sent to somebody equally 'singled out' at VNU and then when sending exactly the same email to us at silicon.com the PR behind this blunder had failed to change all the mentions of 'VNU' to 'silicon.com'.

And we thought we were the CEO's special friends.

Check those emails before hitting 'send' people.

And speaking of press releases, a tantalising challenge headed up one release this week:

"WHAT DO BOY GEORGE, VINNIE JONES, DANNI MINOGUE & RIO FERDINAND ALL HAVE IN COMMON?" it asked in the kind of capitalisation normally reserved for Nigerian 419 scam emails.

"They're all launching celebrity messages," it confirmed

Apparently the voices of these E-listers can now be exploited for all sorts of impractical purposes.

"Ever fancied Boy George answering your mobile phone?" asks the release.

'No, not really' replies the Round-Up.

It continues: "Getting hard man Vinnie Jones to dump your boyfriend? Or how about footballer Ian Wright playing a prank on your best mate, inviting him to a football match?"

What? How do they envisage that would work anyway?

"Who was that on the phone Tom?"
"Well it sounded like Ian Wright inviting me to a football match."
"Wow, that's probably the funniest thing I've ever heard."

Apparently this is set to become "the next mobile-messaging phenomenon" according to no greater authority than the company trying to foist this old pony upon us.

Other 'big names' signed up to this stable of hilarity include Stephen Dorff, Tara Palmer Tomkinson, Jenson Button and Dave Berry (who??).

Hopefully these people all begin their messages by saying "Hi, this is Jenson Button or Rio Ferdinand... " thus taking out the awkward moment when the recipient of the side-splitting prank thinks 'Who the hell is this?'.

Still on mobiles, the Round-Up's friends at the Advertising Standards Authority have been at it again this week, meting out some justice to companies whose claims overstep the mark.

Vodafone has been swaggering around the mobile industry 'giving it the big I am' with its claims the company's service is 'Best Bar None' - in reference to the strength of signal.

In response the ASA said that was going a bit far and couldn't really be stood up.

And as a frustrated user who has wrestled with a laptop, holding it high, low and at all angles in a futile attempt to get a signal on a Vodafone 3G data card, while being told there are signals of near Herculean strength for 3, O2, Orange and T-Mobile customers, the Round-Up can concur. (Though wonders if this is some cruel industry joke, with customers of each operator routinely being told all the other networks are working just fine, thank you.)

There was some small print on the ads which qualified the claim a little but the ASA ruled that as this wording was in white text on a near white background it might reasonably be suggested it didn't actually serve any worthwhile purpose.

And speaking - loosely - of Vodafone.

Kids! They can be a bunch of pranksters can't they, as Manchester United footballer Gary Neville found out recently when his mobile phone number was circulated around the pupils of a school in Bristol.

It seems the students made free with this knowledge and gave Neville something of a hard time.

One student, called John and sounding posher than a silver service supper at the Ritz, rang Neville and had the presence of mind to record the conversation with the foul-mouthed England 'star' (which has never sounded a fitting description for a man who is best known for the fact his dad's name is Neville Neville).

He then posted the recording on the internet. (You can listen to it here but be warned the language would make a docker blush.)

"Tell me who the f***'s got my number and I'll let you off," said the player, offering John the chance for some plea bargaining.

"You better find out or I'll give your number to the police," he added, to which John replied: "I'm being told now... Tony Adams' son."

"Who the f*** is Tony Adams?" demanded Neville, only to be told: "He used to play for Arsenal."

To which Neville, the wit, replied: "Shut up you f***ing d**k."

Now the Round-Up doesn't know whether Tony Adams really does have a son or whether he really attends a school in Bristol but then nor does Neville, it would appear.

Perhaps the England defender was embarrassed to have forgotten the name of a player he lined up alongside on dozens of occasions while inexplicably representing his country.

(As an aside, while trying to find out exactly how many times the pair played together for their country, the Round-Up found that both men feature prominently on a website called UglyFootballers.com - which is a far more justified inclusion than Neville's selection in any England squad.)

However, the Round-Up does have some sympathy for Neville. After all, if his mobile becomes plagued by prank calls what's he going to do?

Perhaps Vodafone might let him have a new number. If he asks nicely.

Though judging by his language 'asking nicely' may be beyond Gary Neville.

Speaking of such sponsorship deals, one silicon.com staffer was recently speaking to a senior exec from Pipex who now sponsor Fulham Football Club and was told: "All the players have just signed up for our service."

"By which you mean you're giving it to them all for free...?" suggested our man as he polished off some Craven Cottage pie.

"Yes," replied the Pipex man.

Honesty is always the best policy.

And finally, have you ever stopped in the street or during your commute and realised that walking around with a laptop sized bag that bears words such as 'DELL' on the side just screams out 'I've got a laptop, please mug me'?

You have? That's good. The Round-Up has long been advising anybody who'll listen to put such gadgetry in the least spectacular plastic bag or sports holdall they can lay their hands on.

But one company has come up with another ingenious means of disguising that all important laptop.

Put it in a specially designed pizza box. (By which the Round-Up means a pizza box with a padded interior.) See here.

The company, called Human Beans, is offering the pizza boxes for £12.99 including space to store your leads and connectors as well. The idea being that fewer street hoodlums are going to steal laptops disguised in this way.

... unless they are hungry, of course.

The lower value of pizza perhaps means that a hungry street robber, while unlikely to want to attract the heat which would come from a laptop theft, might not think twice about stealing a hot pizza from under somebody's arm.

Though of course the final laugh would be on them when they have to stay hungry because all they're left with is an £800 laptop. The mugs!

Similarly, if you're talking about the importance of first impressions in a business environment, the Round-Up would advise against using such a case when taking a laptop to an important meeting.

"Aha, the pizza boy is here... "
"No sorry I'm just the MD."

Until next week, go carefully and be very careful when throwing out your pizza boxes on Sunday morning.