Although I’m sure the anti-Microsoft camp will try, I can’t see that this is anything but good news… and something Microsoft should have planned to do all along. It was always foolish to say they were only going to release new versions of IE with new versions of Windows, because that simply could not sustain their position in the browser market.

I’ve started using this instead of Desktop Sidebar. It’s rather good, clearly takes up less screen space than Desktop Sidebar, and has one of the smoothest scrolling actions I’ve seen on any RSS program. And it’s free. If it had an option to shown only the last x stories on a particular feed, it’d be perfect.

The Round-Up seems to be having a major rant this week, seeing red over ‘irony’:

Pop Idol judge Simon Cowell is apparently the nation’s ideal employer, according to a survey out this week…Abe Elkinson, a director at Trust Medical who commissioned the landmark piece of research, said: “To say we were surprised by the public’s choice is an understatement.”

Then don’t.

But Abe continued: “Simon Cowell isn’t known for his sweet and gentle personality – in fact he’s made a career out of being sarcastic, rude and ridiculing people.

“So for him to come out top as the nation’s favourite boss is rather ironic.”

No it isn’t. What is it about irony that people don’t understand? There is nothing ironic in that statement at all.

Abe Elkinson is clearly blighted by the same condition that plagued the song-writing of long-faced Canadian chanteuse Alanis Morrisette.

For example: ‘It’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife/ It’s meeting the man of my dreams…/ And then meeting his beautiful wife.’

Not ironic in the slightest. Annoying, granted. A sign that you have too many spoons, definitely, and possibly also evidence that the man of her dreams wasn’t really married but rather asked a female friend to pose as his wife because some crazy spoon-collecting Canadian was trying to crack onto him.

The PetsCell uses the same technology as conventional mobile phones but is shaped like a bone and attached to the dog’s collar. Whenever an owner needs to speak to their dog they can dial the number and the phone connects automatically after the first ring.

The dog is able to hear the owner through the speaker on the phone and can bark in response.

This, surely, serves only to define who has too much money.

I’m going to go out on a limb, here, and suggest that this will fail miserably, because of this condition:

However, users may not be keen – if at any point they decide to stop paying the monthly subscription to their provider, they’re left with no access to any of the songs in their library or on their music player.

The idea that I have to continue to pay someone for the rest of my life to listen to the music I’ve downloaded is certainly a turn-off for me.

My favourite download site of the moment is Easy Music, by Stelios. It has a very simple pricing structure, and very simple DRM conditions. I suggest you check it out.

Downloads clearly are the future of the music industry, but I’m certain that pay-as-you-go services will be more popular than subscription services.

According to a new study, adults are better web surfers than teens. That’s a pretty bold claim, but I see a big flaw in the study before I even got to reading it. The summary on the Guardian’s Onlineblog provides all the info I need:

Teens ages 13 to 17 were able to complete assigned tasks on the Web 55 percent of the time, compared with 66 percent for adults, according to Nielsen Norman in Fremont, a firm known for studying how consumers use technology.

Surely the relative success of the two groups depends on the tasks set for them? Especially since teens are likely to use the internet for a much narrower range of things than adults.

I could have download the report and read what the various tasks were, but being a teenager (let me enjoy it for the few weeks I have left) I didn’t have the attention span necessary.

This silicon.com article is actually about the introduction of fingerpint technology for payment in a Washington supermarket, but it makes an interesting point about the controversial introduction of RFID tagging, the backlash against which I commented on last week.

John Davison, VP and research director at analyst house Gartner, said that customers were generally willing to accept technologies, such as RFID, that could infringe their privacy if the benefits of such technology could be ‘sold’ to them.

“Will customers object to RFID? Yes, if you don’t sell it to them,” he said. “Over two-thirds of customers will accept RFID if you sell them the basic utilities.”

However, he added that certain areas of retail were still technology sacred. “The nearer you get RFID to the payment process, consumers get less keen. When you start linking… to their personal information, they’re even less keen.”

This is something I strongly agree with. You cannot sell this kind of new technology to the public by trying to sell the technology to the public: You have to tell them about all the benefits. Telling customers that their shopping will be embedded with microchips (already dubbed ‘spy chips’ by the anti-RFID lobby groups) will be a big turn-off, but telling customers that they’ll save time at the checkout by not having to unload everything from their trolley will be a big turn-on.

Tesco are particularly good at marketing to the public, and I’m sure they’ll do this right, which is another reason why any attempted resistance against RFID by paranoid consumer groups will, surely, fail.

MSN report that MSN Search, my big tip for 2005, has finally launched. This looks like being a good thing.

It appears that, along with many other people, I was duped into believing a false story. I’ll let the silicon.com Weekly Roundup explain and ridicule:

And finally, still on the subject of questionable journalism, news reached the Round-Up this week that one of the year’s most ridiculous stories was little more than a lie… cheaply concocted to sell papers. (Which is the Round-Up’s slightly self-important way of saying ‘phew, thank God we didn’t write this…)

The saga began with a journalist writing for the Romanian tabloid Libertatea claiming to have found a couple who named their child ‘Yahoo!’ in celebration of the fact they met online.

Even the most copy-hungry newspaper editor, with all manner of serious ear, nose and throat issues should have smelled something a little bit fishy at this point but the journalist concerned, the negatively charged Ion Garnod, had gone to the trouble of backing up his story with a forged birth certificate.

(The Round-Up can’t help thinking at this point that it’s a very telling sign-of-the-times that skilled forgers in Eastern Europe are turning to journalism as a source of income.)

However, as surely as night follows day, fact followed fiction and Garnod was exposed as a liar who made up the story “to make himself look good”.

To do what? To make himself look good!?

Whatever happened to elaborate lies about sexual conquests – perhaps involving twins – or great sporting prowess?

“Alright lads… how’s it going?”
“Good thanks Ion… what’s kept you, you’re very late?”
“Oh, I bumped into this couple who named their baby Yahoo!”
“Wow, you’re the greatest, pull up a chair and let us buy you an absinthe.”

The Round-Up doesn’t know who Garnod hangs out with but really thinks his peer group is way too easily impressed.

What about:

“Yeah sorry about that lads but I bumped into the Cheeky Girls and spent a wild night in a hotel with them…”

Actually, maybe ‘Yahoo!; the baby was the better option after all.

(Apologies at this point to any readers in Romania for having a woeful grasp on who the latest Romanian pin-ups might be… without a doubt there must be better than the Cheeky Girls.)

Simona Ionescu, Garnod’s deputy editor-in-chief, told Reuters “we fired him”, which didn’t exactly tax the shorthand of the Reuters journalist.

Ionescu did go on to say: “If it were real, it would have been a good story indeed.”

No, if it were real it would still have been a story about a couple who named their baby ‘Yahoo!’ let’s not get carried away.

I think I’m right in saying that this is the first time I’ve blogged a completely inaccurate story in twenty-one months of posting, and I’m really quite bothered about having helped spread this myth. I’ll certainly be checking my sources even more closely in future to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

So, apologies for making the mistake, and I’ll trust my source on this a little less from now on (though, in fairness, the VNU Network are normally reliable).

RFID plans trigger Tesco boycott call

Tesco is too big for this kind of boycott to make a significant dent in their profits. I do think that RFID technology needs more careful monitoring, but it’s certainly the future of stock control. Imagine the convenience it will bring to stores – no more unloading of shopping onto a conveyor belt, products which customers have abandoned on the wrong shelf can easily be found, and stock levels checked at the touch of a button – all of which will contribute to a great saving in man hours, at the same time as making a more pleasant experience for the customer – there aren’t many innovations that can make a promise that big and economical.

However, care in regulation does need to be taken to ensure that the chips are deactivated when the customer exits the store, which, I believe, is something with which Tesco agrees.

RFID is undoubtedly the future, no matter how much people try and boycott it.