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The Weekly Round-Up: 03.11.06
That time of the month...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 03 November 2006

"Beep beep, time to make a baby."

You might be forgiven for thinking that sounds like it might be Roadrunner's least successful chat up line ever but in fact it was a silicon.com headline accompanying a story this week about a mobile phone which can tell its user when she is ovulating.

In fact the phone, launched in Japan (you don't say!?) includes a number of 'female friendly' innovations. Not only will it help them (up to a point) to get pregnant but it also ships with a handy preinstalled recipe database and (they're really spoiling you now girls) it is available in any colour... as long as it's pink.

It seems NTT DoCoMo, the company behind the handset, has really got women sussed - which puts it at a definite advantage over the Round-Up and the rest of mankind.

Another feature, which possibly owes everything to all those men who 'simply don't understand women' is a dummy ringtone that can be activated by pressing a button on the side of the phone.

With one simple press of this button the phone will spark into life and start ringing as though there is an urgent incoming call.

This enables the woman to react in any one of a number of pre-planned fashions - from 'oh no it's my boss I think I may have to go back to the office' to 'oh dear Lord it's my flatmate, I think my cat may be poorly' - in order to escape unwanted attention, or even a date which has gone horribly pear-shaped (... or possibly even a date who is horribly pear-shaped).

But of course the functionality everybody's talking about is the ovulation-o-meter - as the Round-Up has just decided it will henceforth be known. Or possibly just 'the egg timer'.

However, any suggestion of urgency once that phone starts beeping is a little wide of the mark. This isn't like the Trinity College courtyard scene in Chariots of Fire - the woman will have until long after the beeping stops to get the job done.

In fact, the phone will give the woman a three-day warning (which in this day and age is actually enough time to find the necessary other half if he isn't even on the scene yet) and then it will remind her on the day itself.

Of course this phone isn't that clever... the woman will have to enter all the relevant dates in order to activate the service and get an accurate reading.

She will also need a man involved to some extent.



Another innovative use of a mobile phone being championed by some users is using it to make, yes, voice calls.

And it seems the horrible looming reality that is the enabling of in-flight mobile phone calls edged one step closer this week, with half of airlines reported to be gearing up to support ringtone hell at 35,000 feet.

Now that strikes the Round-Up as being entirely unpleasant in and of itself. But it seems Ryanair isn't content to leave things there.

The company's chairman is famously in favour of in-flight mobile phone use. After all, the noise should keep passengers awake, and sleeping passengers can't buy drinks or food or duty free.

Sounding, in the Round-Up's opinion, like a perfect advert for, well, any other airline, Michael O'Leary told the FT earlier this year: "Ryanair is noisy, full and we are always trying to sell you something."

Sounds great. Where can we buy tickets?

And now O'Leary has hatched another plan to maximise cabin noise and excitement - in-flight bingo and other prize games.

Customers will be able to use their mobile phones and other handheld devices to access the games.

The Round-Up just hopes they all have the volume turned up and shout whenever they win something... just on the off chance the Round-Up ever has to take a Ryanair flight (which would presumably mean any other mode of transport - including walking and swimming, Segway, space-hopper or even pogo stick - isn't an option).



Now the Round-Up knows what many of you are thinking at this point - 'sod mobile phones on your planes, tell us who won last week's caption competition' ... but you're just going to have to wait. (Though we have also launched another exciting competition this week, with prizes including an HD TV, Sony PSPs and Apple iPod Nanos... should you be interested.)



Moving on, the BBC has been causing a stir this week as it continues to consider rolling out ads on its websites in order to generate around £100m in revenue each year.

This most likely won't directly affect those of us in the UK but overseas visitors may well start to see ads on the BBC site as Auntie looks to modernise. We assume, though, the modernisation with stop someway short of scrapping the licence fee which nowadays seems to be spent entirely on sequins for a host of Z-list celebrity-centric shows in which household names (in their own households) compete in disciplines as diverse as the tango and, well, the foxtrot.

Of course encouraging the BBC to start competing as a commercial body isn't everybody's cup of tea but the danger here, in the Round-Up's mind, is that it ends up as a halfway house which will be the very worst of both words - making commercially motivated decisions in order to compete for advertising revenues, while trying to serve its increasingly laughable public service remit here in the UK.

But there is hope, as you can always trust journalists to kick up a stink.

Apparently the BBC news teams aren't best pleased about these plans - possibly because commercial motivation and advertising are somewhat at odds with the Beeb's independent news heritage - though some of us manage to keep church and state separate.

It will be interesting to see whether the will of the money-men or the integrity of the journalists wins through... whichever will it be?



And speaking of the BBC, the Round-Up was doing a little channel hopping last Sunday morning, waiting for Country File to begin on BBC1, when it stumbled upon a programme featuring country singer Kenny Rogers.

Don't ask why the Round-Up didn't just keep on hopping rather than stopping to listen to the man sing.

The Round-Up assumed it would be the usual clichéd old 'Mary-Lou don't shoot me 'cause my boots is hurtin' and my heart is breakin'' school of nonsense - complete with references to 'this old town' and a number of contrasting weather conditions - that is churned out by the string tie and belt buckle brigade... but this was much, much worse.

It seems Rogers has had his eyes opened by the rapid advances made in technology over the past decade.

The song called 'The Last 10 Years', chronicles a number of milestone events over the last, well, 10 years (obviously), including the loss of a number of great men such as Ray Charles, Johnny Cash and Charlie Brown (though he's not technically a real person, the Round-Up would never take anything away from Snoopy's grief.)

However, it is the inclusion of some truly awful lyrics about technology for which Rogers should stand trial.

Such as:

"We watched the Y2K scare in a panic,
And we watched as time proved Nostradamus wrong,
And we watched as Mother Nature shook the planet,
And cellular replaced the telephone."

And if you think that's bad - try this on for size...

"Expensive gas and free downloads,
The dot-com boom and reality shows,
What's gonna happen next is anybody's guess,
Satellite radio and hybrid cars,
Hand-held computers and a trip to Mars."



That'll be why these singers normally stick to the comfort zone of tired clichés.



Moving on, if that's the last 10 years covered what might the coming decade hold in store?

Well step forward UK information commission Richard Thomas who was making some alarming predictions this week.

Thomas issued a report that suggests by 2016 all Brits are going to be fitted with tracking chips (possibly in our clothing) and our every movement, both digitally and also on terra firma, will be watched and monitored by an array of tools - from robotically piloted airplanes, fitted with facial recognition cameras, to yet more CCTV cameras and the road-charging systems which are sprouting up all around us.

Now the Round-Up hears you cry 'that's ridiculous', and you may well be right: the Round-Up too assumed we'd be living in that kind of Big Brother society long before 2016 but this is the government remember... we'll probably still be waiting for Tony Blair to step down in 2016.

Or perhaps Thomas meant 20:16 - shortly after quarter past eight in the evening - because he expressed serious concerns about how far down this road we already are.

He said: "Two years ago I warned that we were in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us."

Do you ever get the feeling you are being watched... ?



And finally, the moment many of you will have been waiting for. It's time for the Round-Up to put you out of your misery (not to suggest reading until this point should have been a chore in any way) and let you know you who won the caption competition last week…

But first of all it must be said the response was so impressive (and at times scary) that we've decided to repeat the offer again this week, with a whole new caption competition.

And this week's pic is a doozey, featuring as it does, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, being upstaged by a family of penguins who invaded the stage at the recent Oracle World conference in San Francisco. We think it was a planned stunt but we're not sure why.

(The Round-Up is willing to wager the word 'birds' appears more than once in your captions, which is in no way a comment on Ellison's number of marriages.)

So click here for this week's competition.

And to find out who won last week and to read the 10 best suggested captions, click here.



Until next week - if you haven't entered our other competition to win an HD TV, iPod or PSP then what are you waiting for - the Round-Up would love it if a loyal reader scooped the prize.


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