The Weekly Round-Up: 08.05.09

As Alfred Tennyson once wrote: 'the old order changeth yielding place to new', and for the average silver-haired IT manager this is a pressing and worrying thought.

These days everyone is talking about Generation Y and the importance of these callow yet tech-savvy youths to our industry.

If you believe the hype, these young whippersnappers are the future of technology. Partly because they know computers inside out, partly because they're confident, partly because the technology landscape is evolving into a leaner more inclusive medium which can be best accessed by people twittering on iPhones, but mostly because they're younger than you and they will outlive you.

People who don't believe Generation Y is the future are either old, or approaching-oldness-at-a-fair-rate-of-knots or merely kidding themselves, so you may as well get used to them because they're coming to an IT department near you. Soon.

The newest generation of employees grew up with technologies that appealed to consumers, such as Facebook, MySpace and Skype and they want to carry those experiences into work - and who are you to deny them?

Luckily, if you do have to bite the bullet and employ one of these strange, white-earbud-wearing youngsters there's help at hand. silicon.com this week published five tips on how to allow these strange, unwrinkled folk loose in your business.

For example a gateway content scanning system will make sure your new employees don't stumble into trouble when connecting to web 2.0-based resources as is their God-given right to do during office hours.

Confused? Don't be, just ask someone with children how they configure the parental locks on their home PCs.

Alternatively, you can merely deny access to certain sites for certain people. This is a good option if you want to show that smug young programmer just who the daddy is, or if you're generally vindictive and mean spirited.

Companies may only want employees using Facebook during their lunch hour. Meanwhile, human resources and management can access the site at all times, so they can conduct background checks on would-be employees and invite totally unqualified people for interviews based on how attractive they are.

All sound a bit too much? Well you better check out the survival tips.

Best of luck old bean, and try to ditch the paper piles and learn how to communicate in 140 characters or less...

Rumoured - Apple wants to buy up Twitter for $700m.

Nine of the most exciting words the Round-Up has heard since a red-haired sociology student told it at the end of Freshers' Week: "OK, but only if you have a bath first."

And yet - just like that other episode of shattering disappointment - the rumour that the world's coolest consumer technology was sniffing about the world's hottest social media property hardly sounds like a realistic proposition.

And yet it was one of the rumours running through Silicon Valley and onto the web this week.

Twitter is the darling of the technology/celebrity/political/media world and usage has exploded in the last six months. Meanwhile, Apple stock's inexorable climb back to pre-recession levels continues. But as to the idea of a tie-up the Round-Up would humbly submit that if you used a high-powered electron microscope capable of viewing the secrets of the sub-atomic universe you still couldn't find the strategic fit between the two companies.

Yes, it's a giddyingly cool thought, but it's about as likely as finding a bottle of bubble bath at one o'clock in the morning in a high-rise halls of residence in the south of England in the early 1990s...

While web-2.0-touting, network-endangering Generation Y might be the future of technology, a new show this week celebrates the past in glorious green command prompt.

This week, the National Museum of Computing's PC Gallery opened its doors on an exhibit where the story of the evolution of the modern PC is told using 50 machines that defined personal computing.

Remember the days when 1MHz of processor and 8KB of RAM was a big deal? No, neither does the Round-Up, but it does recall things like the Sinclair ZX81, the BBC Micro, the Dragon 32, and the first Apple Mac.

Want to take a trip down memory lane (which would actually be quite a good name for the show)? The Round-Up's guessing it had you at 'ZX81'.

Mmm, rubber.

Finally this week, as Gordon Brown's government lurches through yet another news cycle of embarrassments, one of its most enduringly stupid policies could hit Post Offices and camera shops near you soon.

Just as the opposition parties have promised to bin the ID cards scheme, the government has announced plans to put part of the responsibility for creating the high security cards in the hands of disinterested shopkeepers on the high street.

The Post Office, pharmacists and photography shops are in talks to scan photos and fingerprints for the ID cards scheme under new plans.

The bright idea is that customers will be able to use the high street outlets to scan their fingerprints and facial photographs that will be stored on microchips in the cards or biometric visas and the central National Identity Register database.

Not surprisingly, not everyone is that keen on the idea. And for a good reason. As Phil Booth, of anti-ID cards pressure group No2ID, pointed out: "How secure is a booth in a camera shop really going to be?"

Back in cloud cuckoo land, Jacqui Smith believes the National Identity Scheme could stimulate £6bn of business over the next 30 years.

Unfortunately, given the campaign promises of opposition parties, it's reasonably likely we'll never find out if she's right...

Finally this week a wafer-thin smattering of news items to excite and delight:

City workers turn to the sewers for more effective networking opportunities (their jobs are down the toilet anyway).

While trailing Google badly in search has lots of disadvantages, it also opens some doors, says Microsoft's ever-optimistic CEO Steve Ballmer.

The Apple-Google love-in comes under scrutiny.

And don't forget the caption competition…