The Weekly Round-Up: 09.06.06

A shocking statistic ladies and gentlemen - every 12 seconds, somewhere in Britain, a mobile phone is stolen.

That equates to more than 300 every hour, 7,200 every day and more than 500,000 every week. And that all adds up to a staggering 2.5 million mobile phones per year according to the Daily Mirror which this week ran an investigation into just how likely you are to have your mobile phone stolen in various parts of the country.

While the investigation was about as far from scientific as you can get without actually trying to split an atom with a hammer and chisel, it did make for interesting reading while unfortunately reinforcing some time-honoured stereotypes about a number of British cities.

The methodology was simple (to say the least). The Mirror's reporters would sit in a public place with their mobile phones in an exposed position just within arm's reach. They would then start the clock and see how long it would be before somebody pinched it, while lurking in the background was a photographer ready to capture the moment the lift took place.

Lancaster provided a positive result (if that's the right phrase) with the phone being snatched within 27 minutes of the reporter sitting down outside a busy coffee shop. Further up the road in Carlisle the handset was swiped within just 20 minutes, which doesn't paint the (extreme) northwest in the best light.

In Newcastle the result was a more respectable 90 minutes, during which members of the public had even stopped and suggested the reporter should put the mobile somewhere safe else it may get stolen. Clearly these Good Samaritans didn't realise that was the purpose of this honey-trap operation but it's nice to see the majority of people are still thoughtful and caring.

Eventually, however, even Newcastle's friendliness was tested too much and a middle-aged man - not a teenaged 'hoodie', note - stepped up and swiped the handset.

Other cities yielded mixed results.

In London the reporter couldn't get his mobile stolen for love nor money - even in the crowded surrounds of Covent Garden where it seems the high-prices charged for food and drink are still the kind of daylight robbery you're far more likely to witness.

Admittedly the efforts to get the phone stolen were hampered somewhat by police who kept intervening and informing the reporter to put the handset out of temptation's way.

There's never a policeman around when you want one is there but when you're trying to be robbed it seems you can't move for them.

Down in Bristol the sting was again foiled by helpful members of the public, although one old lady did eventually make a grab for it and then made straight for the inside of the shop where she tried to hand it in as lost property (aw!).

And the honesty just keeps on coming - leaving the Round-Up to wonder whether this was the same England we all know and love. In Ipswich the phone actually sat untouched on a café table for a full five hours. Even the reporter pretending to fall sleep didn't encourage any would-be thieves to chance their arm.

Impressive stuff, even if the methodology should make it clear this is far from a conclusive piece of research.

But the Round-Up knows what you're thinking... what about Liverpool?

Well... 43 seconds.

That's right, count them, 43 seconds before the mobile phone was swiped. In fact the phone didn't even make it to the beginning of the experiment as the reporter was actually still setting up the sting when an enterprising young scally dashed past, nabbed the phone and had it away on his heels.

Furthermore the youth even answered the phone when it was called and taunted its owner. It must be that famous sense of humour we hear so much about.

Don't misunderstand, the Round-Up would normally be the first person to defend the wonderful city of Liverpool and is willing to believe that such a result could quite easily have been found in any one of the other cities - even Ipswich - on any number of other occasions... but still, 43 seconds!

It takes the Round-Up longer than that to find its own mobile phone when the thing is ringing.

And while such stunts will certainly help the Mirror to sell more copies of its paper, another, arguably more esteemed title has settled upon a different strategy to boost its sales figures.

Start publishing news later than everybody else. Genius.

Let the Round-Up explain. The Daily Telegraph has decided to stop publishing news online so early in the day as to cannibalise its newspaper circulation. It seems too many people are reading their news free online, which would actually seem to be a fairly strong endorsement for how the Telegraph is positioning itself for a future which will increasingly see paper playing second fiddle to the internet.

But not so. The Telegraph has decided to change the formula in the hopes it will get more readers consuming its content online and offline, according to a report in The Guardian which contains more than a little smugness, as the Grauniad makes a more concerted shift to the online world.

Annelies van den Belt, Telegraph Group new media director, told a conference in Moscow that the move to hold back newspaper content from the website could increase sales of the title "as long as we give them added value and relevance online and in the paper".

Far be it for the Round-Up, who does have a bias for online media, to tell these people how to do their jobs but it sounds like a case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Staying loosely on the lengths to which companies will go to secure more sales, it seems Microsoft may be on the verge of a campaign to promote its Vista operating system, which will draw accusations of the Redmond giant copying the marketing strategy of archrival Apple, if rumours are to be believed.

Gossip in the US media suggests Microsoft, in search of a figurehead for its advertising, may have signed a deal with US comedian, Demetri Martin.

Who he? You may well ask.

Well Martin may be well known to viewers of the US satire show The Daily Show, which is the same Comedy Central vehicle that brought John Hodgman to mainstream attention.

Who he? You may well, quite rightly, ask again.

Hodgman was the actor brought in to play the part of the super-square PC user in Apple's recent ad campaign. It's a little like Apple using Jonathan Ross in this country and Microsoft then going out and hiring Paul Ross - not that the latter would object to the work, we're sure.

It's rumoured that Martin, like Hodgman for Apple, will appear in a series of comic turns to be broadcast online. Whoever thought the IT industry would ever be such a hotbed of comic potential... certainly not anybody who ever watched Channel 4's The IT Crowd.

This is all still rumour and it could yet be proven that Microsoft does have an original bone in its body - we'll just have to wait and see... assuming Vista is ever released.

Funnily enough, on that front Microsoft did this week make the beta version of its Windows update available to the general public while Steve Ballmer very aggressively stated it would be the last Windows product to be subject to such a delay.

"We have one product that has a bigger gap than it will ever, ever, ever have again in its release cycle. That will never happen again... It'll never happen again," Ballmer told one US news service.

Well the Round-Up for one happens to believe him. What's not to believe? He sounds very certain.

Of course one of Apple's big selling points is the media capability of its whole integrated product range and there was good news for the nation's music lovers this week with the BPI announcing that it's not going to go after consumers who copy their CDs onto their iPods, as long it is only for their personal use.

The Round-Up wonders whether this is a victory for the kind of common sense that would dictate that if somebody has paid once for a CD they really shouldn't have to pay again or whether the BPI realised it could never enforce the issue and, as such, might as well just ditch the bad PR that trying to do so would invite.

But before you think the BPI is losing its fight it has this week said it will be turning its legal guns on Russian download site AllofMP3.com which, it says, has been taking liberties with copyright and not sharing its profits with artists entitled to royalties.

The Round-Up supposes the fact AllofMP3.com was selling albums for around £1 a pop was a bit of a giveaway (or should that be 'give away'?) that perhaps not everything was above board.

The site says it complies with Russian laws, while a spokesman for the BPI told silicon.com it won't be chasing individual users in this country - which sounds like a bit of an invite to go on a virtual trolley dash around its Russian aisles, though we would never recommend such a thing.

"While it remains illegal to use the site, we aren't interested in taking users to task - what we are doing is targeting the site itself," the spokesman said.

And finally, worrying news reaches the Round-Up from the US this week where the changing attitudes of students have been highlighted in some stark findings.

This is worrying of course because we all know that when America sneezes the UK catches a cold (or puts out troughs of detergent depending on the contagion) so this worrying trend could be coming our way any time soon.

So what is this revelation? Well, it seems students have done the unthinkable and have turned their backs on beer.

It would be like the fish walking out of the sea.

Worse still, they have turned their backs on beer in favour of the far more unsociable distraction of iPods.

The Apple MP3 player is now the most popular item among US students - more so than a keg of frothy nectar. And in fact beer is suffering the further ignominy of having to share second spot with social networking website Facebook.com.

Let there be no doubt. Technology is truly taking over our lives.

Apparently this is the first time in nine years, and only the second time ever, that beer has been knocked off the top of this student popularity contest. In 1997 it was displaced by the internet before toppling even that technological achievement the next year.

The Round-Up would like to think the beer drinkers simply couldn't be bothered to respond.

Until next week, enjoy the fine weather...

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