Week in review: Google gets antsy, IE IQ MIA, capital Wi-Fi

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The hot and sticky weather has made office life almost unbearable at IT Pro towers this week. Luckily, like IT admins with server rooms everywhere, we retreated to the air conditioned comfort or our testing labs and basked in the arctic conditions. Until the darn thing broke down.

While we waited for the repair man and tried to ignore the tedious, droning techno music bleeding through the walls from our neighbours, we kept our spirits buoyant with some of the more amusing stories of the past week.

Doodling about

Google has stirred a hornet's nest of debate online with its recent criticisms of the US patent system and its smartphone rivals' attempts buy up available patents in an intellectual property gold rush.

Although we agree that patent law in both the UK and US is in need of serious reform, we can't quite take Google's whining with a straight face when the online giant tries to patent something as trivial as the rotating logos on its home page. Next up: my own personal patent for the deployment of sarcasm against barefaced corporate hypocrisy.

Dumb and dumber

IT Pro discovered that a report claiming Internet Explorer users had lower IQs than users of other browsers was actually an elaborate hoax. Acting on a tip-off from a reader, our own magnificent Tom Brewster tracked down the shadowy miscreants in a technological investigate trail worthy of Chloe O'Brian from TV's 24.

We're not going to congratulate ourselves too much, since we were taken in by the original report, as were many other well-known media organisations. Still, if I can work up the energy to do so in all this heat and humidity, I might propagate a false news story all of my own – giants pandas accuse red pandas of trademark infringement!

Better late than never

Virgin has announced that it will be deploying a free Wi-Fi network in London, perhaps in time for the Olympics. Although Virgin isn't the first company to do so, this is still a welcome development as any 3G-cursing Londoner can attest.

We can only hope that Virgin's Wi-Fi will be more reliable than the company's trains and cable broadband service. It'd be nice if it was available in areas other than the City or the West End too. We could all do with the ability to quickly Google a minicab number when we've fallen asleep on the last Tube home and ended up at Cockfosters.

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