The Weekly Round-Up: 02.06.06

Hold on to your seats ladies and gentlemen, the Round-Up is going to open with something of a bombshell this week.

It is possible to find content of an (ahem) 'adult' nature on the internet.

Sorry but it's true...

A company called Telindus has rather desperately, the Round-Up feels, gone in search of (probably not this kind of) media coverage this week and sent the silicon.com newsdesk a press release that explained adult content can, in theory, be accessed anywhere where there is internet access, including - shock, horror - 'coffee shops' of all places, surely the last bastion of civilisation this side of tea rooms.

Telindus expressed serious affront. "This is a shocking story," a press release tried in vain to convince us. "You can access adult content from coffee shops!"

The exclamation mark was their own. We weren't actually that surprised, given 1) the sheer number of coffee shops offering internet access to customers, and 2) the sheer amount of smut which exists online (probably).

What did they expect?

James Walker, mobility specialist at Telindus, said in the release: "To say we were gobsmacked is an understatement."... which belies the Round-Up's suspicion that understatement does not come easily to somebody participating in such a worthless piece of research.

The press release added that their moral outrage was only compounded by the fact they could also search for sites that contained information on anthrax, massage, bombs and terrorism, suggesting they would favour a blanket ban on many key words that would make large swathes of perfectly innocent internet sites unsearchable, in order to ensure the bomb-making masseuses of London's adult entertainment industry can't go online while having a quick mocha-choca-latte of a morning.

"You wouldn't expect café owners to leave porn mags on tables"... Walker went on, making an unnecessary point and leaving the Round-Up thinking 'Are you still talking?'... "so how come they let us access adult content using their hotspots?"

Perhaps because you were trying, James, and they didn't feel that, as a coffee shop, it was their job to censor what content was available over often third-party networks.

The Round-Up's advice therefore: stop trying. It's called self-control. (Or perhaps surf control.)

After all, most customers - even those out of their minds on the caffeine buzz of a double espresso - are actually capable of showing some restraint, whereas a coffee shop owner who liberally scattered 'jazz mags' over the table tops of his restaurant would be removing the choice and making it a little more 'in your face'.

Frankly, the most shocking thing the Round-Up has ever seen in a coffee shop is somebody trying to charge more than £3 for a cup of coffee.

The Telindus research was conducted around Oxford Circus - less than a mile from the heart of London's sex trade where naked flesh and obscenity spill out onto the public streets of Soho, morning, noon and night.

So maybe less of the lambasting of coffee shops for contributing to the decline of morality within society (unless we want to have a discussion about the ethical sourcing of coffee beans, which we probably don't... if only for legal reasons).

Speaking as we were, briefly, of Oxford Circus, the Round-Up found itself there late one evening this week waiting for a night bus when it noticed a curious trend.

Has anybody else spotted that Nokia is naming many of its new handsets after London night buses?

There's the N93 with a 3.2 megapixel camera, the N73 with a built-in MP3 player and then of course there's the N77 from Trafalgar Square to Clapham Junction.

Just a thought.

Speaking of Nokia, the mobile phone giant hosted a screening this week of The Da Vinci Code for press and assorted other freebie-seekers.

The silicon.com team members who went reported it was utter drivel but not without its fun moments and not without some shocking product placement for well-known technology brands such as Sony Ericsson and a mobile search engine, which kept the geek in them happy for a while. However, it seems strange that Nokia would invite people to see a film in which everybody uses Sony Ericsson handsets. But what does the Round-Up know?

The movie also features a cameo appearance from none other than Silicon Towers - sometime home to your esteemed Round-Up - clearly visible as the characters drive over Tower Bridge.

However, when such a scene is the most interesting in the movie - albeit to biased silicon.com cinephiles - it could certainly be considered a good example of damning with faint praise.

For the record we know that Silicon Towers has also featured in one Tomb Raider movie and Bridget Jones's Diary, to name a stellar trio of classic Oscar 'hopefuls'.

And still loosely on the subject of gadgets and travel, if you haven't read our top 10 must-have gizmos for business travellers... what are you waiting for?

Other content you really shouldn't miss this week includes our revelation of the earnings of two very different IT chiefs - from Tesco (earning £2.2m per year) and from the NHS (earning £285,000 per year).

Do you think that's fair? Take our poll and let us know.

Moving on, though unfortunately back to matters of a slightly saucy nature (the Round-Up doesn't want to appear one-track minded here but can only work with the material it's given this week), it seems the UK is becoming something of a hotbed for surfing smut. In fact it is the world's fastest growing market for adult downloads.

Leading the Round-Up to cry: "YES! At last Britain is the best at something!"

... before realising 'OK, that's not really something we should be shouting about'.

Still, it is probably good news for London's coffee shops which are no doubt doing a roaring trade.

The Independent newspaper revealed last Sunday that one in four adults aged between 18 and 49 last year downloaded some skin flicks and pics. And before the fairer sex starts with the 'boys will be boys' line, it seems the fastest growing demographic seeking out the web's seamier content is women.

How very progressive.

But a word of warning for those drawn to the smutty underbelly of the internet. 1) Clean up after yourself (... and please, NO, the Round-Up is only referring to your hard drives, nothing else).

Also worth bearing in mind, as a piece of general advice: 2) If you're going to sell something on eBay, be careful that what you're selling is exactly as it appears, especially if you're selling a computer, without giving due consideration to point 1).

What's the connection? Well, when those two pieces of advice find themselves at odds with one another calamity could strike and much shame and embarrassment could ensue.

One eBay member, let's call him Amir, is alleged to have recently sold a faulty laptop for £375 - though he has publicly denied it was faulty when he sold it - and a blog is claiming he failed to provide a refund when it was drawn to his attention that the laptop did not meet the description he put on eBay.

If you'll forgive the Round-Up coming over all Question of Sport, 'What happened next... ' has now become rather infamous.

Because when the new owner of the laptop did eventually manage to get it working again he claims to have found more than a little ammunition with which to exact a pretty full-blooded revenge on Amir, who he named and shamed on a website that has subsequently been picked up by the world's media and seen by legions of web users.

The laptop supposedly contained some evidence - in picture form - that suggested the previous owner may have had a penchant for foot fetish sites and other adult content. It also contained photos that Amir appears to have taken of himself, partially clothed, alongside personal information contained in CVs and a scan of his passport.

All of this, as well as other revelations from the hard drive, appeared on a blog which painted the hapless eBayer in a far from flattering light.

You can see the full character assassination here, though the Round-Up claims no responsibility for the content of third-party websites and offers no guarantees of the legitimate or otherwise nature of the claims therein.

Perhaps worst of all though, the site claims Amir had a rather sleazy habit of taking candid pictures of women's legs on the London Underground, backing up the claim with photos supposed to have been taken on Amir's camera phone.

But Amir says he never took the snaps and told the Daily Mail they're nothing to do with him.

He also told the paper that his life has been made "a living hell" by the blog. He added: "I will obviously be trying to get the website taken down as soon as possible."

That might be an idea.

However, his efforts may not be in time to stop the site receiving its one-millionth reader. According to our good friends at The Register, the site had received more than 900,000 hits by Thursday morning, severely limiting Amir's chances of ever being able to get a camera phone out on a train unnoticed, let alone sell another item on eBay, regardless of his continued protestations of innocence.

Amir said in an interview with the Daily Mail: "The laptop wasn't even broken. It was in working order."

The Round-Up is unable to comment one way or the other but it certainly believes Amir when he adds: "The last few days have been a nightmare."

The blog also reveals details from a number of Amir's CVs which were uncovered on the hard drive.

As well as apparently having never been late for anything in two years - which is very impressive - Amir reportedly states in one CV: "My interests include cooking the Stock market and travelling abroad to new countries."

Putting aside the fact this man might be routing out "new countries", which he's obviously keeping a closely guarded secret from the rest of us, isn't "cooking the Stock market illegal"?

What a difference a comma makes.

However, what started as a cold, calculated act of revenge has now apparently become a criminal investigation.

Who would have thought?

Scotland Yard have said an allegation of improper use of a public electronic network is now being investigated by Barnet police (who are surely too busy investigating dodgy hairstyles with a name like that).

And finally, the Round-Up finishes as it began, on something of a blue note, with a story which provides evidence of why censorship isn't always a very practical measure.

A resident of Greater Manchester has expressed his dissatisfaction this week about his local council's planning department which failed to receive complaints he emailed to them objecting to a house extension in his area.

The reason why they didn't receive them? Because he had the audacity to use the word 'erection' when writing to the planning department, of all places.

A council spokesman told The Telegraph: "The software that protects the council's email system from spam and other offensive material is not designed by the council and we do not control which words are blocked."

It is, however, clearly designed by somebody who didn't think the planning department would want to see emails containing the word 'erection'. And the planning department clearly didn't provide for such a possibility, so they are far from blameless in this blunder.

"We will be writing to the resident to apologise for the failure of his emails to get through," added the spokesman, no doubt mindful of the need to not include the offending word in his outbound email, while doubtless aware that it's all a little late now as the planning permission has already been granted.

Mr Kennedy, the angry resident, described the error as "political correctness gone wild".

Until next week, read some news:

• UK still divided along digital lines

• Rising IM use poses corporate security risk

• Mobile gambling boom time ahead

• Internet tops newspaper ad spending

• Office space shrinks as mobile computing grows