You may be shocked at this revelation but trade show keynotes can be rather dusty affairs. At the best of times, they lack as much interest as the Round-Up's savings account. They're duller than The Very Very Best of Watching Paint Dry, volumes one to 10. So German trade show CeBIT scored a major win this week by having Arnold Schwarzenegger - yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger - give its opening keynote.

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As the world plunges deeper and deeper into recession there are big changes afoot in the technology industry. Top of the list - a huge reversal of roles in one of the most fundamental divides in the corporate landscape - the client-supplier relationship.

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How are we feeling today? Chilled? Relaxed? Not a care in the world?

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It's Valentine's Day tomorrow. That short statement is almost certainly enough to cost the Round-Up a significant portion of its readership, right now, this minute.

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It only took a light dusting of snow to bring the south of England to a slippery, sliding halt earlier this week. You may have noticed. As the snow came down, mobile usage went up. Monday between 7am and 8.30am saw a massive spike in texts and calls as commuters rang work with sob stories about being trapped behind gigantic snow drifts of nearly three inches, or pinned down by marauding gangs of snowball-wielding 11-year-olds.

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Bandwidth, bandwidth everywhere - but not a spot of work being done. The less connected you are, the more productive you'll be. At least, that's how it works for the Round-Up. Rather than offering the ability to work harder, a broadband connection means speedy access to sites offering amusingly captioned pictures of cute cats, online time-wasting games often involving penguins, and the ability to receive emails from friends, usually featuring amusingly captioned pictures of cute cats and links to sites offering penguin-based games.

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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.

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A career in technology is full of glamour, excitement and many-coloured Ethernet cables. Sadly, given the long hours there's little time for love and romance. Plus, if we are to put any credence behind the old myth, techies are about as adept at romance as elephants are at C++ coding.

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You've got to feel sorry for 2009. Usually in January, a year is still a newborn innocent, the long months ahead stretching out in front of it, full of wonder and mystery. But not 2009, oh no.

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So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Well, if you are anything like the Round-Up, the answer is: eaten too much, drunk too much (already) and failed to buy any presents. At all.

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Technology has had a profound effect on how we live, shop, interact socially or do business. It's also seeping into the fabric of our language like the odour of a three-week old egg sandwich that's been left behind a rack in the server room.

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It's been something of a defining year for the US and the rest of the world, what with the credit crunch, the election of Barack Obama and, of course World of Warcraft's hotly anticipated Wrath of the Lich King release. Looking back over this momentous year, search engine Ask.com has revealed its list of the most popular searches in 2008 with its CEO Jim Safka declaring: "The heart and soul of America - our passions, concerns and aspirations - are reflected in this year's searches."

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The national ID card scheme has had its detractors. Quite a few, actually. In fact, the only people who aren't detractors are the ministers promoting it - but they hardly count when you consider they'll be moved to a different department within a year and have some other deeply unpopular policy initiative to worry about. Just read any article on ID cards on silicon.com about the scheme, you'll see. The list of reader comments about the scheme is very long, and very short on people who think the cards are a smart idea.

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I say tom-ah-to, you say tom-ay-to, Google says gorillas or kitchen sink... No, the Round-Up's not trying to ruin Gershwin songs but is referring to the launch of Google's hotly anticipated voice activated search engine for the iPhone.

google round trying gershwin iphone referring weekly sink launch kitchen hotly songs voice activate engine says search ruin anticipate gorillas

As the dust settles on an historic election, US President Elect Barack Obama turns his focus to the actual nuts and bolts of government. Less shaking hands, kissing babies and more staring into the middle distance and looking thoughtful and thinking about appointing senior aides - and someone to look after the White House server room as the government CTO.

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The Round-Up couldn't let this week go by without a nod to one of the most fascinating victories ever to grace the world stage. The build up, the triumph, the edge-of-the-seat result - yes, the Round-Up can only take its hat off to the man of the moment. Well done Lewis Hamilton.

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Over the centuries, humankind has turned to animals for a number of purposes. Food, clothing, companionship, more food and sport to name but a few. More recently we've been exploiting our furry friends for other reasons, some of which have a business and technology leaning.

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As it surveys the scene outside silicon Towers this week (mainly rain and a building site in case you were wondering) the Round-Up has been giving some serious thought to the pros and cons of technology. Sometimes, the Round-Up finds, people can't see the wood for the tech.

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Did you hear the one about the $12.5m pint of lager? This has nothing to do with the rising price of beer in London's West End but everything to do with a legal spat between a developer and a brewery.

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You don't have to be - like the Round-Up - someone who once dropped a brand new mobile phone into a pint of stout to know that alcohol and technology are rarely a good combination. In our always-on internet-connected, multi-device existence, sitting as we do at the heart of a network of smart phones, netbooks, laptops and PCs, emailing or text messaging your friends or colleagues is but a key stroke away, wherever you are. (Some people get too attached to their gadgets though).

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The name's Round-Up. Weekly Round-Up... In the past, the MI6 used to recruit spies by tracking students with the right 'qualifications' as they made their way through the country's top universities: Oxford, Cambridge or Hull (as Blackadder would have it).

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The Round-Up doesn't have much call to use public payphones nowadays, not being a heavy breather or a spy, as you will be no doubt be relieved to hear. But for those in the aforementioned categories, or the people without mobile phones (yes there really are some) there was good news this week, with BT giving local councils more time to save some of the UK's few remaining iconic red phone boxes which are facing the axe.

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Tim Berners-Lee is a worried man. How so? After all he was bestowed with a knighthood by Her Majesty for bestowing the World Wide Web on humanity. It's the second bit of bestowing that's got him bothered, for his creation is out of control and has taken on an unholy life of its own.

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No one does nostalgia like they did in the good old days, conventional wisdom says. But the Round-Up is here to prove that wrong. For the last week or so silicon.com has been busy publishing the results of its rummage through the National Museum of Computing, out at the home of computing itself, Bletchley Park. That's home of the almighty Colossus, of course.

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Facebook: The Movie is about to become a reality. News which will no doubt strike fear into the hearts of movie execs running the big summer blockbuster franchises. The writer behind hit US show the West Wing has been assigned the job of turning the trials and tribulations behind launching the world's biggest social networking site into a two-hour flick for the big screen.

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There's a row brewing in Whitehall and just for a change it has nothing to do with government policy on immigration or the loss of yet more personal data. Instead, some MPs are getting hot under the collar over web 2.0-related matters and that makes a refreshing change.

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One sign (in case you needed any more) that we are wading through the murky depths of recession is that we stop upgrading and start making do with the stinky old things we've been meaning to replace for ages. By which the Round-Up is referring to hardware and software and the like (rather than - say - husbands and wives, although there is probably a bit of that too).

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Just because you can technically do something, doesn't always mean that you should. Like running the London Marathon dressed as Mr Blobby, marrying the first person who asks or taking on the plate-size Yorkshire pudding filled to the gills with chicken tikka on sale at the Round-Up's local. In the tech world, one project that was the perfect example of the 'don't do it just because you can' ethos hit the buffers this week.

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You may have noticed that things move around a lot in supermarkets. You're not going mad, it's happening. They're doing it on purpose, the swines. The idea is that supermarkets move produce from aisle to aisle to encourage you to buy different things to those you'd normally buy when you stumble across unfamiliar stock in familiar places.

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1 April - that one day of the year that hitherto sensible companies decide to muscle in on the Round-Up's territory and show the world quite how funny technology can be. Of course it's not just IT companies that enjoy a good April Fool's gag - but this year most of the best jokes had at least a sprinkling of tech fairy dust on top. So the Round-Up thought some kind of…round-up might be in order.

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Q: How many computer programmers does it take to change a light bulb? A: None, it's a hardware problem. Ahem.

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The Round-Up is sure you've had a boss who, quite frankly, was a complete git. We all have. Maybe you are such a boss, in which case the Round-Up suggests you take a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself where it all went wrong.

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The Round-Up isn't much of a Twitterer. Or should that be tweeter? Or twitteriser? Anyway, the Round-Up doesn't do it - although silicon.com does and you can find it here. It's not that there wouldn't be lots to tweet about, and it would be easy to keep Round-Up fans on tenterhooks waiting for each 140-character update, ("Sitting at desk", "Drinking tea", "Staring at a pencil", "Thinking about making tea") it's just that the Round-Up ain't the sharing kind. And besides, 140 characters is waaay too small a character count to play with.

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Tooth or dare? You've bought your boss coffee every morning for a month. And sometimes even a muffin, too. You came up with the idea that saved the company a million quid off the IT budget and you had the company logo tattooed on your chest for charity.

company morning tattooed boss month charity bought million idea weekly quid coffee save round logo dare chest sometimes nyou budget

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.

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If you're reading this on Friday 15 May, there's a good chance you're not wearing any trousers. For today is the annual Work From Home day, and quite frankly the best thing about being WFH is the reduced importance of sartorial correctness. Over the past five days the Work Wise initiative has been encouraging people to join in the event aimed at raising awareness of the benefits of flexible working, with the hope of increasing the number of homeworkers to more than 14 million by 2011.

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Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin. Oh, what's that? You're not sitting comfortably at all, but sprawled on your super-king sized divan and you want the pillows plumped up and the duvet straightened?

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Never say those Redmond guys give up easily - Microsoft has tilted its lance at Google once more in the search engine wars. Microsoft's latest charge at its multi-coloured search windmill is underway again after Steve Ballmer unveiled the follow-up to Live Search. Except this time it isn't a search engine it's a 'decision engine'.

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Bada Bing! Some more on Microsoft's latest attempt to catch up with Google in the search engine race - Bing. Or, rather, as The Round-Up likes to think of it - Bing!

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'Web 2.0' has become the one millionth word to be 'accepted' into the English language. That's according to the Global Language Monitor, a company which sifts the web for neologisms in search of formal recognition. Once a word has been used 25,000 times, it gets the stamp of approval.

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