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The Weekly Round-Up: 19.01.07
Big bother...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 19 January 2007

Hats off to Charles Dunstone and the good people at Carphone Warehouse who yesterday dropped a bombshell of an announcement on Channel 4, stating the company's £3m sponsorship of Celebrity Big Brother was being stopped "with immediate effect".

It seems Carphone Warehouse has decided it doesn't really want its well-known brand to sit at the centre of an alleged racism row being played out on national television.

That would seem to make sense.

A statement issued by Dunstone said: "Our concern has rapidly mounted about the broadcast behaviour of individuals within the Big Brother house."

This follows a record number of complaints to regulator Ofcom and broadcaster Channel 4 from viewers alleging racist behaviour towards one contestant, the Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty.

In fact, at the time of writing, Ofcom's website was receiving such a high level of complaints about racism on the show, it was forced to post the following message on its website:

"Ofcom is currently receiving very high volumes of complaints alleging racism in Celebrity Big Brother 7. Visitors may experience delays or intermittent problems when trying to submit complaints."

Carphone Warehouse's Dunstone added: "We are totally against all forms of racism and bullying and indeed this behaviour is entirely at odds with the brand values of The Carphone Warehouse."

Perhaps while Carphone Warehouse is revisiting its current marketing and brand awareness strategies it might do the Round-Up a favour and consider a long overdue renaming exercise, because the Round-Up can't help noticing there aren't so many carphones in use these days.

The name probably seemed a good idea back in the 80s when Carphone Warehouse was set up... like the Round-Up's local off-licence 'The Babycham Shack'.

Moving on, although technology is still a relatively young industry (when compared to mining, say, or prostitution) it does seem the marketing minds behind some of the biggest names in tech are slowly running out of ideas (short of sponsoring controversial television shows).

Cue the assorted brains behind Sony Ericsson's marketing spend deciding it might be a good wheeze to hire a Boeing 757 and Jamiroquai to stage a 'secret gig' at 35,000 feet to promote its range of Walkman phones.

Borrowing, we presume from Pink Floyd, this extravaganza will be called - imaginatively enough - 'The Gig in the Sky' (perhaps wisely dropping the word 'Great' from the Floyd title).

The mobile phone giant will also be roping in 200 'special guests' for this marketing extravaganza which could - fingers crossed - even make it into the Guinness Book of Records as 'the highest gig ever' (though we're pretty sure Keith Richards and a few others may have played 'higher', so to speak.)

Once the lucky guests have been thrilled by a live performance from the band in the skies above Germany, the flight will touch down at a secret location in Europe where the guests will the treated to another concert... this time by none other than, well, Jamiroquai... again.

(This puts the Round-Up in mind of a joke: what's worse than being given a ticket to a Jamiroquai gig? That's right, being given a ticket to two Jamiroquai gigs'.)

What's more the Round-Up can't help thinking Sony Ericsson has missed a very obvious yet very important detail in all of this.

When boarding most commercial flights, passengers are still generally told to turn off all mobile phones, including those with 'flight safe modes'.

So good choice of venue there.

Jamiroquai lead singer Jay Kay said - by which the Round-Up means 'his people' probably signed off a quote, provided by Sony Ericsson, along the lines of: "With this event, Sony Ericsson is taking the music experience to a whole new level."

Yawn.

Last week the Round-Up asked for your stories about mobile phones meeting with nasty ends... and you didn't disappoint, though one reader took 'nasty end' a little too literally.

"My niece, a radiographer, was required to X-ray the rectum of a guy who was complaining of a pain in the backside."

"It was of course a mobile phone," wrote one reader, employing the Round-Up's favourite ever use of the phrase "of course".

Should it really be the first, most natural assumption - that somebody has a mobile phone in their bottom - when they complain about pains?

Picture the scene down your local GP:

"Doctor, I've got a sore bottom."
"Well I would imagine you've probably got a mobile phone stuck up there... "

More to the point - did the patient in question here really not know what was causing the pain? The Round-Up suspects he may have been bluffing.

However, our reader adds that the man subsequently explained away the presence of the mobile phone by saying he had fallen down the stairs, naked (obviously) and he guessed he must have landed on the phone.

Imagine his surprise then when he found that pain he described was a phone, of all things. Just imagine.

"A phone you say, doctor? Well I'll be... "

As if.

Cuter in comparison, another reader wrote in to warn us of the damaging effect baby spittle can have on a mobile phone.

"My mobile phone, a Nokia 8210, the best phone I have ever owned, coped with being dropped, taken on two stag weekends and related issues, a lads snowboarding weekend, falling off the roof of the car, kicked across the floor of pubs and even a number of moderate drink-related accidents," wrote one reader, who asked to remain anonymous - we suspect in case Mrs Reader was to ask what 'related issues' had occurred, not once, but twice while hubby was on a stag do.

"But that phone lasted less than two minutes when finally falling in to the hands of my then eight-month-old daughter. Simply by sucking on the base of the phone and filling it up rapidly with baby saliva... "

Moving on, to another plug for the all new silicon.com Weekly Round-Up podcast.

Last week's first outing went down a storm but it seems we do have to spell out the fact this is SO MUCH MORE than somebody simply reading out the Round-Up - how lazy would that be/why didn't we think of that soft-option?

Among the highlights discussed in this week's edition is this video clip from the archives which remains one of the most toe-curlingly embarrassing things to happen at a technology show ever.

If you want to find out why that was up for discussion and what else was on the agenda in the palatial podcast studios of Silicon Towers, you can listen to this week's podcast right now by clicking here - it will also shortly be appearing on iTunes here.

Onto disturbing news this week that a woman who was so keen to get her hands on one of the much-coveted Nintendo Wii games consoles has died taking part in a radio competition.

The woman entered a US radio competition which challenged contestants to drink bottles of water and promised to reward the person who could go the longest without going to the toilet with one of the Nintendo gadgets.

The competition was called 'Hold your wee for a Wii'.

Can you see what they've done there? That's right, they've conjured up a competition which caused one contestant to die due to water intoxication, such was her desire to win a console for her three children.

Putting aside the fact some things really aren't worth dying for - though that potential outcome was no doubt far from the minds of the woman concerned or the radio presenters - this is of course a tragic story.

However, the Wii has also been making headlines over some positive health benefits, with one American claiming to have defined the 'Wii diet' (which looks slightly better written down than it sounds spoken aloud).

Mickey DeLorenzo, a 25-year-old, possibly with nothing better to do, claims to have lost a staggering 4kg in just six weeks by playing the Nintendo Wii.

That's right - a whopping 4kg. Which, as one wit on the silicon.com team felt forced to remark, "is just a big poo".

As if to emphasise the pointlessness of his 'exercise' (a word the Round-Up uses advisedly) DeLorenzo posted before and after pictures of himself - in which the only real difference would appear to be he looks a lot pastier after his six week 'Wii experiment' - which comes as no surprise.

(You can see the pics here. The one on the right is the 'after'... just so you know.)

And finally, imagine the shock around the country when it was revealed that Marti Pellow, former Wet Wet Wet front man, had died earlier this week aged just 41.

Despite his well publicised problems with heroin in the past, there was probably still nobody more surprised than Pellow himself who by and large felt very much alive - a fact confirmed by a spokeswoman for the Scottish crooner.

However, the story took off after somebody - possibly as a prank - edited a Wikipedia page on Pellow, updating it to include details of his untimely demise.

A spokesman for Wikipedia said: "We would like to apologise for any distress we may have caused to Marti's fans."

But all of a sudden people realised Wikipedia may not be quite the unquestionable font of all knowledge some had taken it to be. Suddenly arguments which were settled with the word of wikipedia were reopened like old wounds and whole countries went to war (OK, not that last bit... )

Is this the beginning of the end for Wikipedia? Will the intentional vandalism of its facts and figures become commonplace? Can we trust anything that's said about famous figures on its pages?

As long as nobody edits out mention of the Round-Up's two Pulitzer prizes...

And finally, finally - it's competition time again. To check out the winning entry for last week's caption competition, click here.

To enter this week's and to be in with a chance of winning yourself a very nice bottle of bubbly, click here.

And don't forget to check out that podcast.