Start me up

Jobseekers want to work for young tech firms, Google wants to help you find things, and Tripwire wants a security-conscious president

It might be the beanbags and ping-pong tables, it might the fixie bikes in the car park - it might even be the exciting world of network-attached storage solutions - but jobseekers just can't get enough of tech start-ups.

That is the conclusion of data from jobs search engine Adzuna, which finds that advertised posts from hot tech upstarts that I've totally heard of such as Songkick, King.com, and YPlan were the most-viewed roles in the month of August.

And the good news for ambitious young technophiles is that "vacancies continue to increase" in the sector. Happy days. Less cheery is the revelation that the mean advertised salary across all industries in the UK in August dropped 3.3 per cent year on year to £33,318. There was worse news still for those seeking new employment in Sunderland, with the city on the Wear picked as the country's "hardest place to find a job".

Adzuna notes that there are "four jobseekers going after every position" in Sunderland - which may not sound like a lot to you and me, but according to the jobs site's experts this makes it "50 times harder to secure employment than [it is] in Cambridge".

Where, presumably, only 0.08 people go for each post.

Spy and all tap

Talking of the chocolate-fountains-and-arcade-machines world of sexy young tech firms, I was intrigued to read an interview with Google this week, in which the web giant lifted the lid on what the future may hold for the in-development Now on Tap service.

As was ever the case with Google, the technology - which represents its next big bet for its core search business - sounds really cool at first and increasingly creepy as you read on. But that didn't stop search head Amrit Singhal talking up the offering to BBC News.

Now on Tap, which will feature on upcoming iterations of the Android operating system, reportedly allows users to employ a single-button press to locate further information about whatever data is found on their phone's screen.

Singhal cited the ever so slightly blood-chilling example of a text conversation with his wife about a restaurant. In this scenario Now on Tap would allow him to simply tap (oh, I see what they did there) the name of the eatery and Google would provide all the pertinent info, such as driving directions and opening hours.

The feature is designed to work with any app, and saying "OK Google" into your phone will bring up "a contextual voice" which suggests further lines of enquiry. The example the BBC cites is using Spotify, for which the voice might assume you wanted to know the identity of the lead singer of the band currently playing. Lord knows what the voice might suggest when you're using Tinder, Chat Roulette, or the Hot Leyton Orient Connections app.

"It's search designed for the mobile world," explained the Google search chief. "You don't have to switch windows to type information into one window and then go to another. "In fact, you don't have to do a thing - just plug your phone directly into your brain stem and you need never think again. All the pain will go away, I promise - join us, join us, join us...," he added, probably.

Prez-ing issue

I was thoroughly underwhelmed to learn this week that "cybersecurity [is] a key issue in [the] upcoming presidential election", according to deeply disingenuous and wildly inaccurate marketing gubbins from Tripwire.

The (VESTED INTEREST ALERT!!!) security vendor quizzed 210 IT security professionals, some 54 per cent of whom feel that cybersecurity policy and regulation will "be a key issue". Just 14 per cent stated that it will not be so, with the remaining 32 per cent presumably unable to get their head around a question that I imagine was so leading as to be four furlongs ahead of all other questions in the running.

The firm also discovered that 68 per cent of respondents "would prefer to vote for a presidential candidate who has a strong cybersecurity policy".

What's more, some 244 per cent of respondents would rather not vote for a candidate who taunts kittens and the elderly, according to further research from the Department of Stating the Bleeding Obvious.