The Weekly Round-Up: 25.07.08

Sat-nav devices are either the saviour of the modern driver or the new bane of our roads. It's worth pondering but don’t dwell on it if you happen to be dawdling at a T-junction. CRASH! Too late.

The innocent sat-nav device is being blamed for hundreds of thousands of accidents and near-misses each year.

According to a survey by insurance company Direct Line, devices have caused users to get lost, infringe the Highway Code and miss appointments (although as far as we know it hasn't sent anyone down here). Two per cent actually blamed the device for causing an accident or near accident. But then again they're hardly going to accept culpability for shunting that stationary Peugeot 206, are they?

At least not to the insurance company.

The report adds that almost one-fifth of sat-nav users said it caused them to hesitate on a busy road; 18 per cent said it reduced their awareness of what was going on around them; 11 per cent said it made them lose concentration while driving and 10 per cent said it caused them to make a dangerous, late or illegal turn.

More than one-third of sat-nav users also said they sometimes felt uncertain or deeply confused - although that may be merely a symptom of modern life.

Almost a third of people said the devices tried to make them drive somewhere where vehicles are prohibited, like one-way streets, pedestrian areas or the North Sea.

Only this week, according to reports, a Turkish truck driver set his sat-nav to guide him from his home town of Antakya near the Turkish-Syrian border to his destination of Gibraltar and ended up in Skegness.

That's Gibraltar Point in Skegness - a 1,600 mile detour. His 32-ton truck carrying luxury cars got stuck on a remote country road startling some local bird watchers and, one assumes, some local birds.

This cautionary tale is symptomatic of our increasing dependence on technology and our ever-decreasing reliance of common sense, map reading and not noticing the English Channel doesn't lie between Turkey and Spain.

silicon.com readers are divided on the subject but many lay the blame at the individual using the technology rather than the technology itself. The best of your comments are published here.

Meanwhile, the Round-Up, so inept at reading maps that it makes no difference whether they're upside down or even on the right page, thinks they're pretty neat and, bugs aside, the technology certainly increases its chances of getting to the destination.

Unfortunately, the Round-Up's better half doesn't share the same view. When the Round-Up borrowed a sat-nav from a friend it didn't realise the friend in question had amended the device so it added a personalised audio message to the end of each spoken direction: "Turn left in 20 metres… you tw*t".

It was hardly a fun drive but, having gotten hopelessly lost using the traditional Round-Up map-reading methods, it got us to the right destination, albeit in frosty silence...

Talk of lost drivers and ineffectual technology leads one naturally to the subject of Windows Vista.

Microsoft has tacitly admitted that Vista ain't all that. Vista has proven so unpopular with some that it's driven unprecedented demand for its predecessor, XP.

So, in light of this, what does Microsoft do? That's right, blow another $300m marketing it.

When Vista launched it was billed as the 'Big Wow'. This time the pitch seems to be 'Windows Vista: Come on, it's not THAT bad."

The first fruits of the company's $300m marketing spurge were visible this week with the launch of a new site aimed at dispelling some of the myths about Vista.

Did you know the company has published a technical support note advising users how to open the box containing the CDs? If you aren't warned off a technology product that gives its users help on opening the box then you only have yourself to blame for whatever follows.

The Round-Up will pepper you with a few excerpts as it gets on with the real business of telling you about the new ad campaign. Here’s the first one.

Step 1: To open the box, cut along the grooves on either side of the Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity label. So far, so good.

Interestingly, the company made an interesting discovery with a rather neat bit of thinking. The company got together a sample of Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista and asked them for their opinion on the OS. They were then shown a "new" OS, code-named Mojave. More than 90 per cent of the sample gave positive feedback on the new OS. They were then told that Mojave was actually Windows Vista. Brilliant.

"Oh wow," said one user.

Microsoft will look at incorporating the Mojave footage, which sounds like a secret UFO film, into its advertising in some way.

Step 2: Peel the red tabbed label off the front of the box and discard. OK. No problem.

Meanwhile, the previously unassailable hold Windows had on the enterprise space is starting to look assailable. A report last week that claimed old adversary Apple, which is running its own anti-Vista campaign, is starting to claw back market share.

Step 3: Holding the box with the Windows logo facing you, grasp the red tab on the top of the box, and pull it to the right to open the box as shown here. What the...?

Windows unit business chief Bill Veghte said: "We have a huge perception opportunity. We are going to try a bunch of stuff." Bravo, in a non-specific-kind-of-way, Bill.

Earlier this month the company launched the "Assurance" campaign, offering small businesses free Vista-related technical support, a move that will add millions of dollars to Microsoft's telephone support costs. The point, Veghte said, is that businesses want to see Microsoft standing behind its product.

Step 4: Pull the red tab to the right to open the box. Discard discs immediately and use box as home for your hamster.

Alright, step 4 isn't exactly accurate. But if you question whether the Round-Up is making all this up, follow this link and never doubt its word again...

So there we are, the company's campaign is gathering momentum. The bad press will be turned into good press and everyone will buy Vista.

Or maybe, and this is where the Round-Up thinks it could make a fair few bucks working as a marketing consultant for the software giant, it could just change the operating system's name to Mojave and lay Vista to rest forever as the ghost in the machine...

As anyone with a modicum of social awareness knows, the fabric of British society is falling apart and it's heartening to see technology companies at the vanguard of social reform.

One mobile company this week painted a grim picture of the failing structure of the typical UK familial unit.

"The breakdown of families is said to be the cause for the breakdown in society," said the email accompanying the press release from Vodafone in a tone that made you suspect that one of its new products may just well hold the solution.

Vodafone asked people to tell them which famous families they most associate with. You'll be thrilled to hear that the Royle Family came top. That's the TV-obsessed Mancunians not the Windsors. The Windsors, polled a paltry four per cent of the vote while the Simpsons garnered 17 per cent of the vote.

The strong traditional values of the Waltons made it the family that over half of the respondents would most like to emulate, even though only 16 per cent could say they were actually like them. In fact, less than one-third of families said they are part of a family that follows Waltons-like traditional family values.

The three most important things that families should do together are celebrate special occasions, eat together and, most importantly, talk. You can see where this research is going can't you?

Yes, for as luck would have it Vodafone has a solution to these woes and as wouldn't you know it, it has nothing to do with embracing family values and everything to do with a mobile talk plan.

Grandma refusing to pass the salt at the dinner table? Give her a call on her N95. Not talking to the wife after the latest row? Send here a grovelling text with a little bunch of digital flowers.

Sod the Waltons. Being a family is easy with a flexible voice and data plan. Sorted...

In other news this week.

Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang will no doubt look forward to board meetings now that Carl Icahn has joined the board.

Techies and academics plead with the government to save Bletchley Park from the ravages of time.

Orange thinks it has the answer to the Apple iPhone...

And don't forget to try your funny out on the caption competition this week…