The Weekly Round-Up: 11.09.09

Microsoft, eh? It seems like there's any excuse for a party these days.

It emerged this week that Microsoft is offering people the chance to hold parties in their homes to celebrate the launch of Windows 7. No, honestly - the Round-Up isn't making this up.

"Be a part of Windows history," goes the pitch. "Host a Windows 7 Launch Party. Have Fun. Help Your Friends!"

The Round-Up presumes the phrase "destroy any fragile street cred you ever had!" was left off along the way.

The parties will be running around the globe between 22 and 29 October, meaning this could be the first software launch visible from space.

The promotional website for the parties shows a bunch of people crowded around a computer looking amazed. Presumably because the notebook didn't take 10 minutes to boot up and connected to a wireless network without any problems.

"So," you may ask, "how do I get involved in staging the social event of the year?" The Round-Up is happy to enlighten you.

To host a Windows 7 party you need Microsoft's approval and you need to invite at least 10 friends. Assuming the kind of person who wants to host a party for an operating system can rustle up 10 friends.

There's also six and a half thousand words of terms and conditions to agree to. And there the Round-Up was thinking all you needed to get a party going was beer and loud music.

If you are lucky enough to get to hold a Windows 7 party, you'll get a load of Windows 7 related goodies such as table decorations, bags and packs of playing cards. Presumably used to pile up against the door to stop your friends from running away once they realise you weren't joking when you said you were staging an OS-themed party.

Nice software, shame about the marketing...

Office training days. Dreadful aren't they?

The way it normally works is that you spend eight hours in an airless room in closer proximity to your co-workers than you're generally comfortable with before trudging out at the end with a ring-bound folder of clipart-heavy print-outs, a huge backlog of emails and a vague and fading memory of the day's events.

Luckily, IBM is on hand to bring a new approach to staff training and thankfully it's game over for boring trainers and ring-bound folders.

Big Blue has taken a different approach to staff development by combining a training exercise with a video game.

However, fans of Super Mario or Gears of War are going to be sorely disappointed with the game as the challenge for the would-be office commandoes is to become a master of the cutthroat world of business process management.

INNOV8 2.0 is a web-based game that has players battling to avoid a grilling from the IT director, rather than facing death at the hands of a three-headed end-of-level boss.

The gamer plays a business consultant tasked with turning around the fortunes of an ailing call centre.

Our brave consultant has to learn the ways of the call centre by working with the operatives, sales manager or the IT director.

Check out the pictures of the game in silicon.com's picture story.

Modern Warfare 2's position of must-have game of the year is not under threat, but it's still a great idea and beats the hell out of sitting with other office nobodies watching the clock on the wall click interminably towards five o'clock.

Finally this week: what's wrong with us? Eh?

Is work so ingrained in our psyches that we can't escape even when lying on sandy beaches? According to a silicon.com poll, more than a third of us check our work emails at least once per day when we should be unwinding on the holiday we booked to get us away from the desk.

If you pity these people, goodness knows what sympathy you'll have for the poor souls who admit they check their work email on the hour every hour while on their hols.

That scenario is apparently fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun for seven per cent of you.

"Daddy, can we go swimming in the sea?"
"Hush, Rosie. Go ask your mother. Daddy's busy looking at the Q2 figures."

Is there no hope? No escape? Thankfully, there is…

There remains a healthy 46 per cent of you who steadfastly refuse to bow to the endless deluge of emails pouring into inboxes while you're on holiday.

Meanwhile, there is a solid 12 per cent who restrict checking work emails to once per week. Pah, half measures will be the end of us all.

And whether you're on holiday or not, another unhealthy chunk of you admit to checking work email before 9am. Heaven help the ones who do that while on holiday.

If that smartphone was so smart it could answer on your behalf: "Give the poor man a break, he's worn out... What's that? Server problems, you say? Hm. Tell you what, I'll let him know next week – he's just having a splash about in the sea with his kids right now... "

In other news this week:

Wah! No Mac tablet! Wah! No Beatles! Wah! No iPhone app that makes you a cup of tea and brings you a biscuit! Steve Jobs is back though and he's unveiling new iPods.

Hello Jed, Microserfs and Generation X author Douglas Coupland talks to silicon.com about technology, humanity and writing.

Get involved in Byte Night - the annual IT industry sleep out in support of charity Action For Children.