Michael Dell was in London yesterday, and held a Q&A with a group of journalists. And I must admit that although he came across as very likeable, his ability to avoid answering questions (well, the ones he didn’t want to answer) was superb.

Example 1:

FT: How much has it cost you to go carbon-neutral, and is it worth it?
Dell: It’s actually not that much… we’re using information as a replacement for physical assets, and that derives a lot of efficiency through the system, which means our carbon intensity is really low.
Jack Schofield (of the Guardian): Presumably you’ve looked at your [manufacturing] partners managing Dell factories? Is that a possibility? Suppose someone can run a Dell factory cheaper than Dell can?
Dell: [stares for 8 seconds in stony silence] Suppose they can, suppose the can’t… as I said earlier we have contract manufacturers, and it’s a trend in the industry to use more. We wouldn’t be the first to do that, and it shouldn’t surprise you.
Question: And it might grow as a proportion of your manufacturing?
Dell: That shouldn’t surprise you either.

Example 2:

Question: Why do you think you are still less than half-way up the Greenpeace list for green electronics, with 4.6 out of 10?
Dell: I think they’ve just published a new list.
Question: This was published on the 16th of September.
Dell: Yes. I haven’t read it yet.
Question: According to this you are level with Toshiba and HP…
Dell: I’m sure with whatever methodology they’ve used, that how it stacks up.

In other news: There was a reiteration of Dell’s commitment to moving into services, which has been reported in the FT before. There was confirmation that staff numbers had been reduced by 10 per cent. And there was no deviation from the stated aim of targeting small and medium businesses.

And he did give some hint of Dell’s strategy for the next few years, suggesting that any acquisitions would be on the small side – preferring what he called “network effect acquisitions”.

But the real treat was his personal insights:

• » He showed us his own laptop – unsurprisingly a Dell Latitude E4200, which he raved about.
• » Asked what he would do if starting a business today: “Storage. I would go to China”.
• » And apparently he didn’t finish his college degree: “I would have had a great education had I bothered to go to any classes. I only went [to college] for one year. Although I did give a commencement address one year to 25,000 people.”

One of the often-cited benefits of the web is the ability to update websites in realtime. Or, failing that, on a daily basis. Or now and then.

Or, in the case of www.lehman.com, not at all. Apparently, the bank is still open for business, and thriving as ever. The latest press release available on the site is the bank’s third quarter results.

Go to the careers section, and you would never know that 25,000 people are out of work. The site exhorts you to “Experience Lehman Brothers: Make an impact. Engage your passion. Realize your potential. Around the world, the Lehman Brothers team is growing. Explore these pages to learn how you can build a career with us, and experience Lehman Brothers for yourself.” The misplaced optimism is almost too much to bear.

Aside from the obvious detachment from reality, this raises the question of what lehman.com should actually look like today and in the future. Should it be a holding page simply stating that the bank is bust? A press release to the same effect?

Certainly the company results and history are still useful, and should be archived in some way. But I would suggest that the best use of Lehman.com would be for the employees to post their CVs, and perhaps a message board for epitaphs of one of the oldest investment banks. Memorial sites are very popular - you might even sell an ad or two.

Today saw the launch of A Message from Earth, a “ground-breaking digital time capsule that will be created entirely by the Bebo community this summer and beamed into deep space on a 120 trillion-mile journey.”

The Bebo page has a video introduction by someone called Venetia, who tells us that there’s a planet 20.5 light years away that is very similar to Earth, “and could, in fact, hold life”. In fact we have no idea, but don’t let that stop you.

Bebo users can submit text messages, photographs and drawings to be beamed into space. So what should we send? The press release helps out: “From our natural planet, the achievements of mankind or the worst traits of humanity to a best friend or a favourite celebrity, nothing is too big or small to be included.”

Celebrities are also being asked to participate. So far the list includes: Gillian Anderson of The X Files, Chris Carter (creator of The X Files), Buzz Aldrin (second man on the moon) and broadcaster-astronomer Patrick Moore, which is hardly “the broad spectrum of leading figures in the world of music, sport, fashion, film, politics” promised by the project.

But more worryingly, the last few messages left by commenters on the Bebo page don’t exactly augur well for the content to be sent. So far we have: “What Is This?” and “you phoned me up about this job and i wasnt in and you said u were going to phone back but you didnt”.

A nice idea, but is this really the best way of communicating with aliens? I agree that it’s time we moved on from sending pictures of Vitruvian man or strange golden records (see picture above) into space, but I fear that if any other life forms do intercept the messages, they might deem us not worthy of a reply.

Of all the schemes Google has dreamt up over the years, Street View has got to be one of the most controversial.

For those not familiar with the idea, Google are taking photos of every street in pretty much the whole world, and integrating it with Google Maps. Naturally, several privacy groups are up in arms at the idea, even though Google have agreed to blur faces and remove people if they request it.

But blurring isn’t Google’s only problem. In what may become a test case, a couple in Pennsylvania are suing Google for publishing pictures of their house, as it is on a private road.

In a statement to court, Google said complete privacy does not exist, but have since said that their remarks have been taken out of context. Google clarified this to me in the following statement:

“There’s been some misinterpretation concerning our response to the Street View suit… It should not be interpreted as a blanket statement on our views towards privacy. To be clear, Google respects an individual’s right to privacy. We have privacy protections built into all of our products. For example, we blur faces in Street View and we offer easy-to-use removal tools so users can decide for themselves whether or not they want a given image to appear in Street View. It is unfortunate the parties involved opted to pursue litigation instead of making use of these tools.”

This problem will be far greater for Street View in the UK due to the very high number of private roads. There are around 40,000 in the UK, according to Private Roads Services. Although it’s hard to quantify the number of public roads in the UK, I estimate there are around 100,000 streets in London (according to a quick calculation counting the entries in the London street atlas).

Google said its policy was to not photograph private roads, and that its drivers were trained to look out for them. Which I think means not driving past a sign saying “private road”. But a spokesman admitted that mistakes have been made, and they would be more careful in future. “We made the error of photographing the approach road to a military base in the US,” said the spokesman. “We learnt from that.”

Are you worried about what you’ve put on Facebook? Concerned that your current - or a future - employer will judge you on some of the personal and possibly foolish things about on the web? You should be.

Apparently 44 per cent of firms are using social network sites to check out job candidates. That was in October last year. And that’s just the ones who admitted to it.

So, what can we do? Well, the brilliant mind of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, no less, was engaged on just this subject the other day. In an interview in London with the FT just before the launch of the web science research initiative (a new interdisciplinary field), he suggested that companies should create something along the lines of a code of conduct:

“I can imagine an employer that wants to be friendly to possible recruits assuring them ‘we won’t look at anything you put on the web before you were 18. Because we know that during that time people put up all kinds of things, but that’s not the way we’re going to run our company.’”

Which is all very well, but not exactly enforceable. So what else can we do? Sir Tim thinks that personal content should come with an automatic licence.

“I feel my own private data is something I don’t want to reveal to anybody, I don’t want it used to make the advertising on the websites I visit more effective, I don’t want it used for people to decide whether or not I’m employable, or whether I’m insurable.

“One possible direction is that we end up with a society in which we understand that information can be released for particular purposes. So you could imagine that I can release information of what I did on holiday including pictures and video - but license it in a way to say that you’re not allowed to use this for determining what I’ve been up to, to determine my pay raise or whether to employ me.”

He’s right, of course. And given the success of the Creative Commons licence, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to imagine such a licence existing for personal data. The question is, as ever, who’s going to play by the rules?