The Weekly Round-Up: 13.02.09

It's Valentine's Day tomorrow.

That short statement is almost certainly enough to cost the Round-Up a significant portion of its readership, right now, this minute.

They'll be the ones that upon reading that fateful phrase have now stood bolt upright, white-faced. Have a look around - there might be one in your office.

Pretty soon they'll be grabbing their coats and scrounging a fiver off you, then fleeing to the nearest card shop to battle with other forgetful partners and spouses for the least dog-eared card in the shop, plus some sort of novelty gift.

It would be polite to hold on and wait until they get back before going on but frankly the Round-Up hasn't been out to the shops yet either and doesn't want to have to make do with a scarlet balloon that says "I wuv you" and a rewritten Christmas card, like last year.

While nothing says 'I love you' like a randomly chosen mass-produced card displaying a cartoon of a dog surrounded by hearts, the more high-tech Lotharios out there may be considering sending an electronic card instead. Displaying an animated cartoon of a cute dog surrounded by animated hearts, probably.

But as sure as the price of roses quadruples in the second week of February, so hackers (and the IT security industry) will come along and make everything a bit more complicated for everyone.

So while you might hope that anonymous electronic Valentine's card you've just received has come from that gorgeous creature on the fifth floor, there's a big risk it might have come from some nerdy hacker who doesn't love you at all.

And to clarify, the Round-Up doesn't mean the one you went out with last summer - this is one that's only after your money.

"One of hackers' favourite tricks is to disguise their attack as an e-card from an anonymous admirer, and as Valentine's Day approaches we can expect the fraudsters to redouble their efforts," reckons Graham Cluley, of security firm Sophos.

Four out of five system administrators reckon electronic greeting cards put computer security at risk, and many are considering blocking them from corporate networks. The romance-hating spoilsports.

"Sysadmins are sick to the back teeth of lovelorn workers allowing cybercriminals to breeze into corporate networks, and it wouldn't be a surprise if some want to pour cold water over the festivities and block all electronic Valentine's," reckons Cluley.

The Round-Up is sure there is no truth to the suggestion that four out of five of the sysadmins surveyed had also been dumped recently or are still on the market. It's no wonder if they're too grumpy to open a greeting card.

But if sysadmins carry out their dire threat, what about all those electronic messages of genuine love that will never be received?

Just as Romeo and Juliet is (basically) a tragedy caused by the inefficiencies of the postal service in Verona, who knows what star-crossed lovers will never meet because their electronic love letters are blocked by the spam filter? It's a tragedy of our times. Maybe if you want to spread some love, send your sysadmin a Valentine's card this year to let them know you care. Just make sure it isn't an electronic one.

Sticking with the subject of online romance for just a little longer, nearly half of under 21s and 18 per cent of 22-30-year-olds dumped a boyfriend or girlfriend (probably a grumpy sysadmin who would never open an electronic greeting) in the last 12 months via the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

The Round-Up hopes they take into account the Facebook curve effect, where you start by spending several hours per day using the site and then as you get to the point where you've poked everyone you've ever met, interest starts to wane. The Round-Up now checks Facebook so infrequently that it may well have been dumped months ago and just hasn't found out yet.

Speaking of Twitter, the Round-Up is a big fan. If you want to catch up on the most trivial comments from celebrities you, until that point, had absolutely no interest in then you can't beat it. Everybody who is anybody, plenty of people who aren't anybody, and a few pretending to be somebody they aren't - they're all there. Even silicon.com is there (find it here and become a follower).

But wait - while you may have been thinking this was just another fantastic cyberloafing technology to keep you busy in those empty hours between turning up to work and clocking off again - it is in fact a vital business tool. Companies are being urged to add microblogging as one of their communication tools, which might give Twitter an interesting opportunity. The Round-Up isn't sure how much customer service can be done in 140 characters, although "have you tried turning it off and on again" does seem to fit very easily, so expect it to be used by helpdesks up and down the country.

And now for some crystal ball gazing. According to a retailer Comet, Brits spent 26 hours watching TV each week last year and are upgrading to even bigger tellies as they cut back on going out because of the credit crunch. But the retailer is also predicting that within another 10 years TVs will be getting very small again - tiny enough to fit on a contact lens.

The lens will be a general purpose display that sits in your eye all day. "You will just pop it in your eye in the morning and take it out at the end of the day," says futurologist Ian Pearson, who estimates that half of the UK population will buy into this technology by 2019. Pearson also predicts we will have "digital tattoos painted onto our skin that will connect our bodies to the internet", which sounds frankly terrifying.

It's all very well to go all Minority Report in theory but the practice might be a little different. What happens if you sneeze and lose a contact lens? Annoying when you do it with a pair of cheap lenses - much less funny if you did it with a super high tech mini TV.

And finally, a quick race through the rest of the news.

Good news - while the rest of us were cowering at home/making snowmen, at least the UK's tech chiefs were making sure the wheels of commerce continued to turn, (at least, those who responded. That might mean the rest were still up to their necks in snow).

What should you invest in to keep your IT infrastructure safe? Find out here and check out our new security special report here.

Still feeling funny? Have a go at the famous silicon.com caption competition.