The Weekly Round-Up: 01.08.08

It's not often the Round-Up gets riled. Well, other than at crying babies on planes, cars parked in the Round-Up's space, queuing in general, that sort of thing. OK, so a few things get the Round-Up riled, thank you very much.

But now it has a new pet hate to add to the list. Sand.

There's usually nothing wrong with sand. Very good for building sandcastles but not, it turns out, very good for laptops or sandwiches, as the Round-Up discovered on a recent short holiday at the seaside. Laptop creaking, teeth gritty, lessons learned.

Indeed, the Round-Up admits it probably should have left the laptop at home. But. Just. Couldn't. Do. It.

And, according to a recent silicon.com poll, it's not the only one.

About one-third of readers admit they have to check in with work during their break via email or phone. Of course these guys - and the Round-Up - should consider themselves lucky, as a Vitamin D-deficient five per cent claim the idea of a holiday at all is a foreign concept.

Which means so many people packing their laptops along with their suntan lotion and Speedos. It is this - along with a couple of getting-in-the-holiday-mood sangrias at the airport bar - that might help to explain why UK airports are such a popular place to wave farewell to your laptop. Forever.

It appears travellers have their minds on duty-free flip-flops and summer romance and are misplacing laptops willy-nilly. At Heathrow airport nearly 1,000 machines are lost per week.

And what happens to the poor, lonely souls, you ask? Chances are they'll have to talk to their family on holiday for once…

Oh - you mean the laptops? More than half are never claimed. So that's about 500 laptops a week knocking around Heathrow lost and unloved.

Now, if you aren't on holiday already there's a good chance you're getting ready to honour the fine athletes competing in Beijing in the only way we know how - slumping on a sofa, drinking beer and piling salted snacks into your mouth while watching their progress on TV.

But it seems some techies are all but smashing Olympic records while simply carrying out their day jobs. A report by Nasstar calculates that IT staff in large organisations are doing the 10,000 metres at work just by covering the ground between every work station. Phew!

In a company of 2,000 staff, spread over several floors with desks approximately five metres apart these star athletes could cover the Olympic distance simply walking between colleagues' desks.

Hurrah! And the gold medal goes to Bob from tech who managed the distance in an impressive three weeks.

Three weeks?

Now the Round-Up is no Olympic guru but it's pretty sure the competitors in the four-yearly event cover the distance slightly faster than that.

But the Olympics might not be for those of you picked last in games - ah, the bitter memories still rankle like sand in the keyboard of a creaking laptop. So how about a quiz instead?

First - is it the red squirrel or the grey squirrel that is endangered?

And secondly, would the lack of hazelnut trees in a squirrel's vicinity merit a 999 emergency call?

'Red, and No, of course not you buffoon', I hear most of you exclaim. Whoever heard of such a ridiculous suggestion?

So, how about this one. When was the internet born?

The Round-Up has been wracking its brains this week as it couldn't quite remember. Still can't.

For a fleeting moment, it even considered this could be an emergency. Imagine it had been the answer to the final question in the Nag's Head Monday night pub quiz?

What if this one answer was the difference between winner or loser, glory or failure, a round at the bar or another half of lime and soda?

Thankfully the Round-Up came to its senses and realised this was not a life-or-death situation.

Unlike one woman who, when faced with the crisis of not knowing when the internet was born, dialled 999.

The conversation went like this:

Police: "Emergency response?"
Woman: "Hello, now it's not an emergency but I'm stuck on something for my college homework and wondered if you could help?"
… [pause]
Police: "You realise you're on an emergency line?"
Woman: "Yes I know that but I just can't remember when the internet first came about you see, when it was born? Could you tell me?"

You can probably imagine the response from the police and you might expect it to feature words such as "idiot" and "get off the phone". And a few other words that often require the generous use of the asterisk.

In fact, the police response was perhaps over-polite: "I'm sorry I can't answer your question. We are very, very busy tonight."

Even when the caller followed up with a very persuasive "You couldn't tell me a rough guess, could please my darling?" the police refused to budge. Spoilsports.

In a bid to stop more time-wasting calls like this, Avon and Somerset Police have turned to YouTube, posting some clips (such as this one) to deter people from tying up emergency lines with ridiculous calls.

Another call - the Round-Up's personal favourite - starts “Hi. I'm next to the M32, city centre... there's an M32 city centre sign. Can you inform Animal Rescue that there's a grey squirrel with no hazelnut trees please."

When queried by the police the caller adds: "Actually yeah, 'cause his life is in danger. It's rare... it's a grey squirrel. It's a rare... it's a rare species."

Obviously these calls should not be encouraged. After all as one YouTube wag pointed out: "Sometimes there'll be a REAL squirrel emergency and no one will believe her."

Still, the Round-Up can't help thinking that as a public service the police really should have answered some of those questions on their website - what year was the internet born exactly?

Now, if the silly woman had been reading silicon.com this week she would have realised there was no need to ring up the nice man at all but instead she could find the answer to her urgent question using Google-rival Cuil.

Some clever little types fresh out of the Googleplex have launched a new web search service that aims to outdo the internet search giant. The ex-Googlers claim Cuil - that's 'cool' to you non-hipsters, although the Round-Up is stumped why these letters should produce this pronunciation - can index a far larger portion of the web faster than Google.

Tom Costello, Cuil co-founder and chief executive, chirped: "Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the internet, placing nearly the entire web at the fingertips of every user."

Wow, large claims. The entire web! The Round-Up was pretty excited. So, being the good citizen it is, the Round-Up thought it would see - in an extremely non-scientific way - if it could find the answer to the age-old question of when the internet was born.

Search Cuil… searching, searching. Hmmm, 95 results. Not a huge amount but they all have the heading, 'when was the internet born'. Hurrah! Couldn't be easier, surely all these pages must hold the key.

But hang on. The first result is an expired domain name. The second result must be nearer the mark surely - oh, a page with one line all in German. Result three, a page of ads. Things were not looking so cool now.

The Round-Up cheerfully concedes this is not a fair test - so turns to a well-known search engine that has six letters in its name.

"When was the internet born?"

6,160,000 results.

First result produced the fruits the Round-Up so desired for its labour. Looks like it might take a while before 'Cuiling' is the word we all use to mean searching the internet.

And in other news this week:

Top tips for graduates… shh, don't mention the money!

Social networks - less sheep-throwing more schmoozing?

And why duvet days should be endorsed by government…

And don't miss out on a chance to be witty with the silicon.com caption competition.