The Weekly Round-Up: 11.05.07

Isn't that Tony Blair brilliant. The Round-Up thinks he's going to make a great Prime Minister.

Oh, hang on... he's done what?

What a shame, because the Round-Up has been mightily impressed this week by the outgoing PM.

It seems just 10 short years was all the lead time Blair required to start getting his head around this whole 'interweb thing' and now there's no stopping him.

True, he probably still couldn't switch on a PC if his life depended on it but this week Blair used YouTube to get his message out.

He is so down with the kids. Next he'll be filming himself dropping packets of Mentos into bottles of Diet Coke.

On this occasion Blair's message was a bilingual (get him!) vote of confidence for incoming French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

It seems Blair may have realised if he is ever to go on a chateaux holiday in his dotage he'd better start rebuilding some bridges with France after three terms in power which would have led many a casual observer to assume the US is actually the UK's nearest neighbour.

In the YouTube clip on the Downing Street channel, Blair jokingly admits his decision to dust off his conversational French might have been "a very bad idea".

Yeah, that or the decision to invade Iraq. It will be very interesting to see which decision the history books choose to remember.

If news that Tony Blair has finally 'got' the internet came as a huge surprise to everybody familiar with the famous technophobe then less surprising by far was news of yet another major security breach involving a stolen laptop.

This time it was Marks & Spencer, after a laptop was stolen from a printing firm containing details of a reported 26,000 staff members.

Sounding ominously like a recipe for identity theft, the details contained on the laptop included employee salaries, national insurance numbers, dates of birth and addresses.

Marks & Sparks duly responded by informing all staff and offering free credit checks for those employees worried about potential identity theft and fraud - though there is currently no reason to believe the laptop was stolen with this purpose in mind or any knowledge of the data it contained.

But sounding rather more rueful than is usual in press releases, Jamie Cowper from encryption specialist PGP, said: "So, the weekend brings news of yet another trusted high street brand losing sensitive information."

At this point he probably broke off to tut and roll his eyes to the heavens.

"The only silver lining here is that it seems to have been an opportunistic theft rather than a targeted attack," he added.

By which Cowper probably means some 'hoodie' is probably even now touting the laptop around pubs and market stalls trying to get £50 for it so he can buy some crack cocaine and spray cans, rather than attempting to access the laptop in search of sensitive information to effect any more sophisticated and profitable crimes.

More on which later.

Although Marks & Spencer would be forgiven for not being delighted for us, the news of this latest high-profile laptop theft broke just as silicon.com published an exclusive story highlighting the rising number of laptop thefts in the UK.

'Tell us about it!', M&S might remark. OK then, we will.

Predictability - given the sheer number of very important people carrying laptops around with them - the Metropolitan Police area was the worst hit, with 6,576 laptop thefts during 2006 - up from 5,735 the previous year. That's an increase of almost 15 per cent and, moreover, these figures show only those laptop thefts that took place outside the home and the office - burglaries are not included.

West Yorkshire has the second highest level of laptop theft, with 2,402 thefts during 2006 and also a 15 per cent upswing on the 2005 figure.

Other areas that saw major changes include Devon & Cornwall, which saw a 45 per cent hike year-on-year, Bedfordshire (35 per cent) and Lothian & Borders (31.5 per cent).

And although these stats may not make for happy reading the news is not all bad, with some forces reporting the number of thefts has fallen considerably.

Gloucester saw the greatest fall overall, with the amount of laptop theft falling 34.7 per cent. Nottinghamshire police reported a fall of 24.6 per cent, and Avon & Somerset reported a fall of 20.6 per cent - suggesting the West Country is a pretty safe place to get your laptop out - just don't stray into Devon & Cornwall... they'll have it off you in seconds.

And of course all this laptop theft is not only great news for would-be data thieves and fraudsters but for anybody looking for a cheap laptop and not interested in asking too many questions about where it came from.

However, silicon.com reader Chris Goodman wrote to say he's not come across any shady bargains.

"Where are all the stolen laptops?" asked Chris. "Nobody has offered me a dirt cheap laptop off the back of a lorry."

Typical, there's never a thief around when you need one.

silicon.com also unearthed which days of the week are best (or probably worst) for laptop thefts.

Friday is the clear winner which seems to make some sense.

Picture the scenario...

You've been putting in the hours all week trying to get the accounts done for the end of quarter. You know if they're not on Mr Walker's desk first thing Monday morning it'll be your job.

Meanwhile, you've been getting it in the neck all week from your other half because your late nights meant you missed little Ginny's swimming gala on Tuesday and couldn't take Billy to football practice on Wednesday.

Now, as you start putting your laptop into its bag, ready for the Friday commute home, you're dreading the conversation about how you've got to work all weekend and won't be able to go to the garden centre, or do that lunch at the in-laws' (working over the weekend has never sounded so appealing).

And then, just as you're walking out of the office, you hear those three little words which so often act as a catalyst to so much that can go wrong in a person's week/month/life...

"Fancy a pint?"

From that point on you are dramatically increasing the likelihood of your laptop not making it home.

Whether it's stolen in the pub while you are up at the bar or whether it gets lifted while you sleep on the night bus home after too much strong lager, or some time in between, laptops, Fridays, pubs and alcohol do not mix. In fact they form a heady cocktail that is almost irresistible to opportunist thieves who can make off with a laptop whose eagle-eyed owner turns his back for two seconds (so a drunk asleep on the night bus with his 'DELL' bag proudly betraying its contents on the seat next to him is really no challenge.)

Yet given the number of people who carry their laptops home each evening, and the number of people who deservedly toast the weekend with a few drinks after work on a Friday, we seemingly continue to test this most obvious equation to its logical conclusion.

Be careful out there this evening.

Of course, as a species, we're rarely as careful as we should be in certain aspects of our lives - that's why we need travel insurance, crash helmets and the morning after pill.

This week silicon.com was informed: "Pharmaceutical company Schering Health Care is harnessing the privacy of the mobile phone to launch an innovative new marketing campaign for Levonelle, the emergency contraceptive pill."

'The privacy of the mobile phone'? Clearly nobody at Schering has been on the Round-Up's commuter train where mobile phone calls are anything but private and even text messages are preyed upon by shoulder surfers. But that fact aside, it's an interesting notion.

The mobile phone service, being launched by a company called Incentivated (no, really, that's what it's called) will target women looking to find out the whereabouts of the nearest stockist of the morning after pill.

The service is being publicised in some of London's free newspapers.

Robert Thurner, commercial director at Incentivated, overcame the usual male awkwardness when it comes to talking about 'women's things' to say: "This campaign illustrates how forward-looking brands can exploit the unique strengths of mobile in serving up time- and location-sensitive information whilst respecting people's intimate relationships with their handsets."

Sorry? The Round-Up thinks it's not an intimate relationship with a handset which gets women into this predicament. A man is almost certainly involved at some point. The wording of that line could really confuse anybody who's not quite sure about the whole 'birds and bees' thing.

"In this case, the mobile option spares Levonelle users the potential embarrassment of getting caught browsing the website in public," Thurner added. Though surely using the store finder on the Boots website, for example, wouldn't raise suspicions...

"Saw that Claire in accounts looking on the Boots website this morning… " "Oh really, somebody must have got lucky last night."

Though of course the mobile phone can only do so much. Users do still have to walk into the chemist and throw themselves prostrate in front of the pharmacist and beg for forgiveness - or, worse still, endure the moment when the shop assistant shouts across the store to her colleague: "MARGARET! Can I get a price check on the morning after pill?"

And now the Round-Up would like to take a moment to point you, dear readers, in the direction of the Weekly Round-Up Podcast - where you can enjoy 15 minutes of lively tech debate and wit sharper than a pair of Eddie Izzard's stilettos… This week we're getting fired up about Second Life - so tune in and join in. You can listen right here, right now (just click here) - and can also subscribe in iTunes (here) or grab the XML feed (here). Get to it!

And finally, there is no escaping the reach of technology or the spread of dishonesty within our society. And the two marching forces are at loggerheads in the world of examinations.

As you will be well aware, should you have teenagers, next week sees the start of the exam season in the UK, with students sitting down to do A-Levels and GCSEs.

Despite the fact these exams have been made easier than a Sudoku with only one number missing, it seems some students are still not confident of passing the dumbed-down tests and are resorting to cheating.

However, exam board EdExcel is rolling out RFID chips in exam papers to ensure they can track and authenticate the papers at every stage of the delivery process. It is hoped this will prevent them going astray and possibly being copied and sold to desperate students.

Furthermore, given the range of ways students can cheat (probably thanks in part to technology), exam boards are also employing technology at the back-end to analyse patterns of answers and results to spot potential anomalies which might indicate cheating.

So tell your children that if they're planning on cheating in their exams: don't be too predictable, mix up the answers, get some wrong and beware consistency (and if they're copying from somebody else, remind them of the need not to copy that person's name or candidate number - it tends to be a giveaway.)

And - god forbid - if they're planning on the old 'honest approach' then wish them the very best of luck.