The Weekly Round-Up: 23.03.07

If you aren't reading this column cowering under your desk, wearing protective Kevlar underwear and considering your business continuity plans, then the Round-Up suspects you aren't taking the threat to humanity as seriously as you should.

You see, a press release which landed in the virtual mail sack this week has alerted us to just what a dangerous world we live in and what the intelligent person can do to mitigate the risks posed by avian flu and terrorists, in no particular order.

The subject line of said press release read: "Boss's Beware Survey Shows Commuters Won't Be Travelling When Avian Flu Hits".

Putting aside the scant regard for grammar, the Round-Up focused more on the use of the word "When". And then sudden panic took over.

The release, which contains enough exclamation marks to make a grown man 'weep!' informed the suddenly terror-stricken Round-Up that business commuters won't be skipping to work across London in the event of an avian flu pandemic or "rumoured" terrorist attack. It added most people would expect their employer to pay for "anti-virals" in the event of a pandemic. Most alarmingly, given the high risk of almost certain death incurred by leaving your house and being vaguely where chickens have been, "three quarters of people [are] not yet 'getting around' to writing a will!" it exclaimed. Furthermore, a poll stated that people believed that companies would put profits ahead of staff.

It's shocking stuff.

So it's death, pestilence, war and (possibly given the sudden lack of poultry) famine all the way. Except there's a solution to all this woe - proper business continuity planning, of course, and the Round-Up was cordially invited to a conference on the very subject in the Docklands area of London at the end of this month.

Responsible business continuity communications or nonsensical FUD - it's such a fine line, isn't it?

Not convinced initially, the Round-Up sought advice from another expert in the field this week and it's more bad news.

"I would certainly not recommend travelling anywhere in London at the end of March, let alone large buildings - like Docklands conference halls which are a prime target for avian-flu ridden pigeons carrying Al Qaeda-manufactured dirty bombs," said anti-terrorism and bird flu consultant Chicken Licken.

"Good God! Look out for that asteroid!" he screeched as he disappeared into his air-raid shelter in a flurry of feathers.

The Round-Up's not suggesting that business continuity isn't important to the modern business. However, it’s just possible that irresponsible scaremongering isn't the best way to go about spreading the word.

Especially if that word is 'Death...'

For more on this story and many other excellent tasty morsels or news and irreverence you really must (must!) check out the Weekly Round-Up podcast which by Episode 11 is starting to sound really quite good (...and yes, the intro music is meant to be all ironic, like). There's something in this week's edition for everybody. Presuming everybody can find something to enjoy about space talk, cyber bullying, Second Life and some shocking revelations about the entire meaning of life*.

You can listen here, or find full details on how to subscribe at the end of this email.

Moving on, care to take the Weekly Round-Up's 30-second coolness test? Excellent.

Question one: Do you own an iPod? If the answer is 'no' then you're either a free-thinker or a dangerous lone wolf. If you do own an iPod, then you probably wear a corduroy jacket with leather patches over the elbows. But don't despair, you can still redeem yourself in the coolness stakes.

Question two: What do you use your iPod for? If it's for playing music then, oh dear, you've probably got a pipe tucked into the breast pocket of that jacket, haven't you?

It transpires that nobody really uses their iPods for listening to their Val Doonican LPs anymore, according to an article on silicon.com this week. In a run-down of the top 10 weirdest uses for Apple's MP3 player, the Round-Up was intrigued to learn the range of alternative uses people have been using their gadgets for.

First off is its use as a little black box in airplanes - though being Apple you obviously have the choice of a range of colours.

One airplane modification company, LoPresti Speed Merchants, has apparently added iPod integration to its Fury line of planes, with a view to using the MP3 player as an in-flight data recorder.

According to LoPresti, the iPod can record more than 500 hours of flight time details as well as act as a voice recorder to capture cockpit conversations and clearances. The company's CEO is also hoping developers will come up with some new aviation applications using the iPod.

For starters you could probably also use it to store pre-recorded in-flight messages. Although you'd need to take care it's not set to Shuffle mode for fear of telling passengers tucking into their lunch of microwaved brown and green matter to assume the crash position.

Meanwhile, England's cricketers have been given video iPods preloaded with clips of their opponents' batting and bowling techniques. Of course, it's not going to do you much good if you leave it in a bar after an all-night bender.

For the scallywags out there, you could also use your iPod for stealing vast amounts of corporate data. An increasingly common phenomenon, apparently, which has been coined 'pod-slurping'.

It doesn't sound particularly hygienic.

You can read about the other seven alternative uses for an iPod here and here.

In the meantime, if you've done something ingenious with your iPod let us know by emailing editorial@silicon.com.

Work just isn't fun anymore. If it isn't a reduction in the number of websites that can be viewed over company networks it's a limitation to personal email accounts and instant messaging. The number of distractions from the hum-drum of making a living in the modern world is being slashed all the time by mean old network administrators.

The latest privilege to be stripped from the average nine-to-fiver is access to their Second Life avatars. Shame!

For the uninitiated (or those that have a 'first life' and are quite happy with that one, thank you), Second Life is a virtual world which claims to have 4.8 million 'residents' across the (real) world. In the game, users, represented by digital avatars, can get up to all sorts of virtual shenanigans while dressed in peculiar garb.

They can even visit Second Life versions of real-life corporate headquarters - check out the virtual US headquarters of CNET (the publisher of silicon.com) here.

Anyway, back to the bit. Security firm Sophos says it has received requests from an increasingly large number of companies for the ability to block corporate network access to Second Life.

The normally publicity-shy Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, was coaxed into commenting this week: "People get addicted to these online games."

Second Life is one of a number of apps Sophos will allow network administrators to block through its antivirus software. Other games include Everquest and Lineage - bad news for wizards and goblins everywhere. The security company also found 41 per cent of PC users have the same password for all of their computer applications - including games.

Cluley - who used to run a nice sideline in writing computer games himself - added: "We're not saying that the game is bad but there's a time and a place for it."

Boo! Residents of Second Life will argue that it’s a bold experiment in social networking. Your boss is more likely to say it's a complete waste of company time, particularly when you haven't met your monthly targets, and he's unlikely to be placated by the knowledge that you're raking in the Linden dollars (Second Life's official currency) in sales of broadswords or the like.

The Man probably has a point on this one. The odd game of Solitaire or Minesweeper is one thing. Total immersion in a virtual environment where an alternative version of yourself buys, sells, negotiates and interacts with oddly apparelled strangers is quite another. (The Round-Up's talking about Second Life, not Working Life, by the way.)

Still, bosses may be missing a trick here. They may be able to communicate with their employees a little better if they log in to the matrix and track down their staff in the game rather than get HR involved.

"Hi Steve, haven't you got a client meeting in 15 minutes?"

"Sorry boss, on my way."

"Good chap. By the way, like the miniskirt and antlers."

"Er, thanks..."

And finally this week, the spat-ridden world of American politics has spilled over into the wonderful world of web 2.0.

Almost a year before the first 2008 US presidential primary, a YouTube video clip war has erupted between supporters of Democratic Senators and presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, reports Reuters.

Supporters have decided to parody an iconic advert in their attempts to get one over on the other camp. Intriguingly, the advert parodied is Apple's infamous 1984 ad, which was only ever shown twice on national TV - once on an obscure regional TV station in a late-night slot and the other time during the slightly less obscure Superbowl.

Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, said: "The internet is going to be the main event.

"Anything that gets the attention of millions of eyeballs - and particularly millions of eyeballs of people who at this early stage are watching - matters."

A rather odd way of getting your point across but the Round-Up's brain cells think they know what data its eyeballs fed to it.

The famous ad features a Big Brother type character (meant to represent IBM) spouting rhetoric to a bunch of grey-clothed, shaven-headed drones via a massive TV screen, which is shattered by a sledgehammer thrown by a lithe blonde, female athlete wearing skimpy red shorts (meant to represent Apple). Obviously.

In the spoofed ads, Obama supporters replaced the Big Brother figure with Clinton. Shortly after, Clinton supporters did the opposite. What larks.

It's nice to see the battle for democratic representation spilling over to a website full of content which itself has been added and tagged 'democratically' by its own users. You've got to admit there's a certain symmetry to it.

Just maybe they should look at more recent Apple campaigns to spoof, like the Get a Mac ads in which a 'PC' and a 'Mac' perform a series of pithy dialogues:

"Hi, I'm a Democrat."

"And I'm a Democrat, too."

"I'm also a straight-talking guy."

"And I'm a straight-talking woman. Look how much trouble the last 'straight-talking guy' got us into. Isn't it time to 'Think Different'?"

Until next week, don't forget to check out that podcast. Go on, you know you want to. And as further enticement there's a bottle of bubbly for one lucky listener. All you have to do is listen and then email editorial@silicon.com naming three of the companies mentioned as being involved in the modern space race. Then one lucky winner will be drawn at random before noon on Friday 30 March. (Entrants must be UK residents aged 18 or over.)

You can listen here.

And if you enjoy it so much you don't want to miss another episode, you can subscribe at iTunes here.

Or get the XML feed here.

And finally, finally, congratulations to the winner of last week's caption competition. You can find out who that lucky winner was, and read all the captions, here.

*OK we lied about the meaning of life.