The Weekly Round-Up: 07.07.06

Good afternoon, trendsetters!

That's right, word reached the Round-Up this week that goings on in the world of technology are forcing something of a fashionable revolution in the world of, well, fashion.

It seems the amount of gadgets we're carrying around on a daily basis - from BlackBerrys and mobile phones to iPods and PDAs - means men in the UK are being forced to consider upgrading the good old-fashioned jacket pocket for the far greater storage potential of the metrosexual phenomenon that is the 'manbag'.

Seriously folks. And for those of you unfamiliar with the term, think of a bag, smaller than a briefcase or sports bag, designed with the intention of marrying practicality with something slightly more en vogue than men have previously slung over their shoulders.

No, it's not a handbag, it's a manbag - there's a world of difference.

A piece of research released this week revealed the changing face of gadget carriage and by and large - whatever you think of manbags - it's good news.

The best news is that only four per cent of respondents are still favouring the 'Batman utility belt' approach of clipping their gadgets around their waist like the holstered pistols of geekiness.

Sure, it may make you a little 'quicker on the draw' than a colleague who rummages around in his jacket for his phone but trust the Round-Up when it says those people aren't all looking at you because they reckon you're lookin' good.

Unless you have a batmobile in the car park and bat plane at home, the utility belt is not a good look (and even Batman tended to hide himself away in the shadows when wearing one... and what do you think the Joker was laughing at?)

Next up, a third of respondents said they still cram what they can into their pockets. Which for the most burdened of gadget fans may give them either the appearance of a shoplifter or a man with a very lumpy body.

Neither look is a real winner, though stand next to the guy whose gadgets are all clipped to his belt and you're already looking a little better.

And this is where the manbag comes in. The remaining respondents all said they favour a bag of one form or another, suggesting the time is right for the metrosexual revolution.

In fact the UK's trend towards manbags even saw one visitor to these shores comment in fairly unflattering terms about the fashionable holdalls.

Writing on his blog, US tennis star Andy Roddick observed: "I have seen some guys walking around with man purses here in London.

"Anything bigger than a money clip or a wallet is to be left to your girlfriend," said the enlightened American.

"And just so we are clear, you should not be able to throw your 'wallet' over a shoulder," he added, before perhaps rueing the fact his own wallet was significantly lighter than it perhaps would have been if he'd not been knocked out of Wimbledon so early by the least charismatic man in British sport (quite some feat).

Speaking of Wimbledon, you might be interested to check out a photo story showing the technology that is used at the All England Club to make the annual tournament happen.

And in case you ever thought a journalist's life was a glamorous one, rest assured there are just lots of pictures of technology attached to the article and none of Pimms (or journalists) being drunk, no strawberries and, what's more, not even a shot of Maria Sharapova's hemline... or at least not that our man in SW19 shared with us anyway.

But then why would you want pictures like that when there are laptops to be ogled.

Phwoar!

Of course the tennis at Wimbledon is famous for two things.

First, for giving British tennis players something to do for three days of the year and second for the almost incessant rain which begins the moment the first fans arrive in SW19.

But not so this year - with the exception of the first Monday and these closing stages of the tournament, matches have been played in 30 degree heat almost every day.

And while the hot weather should be reason to cheer, some companies have been getting a little worried about the effect this unexpected heatwave has had on their computers (the killjoys).

But this is good news for data recovery specialists Ontrack. No, not because they get the summer off and can enjoy the hot rays in the back garden with a gin and tonic and the radio on but because they get to work harder! Yay!

"We do get a definite peak in jobs over the summer every year," said Ontrack's Phil Bridge.

Heat and humidity play a major part in damaging office kit, said Bridge, but so do employees' habits of taking their laptops outdoors to work al fresco when the sun is shining.

"We see laptops that are filled with sand and seawater," said Bridge, leaving the Round-Up to piece together the clues and guess that some people have been taking their laptops to the beach, the scamps.

Read the top 10 tips for surviving the worst that nature has to throw at us, here.

Moving on, debate has been raging stateside of late about the controversial issue of net neutrality - paid for and prioritised internet traffic, or a two-tier system if you will, which would see large-scale content providers footing the bill for the bandwidth their services consume.

And it seems the debate is in good hands.

Senator Ted Stevens, for example, a Republican who is serving the needs of citizens the length and breadth of Alaska, this week spoke very eruditely about the internet - its benefits and its challenges...

... oh OK, of course he didn't. The octogenarian in fact came out with exactly the kind of mind-farts you might expect from one of Dubya's cronies.

The entire webcast of the net neutrality debate certainly made for awkward and slightly embarrassing listening so the Round-Up will spare you - though it is impressive to hear a man speak for 10 minutes without pausing for breath or saying anything that makes any sense.

Perhaps most alarming was Ted's constant references to people's "own personal internet", which possibly betrayed the fact he'd missed the point.

What is it with these US politicians? First Al Gore claims he invented the internet, now a Republican claims he's got his own internet. What next? George Bush being able to spell the word 'internet'? No, that seems too far-fetched...

Ted continues: "I just the other day got, an internet sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially."

Then: "So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet for communication and we aren't using it for commercial purposes."

So there you go. None of us are using our own personal internets for commercial purposes. Did you hear that Amazon? Not laughing now are you iTunes?

And finally...

... If you'd told the Round-Up six weeks ago that the England football team would crash out of the World Cup as ignominious failures, losing on penalties yet again with one petulant player disgracing himself in the process, while the manager sat idly by not giving a rat's ass about it, you would very quickly have been told 'Yup, that sounds about right'.

And so it goes. Once again our players were home in time to watch the semi-finals from the comfort of their front rooms while the nation was left to set about the arduous task of removing all the St George's cross flags from their houses, cars and children's faces.

Of course it wouldn't be an England World Cup exit without a scapegoat and, for all the attempts to blame the ref, the weather and an anti-English conspiracy at Fifa, it seems Portugal teary-eyed acrobat Cristiano Ronaldo has stepped up ably to the plate (before doubtless hitting the deck about two feet away from said plate and rolling several times while screaming as though shot from short range in the shins - all the time holding his hands to his face).

Of course cheating is abhorrent in any walk of life and should be stamped out (though not in the way attempted by Wayne Rooney). And in this instance it seems revenge on Ronaldo, whose tumbling was only rivalled by, well, the rest of his team, will be wrought online.

Several joke emails, at least one fairly vicious online hate campaign (not to be encouraged) and even an eBay auction later and it seems Cristiano Ronaldo is well and truly installed as the new pariah of the internet.

One campaign urged web users to vote against Ronaldo in Fifa's online poll for the young player of the tournament award.

Leading up to the England game Ronaldo had clearly impressed voters with his step over, step over, step over, fall over routine and he was a clear leader ahead of Ecuador's Luis Valencia for the gong. But following a viral email campaign, urging voters to support the second placed star, Valencia overhauled Ronaldo to garner a stunning 34 per cent of the vote.

The power of the web.

Obviously, come August, Ronaldo will (probably) be doing very nicely for himself earning a ridiculous wage at Real Madrid and wondering why he ever moved to rainy old Manchester in the first place but in the short-term the empowered netizens can rightly claim a small victory over the swan-diving Portuguese.

And as if that's not good news enough, consider this gem from a security company called Webroot which has been scraping the barrel marked 'crap PR ideas' this week.

"Following on from the World Cup defeat England suffered at the hands of Portugal in the quarter finals, English fans may be interested to know we are at least beating the Portuguese in the defence against Spyware... "

"YES!" shouts the Round-Up, "we're better than the Portuguese at defending ourselves against spyware!

"Get those flags out again... "

Webroot is surely right. The Round-Up cannot possibly conceive of how this news wouldn't lift the spirits of any wary England fan.

Until next week, read some news:

• 'Geeks' and offshore fears threaten software industry

• 3 slams fixed-mobile convergence

• Revealed: Best places for IT jobs in the UK

• Has O2 PUK'd up mobile phone security?

• Privacy fears spark UK website censure