The Yearly Round-Up: 22.12.05

For the record, the Round-Up's favourite Christmas carol is 'O Come all ye faithful' but whatever your own preferences there is one carol which, like your unpopular uncle Clive, always turns up time and again to make Christmas unnecessarily complicated.

The Round-Up could never remember what happened on the 'Twelve Days of Christmas', which is as much a taxing memory game as it is a carol.

But putting aside the obvious questions ('How do you wrap 10 pipers piping?' and 'Whose true love really buys them seven swans a-swimming?') the Round-Up, with a little help from Google, will now thoroughly bastardise that popular Christmas carol in the pursuit of a festive theme for this final Round-Up of the year...

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

Twelve Lords a-leaping...
One of the stories of the year has undoubtedly been the protracted, messy and generally unwelcome attempts by the government to bring in compulsory ID cards in the UK.

But if the plans didn't quite have the Lords leaping, they certainly had them raising an eyebrow or two.

While Home Secretary Charles Clarke - and his predecessor the scandal-prone David Blunkett - would have us believe these cards will cure all manner of society's ills, the House of Lords isn't quite so convinced.

Back in October, the chairman of the all-party Constitution Committee, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, criticised the plans and called on the government to fundamentally revise its approach and ensure stronger safeguards are in place.

Eleven ladies dancing...
Now the Round-Up isn't quite sure how many ladies you can get to dance for you for $241,000 but in October Robert McCormick, the CEO of IT services firm Savvis, found his name all over the media after he ran up that sum on his company credit card in a New York strip club.

McCormick took three contacts to Scores nightclub in New York and managed to run up a bill of nearly a quarter of a million dollars on drinks and dancing girls. (The rest he just wasted.)

Since hitting the headlines and protesting his innocence and being sued by American Express over the unpaid bill, McCormick found himself on unpaid leave and then last month finally resigned his post at Savvis.

And McCormick wasn't the only man getting into trouble in late night clubs this past year. Events at a party for a group of salespeople from Adobe came back to haunt the company this year when it emerged one female employee had felt pressured into exposing her breasts by a pack of braying salesmen.

According to newspaper reports at the time, Alexandra Teller, 36, was pressured into lifting her top as part of a competition, suggested by one executive, to ascertain who had "the best pair of tits".

Teller later that evening attempted to confide in Adobe's UK MD about her concerns over what had happened.

He probably thought about saying "Well Alexandra I will fight to defend your honour, good lady" but in the end opted for "F**k off, I'm trying to pull the girl at the bar" – see, chivalry hasn't died.

Ten pipers piping...
Fat pipes, piping like they've never piped before, made the headlines in July when the number of broadband connections in the UK finally outstripped the number of dial-up connections.

The Round-Up is clearly sensitive to the fact there will be some people reading this email (which may arrive tomorrow, perhaps) who are still mired in the world of dial-up but by and large the UK truly can rightly call itself Broadband Britain after the years of getting to this point, marred by slow local loop unbundling and great disgruntlement in rural areas of the country.

Nine drummers drumming...
When it came to companies drumming up business in 2005 we saw some strange tactics, ranging from the novelty to the scandalous.

Among the most notable were tactics allegedly employed by dating site Match.com, which stands accused of setting up customers with fake dates in an attempt to discourage them from unsubscribing from the company's service in the highly competitive and potentially lucrative $245m online dating market.

Unlucky-in-love-singleton Matthew Evans, whose lack of a girlfriend became front page news, brought a lawsuit against Match.com after he started getting interest from a woman on the site, just as he was about to unsubscribe.

However, after the relationship came to nothing, Evans suspected the woman had been nothing more than 'date bait' employed by the site, like a siren of old, to lure men into renewing their membership.

He then contacted his lawyers who are now pursuing Match.com under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, normally a law reserved for trying mobsters, not matchmakers.

In a separate case Yahoo! stands accused of filling its own personal pages with bogus profiles in an attempt to make the site look more popular and to give the impression there are far more members looking for love online.

Eight maids a-milking...
When it comes to milking a story for all its worth look no further than some of the PR companies who have shamelessly over-egged the news pudding this past year.

Christmas provides particularly rich pickings with hundreds of press releases all exploiting the Yuletide theme – but rather than give any of them the oxygen of publicity we've instead summarised the most commonly pitched stories here in the hope of getting them to raise their game next year.

But it's Christmas, so we'll put to rest some of the failings and foibles of 2005. (And thanks for all the Christmas cards guys – you've brightened up our already terribly cluttered desks in Silicon Towers.)

However, one harmless little blunder from the PR industry which did tickle us here at Silicon Towers was the knighting of Charles Dunstone, founder of Carphone Warehouse.

That's not to comment on whether Dunstone is worthy of the gong but the simple fact is that he has never been knighted despite the press release which referred to him as Sir Charles Dunstone.

Two minutes later a retraction was issued which stated 'Mr Dunstone is not a Sir' – so that status was short-lived but no doubt good while it lasted. It probably opened some doors for him, we just hope he jumped through them before they slammed shut in his face two minutes later.

Seven swans a-swimming...
The Round-Up racked its brains for this one but the closest it could get to swans (OK, so some of these other sections show total disregard for relevance as well but this is the worst) is WANs – or wide area networks. Pop a totally random S in front that and bob's your uncle: SWANs.

And networks have certainly been 'a-swimming' with lots of things this year – mainly malware such as Trojans and spyware. You can read our detailed - and frankly OK - security review of the year here.

Six geese a-laying...
The golden egg was most definitely laid by one prolifically successful company this year... and like 'goose', and homo sapiens, it also begins with 'goo'.

Google could seemingly do no wrong during 2005, with its share price sky-rocketing and the popularity of its search and other online applications, such as the mind-blowing and unutterably addictive Google Earth, continuing to grow unabated.

And the search giant continued to serve as a social barometer for our 21st century lives.

For example, Google's zeitgeist report, published this week, revealed the top searches of the year and the winner was a figure who enjoyed (if that's the right word) a torrid time in the spotlight back in January.

'Janet Jackson' was the most popular Google News search term in 2005, whose star has risen again after one of her breasts popped out to say hello during a routine at the Superbowl in 2004. (She should go work for Adobe.)

Tellingly the report also reveals that searches for Leonardo da Vinci were among the highest climbers in the search rankings.

Sadly of course this owes little to a burgeoning interest in renaissance art or even early prototypes of the helicopter. Instead it doubtless owes almost everything to the Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown's fictional account of hidden messages in LdV's paintings.

The top search on the Froogle shopping index was 'iPod'. No surprises there then as Apple's must-have gadget enjoyed a very prosperous 2005.

Five gold rings...
One of the biggest stories of the year was the decision by the International Olympic Committee to award London the 2012 Olympic Games.

Organising an event of the scale of the Olympics requires a massive technology infrastructure and in July the organisers put out a call for IT professionals willing to volunteer to help make it happen.

But of course it's not all about benevolence. The games will also see a number of large IT companies pick up major contracts and enjoy a major payday.

The next day of course, the mood in London took a terrible turn for the worse.

Four calling birds...
Please accept the Round-Up's apology ahead of this next section, and the implied sexism in it but when it comes to shoe-horning a story under 'four calling birds' it had to be a story about women and mobile phones.

However, in an attempt to win back some respect from our now disenfranchised female readership the Round-Up would like to point out the only story we could find which made specific reference to women and mobile phones was in praise of the fact the fairer sex are far more law abiding when it comes to the ban on driving while speaking on a mobile phone.

Men on the other hand are pig-headed and think they know better than the road safety experts.

And speaking of women and mobile phones there was also great news for the silicon.com editorial team earlier this year when our own mobile expert, Jo Best, was named Female Technology Journalist of the Year at the BlackBerry Women & Technology Awards.

Three French hens...
We're not sure about French hens but the year was certainly marred by one Crazy Frog.

And in May the Round-Up waged war on the irritating creature and the TV advertising of its ringtones which reached epidemic levels over the summer.

We urged you, dear readers, to email the Advertising Standards Authority to complain and hundreds of you did, overwhelming the watchdog who in September censured Jamster, the company behind the 'ring, ding, ding, ding, dinging' little menace.

Two turtle doves...
The two most notable turtle doves, coo-ing at one another before 'doing the do', were perhaps eBay and Skype. It wasn't the biggest deal of the year but at $2.6bn it was no stocking filler either.

The year also, finally, saw Oracle snap up Siebel in a $5.8bn deal which represented the latest flexing of Larry Ellison's considerable money-muscle.

And a partridge in a pear tree...
The partridge sitting proudest atop the tech tree this year is undoubtedly that godfather of cool Bill Gates who hit the headlines for everything from charity work to world domination in the software industry, via an appearance at the biggest pop concert in the world.

A year of profile raising and worthiness for Gates began in January when he took to the stage at the World Economic Forum with his good friend and fellow humanitarian Bono.

Come the summer he was once again urging economic reform for the Third World, taking to the stage at Live 8 to address the global audience of millions. He again shared the stage with his good friend and fellow humanitarian Bono.

And just this week it was announced that Gates and his wife Melinda have been named Time magazine's Persons of the Year. He also shares the award with, you guessed it, his good friend and fellow humanitarian Bono.

The Round-Up is seriously wondering why he doesn't just join U2 and move in with Bono. He could play the tambourine. The pair seem to have become something of a double act.

It must break Bill's heart when he sees Bono advertising products for archrival Apple.

And on that note the Round-Up takes its leave of you for another year, to return refreshed and a little heavier around the waist in the New Year. However, before signing off, all of us at silicon.com would like to wish you a wonderful Christmas and hope you all return to us happy, healthy and hearty in 2006.

In the words of that poor little lame kid, Tiny Tim: "God bless us every one."