Top 10 spurious World Cup tech news stories

THE WORLD CUP has officially kicked off today, and here at The INQUIRER we've been bombarded with press releases and news reports from tech companies about how their products and services can really enliven the whole footie experience.

Sadly they're not offering everyone all expenses paid trips to South Africa, but instead are using the opportunity to show off their wares to full advantage. So we decided to round up some of our favourite, and most shameless, attempts at jumping on the World Cup bandwagon.

10) Shrek in 3D action

Why people would shell out a fortune for a big screen TV for four weeks of football is hard to fathom. But apparently they do, and retailers like John Lewis are quick to point this out.

John Lewis informed the press that department store sales jumped by 20 per cent as ‘World Cup fever' persuaded shoppers to shell out on new flat-screen TVs.

Imagine what would happen if the World Cup was properly available in 3D - you can already see companies like Sony, Samsung and Panasonic pushing the opportunity to see Rooney's Shrek-like coming at you.

9) Half time lemons

Glare through the windows of any high street mobile phone store and you will see offers relating to the World Cup, most of them involving scoreline-based discounts. Why then, should mid-market web hosting firms not also hitch their cart to the competition bandwagon? Certainly not just because we said so.

So, anyone looking to align their short or long term business plans with a football's teams' ability to score goals during a short competition could sign up with 34sp.com and take advantage of its current goal-based discounts.

We just wouldn't recommend that you tell accounts, or indeed anyone in a senior role about the motives behind your decision.

8) Roaming the veldt

Mobile phone company 3 managed to get some press attention after reducing mobile broadband charges for football fans travelling to South Africa by half.

Considering the prohibitive price of roaming, most people weren't going to be silly enough to take up this offer, instead doing the sensible thing by getting a separate SIM card. This would cut bills drastically, and much longer for the four weeks.

Instead of trying to ride on the World Cup bandwagon, perhaps the mobile operators should concentrate on doing something helpful for their customers - such as cutting the price of roaming full stop.

7) Play the game

EA's FIFA games are great at taking money out of gamer's pockets with virtually the same game released at the same time every year. Add to this the FIFA World Cup games - which are released in the same year that the FIFA games are, so it's two for the price of two.

Not content with this, EA also allows its games to be used in gaming competitions where unhealthy gamers decide to play football on a console rather than doing something healthy like go out and play in the park.

Robert Brewster from Huddersfield. We salute you for being the winner of the Carphone Warehouse Supreme Gamer Fifa World Cup competition and getting even more people to buy a game that makes a horrendously large amount of money.

6) Stattoes! Stattoes!

Trust Experian Hitwise to stuff our eyeballs full of facts and figures on World Cup kick off day. In one of its latest reports the analytics firm tells us that one in every one hundred and fifty web searches relates to the World Cup, which is impressive since it is hard to avoid news of the competition wherever you go anyway.

Currently top of UK searches is the official FA site, which we feel is reasonably acceptable. However, the news that Cristiano Ronaldo was the most searched for player on a global basis caused such a violent and sudden bout of sickness that we were forced to dictate the rest of this from the bathroom.

5) Sucking eggs

Are you interested in speaking to the chief information officer from Star about the World Cup? Us neither.

John Adey, said CIO, was available today during the opening ceremony to talk about how people visiting the internet creates a drain on internet resources. Adey - well Star's PR people most likely, think that this is likely to frustrate IT managers when England play Slovenia on 23 June - which of course is a work day.

The chap is bound to be an expert at such things, but it is a pretty obvious proposition and something that you could get almost anyone to comment on.

In fact, we asked our grandmother what would happen to the internet on the fated day and she predicted some lag and latency issues before turning back to her copy of 'Egg Sucker Monthly'.

4) Longball tactics

Expand Networks also has something to say on the subject and has seized on the opportunity to make a comparison between footballers and productive corporate networks - surely a decision made on "top of your head thinking day".

The press release is honoured with a quote from Adam Davison, vice president for sales and marketing at the firm (you don't say), which chills us with some stunning insight.

"Just like world class footballers, corporate networks need to be finely tuned to ensure the highest level of performance and agility. Also, in order to perform at their very peak footballers need two key attributes - vision and control," he said, and begrudgingly we are with him so far.

However after this Davison takes a stroll along a rather tenuous path, adding, "With Expand IT managers get visibility and control over network usage, assuring priority and quality of service is given to business critical applications and services. In doing so they will be able to support England's world cup bid without scoring an IT own goal."

The last bit doesn't even really make sense. Who approved this press release? Bring me the head of sales and marketing.

3) Why on the earth... PC World!

PC World, a shedstore selling computers and gadgetry obviously had some money left over in the PR budget when it opted to survey people about how they planned to watch the World Cup.

Failing to realise that most people don't actually care, the store told us that lots of Brits will watch games online, or bizarrely, will watch them on the television and re-watch them online. This suggestion caused so much internal debate that we wondered how it ever made its way onto a press release, still, it's the World Cup innit.

Still reeling from that we are presented with the information that one in ten UK punters will watch games on a smartphone - PC World suggests a Blackberry to much yucks all round. Carrying on the pointless statistics we are even told that some meaningless proportion of gits will follow games on their phone in the gym.

Do we look bothered?

2) Instant gratification

This is pretty shameless, even by the standards of our top 10. Synchronica, the company behind the tech used for services such as South Africa's noknok mobile IM service, is predicting a huge surge in - you guessed it - mobile IM use in South Africa during the world cup.

Allegedly footie-mad mobile users will turn to their handsets to access online communities such as themed soccer chatrooms and stay in touch with friends and family about the tournament. Synchronica was even generous enough to allow that fans from "both emerging and developed regions" will make use of mobile IM.

"As World Cup fever takes hold, even the most ambivalent of football fans will find themselves drawn into discussions on the highs and lows of their team's performance," said Carsten Brinkschulte, Synchronica's chief executive. "Being able to IM with friends and family and on soccer chat rooms from their mobile phone allows people to communicate in real time as goals are scored and matches are won and lost."

Yeah, much better than watching the game with your mates or down the pub and communicating with them in real time and in reality.

1) Nil-Nil AET

You know you are in for a dismal performance when the press release starts with, "Now, there is one more reason to get excited about the upcoming matches of the English football team in South Africa".

That's the message out of security firm G Data, which has the unique idea to tie in goals scored with online discounts. However, this could be an offer too far, if the man behind it is to be taken seriously.

"If England does well in the World Championship, our customers will be the biggest winners... they can sit back and relax knowing their security software is protected with an additional gift from G Data", G Data said. "Let's just hope this extra pressure to play perfectly does not cause psychological problems for our footballers!"

You bastard. We demand you recall this offer immediately.

Ok, we called this our top 10 but really should have gone with 11 to keep with the footie theme, so here's a bonus one.

Shake, rattle and roll

There are stupid Iphone apps and there's really stupid Iphone apps. And the creation of an Iphone World Cup football ‘rattle' by PS Ventures counts in the latter category.

Many England fans are stupid - you only have to see your traditional hooligan to work this out. But it's hard to believe that anybody with an Iphone will really shell out 59p for the privilege of waving your Iphone around like a football rattle during a game.

But then again people have paid for the privilege of waving an Iphone like a lightsaber in the past. There's always one. µ