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Silly season and a close online shave
The twelfth of August may not be a red letter day in the calendar of the grouse, but it's not exactly the favourite time of your average news editor either.

By Graham Hayday

Published: Thursday 31 August 2000

It means there's still three weeks or so to go before silly season ends and there are some sensible stories around to write about.

And now, in the last week in August, the strain is beginning to show.

The FT had its ebusiness correspondent covering the earth-shattering revelations made by KPMG this week. Believe it or not (or maybe that should be 'care or not'), dot-com bosses are twice as likely to be left-handed or ambidextrous as old economy bosses.

They're also more likely to have gone to private school. They like Audi cars and are rather fond of aircraft. They're not as young as we all thought- the average age is 38 (it's 46 in traditional companies).

But in a final twist, the FT story ends with this (arguably more newsworthy) point, which comes rather out of the blue: "The researchers warn that changing working hours and an emphasis on cost-cutting are likely to spread form the dot-com environment to the rest of the economy."

Blimey. Does that mean the dot-coms now demonstrate more financial discipline than their real-world cousins? Must be the summer heat addling the brains of all those supposedly reckless dot-com FDs. Come the autumn, they'll all be travelling everywhere by taxi, spending too much time in the Groucho and wearing Armani again. Probably.

Come the autumn, we'll be less likely to receive this sort of press release. And I quote (verbatim): "Simon Holmes, managing director of internet and antiques specialists antiques.co.uk, was slightly surprised when he was asked to authenticate a slice of fruit cake recently.

"The vendors, based in Ireland, told Holmes that it was cut from Charles and Diana's wedding cake and was given to a Royal British Legion pensioner as part of the marriage celebrations.

"'Unfortunately cake is a little tricky to authenticate - particularly as we specialise in art and antique furniture,' said Holmes. 'It is stretching it a little to say that a 19-year-old cake is an antique but if they hang onto it for a little longer it's worth noting that the top tier of the Duke of Windsor's cake was sold for £16,250 in 1998.'"

Bizarre. Moving on from the culinary to the hirsute, we were equally pleased to discover this week that Truefitt and Hill, the world's oldest barbers, have joined the new media revolution (http://www.truefittandhill.com ). Apparently, they're taking 195 years of heritage online. They've trimmed the locks of the likes of Charles Dickens, Frank Sinatra, Sir Winston Churchill and Prince Philip. You can't get your haircut online though. You can, however, buy exclusive gentlemen's toiletries and shaving accessories, including a pair of luxury brushes for £200 (presumably, having more hair than sense is a prerequisite for taking advantage of that offer).

If you want to see a truly marvellous hair site, see http://www.bouffant.co.uk

Meanwhile, a MORI poll, conducted in association with ft.com, found that while business execs take all manner of electronic gadgets with them when they travel, they also take their paper-based equivalents along for the ride, which tends to make the excess baggage alarm bells ring. Of those business travellers who carry a laptop, for example, 72 per cent also take hard copies of files and documents.

Having said that, ft.com also found (perhaps slightly contradictorily) that 35 per cent of computer users do not keep separate copies of confidential and critical business information. Which is a bad thing for government personnel, who managed to lose 52 laptops between April 1997 and May 20003.

We'd like to point out the rather unnecessary '3' in the press release ft.com would like to point out its online office offering at http://www.ft.com/onlineoffice . Free plug over.

And one final dip into the silly season waters: ICL commissioned some research which found that 68 per cent of those surveyed reckon not being able to start a computer is more stressful than spending the weekend with the in-laws. Seventy-nine per cent said waiting for a drink in a busy bar is less hassle than starting a PC.

Fortunately, there has been some real news this week. Andy Mitchell, the UK MD of AltaVista - the man who came back from holiday a fortnight ago to tell the world his unmetered net access service had never launched - resigned. BT's credit rating slipped from AA plus to an A, largely due to its £30bn debt, which could hamper its ability to raise money in the future, and may well bring forward its plans to spin-off some of its businesses (of which yell.com should be the first). Business to consumer site dressmart.com went kaput and Oftel came down hard on BT for abusing its dominant position to keep wholesale leased line prices artificially high.

And finally, a Swedish developer claims he's developed a Trojan horse virus which attacks the Palm operating system - although the security vendors can't quite agree whether this is feasible. Whether it's true or not, you might be well-advised to make sure you have all the anti-virus kit in place to ward off Trojan horses if your techie relatives give you a Palm for Christmas. You know what they say: beware of geeks bearing gifts.

The Round-Up will come cantering back next Friday.