The Weekly Round-Up: 02.10.09

Over the years, the internet has been blamed for many of the world's ills. Sometimes fairly, though often not.

'The internet is corrupting the nation's youth!' 'The internet is giving us terrible piles!' 'The internet has led to a massive drain in revenues in traditional advertising channels!'

Boo hoo. Get a grip.

It never used to be this way. Back in the days when the internet was just the 'Information Superhighway' we were as excited about the prospects that lay on the 'road ahead' as we were terrified of having to explain it to elderly relatives and senior management. (In much the same way we feel about 'social media' like Twitter today.)

This week the internet was accused of bringing an end to a great British institution - the car boot sale.

Visits to traditional car boot sales have fallen by 65 per cent in the last three years, as more Brits have taken to using the internet to sell their tat and find their tat bargains.

The world's first car boot sale was held in Kent in 1980 and to all intents and purposes it hasn't advanced from there. For years, car boot sales have been a way of selling horrible chipped china ornaments, Blackadder video box-sets and improbably large pairs of pants in the middle of damp, grassy fields.

However, people have now woken up to the fact they can buy and sell the same useless tat online and don't need to get up at 6am on a Sunday morning and drive to a distant field with terrible parking. They can simply use their computer and drink coffee and play with the cat.

A study by free classified site Preloved.co.uk found that more and more Brits are turning away from the open air car boot to selling online. Seventeen per cent of the respondents said they attended a car boot sale three years ago compared to a meagre six per cent in the last year.

The Round-Up has a one-word response for this: good.

When asked whether they would prefer to sell online or at a car boot sale, 92 per cent of the public said they'd prefer to sell online, which tells the Round-Up that for a country of eccentrics at least we haven't lost all our senses.

The Round-Up's request for the next great British institution up for the chop by the internet: foxhunting...

As the Round-Up pondered a week of worthy but gag-light news about Intel's tech on show and tech's history under the hammer there was a refreshing ping on Wednesday as a press release dropped into its inbox with some rather shocking news.

According to a nationwide study of more than 3,000 people, there is a direct correlation between the way people use their mobile phones and the way they feel for the rest of the day.

Mobile phones are undeniably a key part of our busy, modern lives.

Each day, millions of us use mobiles as alarm clocks to get us up in time for work; to book and remember meetings; to distract us from the meetings with social networking applications to arrange a night down the pub; and to surf the web looking for the nearest car boot sale while we wait for our friends to arrive at the Crown and Sceptre.

Sometimes, we even use them to make phone calls. Now that's what you call smart.

Given this reliance on mobile phones a UK mobile phone comparison site felt compelled, for some reason not explained, to investigate how our phones affect our emotions.

The study found that a surprising number of people were directly affected by their phones, even down to their ringtone. Presumably the rather dense ones who don't realise they can change them.

Although 82 per cent said they looked forward to hearing from partners and loved ones throughout the day, the most dreaded call of the day is from parents with 19 per cent saying they purposely dodged calls from their mum and dad. This might in turn explain why parents never answer your phone calls as they see it as the cultural norm.

Four in five respondents said not receiving a reply to a text message impacted negatively on their mood.

Meanwhile, 41 per cent said a day without a text message made them feel unpopular and lonely, probably because they are. Is it really fair to blame your Nokia for holding up a mirror to your life?

Who knows - or even cares for that matter - for there are worse revelations afoot.

We are also a nation of filthy, congenital liars, the study found.

Just nine per cent of people said they'd actually laughed out loud at anything they'd ever been sent by text - despite 61 per cent saying the popular texting acronym 'LOL' was part of their regular texting vocabulary.

Not one of the 3,138 people surveyed had 'rolled on the floor laughing', nor 'laughed their asses off'.

Imagine that: figures of speech are often just figures of speech. The Round-Up nearly fell out its chair with surprise.

Next week, a survey uncovers the shocking truth that what software sales managers claim the software does and what it really does when it's installed are rarely the same...

Finally this week, the Labour Party's 'Twitter tsar' has warned MPs to embrace social media but be aware that what they say in blogs and other social media sites remain on the web forever.

Bristol MP Kerry McCarthy told a Google-hosted meeting at the Labour conference that anything they write could be dug up years later and used with embarrassing results. The Round-Up would add - don't promise anything in a tweet that you can't deliver, if only because that's what manifestos are for.

According to the report on the BBC, at the packed fringe meeting activists and prospective and current MPs were told the benefit of social networking sites was politicians were perfectly able to get their messages out without pesky civil servants and special advisers getting in the way.

And there was the Round-Up assuming the majority of MP's Twitter accounts were managed by civil servants and special advisers in the first place...

Finally this week, a jaunty trip through the other big news of the week:

Techies: where's all the money being made in the industry?

Is Microsoft now copying imaginary Apple products? The truth is out there. More specifically, here.