The Weekly Round-Up: 03.08.07

If your sole hope in opening this week's Round-Up was to discover by chance which technology has been voted the 'most influential' of the past 25 years then you are truly the bearer of outrageous fortune.

A survey of IT professionals carried out by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), answers just that question and the Round-Up confesses to be a bit surprised by the answer.

Take a moment to think back over the developments that have shaped the technology landscape over the last 25 years, what technology could be crowned 'most influential' in a quarter century of innovation?

Linux? Nope. The Macintosh? Not a chance. The world wide web? You're having a laugh, mate. It's Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, which garnered a remarkable two-thirds of the vote. Cue some embarrassed clapping near the back. Cough. Let's move on.

In fact, four of the top five are products out of the Microsoft stable. Second place went to Microsoft Word, with Windows (any version, they're all as influential as each other) in third. Apple's iPod managed to squeeze into the list at joint fourth, tied with Microsoft Excel - spreadsheet-tastic (check out the rest of the top 10 here).

It's quite a coup for one of the world's buggiest browsers. The original IE launched in 1995 as a competitor to Netscape and so the browser wars were born. IE won definitively and by the time version 5 was released four years later it had become the world's most popular browser. It still holds that position today, although it is facing steadily increasing competition from Firefox.

But it's still a strange result. Look, if truth be told, CompTIA is actually funded in part by Microsoft, which may just possibly go some way to explain some of the voting.

The CompTIA is a 25-year-old trade body which certifies IT professionals and is funded by major vendors, including the Redmond software giant. The two have been closely aligned, particularly in the fight against the dark penguin-shaped shadow of open source and the European Commission. The two are also key members of the Initiative for Software Choice, which frequently takes an anti-open-source stance.

However, before you step away from the survey - let's stop. Wait. Take a moment to consider how we define 'influential'.

Let's start with web standards. It could be argued that IE has driven the phenomenal industry-wide uptake of the World Wide Web Consortium's standards by paying the scantest regard to them - thereby helping standards compliance with CSS and DOMs at the forefront of designers' and developers' minds as they seek an alternative platform.

Or it's equally possible to argue that it's helped to put security at the top of IT department's lists of things to worry about - and fuelled the growth of the vast computer security industry.

Or perhaps it's the role it plays in being an effective foil to Firefox, the next big hope for web browsers. In those respects it certainly has been influential.

The Round-Up's guessing that at least a few of you might disagree with its opinions or those of CompTIA. You know what to do, email editorial@silicon.com and tell us your top five...

"On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

This was perhaps the central axiom of the first iteration of the social internet. How people judged you was based on how you expressed yourself through the considered metre of email and chat board postings and not how you looked.

You had the potential to be a maker of friends and an influencer of souls despite the fact you may have been a warty, flatulent homunculus. It was a happy time for the Round-Up.

Then everything changed, of course. Second Life and its ilk came along with its avatars. Suddenly you're on your best behaviour as an avatar, even if you are improbably endowed, bright red and sporting a frankly magnificent pair of antlers.

Users of virtual worlds such as Second Life are apparently more self-conscious about how they're perceived by other game residents than bloggers, chatroom posters and the like. There are a couple of reasons for this, according to US academic and virtual world guru Jaron Lanier, and you can find out what they are in the next paragraph.

One is because users can be economically tied to their game property and have "more to lose if they're creepy". Lanier's other theory is that seeing people, even in the form of an avatar, evokes empathy. In other words, you become more affected by real-world behavioural rules despite your virtual status and appearance.

Businesses are increasingly using virtual worlds for real purposes and here, once again, a sense of decorum is being called for. IBM has 5,000 employees in Second Life and Big Blue is using the environment for business collaboration.

IBM vice president, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, thinks Second Life is a "godsend for meetings". He added that there is a code of conduct for IBM staff in Second Life - they need to "be nice" and dress their avatars "appropriately" in meetings.

However, when among friends in the virtual world and their clients in the real world they can do whatever the hell they like. Maybe.

Actually the point is that civility is becoming the 'killer app' of virtual worlds, find out more here - and check out silicon.com's special report on virtual worlds here.

The world of Second Life is one of exciting alternative reality where men are real men (or indeed women or even strange furry man-animal hybrids) and free to express themselves as they wish. It's about being able to literally fly around a virtual world with no limits. Except that all of a sudden there seem to be a lot of limits.

The latest online pleasure to fall foul of offline legislature is gambling.

Residents who take part in games that rely on chance to determine a winner or which depend on the outcome of a real-life sporting event and provide a payout will be violating a new policy put in place by Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life. The company's official blog said the policy supporting federal and state laws regulating gambling also affected users outside the US.

Only this week Second Life CEO Philip Rosedale predicted that the number of virtual world explorers would dwarf the current number of 'standard' web users within 10 years time.

Which would sound incredibly exciting and empowering if it didn't sound so indescribably dull and dour.

No gambling, more personal accountability, tons of virtual responsibility. Only last month the company stamped out bestiality. OK, so the Round-Up's not going to lose too much sleep over that last one but it's the principle. Is no liberty sacred?

Woof!

The smoking ban has been a great success. Our clothes now smell of April freshness, our pubs now smell of alcohol and sweat and our hotel corridors now emit an odour vaguely reminiscent of old school buses. But at least it isn't cigarettes - and this is a good thing.

Best of all, people who have complained for years that they would rather not inhale second-hand smoke and risk dropping down dead now don't have to and this, we can all agree, is also a good thing - we can all look forward to being rosy-cheeked, margarine-eating marathon runners again.

However, just as non-smokers are starting to feel a lot better, along comes some research that warns another health risk has reared its ugly head. This time it's probably in every office and has most probably got A4 paper coming out of every orifice.

Some Australian anti-coughin' boffins have discovered that laser printers are as unhealthy as cigarettes. According to their bonzer research the average 'printer of death' releases toner particles that can get deep into the lungs and cause respiratory problems and cardiovascular trouble. Bleargh.

The particles have not had a full chemical analysis but some are potential carcinogens, the scientists added (you can see some of the worst offenders named and shamed here).

The Round-Up confesses to being a tad alarmed, as it writes this column within a small inkjet's throw from a gigantic HP laser printer so large it looks like its mother was ravished by a fridge.

The discovery was a chance one that occurred when a project investigating office ventilation systems found five times as many particles indoors as those produced by traffic outdoors.

HP has issued a statement to make it clear that its products undergo vigorous testing as part of its quality assurance procedures. But that hasn't stopped the Australian scientists calling for the introduction of regulations on printer emissions.

After all there was a dream once that was 'the paperless office'. Remember that? No, neither does the Round-Up, if it is being perfectly honest. But it could turn out to be a matter of life or death if these scientists are right.

Then again it could turn out to be another scare story preying on our anxiety. Stress, now there's a real killer...

Finally this week, the highly improbable battle between the world's most powerful media mogul and a 23-year-old IT graduate in legal bother with some dorm buddies has kicked off in earnest.

The market lead of Rupert Murdoch's MySpace is being rapidly eroded by social networking fireball Facebook.

Facebook still tracks behind MySpace with just over six million UK visitors in June compared to MySpace's 10.7million (that would be one in six UK residents then).

However, the upstart's popularity has exploded during the past 12 months, with year-on-year user growth of more than 2,000 per cent. MySpace grew by 149 per cent in the same period.

In related news, Australian telecoms giant Telstra has become the latest company to ban Facebook from its offices and it has nothing to do with a show of support for fellow Aussie Rupert.

If you're a business or IT manager you may have some sympathy. After all, an addictive site such as Facebook or Bebo can prove to be a huge productivity vortex. In addition, as social networking blurs the boundaries between personal and business life, some security experts have also warned of the risks to individuals and businesses alike.

The Round-Up wonders if this may be a rash move for Telstra. After all, remember the case of the disgruntled former employee who went postal, stole an armoured personnel carrier - let's just say tank - and drove it through Sydney taking out the company's mobile masts… Bearing this in mind, maybe the company should take a defter touch with employee benefits and reconsider whether it should allow its staff access to their walls and friend lists before one of them takes out the HR department with a Panzer.

Until next week, check out this week's Caption Competition - truly a gem, trust the Round-Up and click here to make us laugh. And congrats to last week's winner, Dave Devine.

And don't forget to tune in to the Weekly Round-Up podcast - for a marble-cake of tech talk, including trouble with Auntie's iPlayer, an ingenious device to find out what your cat's been getting up to in the 'hood and banning the internet. Yep! We don't shy away from the big topics on this podcast, no indeed!

That's it for another week - go read some news...