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SCMP Reporter

Thumbing its nose at cynics who say the handheld market is on the way out, PalmOne last week unveiled multimedia upgrades for its range of Zire personal digital assistants.

It took PalmOne a long time to accept Bluetooth, but now it is becoming standard in all of its products. But PalmOne still has a little to learn about security.

Paul Blinkhorn, PalmOne's chief technology evangelist, lived up to his job title with a passionate presentation and all the enthusiasm of a Home Shopping Network salesman.

Using the Zire 72's built-in camera, Mr Blinkhorn took a snapshot of himself and a colleague. He then explained how, within a few seconds, he could print a copy of the photo by connecting wirelessly to his Bluetooth-enabled printer.

'Hey, wait a minute! That's not my picture,' puzzled Mr Blinkhorn, as a glossy photo emerged of Japanese cartoon monster Domo-kun in hot pursuit of a fleeing kitten.

'Looks like one of you guys beat me to it.'

It just goes to show, if you wait for innovation to happen, someone else will get there first.

Flash mobs may have quickly turned into a pointless yuppy fad, but a group calling itself Artists against 419 have found some worthy inspiration in the idea of drawing crowds of complete strangers to the same place simultaneously.

The idea is to crash the web servers of phishing outfits and Nigerian 419 fraudsters. Describing their idea as 'scam baiting' and 'the new internet bloodsport', Artists against 419 yesterday launched their third monthly flash mob.

Targeting 53 fake business websites, the group aims to get enough people logging on to the fraudsters' home pages to exceed their bandwidth limits and force them offline. As we write this, the target sites seem to be falling like skittles.

In case any of them do stay in business for more than 24 hours, you can get more information, and find out about the next International 419 Flash Mob at www.artists-against- 419.mugus.com

Backspace was chided last week for not making its Tuesday Timewaster politically correct enough. Since Frank's Adventure apparently objectified women, this week Uma Thurman gives you a chance to get your own back at kill-bill.cz/game, slicing and dicing an endless parade of anonymous male assassins.

Any gossip, rumours of ignominy to share? E-mail to Neil Taylor at back.space@scmp.com



Japanese monster crashes PalmOne evangelical meeting