The Weekly Round-Up: 20.03.09

Just because you can technically do something, doesn't always mean that you should. Like running the London Marathon dressed as Mr Blobby, marrying the first person who asks or taking on the plate-size Yorkshire pudding filled to the gills with chicken tikka on sale at the Round-Up's local.

In the tech world, one project that was the perfect example of the 'don't do it just because you can' ethos hit the buffers this week.

Way back in March 2007, Transport for London (TfL) put out a tender for a trial of mobile phone technology on the Waterloo and City line. The aim of the trial - originally scheduled for 2008 - was to determine whether it would be technically and commercially viable for mobile coverage to be extended across the entire Tube network.

But, as silicon.com exclusively revealed this week, two years has gone by since the original tender and TfL has admitted none of the proposals it received by the deadline were considered commercially "credible", and the organisation reckons project costs would be prohibitively high at this time.

Strangely, given that silicon.com's audience is made up of technology enthusiasts, not many readers seemed particularly bothered by the hold ups with this IT project (not sure if these guys would agree with them though).

"Dear God, please let allowing access to mobiles on the London Underground be technologically and commercially too costly so that it will NEVER be done," said one reader, while another piped up: "No mobiles on the Tube for the foreseeable future then. Many thousands of people will be thankful for that!"

But don't expect the Round-Up to get involved with this kind of talk - oh no. In fact, the Round-Up has even spent all of five minutes thinking up some reasons why having mobile phone coverage on the underground might actually be a splendid idea:

1. To allow you to continue (and finally win) the row that you started with your partner over breakfast. Alternatively, to kick it off again before you get home.
2. So you can impress people with the new functionality on your iPhone, while commuting. Ahhh Apple, with this cut and paste, you are really spoiling us!

3. So that when you say you're running late because of Tube problems your boss can phone up and check that you really are on the Tube, and not still under the duvet nursing a hangover.

4. Because novelty ring tones are made to be shared as widely as possible, so why deprive your fellow travellers of Mr T shouting 'pick up the phone, you crazy fool' when someone rings?
5. Everyone who gets a train to work has to put up with the ceaseless aural pollution from commuters' mobiles already, so why should travellers on the underground miss out on the fun?

That's not all. The Round-Up can think of yet another reason: if harassed managers have functional mobile phones to keep them occupied, it might stop them sharing confidential information with all and sundry during their daily commute.

Twice this week the Round-Up has been sat next to a stressed-looking suit on the tube on the way home, only for said grumpy executive to pull out a sheaf of printed-out PowerPoint slides with headings like 'Confidential', 'Shred after reading', 'Wipe own memory after use'.

Strangely none of them were headed 'Read on Tube while sat next to nosy old hack', which is exactly what they were doing. Don't worry - your secret is safe with the Round-Up.

For now, anyway…

There is one final reason why you might not want to use a mobile on the Tube, or indeed anywhere else for that matter.

Germs.

Following last week's story about the muck that resides inside your keyboard (if you'd managed to expunge the memory, the Round-Up is happy to remind you that beard hair and crumbs are among the least unpleasant of the hardware-bothering grot), this week silicon.com's ever-keen - but seemly dirt-fixated newsdesk - brings us another tale of unpleasant hardware.

Using a mobile phone can be as risky as putting your face on a toilet bowl, research has claimed.

In tests of mobiles belonging to 200 doctors and nurses working in operating theatres and intensive care units, 95 per cent of handsets were contaminated with at least one type of bacteria.

According to Andy Felton, director of microbial sterilisation systems company Purelight UK, "holding your phone to your mouth is as dangerous as placing your face on a toilet bowl, and yet we do it all day long without a second thought".

The Round-Up assumes he is talking about putting your phone to your face all day long, rather than putting your head down the toilet all day long, but it's quite hard to tell from the quote.

After last week's tale of dirty keyboards, the Round-Up had to fight the urge to don rubber gloves every time typing was needed. Something similar will now be needed for the phone too.

While the high street ain't doing great (you may have noticed) online sales continue to grow - or at least some parts of it do.

Rather than get out and solve the economic crisis, the great British public is responding in the way that only it knows how - getting plastered and buying lingerie.

According to research out this week, month-on-month sales for beers, wines and spirits grew by 30 per cent in February as Brits ditched their detox regimes. Sales of lingerie also flourished last month, as bewildered romantics raced to online stores as Valentine's loomed, the research said.

The Round-Up is relieved to hear that however much the credit crunch bites, Brits aren't prepared to stop splashing the cash on knickers and booze. A sober nation would be bad enough. A sober nation going commando doesn't bear thinking about.

And a canter through the rest of the news this week:

Is this the world's most middle-class technology? Wine-tasting and mortgages, the Microsoft way.

The government has finally published the early Gateway reviews into everybody's favourite ID card project, after having spent a cool £121,000 of our money to try and stop us finding out what the reports said. And now they've finally been revealed, what do we find? Pretty much everything everyone thought in the first place.

And can your office cope with hackers or even worse - the 'flu?

And as ever, check out the caption competition.