The Weekly Round-Up: 02.12.05

Well we're into December and the first Thursday of the month has already been and gone, which means the Christmas party season is truly upon us.

And somewhere between wondering who half the people at your office party actually are and eating a plateful of food that should have been saved for the town pariah's wake, you'll doubtless notice all manner of other goings on.

Seven days ago the Round-Up brought you scandalous news of just how those cracks get in the glass on the photocopier. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Research out this week has revealed that the most common drunken behaviour at the office bash, beyond the obvious 'staggering', 'stumbling', 'crying', is telling a boss exactly what people think of him or her. And why not - they probably deserve it.

But any HR managers out there, when walking the floor at the Christmas party, may like to listen out for any of the following:

"I'm not being nasty... but... "
"The thing I've never told you is... "
"This is why everybody thinks you're a... "

That would probably be a good time to interject.

"Can I offer anybody another vol-au-vent... ?"

But there's more.

A survey of HR managers, asking them to dish the dirt on their colleagues, has revealed that a third of human resources types have witnessed staff engaged in full-on sauciness - knocking boots in the office or party venue.

The filthy voyeurs. Do you suppose they know they could just look away, rather than stand there gawping?

Furthermore, just over a third of HR managers said they also spied on staff throwing up after too much alcohol (or possibly they were offering a critique of the vol-au-vents).

The Round-Up doesn't really know what is most surprising here.

It's certainly not that people get drunk and point out some of the most obvious failings of their bosses. It's definitely not that people drink too much and make themselves ill.

It's not even that some staff get drunk and get jiggy.

So that leaves a toss up between whether it is more surprising that HR managers, those trusted keepers of company secrets, were so quick to spill the beans at the first opportunity or that they spend their evenings spying on revellers at the office party and making mental notes about who did what. And to whom.

The survey was commissioned by responsible drinking campaigners The Portman Group. The group is urging partygoers to go easy on the booze this Christmas. Wise words indeed.

Responsible drinking is an issue which has very much been on the agenda this week not least because of the UK's move towards 24-hour licensing and the media's desperate attempts to trump up stories about this being the downfall of society.

And of course there was the death of George Best.

The Round-Up isn't about to discuss the rights and wrongs of false nostalgia, selective amnesia or the cult of celebrity but did notice a couple of interesting things while surfing the web and ploughing through the countless obituaries of the Manchester United legend and fatally flawed genius.

Upon visiting The Guardian's Football Unlimited website the Round-Up was faced briefly with half a dozen items about the Northern Irish footballer-turned-bar-prop. However, almost immediately a large pop-up ad covered much of the screen - inviting readers to visit 'the mixed up world' of alcohol and buy the latest booze to the hit the UK market.

Nice touch. But of course entirely coincidental. As was the banner ad which appeared on a Guardian story entitled 'George Best dies, aged 59'.

Plastered across the top of the article was a brightly coloured ad asking in bold letters 'Who will be next to go?'

It seems it was a promotion about Strictly Come Dancing, asking which contestant will be eliminated next from the competition but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a tasteless question about which celebrity may be next to check into the great rehab in the sky.

Sticking with Manchester United for just a moment longer, it has been widely rumoured this week that following the departure of Vodafone as the club's shirt sponsor, its new owners, the Glazer family, are now in talks with a number of high-profile high-tech companies including Google and IBM to succeed the UK mobile giant.

So the Red Devils could be sponsored by Big Blue? Would that mean a change of team colours?

Surely not. After all, it's not like there's a precedent of them selling out to the highest bidder.

And speaking of selling out... and this is a doozey...viewers of popular crime drama CSI are set for a little subtle cross-selling of products and services in a forthcoming episode thanks to a deal between CBS and Capitol Records.

During the episode of CSI: NY, detective Danny Messer is going to be interrupted by a mobile phone call in a key scene.

The phone will be allowed to ring for a while so viewers get to hear that it is actually a realtone clip from a song by middle of the road (hopefully when there's a car coming) UK band Coldplay.

Viewers will then be offered the chance to buy the realtone download for their phone in response to an on-screen message aired by CBS during the programme, so they too can sound like the kind of rough and tough murder investigator who listens to bland-as-you-like Brit-pop.

(The Round-Up does wonder, with so much Coldplay in the air, whether some of those cases being investigated by the CSI team aren't actually suicides.)

We wish we were making this up but frankly in 1,000 years of trying we could never dream something so awkwardly contrived.

The same song - called Talk - will also feature as background music during another scene in the episode.

We can only hope the subtlety will take a further nosedive and a cast member will perhaps utter something along the lines of "great tune", to be told by a passer-by "it's by Coldplay and it's available on the bands multimillion selling album X&Y from all good record stores" (and probably lots of bad ones as well).

Of course this kind of thing is nothing new. In fact product placement is as old as most media. Students of it will long have been familiar with ploys such as the notorious Coca-Cola can in Sigourney Weaver's fridge in Ghostbusters which is the Round-Up's first recollection of such a tactic. (It's not that it's there, people do have Coke in their fridge after all, it's that it magically rotates through several degrees with every change of camera angle so the name is always readable... but the Round-Up digresses.)

Until the airing of the CSI episode, top spot in the shameless product placement stakes will remain the domain of Cisco and the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle 24 which featured these classic lines from Season 4:

"Mr Buchanan the network security module lit up, somebody on the outside is trying to jam our satellite servers."

"Could this just be a high network load?"

"No, it's definitely a denial of service attempt. What do you want me to do?"

"Did it do any damage yet?"

"No, the Cisco system is self-defending."

"OK well have one of your people use the security auditor tool... "

Great - coupled with another scene which extolled the virtues of IP telephony and featured a massive Cisco logo on the handset it was a major win-win, as Cisco promoted the forthcoming series on its website.

How very cosy.

And staying with the subject of mutual appreciation, backslapping and unnerving levels of chumminess, scientists in Singapore are working on a way to allow web users to send each other messages which will include the physical sensation of touch.

Seriously.

The boffins have come up with a material which includes vibrating sections which when stimulated will be able to transmit feelings similar to being hugged and the like, they claim.

So far, however, little costumes made from the material have only been tested on chickens - so the Round-Up wonders how the scientists have concluded that the feeling is akin to being hugged, given that chickens are rarely seen hugging or even talking to humans about how it feels to be hugged.

However, it does answer a very important question.

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?
A. To escape the mad Asian guy with the buzzing chicken-sized costume.

Or perhaps it answers another popular query...

Q. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
A. Depends how good the vibrations were.

Because let's face it, this technology isn't going to be used for sending hugs to loved ones, it's going to become a must-have for users of adult websites.

Sorry to be crude but the scientist at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) who told The Straits Times "parents go on a lot of business trips but with children, hugging and touching are very important", while correct, is kidding himself if he thinks this is where its market exists.

Like the person who once thought the whole internet thing sounded like a great way to share research notes and scientific resources around the world the Round-Up can't help thinking this is another technology bound for cheapening at the hands of market forces.

Another new technology being road-tested, as opposed to chicken-tested, at the moment is a car tracking system from BT.

The idea is that the technology allows individuals and the police to track down stolen cars.

And what do you know... the techie managing the trials of the system only went and had his car stolen and was then able to track it using the technology.

Lo, and, indeed behold it was then discovered without a scratch on it, just a few miles down the road from his house within the hour.

Convenient but entirely coincidental, we are assured.

It would of course have been more believable if his Audi was discovered burned out 200 miles away but the police are currently investigating the theft so we're guessing BT isn't wasting police time in the name of some good PR.

David Thomas, project manager on the testing programme, said: "Obviously I wasn't overly worried because knowing BT Trackit capabilities and performance as I do, I knew that I would see my car again. Nonetheless I was very relieved to get it back safely."

Dear Lord, give that man a Christmas bonus... he could not be more 'on-message' if his life, let alone his car, depended on it.

And finally, one member of the silicon.com team was at a conference this week where the CEO of the Hilton Group was speaking about the company's relationship with the internet.

Can you guess which of the company's properties receives the most web searches and resultant traffic?

That's right, it's the 'Paris Hilton' though the Round-Up and the rest of the western world are more than aware that these people aren't actually looking for hotel accommodation but rather footage of the home-movie making heiress to the Hilton empire and peroxide Olive Oil-look-a-like of the same name.

CEO David Michels said none of the Hilton properties' websites get anywhere near the traffic that the open-minded Ms Hilton enjoys on her own website... and the Round-Up presumes she doesn't even post the really saucy stuff on there.

Until next week. Have fun and read some news:

• Photos: Offshore, inside India's IT capital Bangalore

• Photos: Inside Symantec's secure bunker

• BBC2 goes mad for broadband

• 'Using a PC is bad for your eyes'

• Techie Brits carry £1,000 of gadgets

• CIOs bamboozled by asset management