Annoying website lacks twinkle of Hong Kong stars

Think of a member of the digital aristocracy who bugs you. The obvious contenders are the recently knighted Bill Gates (big glasses, dodgy operating system, lots of money); Steve Jobs (big glasses, more reliable operating system, less money); Linus Torvalds (no glasses thanks to laser surgery, very reliable operating system, even less money but enough to drive a Mercedes-Benz SLK 32 AMG).

Thankfully, the first two at least make the cut at one of the Web's coolest sites, amIannoying.com.

The site is a kind of virtual pillory for overachievers. It gives you the chance to hurl virtual fruit at these alpha people without them having the chance to duck or run. Splat.

High-profile female digerati are poorly represented. The recently retired chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina, has been shamefully excluded.

But tech world icon Hello Kitty makes the cut. Former South China Morning Post columnist Esther Dyson earns a mention as well. In fact, she gets a full profile. Filed under 'I Attended Harvard', Dyson's supposedly annoying trait is that she was a reporter for Forbes magazine during the mid-1970s and appeared on its 2000 power list.

'Is that a conflict of interest?' the website asks. Either way, readers who visit the site have decreed that, yes, she is annoying. But not as annoying as she used to be. In 2003, 70.34 per cent of voters judged her annoying. Last year, this figure dropped to 67.86 per cent.