Mousetrap Technology - Times Online - WBLG

Going like a bomb

All publicity is meant to be good publicity, but Volkswagen bosses are probably not too pleased that a faked advert for the VW Polo was the most forwarded e-mail of 2005, according to the website Bore Me.

The carmaker threatened legal action against the creators of the advert, which spoofed the "small but tough" campaign used to promote the Polo. It showed a man of Middle Eastern appearance driving the car though London before parking and detonating a suicide bomb. The blast is contained within the car’s bodywork, protecting passers-by from injury.

Microsoft's daily £1.5m fine - a price worth paying?

Our Man from Mozilla, Gervase Markham, has written a piece this week on Microsoft's latest spat with the European Commission. The EC is piling pressure on the world's largest software maker to reveal technical details of its products to competitors to level what has been judged a playing field unfairly skewed by Microsoft's market domination.

As Gerv points out, "Microsoft has engaged in conduct designed to make it difficult for other companies or organisations to write software which interoperates with Windows in particular important ways".

So far the coverage of the case has been dominated by headlines pointing out that Microsoft faces fines of up to £1.5 million a day for failing to comply with the EC ruling. Which is a lot of money. Unless, as our columnist notes, you're making £14 million a day from Windows client operating system licences alone - in which case, it could be considered a price worth paying.

Let's keep the light show in Vegas

You know those digital advertising hordings they have at pitch level at some football grounds? The incredibly annoying ones that distract you from the game and look to have been lifted from the garish end of the Las Vegas strip?

Well, imagine if miniture versions were being developed to use as packaging for consumer goods. And that they were going to be so cheap they could be used to label basic staples - like bread.

God bless Berners Lee

So, the man who made this all possible – this webpage, Times Online, that "www" prefix you can read a couple of inches above - finally has a blog.

Change for the better

A university in Japan is going to incorporate identification and vending cards into mobile phones, allowing its students to register for classes, open doors and pay for food using their mobiles.

The idea is that while students might misplace keys, cards or cash, their prize possession will remain with them at all times. "No student forgets to take a cellphone with him, even if he forgets his textbook," Kosei Oguchi, the university president, said.

Taming the west

The internet is notoriously difficult to regulate, but that doesn’t stop governments trying. One of the lesser-known repercussions of the London bombings is that internet café owners in Italy must now request ID from customers and take photocopies of their passports. They must also be able to track the websites visited by their customers.

The new law, part of a package of anti-terror measures introduced by the Italian Government in recent weeks, is designed to limit would-be terrorists’ ability to communicate anonymously using the internet.

Need an Xbox? Try Japan

Steve Ballmer says that "the Ballmer children do not have their Xbox 360 yet". Poor dears. Must be tough when pops is chief executive of Microsoft and worth just a shade more than $10 billion, eh?

How Google does stuff

Everybody wants to know just how Google got to be Google. Just how do those algorithms pick out the most relevant stories on the Google search engine? How does Google News choose its stories? How do you get your stock price to spiral from $85 to over $400 in just over a year?

The dog ate my USB stick

Data recovery is rarely a subject to get the pulse racing, but Ontrack, a company specialising in the field, has managed to raise a smile or two with its 2005 "data disaster league table".

Confirming stereotypes about the artistically inclined, writers feature disproportionately in the top ten. One managed to drop a five-pound piece of clay pottery onto her laptop, shattering the hard drive and destroying five years’ work. The other had attacked her computer with a hammer.

AOL - the sale that never was?

We reported in September how senior Time Warner execs think the mooted sale of AOL to Google or Microsoft would be a massive mistake. Now the New York Times seems to agree.

Time Warner is still in negotiations with Microsoft and Google over AOL, says the NYT. However, the paper suggests that “most of the possibilities under discussion do not involve either company's buying a stake in AOL”. Rather, they “involve co-operation on web search, advertising sales and possibly other areas”.

Revolutionary Times

Quick plug for our groundbreaking new gadget...

Times Online has just unveiled a revolutionary piece of software that lets users explore the web, choose Times Online news feeds and even search their own PCs. Times Online Smart Search, powered by Blinkx, is a free downloadable toolbar which opens up a world of news, video and sophisticated web searching capabilities. But don't just take our word for it - try it yourself.

How Google's going to spend its $7 billion

You might have missed this. There was a small article in the first edition of today's Times (which isn't online) on how Microsoft is developing an online classified advertising service to compete with Google Base.

It makes sense. Stats describing how the dead-tree-and-ink boys are struggling to attract advertisers are as rife as Google product launches. Online marketing (writes the online journalist) is obviously the way forward. So the question is whether Bill Gates is late to the party - again - or might Microsoft have been wise to sit back and wait?

Exploding screws!

Its a gorgeous sunny morning in Ebisu, I'm sitting with my breakfast teriyaki bagel and the suits at the next table are bent double, weeping with laughter. Tears of hilarity are flowing over the business pages of today's paper.

Odd. I mean, TFI Friday and all that, but in 12 years here, I've never, ever seen this. I cautiously crane over to see what on earth has reduced them to this puddle of merriment. Japan is a cheerful enough place but the Sankei Shimbun is hardly known for the quality of its gags. Through his guffaws, the chap nearest me makes things a wee bit clearer. Ahhhhh, ahhhhhhh, heeeeeee...he says, drawing breath and choking on a phrase that translates roughly as "exploding screw".

The X-factor

With only hours remaining until X-day and hundreds of videogame enthusiasts queuing outside the nation’s electrical stores, the launch of the Xbox 360 ought to have been an unqualified success for Microsoft. Predictably, though, a few things have happened to qualify it.

Rumours swirling around before the US launch last Tuesday suggested the company had cut supplies deliberately to stoke up the hype, a charge that was swiftly dismissed by Microsoft. One week on, with British stores predicting equally empty shelves, only a dedicated conspiracy theorist would maintain that the shortage was planned.