The Weekly Round-Up: 16.12.05

It seems organised crime has tired of running drugs and guns and has even decided to put a hold for now on the rigging of sport contests, bank heists and even good old-fashioned protection rackets.

Because there's a new money-spinner in town. Reality TV - the new moonshine.

A syndicate of organised, if deeply un-cool, criminals are believed to be behind a betting scam which made a fortune out of betting on the winners of programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor.

How did they do this?

Reports in UK tabloid The Mirror suggest they had a mole (a person, not the small animal) within BT who actually had access to the results of the phone votes. That person then reportedly had enough time between the phone lines closing and the exciting result being announced live on air to tip off the mob so they could place a bet on their sure-fire winner.

The scam was eventually rumbled when greed took over and staff at online betting exchange Betfair.com became suspicious of very large bets being placed on what are essentially novelty markets.

Among the criminal fraternity, rigged betting on who will win The X Factor, or on whether Darren Gough can beat Colin Jackson at the Paso Doble or Cha-Cha probably doesn't carry as much kudos as other felonies.

BT says it is investigating the claims in the Mirror. However, a spokesman insisted the scam doesn't throw into question the integrity of the results, saying: "The viewers' choice will win."

Unless of course somebody else at BT, who might know a thing or two about phone systems, decides otherwise, the Round-Up speculates wildly.

Don't misunderstand, the Round-Up has no idea how such a vote might be rigged, which is why an IT journalist from London won't be winning the short-term but no doubt lucrative contract on offer with a 'How on earth did that win?' rendition of Joe Dolce's 'Shaddup You Face'.

But nor does the Round-Up work for the country's largest telecoms provider.

Staying on the subject of light entertainment, just (and such programmes are light on the entertainment). Sacha Baron Cohen, best known for his comic creation Ali G, as well as the inability to draw a line under a joke when it stops being funny, has been in trouble this week with the people of Kazakhstan for some online antics.

The good people of Kazakhstan - and there are around 15 million of them - have had enough of Baron Cohen's character Borat Sagdiyev, a presenter for Kazak TV who appeared in a number of popular sketches... and some unpopular ones as well.

Baron Cohen portrays the Kazakhstan people as being crude and sexist, according to Kazakhstan authorities, and he has been hosting said offending material on a website for fans at www.borat.kz. Now the authorities have said enough is enoughski and they have pulled the plug on the website telling the UK comic to take his shallow stereotyping to a different domain.

It's one thing pillorying a whole nation, they argue, but to do it on that country's top level domain just takes the cake. (Some research on Google provided no answers as to what Kazakhstan cake might be like - in fact, unless it includes vodka or a sheep's head, the constituents of most recipes we unearthed, it seems they may not be interested at all. Jane Asher and Martha Stewart take note.)

Nurlan Isin, president of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies, told Reuters: "We've done this so he can't bad-mouth Kazakhstan under the dot-kz domain name."

Isin added: "He can go and do whatever he wants at other domains," hinting at a rather worrying trend towards web censorship. Fair enough if they don't find him funny but it doesn't bode well for advocates of free speech.

And speaking of British comedians who found fame and fortune on Channel 4, Baron Cohen's former 11 O'Clock Show colleague Ricky Gervais has also been making waves online with a series of in-demand, on-demand podcasts recorded exclusively for the Guardian website.

Gervais, who has done about as much to put the M4 corridor on the map as the combined weight of the entire UK tech industry, and his merry band of hangers-on Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington recorded the half-hour shows for free download and the first couple are now sitting pretty at the top of the podcast charts in both the UK and the US. Fact.

On the subject of podcasting, Gartner has added the MP3 broadcast to its 2006 'to do' list for senior IT decision-makers. The analyst house is urging CIOs to familiarise themselves with all emerging trends in consumer technology in order to understand how they might benefit their business.

Garter has even suggested CIOs should get their hands on an Xbox 360, though good luck getting hold of one... not to mention getting it through on expenses.

"But Gartner told me to get one," might work. Or then again, it might not.

And, probably speaking more (though not exclusively) to the male readers here, if you get it past the finance department good luck getting it past your partner.

"Sorry love, looks like I'm going to be in my study working all weekend... it's this bloody Xbox thing that Gartner has told me to master. Believe me I'd love to come round the sales with you and your mother but this is one time when my job has to come first."

Moving on, and completing a hat-trick of comedian-based tech tenuousness, it was revealed this week that New York comic Jerry Seinfeld has turned to videoconferencing in order to make a film with Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks production company.

The reason, according to DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, is because Seinfeld is so 'New York' through-and-through that he turned his nose up at the prospect of having to spend time out in California in order to make the film.

However, with a little bit of help from an advanced videoconferencing system, Seinfeld was able to get involved with the venture - an animated movie due out in two years.

"We wouldn't have our movie without it," added Katzenberg, whose list of wise-cracking New York comics willing to do lucrative voiceover work, is clearly a lot shorter than everybody else's.

Interestingly, Seinfeld didn't seem opposed to a cross-country trip to Las Vegas last month when CA gave him a boat-load of cash for doing just an hour of material at CA World.

And thinking about it, he's back in Sin City again this month as well, with a little encouragement from Caesars' Palace and the emperor's undoubtedly deep pockets. Fans, though, probably wouldn't tolerate a routine done over videoconference.

It would just scream 'You could have just bought the DVD'.

Another hidden benefit to getting staff working from home via videoconference might be that if they're rarely in the same room as one another, the number of HR violations may go down.

No sooner had we covered what was uncovered at a controversial Adobe party, much to the litigious dislike of a female sales exec, than another IT company is seeing its name linked with some rather distasteful allegations of crude and sexist behaviour.

In this instance the company is less high-profile - in fact they're a hitherto unheard of Wiltshire IT firm called Fokus Systems (so at least it's got the name 'out there' - in both The Sun and The Mirror).

The crux of the scandal is that MD Robert Clarke is alleged to have referred to one colleague as a "fat, fiery Sicilian bitch".

That would do it.

According to Maria Maniglia that outburst was symptomatic of a tendency by Clarke to refer to female colleagues as "his bitches". Which is odd, because he doesn't look like Snoop Dogg.

She also alleges that Clarke buried his head between her breasts and smacked her backside, according to a report in The Sun.

Maniglia was later sacked after she walked out following an argument about personal phone calls, during which, the court heard, Clarke allegedly said: "If you don't stop using that phone your bitch-ass will be fired bitch."

(Somebody really should confiscate this man's hip-hop collection.)

And while Clarke denied a number of the charges against him he did admit "sometimes calling people bitches". However, he told the court: "It was just harmless office banter."

So that's alright then. The wag.

More workplace inappropriateness was revealed this week with the news of a teacher in Cyprus who left her mobile phone unguarded on her desk when stepping out of the classroom.

Cypriot kids being much like kids anywhere else, it transpires, unsurprisingly, couldn't resist such a jaw-gapingly fortuitous, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for mischief and snatched the mobile off Teacher's desk.

Possibly thinking about sending some joke texts or making some prank calls the child or children behind the theft were understandably distracted from any previous plans they may have had when they discovered a picture message featuring Miss in the buff.

There probably aren't words for the magnitude of the 'Oh dear Lord, we've struck gold' feeling which swept through the minds of impressionable youths at this point.

Of course, you know what happened next. The picture was sent to every student with picture messaging capability on their handset, who in turn forwarded it on some more until within hours it had pretty much been seen by everybody on the island. (OK, the Round-Up exaggerates.)

The rumpus alarmed parents and staff leading to a full investigation in co-operation and the involvement of the local police... who probably had to look at the picture closely for the purposes of the investigation.

And to think some said MMS would never be successful.

If the saucy Miss ever recovers enough to consider swapping such cheeky content via her mobile again she may be interested in technology being billed as offering Mission Impossible-style mobile messaging which will see messages 'self destruct' (by which we mean expire and no longer be readable - but that's far less interesting) after a set time.

Carole Barnum, CEO of Staellium UK which is offering the service, said it's an application which will appeal to "people from all walks of life, from everyday mobile users, through to celebrities and business people".

Some might assume the celebrity reference is a knowing nod towards figures such as David Beckham who was famously linked to racy text messages to his then-nanny (well, his son's nanny but you know what we mean).

And finally, anybody who has suffered the awful intrusion of a burglary at home will be aware that computer equipment is among the items most coveted by the striped jumper and swag bag brigade.

But not everybody suffers the annoyance of their PC being stolen. And in one very bizarre case that came to light this week, which is more weird and worrying than funny, a burglar broke in to a house and actually fixed a broken PC before making good his escape.

He also washed the dishes and took away an MP3 player which was also broken but couldn't be fixed on-site, he later claimed, according to the Xinhua news agency.

The Round-Up presumes the only reason he didn't put the cat out and feed the fish was because his victim kept neither type of pet. Presumably the bins weren't put out either because the men don't come until Thursday morning.

The man, in China, had actually broken into the same house five times during a two-month period of stalking the woman who lived there. However, despite stealing items including a bra and a photograph of the woman the court threw out the charges against Jin Bo after he countered the accusations with a defence of 'unrequited love'.

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