The Weekly Round-Up: 03.07.09

Glastonbury - home to ley lines, juggling hippies, gurning students covered head-to-toe in mud and publicity-hungry minor celebrities showing off in their wellies.

And, this year, they were joined by 407 BBC staff. Yep, 407.

But, ignoring the kerfuffle over how many people Aunty decided to send to the festival, (the Round-Up is sure they all worked very, very hard) it was heartened to find out that the Beeb brought a veritable high tech arsenal to bear on Glastonbury this time round.

This included using live streaming from the festival via wireless video cameras overlooking different parts of the site to give web users a taste of the event.

That taste, if the Round-Up remembers rightly, being a combination of warm cider and falafel and quinoa salad.

The BBC coverage also included aggregated Twitter feeds and iPhone experiments, while Aunty integrated its Glastonbury coverage more closely with its new digital video system so content could be more easily formatted for the online, mobile and red button services.

All very festival 2.0. Then again, most festival goers are equipped with smartphones to send video clips to their mates and tweet about all the great bands they've seen, and a GPS to find their tent after a day of moshing, so really this is just the BBC catching up with the kids. Which is how it should be.

The Round Up just hopes they all managed to keep all that shiny new kit out of the mud and safe from taking a swim in a festival toilet (unlike this unlucky gent a few years back ). Because really, you don't want it back once it's been in there...

There's a bit in the original Transformers movie (the Round-Up accidentally saw half of it recently on a plane before the gin and tonics kicked in) where some kind of space-alien doohickey is used to turn everyday electronics into angry little monsters. And no, said space alien doohickey wasn't called Windows Vista.

Unfortunately, it seems that such meddling with the natural order is not simply the stuff of movies anymore, with the news that soon everyday objects like toasters and even toothbrushes will have a mind of their own. And it won't need some reverse-engineered alien hardware - just a SIM card.

Fifty billion devices will be connected to cellular networks in the next decade, according to Ericsson, with one of its execs predicting that years to come could see connectivity spread to some of the very smallest household items.

"We're talking about 50 billion connections, all devices will have connectivity - your cameras, your everything. I'm not sure if you will have broadband in your toothbrush but maybe your dentist wants to know [how you brush your teeth] so why not?" he told silicon.com.

It's an appalling idea and it won't be long before all these gadgets start ganging up on us. Do you really want your toothbrush deciding you've got too many cavities and instructing the fridge not to open, or telling your credit card not to let you pay for that big cream cake?

This is how the robot invasion really starts - not with hulking Arnie-esque Terminators, guns a-blazing, but with an officious little electric toothbrush refusing you your favourite snacks. You've been warned.

Of course, this great leap forward will mean a major investment in the telecoms infrastructure and the industry is already scratching its head over how to come up with the cash. So that, and the fact that even the Round-Up's mobile only manages to connect to a network about half the time means maybe there isn't too much to worry about. Yet.

Another week, another government U-turn. Did someone say there's an election on the way?

This week the world's least loved IT project (and let's just say there's plenty of competition for that title) got another kick in the teeth with the new Home Secretary announcing that ID cards would never become compulsory.

Plans to make ID cards compulsory for airside workers and pilots have also been dropped this week by the Home Office with the trials planned for Manchester and London City airports both scrapped.

'Hurrah!' said campaigners (who probably don't know about the approaching danger of sentient toothbrushes to their civil liberties).

The government, of course, hasn't actually given up on the scheme and like a particularly persistent zombie it is likely to rise again at some point. ID cards that is, not the government…

Still, that's not to say that every technology that our elected representatives get their hands on ends up all sticky and broken, like a remote control after a toddler has chewed it.

An amazing 64 MPs are dipping their toes into social media and are Twittering (follow silicon.com on Twitter). The rest of course are still puzzling over how to work that strange device that looks like a cross between a television and a typewriter that has been taking up so much room on their office desk.

Of these high tech politicos that do tweet, nearly two-thirds are Labour, about a quarter are Liberal Democrat and a rather poor one in eight are Conservative. Their tweets reveal the fascinating behind-the-scenes story of politics today, with searing comments straight to the public and unmediated by spin doctors, including "Take part in our parking survey" and "Back home in time for Question Time".

It's like The West Wing in 140 characters!

And finally this week: Alexander Armstrong will play Sir Clive Sinclair in a one-off drama with the working title Syntax Era - an "affectionately comic" account of the Eighties race for home computer supremacy. The drama documents the lengthy rivalry between maverick visionary Sir Clive and his former colleague Chris Curry (played by Martin Freeman) as they go head to head to achieve domination of the growing home computer market.

Controller of BBC Four, Richard Klein, said: "Those of us that lived through the Eighties will remember the sense of excitement when gadgets and technology started to appear in our homes but not many of us will know the fascinating stories behind their arrival."

Classic clips are promised including John Craven's Newsround showcasing the likes of Sinclair's ZX Spectrum, the infamous Sinclair C5 and Curry's triumphant BBC Micro.

For those younger readers of the Round-Up for whom the last three paragraphs were filled with names and products that you've never heard of, ask your parents. The Round-Up is already feeling nostalgic about the sound of a ZX Spectrum loading Jet Set Willy.

That just leaves a little time to highlight some of the other big news this week.

50p landline tax to save Broadband Britain?

You get to take your own iPhone to work? Enjoy the envy of all your colleagues