The Weekly Round-Up: 15.12.06

When Romantic poet, artist and serial loon William Blake waxed lyrical in Auguries of Innocence about seeing "a world in a grain of sand" he was probably referring to witnessing the presence of the divine in the humblest and most insignificant of objects.

Despite his well-reported reputation as a visionary, it's almost certain he wasn't alluding to the future development of ultra-condensed, mega-capacity storage devices, but that’s exactly where the Round-Up's going with this long and frankly-too-verbose-for-the-penultimate-Friday afternoon-before-Christmas intro.

A UK university professor this week offered up a few auguries of his own. Nigel Shadbolt, president of the British Computer Society, has predicted if current trends continue, by 2025 an entire human life experience could be held in video form on a device similar in size to the sugar cubes you drop in your coffee. Except, of course, you probably shouldn’t drop them in your coffee; it would almost certainly invalidate the warranty.

Shadbolt, who didn't get where he is today by making outlandish claims that'll take 20 years to be proved right or wrong, was discussing the devices at the Memories for Life conference in London.

The technology actually has some useful applications (or would if it actually existed). The 'memory cubes' could be used to store digital video data documenting a person's life. This could be used to treat people with memory disorders or help to improve the lives of Alzheimer's sufferers.

However, Shadbolt also pointed out that this could prevent people from forgetting painful memories and may lead to concerns about privacy (if it happens).

The technology (which doesn't exist yet) could also allow Apple, Samsung and others to build mind-numbingly tiny mega-storage media devices.

And the Round-Up thought 10,000 songs on an iPod was impressive. With that much memory you could just download the entire iTunes Store.

Speaking of cool gadgets, the hidden dangers associated with the Nintendo Wii have started to come to light this week.

The swanky new gaming device allows you to use a wireless handheld controller to mimic real-life movements and gestures in games, so a golf game will need you to perfect your swing technique, while a sword fighting game requires you to hack and slash wildly to down your improbably muscular opponent.

The Round-Up had a play on one this week. Its quick, in a nutshell review: utterly fab. Go buy one. Except you probably can't as they're as rare as the fillings from hens' teeth.

However, news reaches the Round-Up this week that a woman in America has managed to dislocate her knee severely while playing a tennis game on the Wii. It must have been a hell of a backhand. See the damage here.

All sympathy deserted the Round-Up when it read a little more about the accident. It transpires the wannabe Maria Sharapova wasn’t wearing the most appropriate of footwear when taking on her virtual opponent. Rather than donning a sensible pair of white and green Dunlop pumps she’d pulled on a pair of high heels before heading on court. It's enough to make anyone utter a guttural grunt.

Players stumbling across court in four-inch heels is certainly something that would make tennis a lot more interesting. The Round-Up (not in a kinky way – before you leap to conclusions) would like to see Roger Federer romp to another grand slam victory while tottering about in a pair of Manolo Blahnik heels.

Plus, it would certainly help level the playing field for 'Tiger' Tim Henman and give him one final shot at Wimbledon glory. But then again, perhaps not.

It's not hard to see brainless accidents like these sparking a series of lawsuits against Nintendo from the land of the free and the litigious. So we can probably look forward to a load of idiotic disclaimers on the sides of Wii boxes anytime soon: "Do not play Wii in stilettos, it could make your knee go pop...

(A Wii accident also left this woman with a shocking shiner - though it's nice to see she can smile about it.

)

Moving on, Windows Vista is here with us - at last! - and while most CIOs and IT managers are adopting a hands-off/10-foot barge pole approach to deployment for the foreseeable future, the marketing executives at Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters are giddy with excitement and (probably) staggeringly expensive champagne.

This week the Round-Up was thrilled to hear Vista will create around 100,000 new IT-related jobs in the US. Which is great news.

And who are we to question the research when it was conducted by... well, by Microsoft.

Furthermore, for every dollar of Vista-related revenue, Microsoft takes next year, around $18 will be generated for the technology industry as a whole. Vista will also rid the world of all known diseases by 2011, the report authors didn’t add but were probably sorely tempted to.

Meanwhile, a separate but closely related study also found that Vista will create around 50,000 tech jobs in six major European countries. Cue the company shooting hurt glances and tut-tutting sounds in the general direction of the mean, old lawyers and bureaucrats of the European Commission, who continue to unjustly harass the happy-go-lucky monopolist over its 'apparently' anti-competitive practices. Shame!

So actually the same study then, except with some of the numbers changed and 'US' crossed out and 'Europe' written in.

"The bottom line is that Windows Vista is creating jobs," barked Microsoft's general-manager-of-something-or-the-other Brad Goldberg to anyone who'd stop and listen.

The Round-Up knows it's neither big nor clever to pick lazily at the low hanging fruit when much juicier and rewarding delights are available in the higher branches to those nimble and agile enough to ascend the tree of wit. But quite frankly, the Round-Up has gotten lazy in its old age and that last extended metaphor alone was truly exhausting.

So taking aim with its howitzer at the blind, drugged cave fish circulating in a small, well-lit barrel, the Round-Up has to ask: exactly what sort of professions do we think will be created in the Vista Jobs Bonanza?

You don't have to answer that, we're probably looking at more security consultants to warn us about holes and malware and more desktop support people to re-install drivers and configure patches for us, aren't we Microsoft? Brad, the Round-Up's looking in your direction.

Actually, security firm Kapersky Labs has already been good enough to come to a similar conclusion, and right on cue as far as the Round-Up‘s concerned.

In a release, the company warned the new operating system will inevitably fall foul of the legions of malevolent hackers and malware authors out there who seem to have nothing better or more constructive to do with their time.

In fact, the Kapersky report has predicted that up to 90 per cent of current malware will run on Vista and said some of the much-touted Vista security improvements are in fact so-much-toot.

This will probably do little to dampen the mood of the Armani-clad Microsoft marketing execs firing champagne corks into the Redmond campus undergrowth and watching Steve Ballmer chase them wildly and return with them clasped in his mouth.

And finally this week, it's a well known fact that you are always within 10 feet of a rat. And in a couple of years time, a security consultant.

Rather conveniently, it's impossible to evaluate the veracity of either assertion and so it is with complete impunity that the Round-Up gallops off in the direction of the next paragraph.

Anyway, cheap paper party hats off to the UK government. The Cabinet Office’s extremely orange, citizen-focussed portal Direct.gov.uk has been charged with putting local people in touch with local services. In fact, the league of gentlemen at Direct.gov.uk has spent quite a lot of time and money promoting the central-local services link.

(You could just use Google or go direct to the council website and cut out of the middle man but the Cabinet Office has some money, damn it, and it’s determined to spend it.)

Anyway back to the bit, it would appear the government has decided to come clean on its position on the whole weapons-of-mass-destruction unpleasantness that raged and raged until the media got bored of it and turned its attention back to 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here'. (Seriously though, a kangaroo's anus?)

It’s come to the Round-Up's attention that recently a Direct.gov.uk user was trying to find out about the procedure for reporting infestations of vermin to the local authority.

The user in question typed the words 'Report a Rat' into the Direct.gov.uk search box and was presented the following newsroom link in the top search results section: ‘Prime Minister responds to Butler Report’.

Bravo.

Dodgy politics aside, that's it for another week. Next Friday, your run-of-the-mill Weekly Round-Up will be replaced by the quite-frankly-epic Yearly Round-Up.

Start getting your hopes up now.

And then enter this week's caption competition which we think should get you all joining in with the weekly chuckle-fest, or check out last week's winning caption.

And if you've not had your fill yet why not check out atlarge.com – a brand new launch from the pioneering dot-com folks who brought you the hugely successful silicon.com ...so there's your guarantee of quality right there.

atlarge.com is pitched at the growing community of business travellers out there who want to stay connected and help their fellow travellers with reviews and helpful tips.

Think of it as your indispensable guide to modern mobility and it should be the one thing you check before even your passport.