The Weekly Round-Up: 11.08.06

It's been a week of allegation and fairly juicy gossip where technologies have been a mainstay of tabloid scandalabra (so look away now if you were hoping for the Round-Up's usual high-brow discussion of enterprise IT).

First we heard that members of the royal family may have been targeted by individuals - maybe even journalists, shock! - invading their privacy and intercepting phone calls and text messages.

The Round-Up loves the idea that senior members of the royal family might text one another or their staff.

"Running L8, put T in oven, will b back 4 EastEnders, spk laterz, HRH E II."

Or:

"Can 1 hv a sndwich when u hv time? Willz."

It seems the old school ploys such as undercover journalists getting a job as the Queen's back-scrubber or Prince Philip's butler are simply too low-tech nowadays.

Furthermore it is being suggested, with no little amount of glee by some hacks not under suspicion (who probably realise that's an easier stance to take than exclaiming 'why didn't we think of that?') that this scandal goes way beyond the gates of the royal residences and includes a series of phone-tapping operations involving other public figures.

Who knows where it ends. The Round-Up for one is going back to using yogurt pots on a length of string or carrier pigeons, for long-distance communications (obviously).

But more to the point the Round-Up - which believe it or not has some journalistic credentials of its own - would normally go to any lengths to avoid other people's mobile phone calls... not actively go looking to listen in.

Occasional gossip and scandal notwithstanding, the Round-Up can only imagine how dull the vast majority of those conversations were.

Far more interesting was the woman on the 7:47 to Victoria train this morning... which at the Round-Up's end went a little like this.

"Hello... "
"Are you?"
"No I won't!"
"Why! Because I'm on the train... you'll have to think of something yourself."

You had to be there really. Well, the Round-Up had no choice but the whole carriage knew exactly what that was all about.

Still, were the papers interested? Not at all.

Next up we come to a story which reminds the Round-Up of one of those mobile phone scams where people claim they were encouraged to text a premium rate number only to find the service advertised bears little resemblance to the offer they thought was being made... and then they're out of pocket and out of luck to the tune of a few quid.

Often these are fake prize draws or similar and often they target large enough groups of gullible people to make some serious money before they are inevitably closed down.

This latest alleged duplicity concerns viewers of Channel 4's Big Brother programme.

But worse than that, it was actually carried out on behalf of Channel 4, which this week returned four Big Brother housemates to our screens who had previously been evicted by viewers texting their votes to the show.

It's just not cricket, is it? (As Channel 4 viewers may have commented more than once, while watching this summer's daytime scheduling, while Sky gloried in the test match coverage it snatched from Channel 4's grasp.)

Around 2,500 viewers have expressed their anger to Icstis, the body which regulates premium rate phone numbers, claiming they voted in good faith and now feel Channel 4 has ripped them off.

A statement from Icstis said: "The majority of the complainants believe that they have been misled as they were under the impression that they had voted to evict the contestants permanently."

But, putting aside the fact that people who care enough about Big Brother to vote, multiple times in many cases, probably deserve everything they get, this is clearly still a pretty poor way for a reputable organisation to run premium rate numbers.

Channel 4's pool of trained monkeys and work experience kids with wacky hairstyles ("… and even wackier ideas, dude!") who clearly manage the twists and turns of reality television obviously decided it would be a great idea without stopping to think... 'Hang on a minute, haven't the British public paid a fortune to evict these people?'

They possibly didn't think anybody cared but it turns out they really did.

To date it's believed around £3m has been raised from the Big Brother voting lines, much of which - it has been suggested in the media, based on the strict science of tabloid guess work - Channel 4 may have to refund to viewers.

"Icstis is urging all of the parties involved to continue working towards a speedy resolution. However, Icstis is reviewing the situation on an hourly basis and reserves the right to conduct a full, formal investigation," said Icstis, obviously.

Moving on, another reputable big brand that has seen its name dragged through the mud a little this week is AOL which inadvertently opened a massive can marked 'worms' and threw the contents around with reckless abandon.

At the heart of the problem are the search records of more than 650,000 AOL members which were published online for a brief time earlier this week before they were taken down.

The publication of the search terms, which show everything users were looking for online, provided a shocking insight into the minds and lives of AOL members and the things people search for behind closed doors while wrestling with a veritable who's who of personal inner demons.

Many of the records reveal AOL members plagued by infidelity, hate, revenge, lust and violent, criminal and harmful tendencies.

Take AOL member 311045, for example, who most likely recently changed the brake pads on his Scion XB car after some searches for the right parts.

And when he isn't repairing his car he is searching for advice on "how to get revenge on a ex girlfriend".

And if that search string seems a little specific, he also searched for "how to get revenge on a friend who f*cked you over" which suggests he favours vernacular language over the probability of getting any decent level of returned results.

But then, it's fair to assume these people have bigger things on their minds than learning how to use a search engine effectively. Such as AOL member 9486162 who searched for "how long does carbon monoxide poisoning take to kill a person".

Meanwhile AOL user 17556639 should probably have an eye kept on him after he searched for advice on "how to kill your wife".

And given the sinister nature of many of these searches it is unsurprising to see that AOL member 2708 searched for "how to permanently delete information from your hard drive".

Other revelations shared with the world by AOL were too disturbing and in some cases too upsetting to share here, or anywhere else for that matter, which makes AOL's original plan to make this data available online seem all the more incredible.

Even though personal names weren't included many of the searches would seem to indicate some fairly clear identifying details which could be correlated - such as probable home location, type of car owned, hobbies, universities attended etc - in order to make people recognisable to friends and family.

In explaining the terrible decision to publish these records, AOL dispensed with spin and bit the bullet.

"This was a screw-up, and we're angry and upset about it," said AOL in a statement, possibly only scratching the surface of how its customers feel if they believe enough scraps of identifying information about them were published among their searches.

"Although there was no personally identifiable data linked to these accounts, we're absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake and we apologise. We've launched an internal investigation into what happened," added AOL, which recently announced that as many as 5,000 jobs may go as part of restructuring.

The Round-Up suspects this figure could rise to at least 5,001 jobs now on the back of this blunder and can save them some time on the "what happened" conundrum…

… What happened was you published all these records online when you really, really, really shouldn't have done.

By exposing these files AOL has also confirmed what many of us expected: that ISPs monitor our searches and retain detailed accounts of what we're looking for online.

The idea that such detailed profiles exist will inevitably raise fresh questions about what level of liability ISPs should have relating to the actions of their members and what their responsibilities should be in disclosing that information.

And finally, Microsoft - everybody's favourite love-hate tech titan - has been up to its old tricks of late with a botched live demo of new voice recognition software, which will be included in its Vista launch, in front of media and analysts at its Redmond headquarters.

A Microsoft employee bravely took to the stage, no doubt with the same kind of trepidation felt by the world's first parachute jumper or the person who discovered 'yes, you can eat snails'.

"Dear mom comma", he began speaking purposefully into a headset microphone positioned just a few millimetres from his lips with all the pace and clarity of an English tourist trying to order "Two... pints... of... lager... please... " in a foreign country.

At which point "Dear aunt," appeared on the big screen for all to see, followed by some much-to-be-expected chortling from the audience who no doubt fear the day a Microsoft demo runs smoothly.

"Fix aunt," said the slightly embarrassed Microsoft man.

"Dear aunt, let's set", read the screen.

"Delete that, delete that, delete that..." he said.

"Dear aunt, let's set so", said the big screen.

"I think it's picking up a bit of an echo," he told the guffawing audience.

"Delete, select all", he added.

"Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all," came the response on the screen.

By which point the audience was laughing so hard the Round-Up suspected an accident of a toilet nature may befall at least a few of its members.

"I'm glad you're enjoying this," offered the Microsoft man, realising he may have seen his demonstration go horrendously wrong but he'd at least made them laugh and doubtless left them eager for more.

The comedy could only have been heightened if at that point Mr Clippy announced his return by popping up and saying: "It looks like you're writing a letter."

Or perhaps even: "It looks like you're making a right old balls up of this my friend."

However, it seems the problem may have been down to some background noise at the demonstration and not - the Round-Up repeats 'not', you understand - any crappy software.

You can see the full horror unfold for yourselves here, thanks to YouTube, though the Round-Up seriously suggests you skip through the 26 second intro which includes a US TV reporter who simultaneously redefines the word "pointless" while reaffirming anybody's worst suspicions about Americans and their sense of irony with the use of 'air quotes' which will make your toes curl to such a painful degree that you may permanently go down a whole two shoe sizes...

Until next week, why not read some of silicon.com's recent news - we know some of our rivals have been (and some have even figured out how to cut and paste it), so why not remind yourselves why we're the original and still the best online technology news service in the UK...

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• Ever had text on an airplane?