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The Weekly Round-Up: 18.01.08
Macworld twitters...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 18 January 2008

And so another Macworld has passed us by and Mac fans and news rooms are a-twitter with talk of the latest goodies to come off the Cupertino conveyor belt.

This year, the pre-show rumours were largely right, which is always a little disappointing for those looking forward to the big surprise.

The star of the show was the MacBook Air, a laptop so thin you could slice bread with it. Coincidentally, Apple fans have also labelled the new computer the best thing since sliced bread. But then they would.

Admittedly, it is a desirable beast, if you think in those terms when talking about desire. The usual Apple style has been applied to make the laptop the must-have computer of the year. And probably next year, too.

While Apple has gone to great lengths to stress the green credentials of its new kit, it has stumbled blindly into another political minefield: lauding size zero computers.

Sub-notebooks are becoming thinner and thinner, some say to the detriment of features. Do we really want to get to the point where what we celebrate as the ultimate in computer designer chic is a computer so thin you could slide it between your front teeth to shift stray bits of food?

Apple is an agenda-setter in personal technology. It's setting up a terrible exemplar of tech beauty and should be ashamed of itself. The Daily Mail should run a campaign or something.

Inevitably, any new Apple product is discussed in terms of its faults as well as its virtues. What isn't there as much as what is there. The lack of a removable battery will bother some power users and pedants, but word from Apple is that a replacement battery will cost the same as the one in the existing MacBook Pro and installation is free.

Also, pedants are bitching that the computer isn't that powerful or expandable. Go figure: as it fits neatly inside a manila envelope with room to spare, it's hardly surprising, really.

Anyway who cares? After the huge disappointment of the CES in Las Vegas last week it was good to see some sexy kit paraded around.

There was also word of the imminent release of a software developer kit for the iPhone. The iPhone now features a redesigned Maps application that uses wi-fi and cellular base stations to triangulate a user's current location. Very clever. Plus there was the movie rentals service in iTunes, which might do for digital movies what it did for music.

And then there are the new apps for the slinky iPod Touch that bring it even closer to the function of the iPhone - although without the phone bit or the hefty monthly charges. The Round-Up's resolve is finally cracking...

And Time Capsule, which... Oh forget it, everyone's talking about the MacBook Air and if you haven't seen the laptop, you can check out the grand unveiling of the laptop by Apple boss Steve Jobs here.

Ta-da!

By and large, silicon.com’s CIO Jury is less than impressed with Facebook's potential for corporate networking.

The uber-social networking phenomenon - Facebook, not the CIO Jury - is being snubbed by professional executives because of the increasing number of "silly applications" and lack of business use.

Let's face it they've got a point. Facebook has changed irrevocably since the halcyon days before every man, his dog, his parents, his parents' parents, their cleaners and their chiropractors logged on and created a profile and a zany group.

Facebook veterans will remember the good old days around September 2007 when the absolute zaniest thing that could be done on the site was toss a sheep at someone. Oh the hilarity.

Now, most of the Round-Up's notifications are to do with challenges to reveal its inner chav, posts to its multimedia ultra-wall and invitations to become a zombie. All of which require the downloading of the app before the message can be read or the chump can be bitten.

Further clutter to the profile. What we really need is a Facebook Feng Shui app. Who's the Round-Up kidding? There probably is one.

Most alarmingly, Facebook seems to have given new life to that greatest menace of online and offline communications - the chain letter. Or chain emails. Whatever they’re called, Facebook is giving the irritating people who propagate these things a new lease of life as they forward animated dogs and whatever to their entire friends list.

A reasonably tech-savvy friend of the Round-Up this week managed to send a meaningless chain wall posting to 33 people and then had to send them all a message apologising. It's no surprise CIOs aren't buying into the idea of using the sites for business.

The CIOs questioned expressed a preference for LinkedIn and Plaxo which are, of course, very useful for networking but nowhere near as popular as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook, mainly because they're full of IT people talking about work.

Anyway, Facebook: good for sheep and zombies, bad for productivity.

Baa! Thud!

You may remember last year's HMRC data loss scandal. It made a few headlines, here and there.

If you were one of the unlucky 25 million on the HMRC's child benefit books then you may well have received a letter from everyone's favourite government department grovelling with an apology about the misplaced CDs.

This was the HMRC's next big mistake. The government has this week admitted it cost £2.25m to send letters of apology to people affected by the loss of millions of child benefit records by HMRC. That's an outrageous amount of stamps.

All the more outrageous given the Round-Up never received its letter of contrition from the taxman for potentially exposing its family's details to identity fraudsters.

Probably lost in the post.

Both Conservative and Liberal Democrats MPs attacked the huge spend and said if any of the letters had gone missing it could have triggered a second wave of data loss, which now has the Round-Up worried. They probably waved bits of paper in air and made harrumphing noises, too. You would, wouldn't you?

The revelation, which came to light in written answers to the House of Commons, comes shortly after last week's announcement by the Metropolitan Police that it would seek the full costs from HMRC for the force's hunt for the missing disks.

The search for the discs is now winding down - current status: still lost. The search has been reported as the most expensive lost property search in the UK's history and the Bill want HMRC to foot the bill.

Translation: your taxes are going up next year.

Heard about the latest outrage to be foisted on overworked, stressed and underpaid IT managers?

Most of you are fat. Fact.

Some research from Bupa has concluded that overweight IT managers are risking their health by smoking and failing to exercise - but they are at least staying off the booze.

The survey found almost two-thirds (61 per cent) of senior employees in the tech sector are overweight with a body mass index score of over 25. How do they know? Anyone been measured and prodded by someone from HR in the past year?

Actually the study is based on data from health assessments undertaken by more than 20,000 employees through Bupa corporate healthcare schemes in the technology and software sector, but the Round-Up was rather taken with the idea of random fat tests for techies.

One of the reasons for the industry's pervasive chubbiness is a lack of exercise with about 25 per cent admitting that despite spending most of their day behind a desk, they still don't exercise even once a week. The Round-Up suspects this is because they spend most of their week behind a desk and are therefore not capable of doing any exercise.

If obesity isn't bad enough how about considering your staff churn rate.

See the network admin? He'll be gone by February. Your database guy? Just drafting his resignation letter ("Dear Lardy..."). Heck, at least you'll get some exercise walking to and from the interview room.

Most tech workers are on the look out for a new job, according to the latest silicon.com reader poll - and they're likely to be dreaming of a fatter pay packet or a bigger challenge. Then again, who isn't?

A hefty 80 per cent of respondents said they are looking to change job this year. The factors creating the most unrest in the tech department are pay and boredom, with 35 per cent of poll respondents eyeing the job pages because they want more money.

But this is matched by those suffering from boredom: a further 35 per cent said they are looking for more challenging work.

Some 78 per cent are complaining because someone keeps eating all their food in the company fridge. Probably.

Meanwhile, another 10 per cent are planning a move to reduce levels of work-related stress. That'll be the IT managers then.

The good news is that you'll soon be inundated with job requests from young, fresh-faced graduates from academic and vocational IT courses. There are loads of highly-qualified, highly-ambitious would-be IT managers milling around your department in their 30-inch waist trousers.

Bit stressful isn't it. Go on, the support desk manager won't mind if you nick his yoghurt from the fridge. You deserve a bit of a treat...

Time for a quick round-up of the week's other big stories:

The Server in the Sky. Think ID Cards crossed with Star Wars. Scared? You should be. If the privacy implications don't frighten you then just think about the cost to the taxpayer:

Apple shows some skin and Google flaunts its socks. Intrigued? Check it out.

What gets you excited? Collecting beer mats? Tortoise husbandry - hell yes. Each to his/her own but keep it off the CV. If you are one of the 80 per cent of silicon.com readers looking to move jobs you can get top tips on CV writing and learn how to avoid the pitfalls here.

Just don't let your IT manager see you doing it because he's probably thinking the same thing and competitive advantage is going to come to bear, bless his chubby little fingers.

Until next week, check out the Weekly Round-Up podcast and win a prize in the caption competition.