PC Squealer

Hair today, gone tomorrow

When PC Squealer clapped its eyes on this snap of Andrew Harvey - who we are reliably informed is the man behind attitudenet, the forthcoming free ISP - we didn't know what possessed him to have this etched into his barnet. So when we finally stopped laughing, we decided to have a brainstorm session on the possibilities. Maybe someone told him that to succeed in business he needed to know how to use his head, and he took the advice too literally. Or maybe it's the result of a serious session on the booze with a bunch of internet geeks. Did he wake up the next morning to find not only a partially shaved bonce, but also the URL tattooed on his nether regions?

Babs is on song

Singer and actress Barbra Streisand has never been one to be led around by the nose. Far from being demoralised over the seeming decline of her first choice careers, the wily chanteuse is turning her hand to internet stocks where she's making a killing. US newspapers have been reporting how Streisand contacted the chief executives of two US companies about to list on the Stock Exchange and persuaded them to sell her shares at the IPO share price. The price of both shares shot up after that, leaving Streisand with a good deal in change. Not bad for a funny girl.

Desperate liaisons

Are you single, female, and desperate? If so then Silicon Valley is the place for you. Despite having a reputation as nerd capital of the world, the area is bracing itself for an influx of dateless women looking to find an ideal, and presumably wealthy, partner.

A contact group, (highly reputable, we're sure) American Singles, is organising an invasion of Palo Alto in California, in November, which has just been named as Guyville. The county hosts 5,500 more single men than females, beating long standing champ Anchorage, Alaska, as the hub of testosterone fuelled frustration in America. We wish all the lovely ladies visiting the region the best of luck, apparently they're not all geeks. If you can prise them away from their PCs for long enough, you may even be able to stop them talking about technology for five minutes.

Many would agree that they would make ideal husbands. While they're working late at the office (and this time you really can believe them) you're out spending their excessively large personal wealth. What woman could ask for anything more?

Leap of faith

Toshiba has taken advertising to fresh heights with the launch of its latest campaign for the PDR-M4 digital camera. The company has used the highly dangerous and, until now, mostly illegal activity of Building Antenna Spans Earth (BASE) jumping, to show how fast its latest digital addition can take pictures. Representatives of Toshiba claimed that the BASE jump, which took four seconds from the top of the Grenadier Guards Barracks into Hyde Park, was the first ever legal building jump.

Hackers@hotmail

Poor old Microsoft. It gives the world a free email system and what happens?

A really nasty bunch of good-for-nothing hackers break into the system and start playing havoc with millions of individual email accounts, that's what. Microsoft itself wasn't aware of the breach, which is believed to have originated in Sweden, until it was alerted by various media reports. It wasn't long before some observers were pointing at Hotmail's back office weak spot and speculating that it might have been an inside job. Of course, the software giant played down the whole incident with mutterings about service issues, but the fact that the breach was centred around the manipulation of just nine lines of code must have kicked off some serious closed-doors discussions at Redmond HQ.

Bulldog Greg's double bubble

And speaking of dodgy servers, the Stock Exchange's golden boy Freeserve has announced a sponsorship deal with the UK's favourite import, grinning Greg Rusedski (well, in tennis anyway). According to the press release, the British number two, who is said to have the fastest serve on the circuit, is an ideal partner for Freeserve, and Greg the Grinner will soon be available to front a live web chat session on its sports channel. Let's all keep our fingers crossed that Greg remains virus free and hope that his service doesn't let him down.

Tales from PC galaxy

A bombshell from head office. We have been visited by a mystery female shopper. The report does not make pleasant reading - she picked staff at random and asked them about the advantages of USB. Three thought it was the name of a rock band, four assumed it was an uninterrupted power supply. But seven correctly identified a Universal Serial Bus. Of these, only two could say why it was a good thing, but neither could explain why we stock almost no USB peripherals - a year after it has been standard on PCs. Not a good start.

Then she asked for help to find a piece of CD recording software. Half the staff pointed to the software aisles, saying it's in there. When she said she couldn't find it, they recommended she try again (in one case, with an aside to a colleague about technically incompetent women). The rest took her to the utilities, music and multimedia racks ... and decided we didn't stock it.

One enterprising soul had checked the stock system and told the customer we had three copies, but admitted he had no idea where they were. He searched the stock room but the customer had to wait half an hour to be told we couldn't locate our own stock. This did not go down well.

We can't afford to have this happen again. The operations director is hot on mystery shoppers, and we're bound to be revisited. By evening I had issued my own guide to avoiding mystery mayhem:

1. Be polite.

2. To a technical question, frown, smile and say: "It's rather complicated," and nod sympathetically.

3. If an explanation is still wanted, say: "It will be changing with the latest models next month."

4. If they still want an explanation, hit them back with a question such as: "Is that 32 or 64 bit?"

5. If they still want an explanation, pat your pocket and say: "Excuse me, it's my pager." Go to technical support and find someone who can explain.

6. If you must leave a customer standing (to run to technical support), slap a bright sticker on them so you can find them again. If necessary, explain that it gives them free entry to a prize draw.

7. If asked to find a product, take the customer to the right location. If it's not there, say: "There's been a run on them today. I'll see if I can get one in from another store." Try locating the product, but don't admit to doing this.

8. Watch out for shifty characters talking into pocket recorders.

Sure enough we had another mystery shopper a week later. Result: 90 per cent improvement with no change in service delivered. But then, retail is the business of selling illusion.