The Weekly Round-Up: 02.05.08

Time heals all wounds. And over at the head offices of HM Revenue & Customs, life is returning to normal.

After all, there are small businesses and middle-class citizens to tax heavily.

Life is good again. Best of all, almost no one mentions the 'incident' any more.

The tax inspectors can get back to taxing, the administrators back to administrating and the press officers can get back to eating solid foods and not screaming when the phone rings again and again and again. Maybe even time to shift the furniture around perhaps?

Mmm, nice.

No wait, hang on: the minister has just announced that more than 600 staff at HMRC have been disciplined for snooping on personal data. Your data. There go the phones again, pass the straws. Nurse! Nurse!

Apparently 192 staff had been disciplined last year, 180 in 2006 and a whopping 238 in 2005.

The HMRC has discussed 11 data security incidents involving customer information with the Information Commissioner's Office since April 2005, has stopped data transfers unless there is a business critical need, and now demands adequate security protection for the transfer of bulk data on removable media such as CDs and memory sticks, Jane Kennedy said in a separate answer (which the Round-Up would like to think was supplied on a couple of CDs in an unmarked jiffy bag with a 'rubbish' stamp).

She added the 'data guardians' brought in to shake-up data security at the HMRC did not have power to operate outside of the existing HMRC chain of command and that business unit directors and the HMRC chairman retained ultimate responsibility for data security. So it's very much chocolate teapot time then, thanks to a classic bit of civil service, red-tape poppycock.

According to the written answer, the minister added: "HMRC has a strict policy forbidding staff to access customer records, unless they have a legitimate business need. Breaches of this policy are taken seriously."

Pfft!

A shadow home affairs spokesman said he was shocked that "so many public officials have been sacked or disciplined for abusing people's private details".

Pfft!

And to think, only this week the House of Lords supported a hasty amendment to the criminal justice and immigration bill which would make it a criminal offence to carelessly release or lose personal data...

Sales of Windows Vista might just be about to go through the roof.

"How so, deranged fool?" you may well ask. "Show us your evidence." And you'd be well within your rights to request it.

Faced with a 30 June deadline to stop shipping computers with Windows XP, the world's PC makers are getting creative. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Welcome to the party.

The way it works is thus: by taking advantage of the "downgrade rights" offered as part of the Windows Vista licence agreement, PC companies plan to offer machines loaded with XP beyond the cut off date.

Technically, the computers will be Vista Business or Vista Ultimate machines that have been factory downgraded to XP at the customer's request. In practice, they are more like XP machines that come with an already paid-for upgrade to Vista when and if the customer chooses to do so.

Find out more about this particular conundrum and its daft workarounds here.

So everyone's happy. PC makers are happy because people will continue to buy their computers. Customers are happy because they can continue to buy computers that don't run Vista. And of course, Microsoft is happy because Vista sales are up.

Customers would no doubt be happier if they didn't have to go to all the trouble of buying one system so you could run the previous one and could get what they wanted.

Some people, the sane ones with a half-developed sense of commercial rationality, are simply asking why the emperor doesn't just admit that his dangly bits are getting cold and just do the sensible thing and extend the deadline for selling XP machines…

Smart phones are the hottest property in the mobile handset industry, with some analysts predicting that in a few short years we'll all be holding them or have pockets vibrating with them.

The market sector has exploded in the past month with Apple and Google both taking bold steps into uncharted territory. A market that was already a bit crowded.

With so many manufacturers jostling for attention, wouldn't it be handy to read a report from the users of the two most popular smart phones - the BlackBerry and the iPhone?

Well strike me down, some helpful people have only gone and done that this very week. What a happy coincidence.

A survey of more than 800 US smart phone users has shed light on the most-loved and least-liked functions of the two phones - and shown up key fronts on which the competition between the two might play out.

The BlackBerry has long ruled the roost when it comes to receiving corporate email.

So what does it for the CrackBerry addicts? Well, convenient corporate email is the top of the pops for more than half of those polled. Then it's the small form factor, followed by web access. Ease of use creeps into fourth place.

Meanwhile, iPhone users are more enthralled by the converged solutions offered by the Apple device. More than a third said the integration of phone, iPod and web browser was their favourite feature, while another 27 per cent admitted to going a bit gaga over the touchscreen - it is awfully nice - while 16 per cent have been sucked into Apple's "it just works" mantra with usability being the top feature.

The study also reported the top issues iPhone and BlackBerry users had with their devices.

The nice people who conducted the research, ChangeWave, quoted one user as stating: "I love the iPhone. It is revolutionary. I love being able to jump on the internet, send email, get maps, weather forecasts, instant message and make phone calls."

'Revolutionary' is a word that might be applicable to one of silicon.com's readers with reference to his own experience of an iPhone.

"Being a long-time PC user, I'm predisposed to dislike Apple, and I do..." started a gruff IT director from up north in a reader comment that was unlikely to make pleasant reading for fans of the iPhone. That was until he had a play with the gadget and it turned out to be a Damascene moment for the reader who added that as soon as a 3G version is released he may well turn to the dark side.

Apparently "annoyingly, it is really easy to use and provides a great user experience. It does indeed 'just work'.

"I feel so dirty..."

In other news this week not warranting a full write-up but of interest nonetheless.

CIOs are the new eco-warriors. No, they're not hanging around in underground tunnels and trees objecting to a new motorway bypass, they're doing their eco-warrior-ing (ahem) in the server room and the boardroom.

Great news for Virgin Media customers - the BBC is bringing iPlayer onboard. It's not the latest series of 24 but it is content nonetheless and beggars can't be choosers.

Businesses are still wondering what the hell Second Life can do for them. Probably nothing in terms of sales but if you're talking about collaboration then the virtual world's your oyster.

Hungry for more? Of course you are. Take your best shot in the caption competition for a chance to win some bubbly. And check out the latest episode of the Weekly Round-Up podcast. There's no finer way to get you to 5pm on a Friday afternoon.