The Weekly Round-Up: 01.06.07

In life it's important to know who you are and how other people see you.

So imagine the consternation of author Ted Demopoulos when it was revealed this week that he is officially the world's dullest man.

That's not good, right?

A search on Google for "dull person" revealed Demopoulos as one of the top returned searches.

Putting aside the fact this is neither news, nor particularly interesting, Demopoulos attempted to use this rather bogus discovery to put out a press release bigging up his blog, his books and his speaking engagements. (Though we're not going to use the clumsily shoe-horned in quotes where he attempts to plug his offerings.)

"I'm not THAT dull," said Demopoulos, who claims more people are finding his blog as a result of this unwelcome honour (presumably because in his world thousands of people search Google looking for a "dull person").

"I noticed I was getting more traffic than normal today," said Demopoulos, doing little to allay the suggestion he's a little on the boring side. "And when I checked my traffic statistics... "

... Zzzzzzz...

Makes you wonder though. What else would Google unveil?

Well, a student at the University of Glamorgan is the "baldest man" in the world.

James Gregory is apparently the "funniest man"... so not the Round-Up then?

And the Round-Up's personal favourite, however, a search for "most flatulent man" returns George W Bush as top windy-popper.

Speaking of Google, the search giant has enjoyed mixed fortunes in recent times when it comes to questions about its 'foreign policy'. Take the shameless kowtowing before the Chinese government, for example. This from a company whose 'whiter than white' image has looked increasingly implausible of late.

However, Google Earth may have unwittingly shed some light on a gun smuggling operation into war-torn Sudan. Images on Google Earth clearly reveal the location, near Darfur of a downed aircraft cited in a leaked UN report into gun-running in the region.

"The Government of the Sudan continues to ship both small arms and heavy weapons, ammunition and other military equipment into the Darfur states by air," claimed the UN report.

"According to reliable sources, several cargo aircraft landed repeatedly at El Geneina airport in January and February 2007 reportedly to offload military equipment... an Antonov AN-12 aircraft bearing registration number ST AQE flew from Khartoum to El Geneina airport, where it crashed shortly after 9AM... In addition to the passengers there were two D-22 type 122-mm artillery howitzers and 40 to 50 wooden boxes painted olive drab, suspected to contain arms and ammunition."

Any intentions the Sudanese had of denying these claims have been pre-emptively undermined somewhat by said aircraft popping up on Google Earth.

Elsewhere in Africa the Moroccan government appears to have lifted an apparent ban on YouTube. The popular video site apparently became website non grata after it hosted footage of Moroccan policemen beating a female activist who was part of a protest against the country's occupation of Western Sahara.

However, the state owned Maroc Telecom said the apparent block was down to nothing more sinister than a technical fault... which blocked only YouTube. No other websites.

Of course it was.

YouTube went offline to Moroccans on 25 May, meaning anybody in Fez or Casablanca looking for footage of Mentos being dropped into bottles of Diet Coke will have been out of luck.

Moving on, can the Round-Up encourage all you dear, dear readers to raise a glass and toast the humble debit card this weekend, for it is turning 20 years old.

The Round-Up remembers being 20... just about. It was a good age.

The debit card first found its way into our wallets, pockets and purses two decades ago, on 3 June 1987.

My, how time flies.

And Barclays is celebrating this fact with a nostalgic trip down memory lane and has furnished us with a list of everything you would ever need to know about debit cards.

For example, would you believe there are currently 68 million debit cards in use across the UK, accounting for a staggering 143 purchases per second, on average?

The average UK shopper uses their debit card 210 times per year and averages around £10,000 per year in spend.

However, the well-heeled of Battersea in London spend the most - averaging £15,840 per year, compared to the frugal folk in Small Heath in Birmingham who average less than £5,000 - which would barely buy you a dinner and a decent bottle of claret in Battersea.

Now of course the debit card is evolving at a rate of knots, what with chip and PIN and 'wave and pay' and all the advances modern technology is encouraging. And to think the Round-Up remembers getting the first one with a holographic sticker on and thinking that was pretty flash.

"Look, it's an eagle, now it says £100, now it's an eagle... I could do this for hours!" (And did.)

Slightly outside the budget of most debit card users will be the domain name Porn.com which sold this week for the pant-droppingly humungous figure of $9.5m.

The domain was bought by MXN, a company unsurprisingly up to its nuts in the 'adult entertainment' industry.

Cue lots of claims in the media about this being the highest fee ever paid for a domain name... followed, as surely as 'ahh' follows 'ooh', by counter claims that the record is still held by Sex.com - which sold for $12m in 2005, though its ownership has been the subject of some particularly messy legal wrangling.

But whichever site genuinely lays claim to the title of most valuable domain name it's not the greatest endorsement for how the web has matured over the years.

(What value 'silicon.com' these days? The Round-Up wonders… )

Typos are a pain, aren't they. The Round-Up is particularly afflicted by the fact the 'r' and the 't' are next to one another on a keyboard.

Why is this such a problem? Just speak to anybody in Cambridgeshite, Oxfordshite, Lancashite or Yorkshite who has ever been offended by an email from the Round-Up. They'll tell you.

So the Round-Up's heart goes out to the hapless PR at tech agency GBC who sent out a press release this week championing some factoid or other, only to send out a correction some hours later.

"I am extremely sorry, however there was a typo in the below email," he began. "The company that should be mentioned is PacketExchange not Websense."

That's not technically a typo is it? 'Websende' would have been a typo. 'Websence' even.

'PacketExchange' is just a case of cack-handedness.

However, that blunder was outdone by a PR agent acting for Vodafone who managed to spell that company name wrong... or right, depending on whether you, like the Round-Up, still cringe slightly at the 'fone' spelling.

The PR agent in question insisted on spelling it 'Vodaphone'. Doh!

Another email which caught the Round-Up's eye this week was one of the many hundreds of scam emails that wash up in the editorial inbox.

Why did one in particular stand out? Was it because he claimed to be from a large international bank but was emailing from an account at beautifulflowers.info (that well known titan of finance)? Or was it because it purportedly came from one Patrik Berger, the Aston Villa and former Portsmouth and Liverpool footballer?

That's right, it was the latter.

With Deloitte reporting just this week that footballer's wages in the Premiership have hit £1bn per year it seems strange that Berger should have to run a sideline in sending scam emails, so the Round-Up investigated further.

Sadly Mr Berger failed to respond to a very friendly line of questioning, leaving the Round-Up to assume it's probably a different Patrik Berger.

And speaking of spam email, a man accused of being one of the world's most prolific spammers was arrested this week in the US.

Robert Soloway, 27, was arrested in the US on Wednesday, accused of using a network of compromised PCs - or botnets - to send out millions of spam emails. This came after a federal grand jury last week returned a 35-count indictment against Soloway, including charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering.

While silicon.com will reserve comment until the case against Soloway is settled one way or the other and he has enjoyed his day in court, others have been quick to comment.

Speaking to the media, Tim Cranton a lawyer with Microsoft, said of Soloway: "He's one of the top 10 spammers in the world. He's a huge problem for our customers."

"This is a very good day," added Cranton of Soloway's arrest.

Meanwhile Spamhaus, a perennial thorn in the side of the spamming fraternity, said: "Soloway has been a long-term nuisance on the internet, both in terms of the spam he sent and the people he duped to use his spam service."

(At this point, can the Round-Up say 'allegedly'.)

Apropos of nothing, however, Soloway's arrest has coincided with a dip in the amount of spam email in circulation, according to the excellent folks at email security specialists MessageLabs.

"Interestingly the percentage [of all email that is spam] for May is currently 72 per cent which is down four points from last month," wrote Mark Sunner, anti-spam guru at MessageLabs, improbably beginning a sentence which included the word 'percentage' with the word 'interestingly'.

Sunner continued: "Although I could not say if it's specifically due to this guy being shutdown, I would speculate that it could well be a factor as the trend had been upwards until now."

And finally, news this week that the BBC has been doing more dabbling in trendy virtual world Second Life.

So into the notion of Second Life is the Beeb that it's broadcasting a programme inside Second Life which will, by a happy coincidence, be about Second Life.

And what programme has the BBC chosen to target this phenomenon among the world's 'yoof'?

The Money Programme. Rock and roll!

The episode of The Money Programme, scheduled for airing this evening (Friday 1 June), will feature reporter Max Flint, who was surely named with a future in Boy's Own heroism in mind, rather than documentary work discussing the economics of virtual worlds such as Second Life and the ominously named Lord of the Rings Online - the very concept of which just sent shivers down the Round-Up's spine.

So there you go. If you really have nothing to do tonight... no grouting, no laundry, no ironing, no dusting, no alphabetising of your cook books... log on to Second Life and watch The Money Programme. (Though check if the oven needs a clean first.)

Until next week, check out our photos of the month. And then why not try your luck at this week's caption competition. Congrats to last week's winner: David Caddick.

And don't forget the ever-popular Weekly Round-Up podcast. (You can even subscribe in iTunes here - or pick up the XML feed here.)