Sneak was well aware that just about everything is up for sale on eBay, and indeed dimly aware that eBay has apparently bid on just about every spare Google AdWords vacancy going, but neither scrap of knowledge provided proper preparation for the shock when Sneak recently Googled for “Soylent Green”, the infamous food product made from recycled people. “Looking for Soylent Green?” eBay’s ad nonchalantly asked. “Fantastic low prices here. Feed your passion on eBay.co.uk!”
You know what, on this particular occasion Sneak will pass on this opportunity to feed the passion, thanks very much.

June 30, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sneak hears that telecoms firm Orange has set up a fine sounding, forward-looking organisation called the Orange Future Enterprise Coalition to “explore the impact of mobile data technology on the UK economy”. It’s just a shame that nobody at Orange seems to have explored the impact of celebrated sitcom Father Ted on the English language, before picking a name that shortens to OFEC.

June 30, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has always felt sorry for newspaper subeditors - wondering how they retain their loose grip on sanity while trying to craft an eye-catching headline for the latest story on Cisco’s router roadmap. According to a recent article by Steve Lohr in the New York Times, the mental wellbeing of subs is about to be given another test. In his piece, entitled “This boring headline was written for Google”, Lohr argues that hours spent agonizing over the perfect pun-laden headline could soon be a thing of the past as newspapers become more interested in attracting Google's algorithms rather than sentient readers.
Sneak has known this for some time, and has come up with a cunning ruse to help attract new readers. But sadly Sneak’s colleagues on the subbing desk have failed to see the light, and for strange reasons of professional pride are refusing to preface every Sneak story with the words “genuine Britney Spears sex tape”.

June 26, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like most IT professionals, Sneak is often overwhelmed by a desire to gnaw off his own ears, after hearing of yet another IT acronym that seems to serve no purpose in life but to keep IT marketing executives in red braces. So praise be to analyst Neil Ward-Dutton who, upon hearing that Oracle had started to use the term SOA 2.0, decided that it was time for a halt to be called.
Rather than head home to try to order a sniper’s rifle from eBay - which would have been Sneak's first reaction - or start work on a profiteering report on why every organisation should embrace SOA 2.0 - which would have been every other analyst’s first reaction - Ward-Dutton instead launched an online petition. Our double-barrelled friend aims to give both barrels to Oracle, by giving a voice to all those IT professionals for whom the term SOA 2.0 will prove even less helpful than the vaporously vague SOA itself.
If you count yourself among the nay-sayers, you can find the petition at the Macehiter Ward-Dutton web site.
If, on the other hand, you can’t see what Ward-Dutton’s problem is, then Sneak would like to point out that deposits are currently being taken for Sneak’s forthcoming exclusive executive report: SOA 3.0 - Buy it or Die.

June 23, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sneak has rather gone off high definition TVs (HDTVs), and not just because Sneak can't afford one. Like many others, Sneak was to be found standing in a crowded pub earlier this week, watching England's laboured World Cup draw with Sweden on a snazzy new HDTV. Unfortunately, the pub's refit hadn't extended to replacing the analogue TV at the other end of the bar and, as a result, Sneak was rather perplexed after 34 minutes to find half the bar ecstatically cheering the fact that the Swede's had successfully cleared a corner in the vague direction of Joe Cole. About four seconds later the HDTV finally got round to processing the digital signal to reveal that Mr Cole had scored what is known in the football vernacular as an absolute screamer.
The area in front of the old-fashioned TV-set quickly became as tightly packed as Coleen McLoughlin's wardrobe, while the bar around Sneak emptied out like the bits of Wayne Rooney's brain that contemplate the arts, sciences, and the meaning of life.
Which meant that Sneak was forced to watch the rest of the game in Posh-Spice-appreciation mode: with fingers firmly plugged into ear-holes.

June 22, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

A few weeks back Sneak was snickering at the name Nintendo picked for its next-generation games console: Wii. (Not to be confused with Pee & Poo, which is something else entirely.)
It seems the naming gnomes at Nintendo are not finished, however. Apparently the corporation has registered !!M as a trademark. Readers with an eye for the topsy-turvy will immediately recognise that !!M is Wii upside-down - if you squint hard enough. Allegedly the unpronounceable name will be used to label the Wii’s player-to-player instant messaging system. What next? Will Wii consoles be sold at woc.opu3+u!u.mmm? Or is it all just s>lolloq...¿

Update:
How much easier life would be if all internet addresses were inverted: after all, em-em-em is a lot easier to say than double-U-double-U-double-U. As a letter-writer to The Times recently commented, www, at nine syllables, must be an extreme rarity among abbreviations in being more of a mouthful than the long form it replaces, World Wide Web, which enjoys a third as many syllables. Sneak abhors waste, and so will henceforth join with the growing body of people who say “dub-dub-dub” instead.

June 21, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak assumes everyone but sand-dabbling ostriches will have heard by now that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is to spend more time with his money, leaving the day-to-day whatever-it-is-that-he’s-been-doing entirely to others from July 2008. You’d have thought it would be long faces all round at Redmond, but no. As a picture released by the Microsoft spin machine proves, much hilarity was had by all on the occasion of the announcement. Looking at the picture - of a laughing Gates, screaming chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie, chuckling chief software architect Ray Ozzie and smirking CEO Steve Ballmer - Sneak does wonder what the joke was, aside from Bill’s frightful sweater. Send Sneak your suggestions for what the fearsome foursome have been up to, in the form of a caption or other means of conveying your notion of topical hilarity.

June 19, 2006 Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (12)

Reader Vince Horan has manfully responded to Sneak’s request for duff IT products invented right here in the UK. “I vote for the ICL One Per Desk (OPD) ‘executive toy’ of the 80s. The best bit was the telephony unit with programmable automated phone answering. With its very limited vocabulary, the trick was to try to get it to say something rude. The best we could manage was, ‘My secretary is on my private_s please have phone in my ring’. Note also the OPD was rebadged by BT as Tonto, which means ‘silly’ in Spanish.”
Vince helpfully provided the location of a screenshot of the limited OPD vocabulary so that Sneak was able to verify that he has not lost his marbles.
Further suggestions for the UK hall of IT shame gratefully received.

June 12, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

It seems Apple chief and Pixar boss Steve Jobs' obsession with nuts and bolts knows no end. If the polished appearance of iPods and Mac computers is anything to go by, the man is clearly focused on sleek, fastener-free lines. Either that or he’d prefer you bought a new iPod than replace a worn-out-battery by taking the back off the thing.

Anyway, Jobs reportedly forced workers to replace bolts used to build Apple's new 5th Avenue store in New York, because he felt they spoiled its look and feel. And more recently, Sneak heard a similar tale concerning the recently constructed Pixar building in California.

Jobs had apparently demanded that the manufacturer’s logo be ground off the heads of all the bolts and replaced by a Pixar logo.

Unfortunately for Jobs the maker’s mark, plus codes showing the tensile strength of the steel, are stamped on the bolts due to legal requirements - so that safety inspectors can verify that the right kind of nuts and bolts have been used to hold the building up.

So in the end Jobs didn't get his way: the big nut’s nuts had to stay as they were.

June 8, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (3)

Like most people with a home to go to, Sneak typically finds life too short to bother with ReadMe files before installing new software. There is an exception to this rule of thumb, however: just as you wouldn’t blindly gargle with every fluid found in the bathroom, so it pays to check the label before installing Microsoft beta software.

So when Sneak recently installed the Beta 2 release of Office 2007, it seemed sensible to take a quick snoop through the ReadMe to check for known issues and incompatibilities.

The ReadMe.htm file on the install disk, however, turned out to be a very small file that did little but point to a page on the Microsoft web site. Sneak is perplexed by the need for this, but perhaps this is a cryptic way of telling users that they need internet access in order to install Office 2007?

Unfortunately, the page that the ReadMe links to sniffily reports that Sneak is “not a 2007 Microsoft Office Beta release user”. And it can tell because “the 2007 release was not detected”.

In other words, Microsoft insists that beta testers install Office 2007 before they are allowed to view the ReadMe detailing the problems they may run into during installation of the beta.

And they wonder why nobody reads the ReadMe files.

June 7, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Living, as we surely do, in enlightened times it is no longer strictly necessary to book an illicit weekend away under the saucy pseudonym of Mr and Mrs Smith. However, Sneak for one is ready to reinstate the practice after news reaches him from the US that auditor Ernst & Young has managed to have a laptop stolen with the personal details of 243,000 Hotels.com customers. Adopting a pseudonym and paying in cash now seem like quite sensible ideas. Sneak is not so worried about stern lectures from bible-basking B&B owners, nor the threat that incompetent auditors might have handed Sneak’s address to criminals unknown. No, the more worrying prospect is that Mrs Sneak might get hold of a leaked list of hotel bookings and realise that Sneak’s frequent “foreign business trips” are spent at a nearby Holiday Inn, where there is wireless internet access, a telly, and no washing up, no DIY, and no gardening to be done.

June 6, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tomorrow’s date is 06/06/06. Not that Sneak is superstitious, but during the day it might be worth steering clear of any groups of four people on horseback.

June 5, 2006 Top tips | Permalink | Comments (0)