The Weekly Round-Up: 23.01.09

The Round-Up looks back at its school days with a sense of misty nostalgia, tempered by a certain amount of relief that they are over forever.

But one cherished memory is the time the computer 'lab' took first delivery of six Dragon 32s. Such elegance, such processing power, undreamed of by most mortals in 1983.

In hindsight it wasn't that much of an inspiring formative experience with computers, but a happy one in many ways if you ever recall playing the epic proto-RPG game 'Ring of Darkness' on the machine.

These days of course, things are rather more high-tech, indeed as proved by the Round-Up almost getting trounced by its three-year-old daughter while playing Wii Sports bowling last evening. In fact, if she hadn't been sent to bed half-way through the last game it's likely she would have won.

This early grounding in technology may put her at an educational advantage to previous generations as a new breed of teacher (or educational architect), saunters in to the classroom, laptop under their arm (although probably not one as glamorous as this).

Fortunately, hard-pressed teachers also have a new assistant - one better than Etienne the French assistant who proved rather ineffective at the Round-Up's school. Instead, the latest teaching aid for schools is chief Transformer Optimus Prime, or at least his robot cousin.

ED-E is a humanoid robot and learning tool that featured in education tech supplier RM's Shaping Education for the Future display at an educational technology show this week.

The robot can be programmed to move into balancing positions that can teach children how basic physics works.

If the designers are looking for upgrade options for version two, The Round-Up would suggest a plagiarism detection system that reads an essay and spiders the entire web, in less than five nano-seconds. And a universal translator to help teachers understand the kidz when they say things like "book" or "nang". No, the Round-Up has no idea either.

Also on show was the Microsoft touchscreen Surface technology, which would be mind-bogglingly cool if it wasn't embedded inside a large piece of furniture. Microsoft: so close and yet so very, very far.

Yes, for a mere $10,000 kids can navigate to anywhere on earth by rotating the onscreen globe and then zooming in to an area of interest. Just like you can on Google Earth for free.

The Surface can also let kids improve their spelling through touch-sensitive games and, to be fair, a whole load of very cool stuff.

Robots and touch-sensitive tables? Pah! Kids these days. Don't know they're etc....

Still, there's nothing like a global recession to spread a little of that feel-good factor about, is there?

Markets may be crumbling, investment banks going to the wall and high-street mainstays shutting up shop but you can always rely on the technology sector to cheer us all up.

First up there's Intel, which this week announced it was slashing the prices of its chips by almost 50 per cent. Secondly, there was some good news for Apple as it bucked the market downturn with some stellar results.

But to hell with all that, the really big and exciting news of the week is that the global economic downturn could push nations towards investing in a single, open next-generation broadband network, a huge telecoms love-in with everyone diving in for fun and some twangy sitar music playing over the top. Lovely.

According to management consultancy Deloitte the high costs of broadband networks could make regulators look at a single fibre network deployment that is shared by multiple operators.

It's a wonderful vision isn't? Rather than continuing the current strategy of multiple networks we all come together into a happy, autonomous collective. For the common good of ecommerce and humankind.

The report adds: "Regulators may determine that the fibre connectivity market is not sovereign and that the case for a single network, with shared ownership and open access, might be the best way forward."

They might well decide that. Alternatively, just to play Devil's Advocate, they might as well not. Do you believe in this brave new world of telecoms, with former competitors marching forward, arm in arm, heralding in frighteningly fast broadband and real competition on price for consumers?

No, neither does the Round-Up...

As you may well have noticed, the world has a new saviour and agent for change in the form of new US President Barack Obama.

No irony there, the Round-Up's a big fan. Two immediate priority actions for the President were an order to close Guantanamo Bay and a pledge to be an open government.

What counts is action. The Guantanamo Bay facility will be shut down within 12 months and the latter pledge has been backed up by a complete overhaul of the whitehouse.gov website with a promise for greater openness and transparency.

Under the previous administration (Boo! Hiss! Etc...) the robots.txt file, which defines what content directories search engines can spider on a site, was more than 2,300 lines long.

One of the first things done under Obama was a slim-down of the robots.txt file, although he may have delegated that. He is, after all, quite busy. Also, have you ever seen a computer on the desk in the Oval Office?

The new file is a mere two lines, according to the BBC (probably containing the words 'change' and 'hope' over and over again).

This allows any user to search every single page on the site, give or take a few. According to the report on the BBC, after eight years of Bush's government, huge swathes of the White House website were made inaccessible to search engines. Which makes you wonder why they didn't just remove the pages altogether.

In the White House blog, the President stated his aim to improve transparency and openness through the internet - the blog will be an informal record of the administration and the President's events, speeches and decisions.

President Obama said: "In the face of doubt, openness prevails." Bravo, Mr President.

But at least we have a transparent US executive. At least for now. We'll see how busy the President's webmaster will be in a few months time when 'Hope' and 'Change' will be down 28 per cent and 'harsh realities' up 34 per cent.

Best of luck in the meantime, though...

Until next week:

In a recession, nobody is exempt, even the mighty.

Apple released the first Macintosh computer 25 years ago and turned the computer world on its head. Take a trip down memory lane with this photo story showcasing the best and the weirdest to come off the Cupertino conveyor belt since 1984.

Netbook or laptop. What's the difference?

Oh, and don't forget the caption competition…