The Times: Tech column - Advergaming the Sims/Google News/Warchalking

By David Rowan

In the old days - a year ago, say - a video-game producer in search of realism would pay thousands of pounds for the rights to include a recognisable brand of car. But the balance shifted last week, when the games company Electronic Arts (EA) signed a deal with McDonald's and Intel that will actually bring in millions of dollars for featuring their goods.

The deal focuses on the online version of The Sims, the hugely popular neighbourhood-building game that has sold nine million copies. So high are expectations for the online version, released in time for Christmas, that McDonald's negotiated to include one of its restaurants in the community. Each time a hungry player stops by for a meal, a competing player somewhere in the world will earn virtual money as the restaurant's "owner".

Players will also have the chance to buy an Intel computer, which the IT company believes will "strengthen our brand identity and increase awareness of our products" among women and young adults. This is not a first for EA - it received a few thousand dollars from Reebok for including its logo in the Madden Football game, and has previously done deals with Coca-Cola and Lee jeans - but the millions at stake here take product placement to a new level in the interactive world. Naturally, the trend has its own buzzword - "advergaming" - and EA believes that this is just the start. Hardcore gamers worry that the commercial messages will spoil the fun, but the dealmakers have their answer prepared: people eat branded hamburgers and use named PCs in the real world, and who would not want the gaming experience to be more realistic?

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Google has unveiled a news search engine that trawls continually through 4,000 sources and links you straight to the web pages where events are being reported. As well as grouping news into eight main categories - from business to health - the free service (news.google.com) also lets you search for key words in 30-day archives. Google is not the first to aggregate online news sources, but its speed, simplicity and range give it the edge over rivals such as moreover and alltheweb. Coverage of the German elections, for instance, ranged from Norway's Aftenposten to the San Jose Mercury News, with related stories grouped together. The service relies on computer algorithms to select and summarise the stories generating the widest coverage.

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It's hard to be law-abiding in the high-tech world. First the record companies insist that downloading music is theft; then we are told that skipping adverts when recording TV shows is theft. Now Nokia is trying to criminalise community-minded "netizens" who inform passers-by about shared local wireless internet (WiFi) connections. Since the summer, chalk markings have been appearing outside buildings in Europe and the US to indicate the presence of an open WiFi broadband network. This remarkable grassroots phenomenon, known as "warchalking", allows anyone with a suitable laptop to log on and use spare bandwidth. But now Nokia is accusing warchalkers of "bandwidth-robbing", claiming that their altruistic squiggles are anything but public-spirited. "While the warchalkers maintain that they are not trying to hack networks, they are using a resource that they haven't paid for," states Nokia. "This is theft, plain and simple."

It is not surprising that the corporate world is reacting against a movement that is saving people money, but it is odd that Nokia blames the messengers for pointing out the availability of WiFi connections. In many cases, broadband subscribers actively choose to make such connections available, something that may bother some internet service providers but is hardly something to blame the chalkers for. What really bother Nokia are chalk marks which indicate insecure corporate networks that are open to outsiders.

But shouldn't such companies see these markings as helpful reminders to make their systems less vulnerable?

(The Times, September 25 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - An academic mystery/Search priorities/Smiley history

By David Rowan

It is not often that the arcane field of nanotechnology produces a superstar, but for 31-year-old Jan Hendrik Schon, the prospects this time last year were gilded. Schon, a physicist at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs in New Jersey, was being celebrated by his peers for some remarkable experiments that promised "a new era of molecular-scale electronics". By building the world's tiniest transistor, a million times smaller than a grain of sand, he offered the hope of cheaper and more powerful computer chips - prompting breathless international press coverage, job offers, even talk of a Nobel Prize.

When the respected journals Science and Nature peerreviewed Schon's experiments last autumn, the recent German PhD student was being feted at conferences: his findings meant the end of the silicon-chip era, and could lead to computers tiny enough to put into clothes and credit-cards. Schon also published more than 60 academic papers in more than two years, which only added to his mystique.

And then the doubts surfaced. This spring, fellow academics began questioning some of Schon's data: identical graphs that he used in a variety of unrelated papers to illustrate the results of widely differing experiments. The discrepancies led one former supporter to rebuke himself publicly for his "gullibility", and caused deep soul-searching at the journals. Schon told Nature that he remained "confident" of his findings, and insisted to Science that he had done nothing wrong, but no other scientist has yet achieved the same results. Concerned to protect its reputation, Lucent Technologies appointed an independent committee, under Malcolm Beasley, of Stanford University, to discover "whether scientific misconduct has occurred".

In the scientific community, the stakes could not be higher - especially for the learned journals whose peer-review processes are now under scrutiny. As Physics World magazine put it, any evidence that emerges of fabricated data will be a devastating blow not just to Lucent and to the scientists involved. "The reputations of leading journals," it added, "the burgeoning field of single-molecule nanoelectronics and the physics community will also suffer."

Perhaps there is an innocent explanation for the remarkable similarities in Schon's graphs; he himself is refusing to comment. But if Professor Beasley's findings, expected shortly, suggest anything more than human error, then the journals will need to rethink how they validate such specialist but potentially revolutionary research. And the rest of us ought to be a bit more sceptical.

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We are a land of cheapskate pop fans who are desperate to move home, if Google's most popular search queries are an accurate barometer of the national Zeitgeist. The search site's analysis of last month's Top 10 UK requests - excluding the rude ones - are, in declining order: cheap flights; BBC; holidays; easyJet; Britney Spears; Ryanair; car insurance; estate agents; exchange rates; and Gareth Gates. The Italians were keener on Padre Pio, and the French on Harry Potter - comparisons sure to prompt a rash of undergraduate courses at the new universities. But what's really worrying is that the world's most searched-for newsmaker was not Saddam or Bush, but ... Anna Nicole Smith. Time, surely, to log off and go on a long holiday.

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So now we know what they get up to at Microsoft's research labs: studying the origins of that vital communications tool known as the smiley. Seven months ago Mike Jones, a Microsoft researcher, launched a search for the earliest occurrence of the :-) symbol on the internet. After a study of old bulletin-board posts, Jones concludes that the emoticon (to give it its proper name) was first used at Carnegie Mellon University 20 years ago tomorrow. Its originator, one Scott E. Fahlman, was looking for a way to indicate humour, and coined the :-) to signal a smile. Predictably, this has created a huge debate, prompting other techies to date the symbol to the Sixties, with some even crediting it to Vladimir Nabokov.

(The Times, September 18 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - A 'murder' confession/Political games/Saving Karen

By David Rowan

WHAT would you do if you saw an apparent murder confession on an online forum? It is not an abstract question - it happened to me last week. Browsing a lively community talk board at Kuro5hin.org, I was distracted by a mischievous discussion about revenge. Out poured painful accounts of bosses finding their chairs stinking of rotting shrimp, and of unfounded rumours that cost a love rival her job.

But it was message 117, posted by somebody called "Locked", that froze me. Locked had attended an unnamed secondary school in Cornwall where he suffered from bullying. One Wednesday afternoon after games, a group of the bullies was messing around in the road playing "chicken" with the cars - seeing how close they could run past them without getting hit - when one of the offenders, Paul, failed to move quickly enough. "Imagine my glee when Paul gets hit," Locked writes. "Paul hadn't died (damn) but was obviously in a bad shape. Ever the 'helpful Samaritan', I strode over to his body and pulled it on to the pavement: (I was) manhandling him roughly in a faux-clumsy attempt to put him in some sort of lying-down-with-head-awkwardly-resting-against-wall recovery position."

Locked kept doing this, he writes, until he believed he had broken the bully's neck. No one would know that this had not happened by accident. Paul later died - "his neck injuries killed him", Locked admits. "So, yeah, revenge can work well," he concludes. And with that, it has been left to the Kuro5hin community to debate the ethics of such a brutal death: whether the bully had been "taught a lesson", or Locked had revealed himself as a psychopath.

It is possible that Locked's claim is a hoax: that is what Kuro5hin's founder appears to believe. But if true, it would not be the first internet confession to murder (or would it be manslaughter?). Four years ago, Larry Froistad, a San Diego computer programmer, was jailed for 40 years for murdering his five-year-old daughter after a message in his name appeared on an online support group site for problem drinkers. "I murdered because her mother stood between us," the message stated, prompting another group member to alert the police.

I traced Locked by e-mail to a man in Newton Abbot, Devon, but although he admitted posting the message, he would not say if it was a hoax. Devon and Cornwall police were not aware of the claim, so for the moment, it seems, the matter rests. The consensus among community forums is that the message was probably a warped joke. Perhaps, but the internet has a strange ability to get us to admit things we would never say in the real world.

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IT is being suggested that one motive for China's hostility to the Google search engine is its ability to locate animated online games such as Slap The Evil Dictator Jiang Zemin. Such web-based games are the latest means for netizens to deliver political messages. Other favourites include Downing Street Fighter - eight politicians punch and kick to win Tony Blair's job. But this week the popular choice is New York Defender, on the website albinoblacksheep.com. It is a tasteless game in which you have to shoot down endless aircraft before they hit the World Trade Centre. The French designers claim its message is the futility of the war on terrorism: you cannot win the game. With a million players, its popularity suggests that subversive thought has found a powerful new outlet.

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Since Karyn Bosnak, a 29-year-old Brooklyn shopaholic, turned to the web in June for help to reduce her credit card debt, cash-soliciting sites have mushroomed. Bosnak's site, SaveKaryn.com, has attracted $10,374.04 towards her $20,000 debt. Her plight resulted from her obsession with Prada shoes and Gucci purses. So imagine what "Penny" could achieve with her site, HelpMeLeaveMyHusband.com. She wants cash to support her children through a divorce. In the first three weeks, Penny received $326.31. The strategy is not guaranteed - a 21-year-old "college girl" has netted just $9 at LendMeABuck.com.

(The Times, September 11 2002)

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Evening Standard: Radio 1 comes under fire over 'dance'

By David Rowan

THIS might just be the moment for Tony Blackburn to ask for his old job back. As Radio 1 confronts falling ratings, confusion over its music policy and protests about "dumbing down", calls are growing across the industry for radical changes at the station Blackburn launched 35 years ago this month.

With its share of listening down from 10.7 per cent to 8.3 per cent in two years - at a time when Radio 2's audience has risen by a third - critics are asking if the station's continuing obsession with dance music is a sign of a deeper failure to understand today's young audience. "There's been pressure for a shake-up for some time, and I think it's going to happen," according to a senior music-industry figure. "There's a big disenfranchised audience out there that it's just ignoring."

Last month's quarterly listening figures showed Radio 1's audience falling from 13.8 million to 12.8 million, with Sara Cox's breakfast show losing almost 700,000 adult listeners in a year when she was censured for obscene remarks in an Ali G interview. Andy Parfitt, the station's controller, blamed the World Cup for the slump, but in the same period Terry Wogan's Radio 2 breakfast show gained half a million new listeners.

If the station sees Cox as its big star - she recently signed a three-year £1 million contract - then other corners of the corporation seem not to agree.

After Wogan told an interviewer that Radio 1 had "lost its way" and criticised the "doubtful taste" of Cox and her fellow presenter Chris Moyles, the latter yesterday went a step further. "I think I could do a better job (than Cox)," Moyles told Heat magazine, adding that he would rather spend his time watching breakfast television than listening to her.

But what concerns the industry is the station's current music policy. It recently decided to axe its innovative show, The Evening Session, presented three nights a week by Steve Lamacq, which has a rising audience and helped launch the careers of bands including Oasis, Blur and The Strokes. "Losing the Evening Session is a big mistake," a senior A&R man tells the Standard.

Bands, too, have been lining up to condemn what The Parkinsons are calling "a sad day for the future of rock 'n' roll". The band Hell is for Heroes has denounced it as "a great blow to alternative music". The station says the programme must go in order to "revamp and refresh" the schedules, and that a replacement will continue to showcase independent music. But some see the decision - together with the recent departure of veteran DJ Mark Goodier - as symptomatic of a deeper malaise.

"Radio 1 has got an identity crisis and doesn't quite know who it is aiming its musical content at," according to James Oldham, deputy editor of the NME. "It's axed The Evening Session at a time when we're undergoing a rock 'n' roll renaissance, but Radio 1 seems shy of getting involved. So it's missing the young, hip, popular bands that are dominating the market at the moment - The Strokes, the White Stripes, the Datsuns. A successful band like the Vines has not even been able to get on to the playlist, but an electropop band such as Fischerspooner gets through straight away. Everyone knows that dance music is in the worst state it's been for years."

Paul Jackson, programme director at Virgin Radio, believes that the rival station is "out on a limb" with its devotion to dance music. "This year's hottest records are by Coldplay and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but they're not getting the play you'd expect on Radio 1. It will need to re-address its priorities: the trends are moving so fast now, and we're already entering the back end of the rock renaissance. Music in the past few years has fragmented, and Radio 1 has to bring the varieties all together, but it's hellbent on going down one path."

Yet the station's power remains such that few people who spoke to the Standard would give their names. One senior music industry figure, who launched the careers of a number of internationally acclaimed bands, blames its music strategy for holding back new talent. "The pop charts have been hijacked by the eight-to 14-year-olds and driven more and more by television shows, yet Radio 1 isn't breaking any of its own records," he says. "And then when a left-foot record breaks, such as Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus, they ignore it. It just hasn't got its finger completely on the pulse as to what young people want."

He suggests that this may be because Alex Jones-Donelly, its editor of music policy, comes from a dance-music background, a sector that is becoming an ever more focused niche. Others in the industry worry that Jo Whiley appears to be one of the few presenters to "care" about the music.

Radio 1 denies that the loss of Lamacq's evening show and the departure of Goodier were linked to the disappointing listening numbers. "We don't base our decisions on figures," a spokesman says. "These changes were planned some time before and are not an indication of some bigger shake-up." The spokesman insists that the station continues to broadcast more hours of guitar-based rock than dance music and that, despite the criticisms the station has faced, Andy Parfitt "has still got a smile on his face".

The music industry, which relies on Radio 1 to help nurture tomorrow's success stories, is less relaxed. "It's never been easier to break new pop talent - you just need to be on TV or in the press," an industry executive says. "But only a few people are working to build a band's career. Why isn't Radio 1 developing the acts?"

He adds: "Radio 2 is the UK's most successful station because it absolutely knows its audience. Maybe we need a Radio 1-and-a-half."

(Evening Standard, September 11 2002)

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The Times: Britain is eroding personal privacy

Britain 'leads the way' in eroding privacy. By David Rowan


INDIVIDUAL privacy is being eroded in Britain to a far greater extent than in other developed countries, according to an international study of state surveillance in the year since September 11.

Many states have rushed through restrictive anti-terrorism and security laws in response to last year's terrorist attacks, but the Blair Government is singled out for an anti-privacy "pathology" that the report claims is leading to mass surveillance of the population.

In the 400-page report, to be published tomorrow, Privacy International, a London-based campaign group, and the US Electronic Privacy Information Center, give warning of a significant loss of personal freedom. The Privacy and Human Rights survey notes that in many of the 53 countries studied, communications surveillance has grown, intrusive "personal profiling" of individuals has increased, and data protection laws have been watered down.

"In the rush to strengthen national security and to reduce the risk of future terrorist acts, governments around the world turned to legal authority and new technology to extend control over individuals," the report states. "Many of these proposals have had far-reaching consequences for the protection of privacy."

The report highlights the British Government's use of the terrorist threat to introduce new requirements for personal communications data to be stored and to launch a new debate about a national identity card. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, also sought in June to extend the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to allow private e-mail and telephone records to be shared among more than 1,000 government agencies. After facing strong protests, Mr Blunkett withdrew the proposal a few weeks later and announced that he had "blundered".

Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said the report highlighted "a systematic attack on the right to privacy by all levels of the British Government". He added: "The UK demonstrates a pathology of antagonism toward privacy. The rate of growth of video surveillance, communications surveillance and information collection has exceeded the growth rate in such countries as Singapore and Israel."

The erosion of privacy in Britain was not a new trend. "Crime and public order laws passed in recent years have placed substantial limitations on numerous rights, including freedom of assembly, privacy, freedom of movement, the right of silence, and freedom of speech," the report states. It cites a number of illegal spying and surveillance activities by government agencies, often in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, and estimates that 1.5 million CCTV cameras are now monitoring public spaces.

Amnesty International says today that anti-terrorism laws introduced in Britain in the wake of September 11 are inconsistent with international human rights and should be repealed.

The charity claims that the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act, passed last November, contravenes fundamental human rights and calls for an immediate repeal of section 4, which empowers the Home Secretary to detain foreign nationals indefinitely, without charge or trial, if they pose a risk to national security.

(The Times, September 5 2002)

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The Times: Britain 'leading the way' in eroding privacy

By David Rowan

INDIVIDUAL privacy is being eroded in Britain to a far greater extent than in other developed countries, according to an international study of state surveillance in the year since September 11.

Many states have rushed through restrictive anti-terrorism and security laws in response to last year's terrorist attacks, but the Blair Government is singled out for an anti-privacy "pathology" that the report claims is leading to mass surveillance of the population.

In the 400-page report, to be published tomorrow, Privacy International, a London-based campaign group, and the US Electronic Privacy Information Center, give warning of a significant loss of personal freedom. The Privacy and Human Rights survey notes that in many of the 53 countries studied, communications surveillance has grown, intrusive "personal profiling" of individuals has increased, and data protection laws have been watered down.

"In the rush to strengthen national security and to reduce the risk of future terrorist acts, governments around the world turned to legal authority and new technology to extend control over individuals," the report states. "Many of these proposals have had far-reaching consequences for the protection of privacy."

The report highlights the British Government's use of the terrorist threat to introduce new requirements for personal communications data to be stored and to launch a new debate about a national identity card. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, also sought in June to extend the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to allow private e-mail and telephone records to be shared among more than 1,000 government agencies. After facing strong protests, Mr Blunkett withdrew the proposal a few weeks later and announced that he had "blundered".

Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said the report highlighted "a systematic attack on the right to privacy by all levels of the British Government". He added: "The UK demonstrates a pathology of antagonism toward privacy. The rate of growth of video surveillance, communications surveillance and information collection has exceeded the growth rate in such countries as Singapore and Israel."

The erosion of privacy in Britain was not a new trend. "Crime and public order laws passed in recent years have placed substantial limitations on numerous rights, including freedom of assembly, privacy, freedom of movement, the right of silence, and freedom of speech," the report states. It cites a number of illegal spying and surveillance activities by government agencies, often in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, and estimates that 1.5 million CCTV cameras are now monitoring public spaces.

Amnesty International says today that anti-terrorism laws introduced in Britain in the wake of September 11 are inconsistent with international human rights and should be repealed.

The charity claims that the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act, passed last November, contravenes fundamental human rights and calls for an immediate repeal of section 4, which empowers the Home Secretary to detain foreign nationals indefinitely, without charge or trial, if they pose a risk to national security.

(The Times, September 5 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Tagging kids/Console price wars/Spam filters

By David Rowan

HAVE you tagged your children today? With parental anxiety at an understandable high over child abduction, it was inevitable that a high-tech solution would sooner or later be offered. Sure enough, this week a Berkshire couple, Wendy and Paul Duval, announced that their 11-year-old daughter Danielle is to have an operation to implant a microchip in her arm so that she can be tracked by satellite wherever she goes. It used to be just criminals and pet dogs that were tagged electronically, but today children are the latest target for location-tracking technology.

This summer a Florida company, Applied Digital Solutions, began selling a chip that is worn under the skin and uses Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology to locate its wearer. Another US firm is marketing a wristwatch-sized device, called the Wherify Personal Locator for Children, that lets parents track their child's movements via a website for £300, plus a monthly subscription. When the parents are otherwise engaged, the wristwatch-linked satellites will continue to "watch" the child.

The Duvals insist that it is "only sensible for any parent to use technology when it is available", and they plan to fit their youngest child, aged seven, with the chip as well. But even after a month of saturation coverage from Soham, their concern to protect their children represents a vast exaggeration of the actual risks, and merely adds to the hysteria that is causing parental anxiety. The Duvals are being helped in their mission by Professor Kevin Warwick, the Reading University academic, who claims to be "the world's first cyborg" - part man, part machine - and who has gained the nickname "Captain Cyborg" in the technical press for his headline-provoking experiments involving a microchip implanted into his own arm. Because of this work, he says that "several families" have contacted him to develop a tag that can be implanted in children, and he hopes that the first operation will take place within three months.

The publicity may help to generate further funds for Warwick's department. But to use "recent tragic events", as he does, to promote this still-unproven technology is dubious. By all means let us track hunting dogs using chip implants, but do we really want to extend this to children?

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What can explain the sudden cut in the price of games consoles? Last week Sony and Microsoft slashed a further 17 per cent from their retail prices, bringing PlayStation 2 down to £170 and the XBox to £160 - not quite as low as the GameCube at £129, but attractive enough to make them huge sellers this Christmas. The XBox cost £299 when launched here barely six months ago. But even before the latest cut, analysts estimated that Microsoft was losing almost £70 on each console sold - so has Bill Gates finally had an attack of generosity? Not quite. It is the business model first perfected by King Gillette, founder of the shaving firm, who realised that if the razors were loss leaders, the customer would come back for the blades. In this market, online gaming is what the box-makers hope will drive profits, and if only a fraction of their owners sign up, their monthly subscriptions will continue to bring in vast sums. Game over.

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Our thoughts go out to the Lutheran Council of Great Britain, the latest victim of the "spam" e-mail culture. Last week the council's website was suddenly taken offline (it has now been reinstated) after its internet service provider, Netcetera, decided that it had sent an e-mail too far. In fact, the offending e-mail was an innocent reply to somebody who wished to stay in the charity's hostel - yet the reply was deemed suspicious by SpamCop, a popular piece of filtering software. The software automatically alerted Netcetera, and it banned the "offending" website without any human intervention. "Any reasonable person would have concluded from the content of the message that this was not spam," the council's general secretary, the Rev Tom Bruch, said. Further proof, if it were needed, that humans have their uses.

(The Times, September 4 2002)

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Evening Standard: Cannabisness - the people hoping to profit from legalised cannabis

SUZIE, 36, is a respectable mother of three who left accountancy to launch a successful landscape gardening business. But it is the healthy crop that she cultivates in her own flower beds that might surprise her well-to-do clients, among them a judge and a number of police officers and solicitors.

For lovingly tended at the back of her 40ft garden in suburban Southend-on-Sea sits an elegant grove of Cannabis sativa
- still an illegal Class C drug, according to David Blunkett's reclassification, but soon, if Suzie is right, just another social relaxant to go legally on sale.

Once the law changes, as she believes it will, Suzie plans to launch her own cannabis cafE so she can profit from the expected boom in demand. "It will cost me about £7,000 to open my Southend coffee shop, and I've already had offers of backing," she says. "I'd be hesitant about supplying the shop myself, but I do have a friend who would grow for me."

As debate intensifies over what many see as the inevitable decriminalisation of cannabis, small-scale entrepreneurs like Suzie are vying with corporate investors to gain a foothold in this multibillion-pound market. From cannabis cafEs to cannabis vodka, the new commercial opportunities of " cannabisness" are spurring hundreds of business plans and countless board meetings - and all despite the Government's insistence that legalisation is not on the agenda.

Simon Woodroffe, founder of the Yo! Sushi restaurant chain, is among the investors standing by - among them pop stars, venture capitalists and even a television racing pundit. While most established businesses are keeping silent on their plans, Woodroffe is looking to create an "elegant" range of highclass cannabis bars that would redefine the drug's image. He wants to create a fashionable space - call it Yo! Blow - for urban sophisticates to meet for a smoke.

"I'd hope licences would go to people who have a proven record of operating restaurants or bars," he says. "I'd just find it a fascinating thing to do, and we'd all be better off if we drank less."

He has even proposed pumping cannabis smoke through his buildings to save customers the trouble of rolling their own - a joke, he says, that has taken on a life of its own. But he is serious about the business opportunities a change in the law would provide. "It will definitely happen in time," he says.

Another eager cannabis investor is Jamiroquai singer Jay Kay, who has invited concert audiences to share an oversized joint, and admits to being a former dealer himself. Today, if the law allowed, he too would like to back a London cannabis bar - and, according to some suggestions, he would be prepared to spend £1 million to secure the right property. "Jay Kay has considered investing in such a venture if the time was right," his spokesman confirms.

David Dundas, the Seventies pop star who found fame with the song Jeans On, has not only invested in cannabis, but is already reaping the financial rewards. Dundas was one of the initial investors in GW Pharmaceuticals (GWP), the first company licensed to grow cannabis in Britain for medical use, and when the company floated last year his 40,000 shares initially grew fivefold in value. Other investors included John Francome, the former jockey who now commentates on Channel 4, children's campaigner Lady Chadwyck-Healey and City investors Peter Mountford and Adrian Bradshaw. Not a bad rollcall for a company that grows 15 tonnes of cannabis a year.

PROTECTED by heavy security, somewhere in the South of England, GWP is today cultivating more than 40,000 cannabis plants. Assuming its research trials are successful by late next year, the company expects to have cannabis medicines legally on sale in early 2004. "Cannabis is a very versatile plant," explains GWP's spokesman, Mark Rogerson. "We're looking at it for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, cancer, a wide range of intractable painful conditions, even arthritis. It's not a question of if these medicines become legal, but when. That doesn't require any change in the law, just a decision by the Home Secretary to alter the medical schedule of drugs that doctors are allowed to prescribe."

The drug's active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), will be delivered not by smoking, but through such mechanisms as a spray aimed under the tongue. And if the company's founder, Dr Geoffrey Guy, is correct in his conviction that the trials will show cannabis to be "a remarkably safe, very worthwhile medicine", other pharmaceutical companies are certain to follow in pursuit of a huge potential market.

Exactly how much that market is worth is open to debate. Campaigners for legalisation claim that nine million British smokers currently spend around £3.5 billion each year on the unlawful trade. Even according to the Home Office, which commissioned its own sober assessment last year, some 2.6 million users in England use the drug on average 78 times a year, spending £6.40 a time to get high.

Edward Bramley-Harker, the economist who prepared the Home Office survey, estimates the total UK market at £1.6 billion. For regular users, that typically means a £1,500 annual habit - a sum that legitimate organisations, from the tobacco industry to the Treasury, would like to get their hands on.

They will not acknowledge it, of course. The Treasury will not comment, and no tobacco company contacted by the Evening Standard would admit to making plans to sell cannabis products should they be legalised. But every now and then, a document slips out that suggests how advanced these companies are in their plans. One internal British American Tobacco (BAT) memo draws attention to "the undoubted opportunities which exist in the development of future products ... If the use of [marijuana] was legalised, one avenue for exploitation would be the augmentation of cigarettes with near-subliminal levels of the drug."

In another memo, a certain DE Creighton of BAT warns that tobacco products could expect "competition from cannabis ... We must find a way to appeal to the young ... so that the product image, and the product will satisfy this part of the market". And although the company denies it, Philip Morris, which makes Marlboro, reportedly applied in 1993 to trademark the brand name "Marley" - Marley, that is, as in Bob Marley.

Danny Kushlick, of drugs campaign group Transform, is convinced that tobacco companies, pharmaceutical firms and distilleries have developed "scenario plans" in case of legalisation. "Obviously the tobacco companies will leap on this with enormous verve," he says.

BUT Clive Bates, director of Action on Smoking and Health, believes this market may not in fact be ripe for cigarette firms to exploit. "My guess is they'll be very wary of getting into cannabis," he says. More likely, Bates believes, will be the well-funded launch of a cannabisbased gum, rather like nicotine gum, or new food products such as hash biscuits. Mr Kipling's Exceedingly Good Space Cakes, perhaps?

Breweries and pub chains have themselves been discussing the potential impact on profits of legalisation, notably cannabis smokers' tendency to consume less alcohol. The drinks firm Diageo, which makes Guinness and Smirnoff, insists with typical firmness that "this is not something we consider relevant for our business".

Yet the Evening Standard understands that Britain's first cannabis cafE, The Dutch Experience in Stockport, was approached some months ago to see if it would stock Guinness. The offer was refused; Guinness says it is unaware of any approach.

Sir Richard Branson, an active supporter of decriminalisation, believes that the legal cannabis market will actually favour small traders rather than huge conglomerates. He, for one, is not sure that the Virgin empire would ever wish to sell the drug. "I believe it's a product that should not be too commercialised," he says, "and is better suited to being marketed by small cafE-style specialists."

This is where Nol van Schaik fits in. Van Schaik, a 48-year-old Dutchman, is a founding father of "cannabisness" in Britain. The owner of three coffee-shops in Haarlem, he has since March been training British entrepreneurs to open their own cafEs, and personally backed The Dutch Experience in Stockport.

His five-day "Cannabizness Workshop" costs £575 a head, and topics covered include "How to make Netherhash", "The joint-rolling machine in action" and "How to differentiate and value the range of weeds and hashes". Van Schaik believes Britain is ready for a wave of new cannabis cafEs, more per head even than in Holland.

"The charm of coffee shops is that they're independent," van Schaik says. "I don't see that Starbucks doing marijuana would succeed, though I'm sure they'll try it."

Van Schaik has been trading since 1991, and would now be "a very rich man" if he sold up: his shops each take around 500,000 euros (£330,000) a year. And though the sale of cannabis is tolerated rather than legal in Holland, the tax office is rather pleased with him: he pays income tax on his joints as well as 19 per cent VAT, and employs 30 people directly and a further 70 indirectly - many of them "aunties and grannies" who grow weed at home.

One of his workshop graduates is David Crane, a 38-year-old website builder from London who after eight months' work is hoping to open his own coffee shop in Hackney. It will cost Crane £250,000 to open The Hempire, which will be aimed at the over-25 crowd. A week after finalising his business plan, Crane attended a meeting with police officers to discuss his plans, initially for a standard cafe that would tolerate smoking.

The news was not good: "They made it very clear that we would be referred to the CPS if we opened," he says. "It may be prudent for us to wait a bit longer - but this is a big industry that won't go away."

Carl Wagner is already seeing the profits. Wagner, 43, runs the Divine Herb market stall in Hull's indoor market, selling gro-lights, hemp wallpaper, cannabis pasta and hemp boots and clothes. He has already rejected a £20,000 offer for the stall. Next January, he plans to open the Divine Herb cafE, for which he has just had three offers of premises from elderly medical cannabis users.

"I know of dozens of people who grow it, and I even arranged for a consortium of eight pensioners to grow it in their sheltered housing," Wagner says. "They're looking to supply themselves with medicinal cannabis, and I've asked them to pass over any spare."

But there are some things even beyond an astute businessman such as Carl Wagner. "I was approached by a rep to sell Cannabis Vodka," says Wagner, a reformed bottle-aday man. "I had to say no - I just didn't want to associate such a safe plant with hard drugs like that."

(Evening Standard, September 3 2002)

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The Times: The WiFi revolution arrives/Ultra wideband (UWB) technology

By David Rowan

Even before third-generation mobile phones arrive to deliver fast, permanent internet connections while we travel, a new type of cable-free IT network is sweeping across Britain.

It is called WiFi and it offers fast internet access using a wireless networking standard known as 802.11b. If you are within range of a local WiFi network, all your laptop needs is a wireless network card and an antenna to get online via radio signals that link to a base station near by.

Once you are within reach of a local wireless "node", you can surf at six megabits a second, fast enough for comfortable video conferencing, game-playing or MP3 streaming.

So convinced is Starbucks that customers will pay to use WiFi networks while sipping lattes that it is working with Microsoft to wire up every one of its US cafes and has recently started trials in London.

BT is building networks across Britain, after the Government recently allowed commercial exploitation of this part of the radio spectrum, and has pledged 400 of its own wireless "hotspots" by next June, with up to 4,000 sites by June 2005. Business travellers can already log on while sitting in airport hotels and motorway service stations.

But this communications revolution also has its grassroots side. From Bethnal Green to Bath, individual internet subscribers have been sharing their spare bandwidth with strangers through wireless neighbourhood networks. Many of these local networks were set up to allow groups of friends or colleagues to work away from their desks, but in a spirit of community scores of them are now available free to passing strangers to check e-mails or log on to the web.

There is even an evolving language of street markings, known as "warchalking", that uses chalked symbols to alert passers-by to a WiFi network near by.

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Another new wireless technology: Ultra wideband (UWB)

Controversy over the use of new ultra wideband (UWB) technology goes far beyond its potential to disrupt air safety systems. Of greater concern to privacy campaigners is its extraordinary ability to see through walls up to 8in thick, threatening householders with a 21st-century version of Superman's X-ray vision The promise of UWB lies in the fast, secure connections it offers computers and other electronic devices that are on the move. But the technology also has another great advantage: it can be used to track a person's movements through concrete, brick and steel.

Unlike conventional radar, which relies on high-frequency waves to produce fuzzy images, UWB uses lower-frequency pulses that can penetrate walls and produce clearly defined images. Commentators in the United States, where it was developed, are saying that widespread use of the technology will allow strangers to see "right into your bedroom". Some US police forces have been testing special UWB "torches" that can peer through walls to locate hidden criminals or weapons.

Companies developing such devices point out that they could help rescue teams to locate victims trapped under collapsed buildings, and even detect beating hearts in an earthquake zone. But the American Civil Liberties Union is more concerned that the technology will be misused by police conducting "a high-tech strip search".

Critics of UWB also claim that it could interfere with transmissions of the Global Positioning System (GPS) network of satellites, beyond the feared disruption to aircraft safety equipment. Concern has been expressed by meteorological organisations, the US military and air passenger groups, which point out that the GPS is extremely sensitive to interference.

But the technology also offers enormous benefits to the consumer, which is why those companies developing UWB devices, most notably the Time Domain Corporation of Alabama, have been lobbying hard for its widespread introduction. Unlike the next generation of internet-connected mobile phones, UWB does not require an expensive dedicated radio frequency or newly built infrastructure.

Instead, it sends short pulses of data across a wide range of the allocated radio spectrum, offering fast, powerful signals that are almost impossible to intercept. UWB signals can travel only about 30ft, far less than competing standards for wireless home networks.

But the signals are strong enough to carry high-quality video and audio, and cable- television firms are embracing UWB as a means of vastly increasing the bandwidth they can use.

According to the California analysts Advanced Strategies for Integrated Solutions, there will be 274 million UWB-based devices in use within five years. Such growth, if it occurs, will be led by IT firms such as Intel, which is considering incorporating UWB technology in its chips.

(The Times, September 2 2002)

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The Observer: Lego for corporate executives

What does every top corporate boss need? Lego. By David Rowan

After white-water rafting, the latest corporate bonding technique taking the management world by storm is sitting for hours round a table making shapes out of Lego.

Don't be fooled by those familiar green and yellow plastic blocks. This is Lego for grown-ups, and among senior executives it is the hottest management tool since David Brent's jokes to his team in The Office.

Companies from Nokia to Tetra Pak are now sending senior staff to learn what Lego can do for their corporate ethos, and management consultants are even specialising in running Lego sessions to meet the demand. Lego Serious Play claims to be 'the first application of Lego for the serious world of adults at work', and from London to Johannesburg the multicoloured bricks are helping unlock the corporate imagination.

What this means in practice is urging staff to 'unlock their creative potential' as they build models to understand how their businesses work. By representing their firms as three-dimensional structures, they can judge whether they see their sales force as too far removed from their product, or if the sales force is in fact larger than it need be.

According to Executive Discovery, the company working with the Lego Group to train firms such as Alcatel and Daimler-Chrysler, this 'adult thinking tool' can 'uncover business insights and enhance business performance'.

Executive Discovery claims that there is a science behind Lego Serious Play. To discover what this meant in practice, The Observer attended an afternoon workshop in the CBI conference centre in Charing Cross Road, London.

Stuart Schofield, an occupational psychologist, was 'facilitating' a course that 'would enable everyone to engage in continuous strategising'. He explained that delegates would use Lego 'to create metaphors and stories that add meaning to our identity'.

'Why Lego?' he asked. 'It's easy to use, you've played with it before, and it's non-threatening - which makes it useful for describing your identity in the organisation.' The key, Schofield said, was to use the bricks to clarify the 'simple guiding principles' by which an organisation would be governed.

The first challenge of the afternoon was to build a duck. Then we were asked to build the tallest tower we could - an instruction that was qualified a few minutes later to stress that it must be stable. 'Did you notice the rule change in the middle?' Schofield asked, just as The Observer's tower toppled over.

The deeper lessons were never far away. 'By building models, we imbue our descriptions of our workplace with emotion,' Schofield said.

He then asked us to use the Lego pieces as a metaphor to describe a complex issue that affects our work. Other exercises include 'building the ideal employee', and a painful 10-minute session which involved building our own personal identity at work.

Rory Fidgeon, a 32-year-old business consultant, concluded that the afternoon had been more fun than dashing up a mountain. 'If corporate types can build a raft and sail it over a river, then playing with Lego shouldn't be that big a leap. And at least it's dry.'

(The Observer, September 1, 2002)

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