Regular reader(s) may have been disappointed at the lack of entertaining robot news recently. It's all well and good building androids that can go into space, perform keyhole surgery, teach kids to read or cook a three-course dinner. But, as a long-time robophile, I can't help but feel a misty-eyed yearning for the days of Johnny 5 and C-3PO, when automatons were just a bit more fun.

Take a bow, Teotronica! If you possessed the robo-invention skills of Italian brainiac Matteo Suzzi, what would you set your mind to? Automating production processes for cleaner fuels, perhaps? Or developing complex algorithms to immunise against stock market fluctuations?
That'd be alright, I guess. But how about a weird-looking robotic Billy Joel? Yeah, let's go with that one.

It took Suzzi some four years to bring Teotronica to life. I've had a wee look at the robo-pianist, and I can't help but like the fella. I always try and apply the same judging criteria to robots as I do to humans. And if I met a guy in the pub with 19 fingers, a little Mickey-Pearce-meets-the-Artful-Dodger hat and wildly oscillating eyebrows, I think I'd take a pretty instant shine to him.

Teotronica can also pay the drums and sing and does a mega version of We Are The Champions, which can be viewed here. Here's hoping he does a tour of the Barking and Dagenham area's classier nightspots in the not-too-distant future.

Working in IT you get used to tech-makers coming up with highfalutin analogies comparing their business or technology to something like, oh let's say, Borussia Dortmund, the city of Barcelona, or heroin. (What? No, of course those aren't genuine examples...)

But this week I encountered one of the more bizarre comparisons I've ever come across, when a vendor exec likened his firm to insufferable purple dinocretin Barney. Apparently, this manufacturer has sometimes fallen into the trap of having a "Barney relationship" with resellers.

He was suggesting the channel scheme was becoming far too redolent of the cuddly dinosaur's biggest chart-smasher.

"I love you, you love me, we're a happy family," says the song.

The exec stressed that, while he loves his VARs, he doesn't want to be as indiscriminately accepting as the anthropomorphous T-rex.

Come to think of it, I've often felt I have something of a Barney relationship with my suppliers. In that they treat me like a child and I often feel like I want to rip off their dopey-grinning head and play football with it.

As Dagenham's sixth most prestigious IT dealer, I've always found it nigh-on impossible to balance work with my home commitments - until now. A reseller friend of mine who was down the Dog and Duck told me he'd posed a question concerning that very conundrum to Michael Dell himself when the Texan PC baron was in London recently.

Just how did the eponymous computer maker manage to create a firm with a net worth of $20bn before the age of 40, while at the same time raising a young family? His answer was that he simply replied "yes, dear" to everything his wife asked of him. Ah, a simple recipe for matrimonial and professional bliss. Just say "yes".

So it seems Michael Dell is a bit like Jim Carrey in that film where a man decides to answer every question in the affirmative - a Yes Man, if you will. (I forget what the movie's called.) Only with rather more lucrative - although arguably less hilarious - consequences.

Ah, the internet - how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Where else could I bid against fellow functioning members of society for an (all-too-rare) copy of Lauren Laverne's solo EP? Or settle a pub argument concerning the difference between apes and monkeys in a matter of seconds? And where else could you find Salman Rushdie and Kylie Minogue "locked in a Scrabble deathmatch series"?

Official confirmation that Twitter is no longer solely for narcissists and social unrest enthusiasts arrived this week in the shape of Salman Rushdie joining the micro-blogging site. The novelist has already Tweeted fellow highbrow celebs including Stephen Fry and Bret Easton Ellis, and become involved in a hotly contested word-based challenge with everyone's fave pint-sized Aussie popstrel. Fair enough.

I read this story on the website of a left-leaning national paper - to spare its blushes, let's call it The Grauniad - and some of its readers were none too happy about its reporting this as news.

One commenter said: "This ‘article' feels to me like it's just pointless padding, writing for writing's sake, and would be more suited to the pages of a mindless glossy celeb mag."
Which is where I got the idea for covering this in CRN.

In an absolutely hammer blow for technologists everywhere, research emerged today revealing that Johnny Small-Businessman is not diving in at the deep end with social media technologies. NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

According to deeply inscrutable research from TalkTalk Business, just one per cent of UK SMBs are using platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to try and drum up new custom.

Furthermore, Scottish businesses are seemingly completely ambivalent to this whole social networking malarkey. A meagre nine per cent of smaller firms in Edinburgh and Glasgow consider social media as an integral channel of business communication.

But among the legendarily tech-friendly businessfolk of Norwich a massive 44 per cent consider the MyFaces and the TweetBooks their most important bizness comms tool. And, in other news, the personal computing revolution has seemingly reached East Anglia, and is probably spreading like wildfire through the Norfolk broads as we speak.

Newcastle emerges as another of the UK's top techie provincial outposts. (Reader(s) from any other non-London locations who wish to be alienated in a future blog post, please get in touch at the usual address.) Some 69 per cent of SMBs in Geordieland are comfortable using social media, with Manchester (63 per cent) and London (62) coming second and third.

(To be fair, I imagine most business types in the capital are too busy making lots of money or enjoying the city's unparalleled array of cultural attractions to spend hours just sitting in front of their PC and looking at pictures of other people having fun.)

Bristol appears to be the least Facebook-friendly city, with just 39 per cent of SMBs feeling comfortable using social media platforms. Edinburgh and Nottingham (46 per cent) and Sheffield (47) also scored lowly.

TalkTalk Business managing director Paul Lawton reckons small businesses could benefit from making better use of social media technologies.

"Its business benefits range from being able to engage and understand the needs of customers and prospects, through to gaining insights into target markets and perceptipocketons of your organisation or brand," he opined.

Good points, Paul. In fact, as a little experiment, I thought I'd search Twitter for #talktalk to see what people's "perceptions of your organisation or brand" are. It appears that many people perceive your firm as one that's just been hit with a £3m fine for accidentally charging 65,000 customers for services they never received.

I think you're right - this social networking business can be a useful source of information.

I've been itching to get in on this tablet bandwagon, but I just haven't found a device that ties in with my collection of mid-priced designer polo shirts.

So imagine my delight that French fashion house Pierre Cardin has unleashed the first designer-branded model. The device, called, imaginatively, the Pierre Cardin Tablet PC, is "underpinned by high-performance technology" and runs on "the ever-popular Android" OS, says the marketing guff.

"Last, but by no means least, it comes packaged in a tasteful case and an über-cool black gift box." (Yes, that's right, they said "über-cool" But why not judge for yourself? See picture, right.)

I should think so too! I base 95 per cent of all my purchases on the attractiveness of the packaging. (I'm particularly fond of the abstract minimalism of the stripes on Tesco bags.)

And, as if all this weren't enough, owning a Pierre Cardin tablet means you join a clientele roster including "Lady Gaga and Nicole Ritchie".

I'm having some of that! It beats sharing your brand loyalty with Rory Cellan-Jones, Suzi Perry and thousands of message board-using fanboys.

Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle, when the hell did us Brits become a nation of married-to-the-job workaholics?

According to hugely unimpeachable research from Origin Storage, 73 per cent of workers in London will contact their workplace while on holiday. Some 54 per cent will check their email once a day while 62 per cent expect that their boss will try to contact them.

Mike, a chief executive from Barnes, was probably cackling and stretching out his braces when he said this: "I expect to contact my staff when on holiday. Can we really afford not to work all the hours in this economic climate? I think not."

But if Origin Storage boss Andy Cordial is to be believed (and I'll wager dollars to dimes that he is!), perhaps a bigger worry than all this workaholism is the fact that we're all running around foreign beaches using completely unsecured mobile devices. NOOOOO!!!

What Cordial neglects to reveal, however, is where we can find someone - anyone - offering some kind of portable encryption solutions. Where are you when we need you, Andy?

Now, I like holidays, I like subsidised coffee and stationery and I like my iPhone/BlackBerry/Windows Phone (delete as applicable - maybe start with the last one?) But which one is best? There's only one way to find out! FIIIIIIIIIIIGGGHHHHHT!

Oh, no, wait; there is another way of finding out, thanks to the good folk at Kelton Research. The market watcher was commissioned by SAP subsidiary Sybase to conduct a survey looking at how much employees value being able to choose what mobile devices they work on. Quite a bit, as it goes.

Of the 500 UK and US workers surveyed, half want the freedom to choose what device they use for work purposes. Some 71 per cent of these people would gladly give up one of the perks of their job to enjoy this freedom.

An eyebrow-raising 58 per cent would lose free coffee, while a surprising 39 per cent would give up free food and 30 per cent would gladly buy their own office supplies. An astonishing 26 per cent would forego free parking, while a frankly mental 20 per cent would happily trade one of their paid holiday days just to use their own mobile device at work. Righty-ho.

On top of the implications concerning the sanity of the average UK worker, all this mobility madness could have grave consequences for the security of our nation's businesses. Imagine my horror to hear that one in four employees has sent and received work-related emails on their personal device?!?! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But, fear not!

"There are solutions to address these concerns," sez Sybase, "such as Sybase Afaria, the industry's leading mobile device management and security solution."

Thanks, guys - I can't tell how big a load that is off my mind. Unfortunately, in the name of progress, I let my staff decide which mobile device management and security solution we should implement at Dodgi, and they all said they wanted something - anything - else.