The Weekly Round-Up: 04.07.08

And so, the Round-Up empties its rucksack of festival tat and puts away the tie-dyed t-shirt for another year - and is left wondering why anyone ever thought standing in a muddy field listening to a band a half-mile away was a good idea.

On top of that the Round-Up is also left with an unexpected case of tech-envy, wishing it had gone to one of the more gadget-filled festivals.

Glastonbury had a wind-powered phone charging station and mobile sat-nav to direct you back to the tent in the dark. And for those who like to do more than just nod along, they could charge their phone with kinetic dancing energy courtesy of a gadget from Orange (or bike their way to phone-charged fun). And this weekend's O2 Wireless festival promises that some lucky punters will have access to luxury toilets with the help of contactless NFC wristbands.

But amazingly - considering the mud - it seems the festival goers are a pretty tech-savvy bunch, with insurance company Swinton estimating the average festival goer takes more than £500 of clobber with them including "state of the art digital cameras, mobile phones, BlackBerrys and iPods". (Not to mention juggling balls and glo-sticks.)

Even more worrying, this seems to have resulted in a return of that classic 1980s fashion aberration - sorry "must-have fashion item, combining festival chic with security-conscious style" - the bum bag. Apparently they are selling them like its 1988 so all the kids can keep their tech close at hand.

A Swinton spokesman said "a bum bag is a great way to keep everything safe" for this "high-tech breed of 21st century partiers".

The benefits of a bum bag, apparently, include the fact you can sleep while wearing it - that sounds comfy - and that they're "so discreet, you won't even notice them".

And obviously, they're "the cutting edge of festival fashion", which judging by the state of the bedraggled wretches on display after a long day dancing, doesn’t really take much.

And as if losing sleep during a weekend of field-based musical fun - probably because you've tried to get 40 winks with a bum bag around your waist - isn't enough, just spare a thought for tech workers who can't sleep at night.

Most techies somehow get by on six and a half hours of sleep per night, placing them squarely in the top 10 of most sleep-deprived professions.

The recommended amount of sleep is eight hours so clearly there are some pretty tuckered-out techies out there. Apparently people don't get enough sleep because they're worried about job security, money and work in general or because they have to work late.

About a third of 4,000 people surveyed said they can't switch off from work and a similar amount said they go to sleep thinking about work.

Still, the Round-Up usually finds playing a tape of any software CEO talking about their latest widget is enough to help it nod off…

On (roughly) the same subject it appears there may be a lack of people interested in helping the next generation get interested in the industry.

According to the Graduate Teacher Training Registry, the number of students applying for post-graduate teacher training courses in IT is continuing to slide. Applications are 18 per cent down on last year making it the subject with the second worst decline after physics.

This means the 140,000 new IT and telecoms workers tech skills body, e-skills, predicts will be needed every year could be a tough target to hit.

Head of strategy at e-skills, Margaret Sambell, said it's essential "we inspire young people about technology and encourage them to consider becoming the IT professionals of the future". So probably best not to mention the stuff about never getting another proper night's sleep until they retire or are outsourced...

It would probably be a good idea if IT lessons were a bit more inspiring though. The last time the Round-Up was in a school IT lesson all the computers had Amstrad on the front and Prestel was everyone's idea of a great night in. It seems things have moved on. But perhaps not in a good way.

As one silicon.com reader pointed out, "Instead of teaching important stuff, like how computers work, what's inside the box, how to put one together, what an operating system is and how it does its job, IP addressing, etc, they seem to be teaching them secretarial skills."

Learning about Word and Excel may help people in the world of work but it's not exactly going to make you lots of money. If people are going to teach it, perhaps they need to be a bit more inspired too…

Meanwhile, security company McAfee did a little experiment by encouraging 50 volunteers around the world to trawl through some of the murkier backwaters of the interweb without the protection of a firewall or antivirus to see what would happen.

About 23 per cent of the global spam went to the UK users. And apparently a lot of the spam (18 per cent) was quite racy. Presumably these smut pedlars aren't familiar with the "no sex please, we're British" attitude or they might have tried another approach. Like trying to sell us bum bags, perhaps.

The 50 participants received more than 2,000 spam emails each over 30 days with UK users the fifth most targeted. See - who says we're no good at anything? One UK volunteer received 5,414 emails.

And making the silicon.com press grind to a halt, Guy Roberts of Avert Labs said: "Spam is most definitely much more than a nuisance; it's a very real and fast-growing threat."

What with all this stress, maybe you should head down to Selfridges for a well-earned drink. And even better, you can order a drink from the new barman. Apparently he's a robot called Mr Asahi. It's like the future.

Mr Asahi is capable of serving people in less than two minutes saving each person an average of 13 minutes at the bar. Granted, the Round-Up has had to wait a long time at a bar but it wouldn't say 15 minutes is the average.

Either way. Mr Asahi is controlled by a PC which uses compressed air and electronic control mechanisms to allow him to pour you a pint. Just don't ask him to pour a Guinness - he'll never get the Shamrock right…

This Bladerunner-esque vision was created by a 200-man team and cost £100,000 to build. Possibly slightly over the top for a glorified bottle opener but there you go.

A human bartender - presumably battling with Mr Asahi for her job - said: "I have more communication and I can speak to the customer and deal with them." Good point.

See, it remains to be seen whether Mr Asahi has the bar-side banter to brighten a stressed-out shopper's day. He may serve you quickly but what if you want someone to unburden yourself to or just have a moan at? The role of a bar keep is to give you liquid refreshment but also to make sympathetic noises as you moan about some problem.

Returning to the musical theme, Virgin Media showed its tech credentials this week by sending warnings to customers about downloading music through file-sharing websites. This is all part of a campaign by the rather quaintly named British Phonographic Industry to educate users about dodgy downloading.

Now you'd think that file-sharing fans are pretty tech-savvy, spending plenty of time chained to their computers - so the BPI and Virgin would, rightly so, use the latest digital technology to send them this warning.

But what do they actually do? Yes, that's right, they send a letter. Good old snail mail. What next the Round-Up wonders? Will they up the ante and send them a telegram? Or perhaps a warning via messenger pigeon?

And finally here's an interesting idea for UK government data. The great and good have decided to hold a competition to find new uses for public information held by the criminal justice, health and education departments. The Round-Up would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in that meeting.

The government stresses none of this will be personal data but it will include information from the NHS, Defra, the Office of National Statistics as well as mapping data from the Ordnance Survey.

Well, this may sound like the Round-Up is a stick-in-the-mud - sorry, a sudden festival flashback there - but wouldn't it be best if the government worked a bit harder to keep its data secure rather then thinking of fancy new ways to use it?

And another thing, it seems like the government has a lot of data just sitting there waiting for a rainy day rather than actually being needed. You have to wonder sometimes…

Still looking for fun? Have a go at the silicon.com caption competition.