The Weekly Round-Up: 06.11.09

Question: What do Britain's hairdressers and IT technicians have in common?

Answer: A shared love of getting a bit on the side.

No, not that kind of 'bit on the side'. Well, maybe they do, but it's not what the Round-Up had in mind.

More than one in three IT technicians admit to taking on extra work outside office hours.

The moonlighting techies appear in a top 10 of the UK's neediest professions. However, despite more than a third admitting working outside office hours, techies still trail some way behind the most prolific cash-in-hand workers of all: the money-strapped, workaholic hairdresser.

A staggering 73 per cent of hairdressers admit taking paid work outside the salon, a snip ahead of the next most prolific moonlighters: mechanics (67 per cent) and plumbers (65 per cent).

So exactly how do freelance hairdressers operate? Do they prowl their territories outside Tube stations going up to commuters with curling tongs and asking: "Alright mate, need a perm? Just a shave?"

Likewise, do techies wander around parks with blade servers under their arms asking joggers: "Need a server farm built? How about an ERP implementation? £20 cash in hand."

Almost half of survey respondents said they had done work for customers they had met through their day jobs, while one-third said they had worked cash in hand because they needed the money.

One anonymous reader of the story even offered their sophisticated barter-based price list for IT jobs on the side: a case of beer for a 'simple IT fix' along the lines of slow-running desktop, wireless problems or hooking it up to a shared printer.

More complicated jobs - fixing a failed hard disk or clearing out a virus-ridden PC would "require additional barter items" such as bottles of whiskey, more beer or IT goodies, they reckoned, which seemed pretty good value.

Still, the Round-Up reckons it's all downhill from here for techies.

Coming soon: cold-calling IT managers offering bespoke network virtualisation solutions and social media consultants on street corners holding up cardboard signs stating: "Will tweet for money..."

Apple, Cisco, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle… What have they got in common?

Firstly, they're huge, great big whopping technology companies with a combined market cap of a trillion dollars. Secondly, they're all born in the USA.

Yes, Autonomy and ARM continue to fight the good fight, along with a host of other high-tech start-ups, but when will the UK produce a regular, bonafide mega-tech behemoth?

According to silicon.com's CIO Jury: never.

That's the sobering conclusion of the jury, which voted 10 to two against when asked whether the UK could create a global software business to rival the technology industry's most powerful companies.

It's not all grim news. A recent report from analyst firm TechMarketView found that the UK software industry is in fine fettle, although much more needs to be done to support the growth of small tech firms.

So what's standing in the way of UK software firms from hitting the big time? Well, plenty as it happens. Where to start?

The report said improvements to the teaching of science, technology, engineering and maths need to be made in order to create the next generation of software developers. Furthermore, better tax incentives for investment, corporate venturing, R&D support and so on could all help young software companies flourish in the UK.

So in summary: we're stuffed.

Our education is poor, as is our management culture, our marketing sucks as does our regulatory and tax systems and our economy simply can't support entrepreneurship.

Furthermore, we persecute success stories for being far too pleased with themselves and turn up our collective noses at people with bright ideas who are bad mannered enough to show up everyone else for being a bit dull.

It probably doesn't help that all our best techies are spending all of their free time clearing out spyware from their mates' PCs for cash or beer when they should be thinking of how to invent the next Twitter.

The Round-Up has an additional theory - it's down to bad dentistry.

As a nation we have really bad teeth. Remember 'The Big Book of British Teeth' from The Simpsons? Have you ever seen a major tech CEO with really bad teeth?

No.

It's because they realise that a winning smile gets you ahead in this tech business. That and the superior economy, tax breaks, education system, skills mix, business culture and supportive government regulations.

Although mostly the superior dentists. Possibly...

Apple's App Store has been a runaway success since it launched in 2008. Look at the figures: there are more than 100,000 apps available for purchase and download. Apps have been downloaded more than two billion times and the massive range of software available has been a big differentiator between Apple and its competitors. Check out silicon.com's list of business apps for the iPhone here.

There have been a few problems, naturally. The company has come in for criticism from many quarters for its approval process.

Apple initially baulked at 'fart' apps which allowed users to pull a virtual finger that resulted in a virtual parping noise. And the $999.99 app 'I Am Rich' didn't last long. This week it was the turn of Macworld to feel the pang of rejection from Apple, with this very web 2.0 drama inevitably unfolding via Twitter.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Macworld editorial director Jason Snell revealed: "Our book about the iPhone has been rejected from the App Store BECAUSE IT CONTAINS THE WORD iPHONE."

According to Snell, it was rejected because apps weren't allowed to show an iPhone or even use the word iPhone in the icon, despite at least one other app doing just that.

Really, you'd have to feel a little aggrieved. The Round-Up would.

Considering the ridiculous situation, Snell was in remarkably good cheer: "I appreciate Apple wanting to protect its trademarks. However, publishers need to be able to communicate the subject of their content."

He even suggested a new title for the manual: "Macworld Superguide For The Product You're Holding Right Now."

Things went downhill from there. News of the rejection was blogged and reported far and wide.

Fortunately Apple's app approval team woke up to the gathering storm and Snell could finally tweet: "Suffice it to say, someone from Apple called me this afternoon and insists this is all a misunderstanding. (On their part.) Resubmitting."

A few hours later the app was live. All's well that ends well.

In other news this week, you may think your server room is the business. You may think it has the mostest twinkling lights and the tangliest cables in the world. But you haven't seen the inside of one of Microsoft's datacenters. That's 3,400 tonnes of steel housing 2,000 servers.

The Apple mouse. Easy on the eye; not so easy on the hand. Will the new Magic Mouse pull a rabbit out of a hat? Find out what one eternally hopeful but terminally masochistic Mac user thinks.

Where next for Wikipedia and Jimmy Wales? silicon.com finds out in an exclusive interview.