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Category Archives: Bristol Wireless News

News about or from Bristol Wireless

Yesterday’s Evening Post

Yesterday Bristol’s Evening Post, the city’s newspaper of record (really? Ed.), carried the news of Bristol Wireless’ shortlisting for the Santander Social Enterprise Awards (which were being organised locally in conjunction with the Quartet Community Foundation). We’d originally applied for the award after a report on them was spotted by a keen-eyed Bristol Wireless volunteer […]

A special offer for Bristolians

TCP/IP is the open framework that makes the internet work. Of that framework, we’d like to draw your attention today to the IP bit. IP stands for Internet Protocol, of course (and not Intellectual Property address, as once written by the Digital Britain Minister in the last government. Ed.), and every device connecting to a […]

Meanwhile back in the lab…

Bristol Wireless was donated* some redundant laptops yesterday that were surplus to requirements. Their arrival has encouraged volunteer Acesabe to try experimenting, as about an hour ago he tweeted: Think I’ll have a pop at installing ChromeOS on one of those old laptops we got donated @BristolWireless yesterday http://chromeos.hexxeh.net Please let us know how it […]

A DFD free gift for politicians

Do you know a certain politician who should really learn more about Open Standards? This is the question that the Free Software Foundation Europe has asked in the last couple of days. The article goes on to ask readers if they have tried to explain the importance of Open Standards to your boss, friends, local […]

28th March is Document Freedom Day

This year’s Document Freedom Day, which celebrates information accessibility and raises awareness of Open Standards, will take place on Wednesday, 28th March. Here in Bristol Wireless, we’ve been using the Open Document Format (ODF) Open Standard for exchanging documents internally for many years now. We like it since it has many advantages: firstly, there’s the […]

The Company Secretary writes

When he’s not keeping the news section of the website refreshed, the chief scribe also acts as Bristol Wireless’ Company Secretary and in that role has just circulated the message below to members via our mailing lists. Hi all One of my duties as company secretary is to keep the shareholders’ register up to date. […]

It’s that day of the year again, so show your love for free software

It’s February 14th and all over the world, swains are getting knock-kneed and tongue-tied as they profess their love to the objects of their desire (OK, it’s Valentine’s Day, you long-winded beggar. Now get on with it! Ed.). Right, now that’s out of the way, let’s just say we’re once again supporting the Free Software […]

IRC – not just for idle chat. It’s great for meetings too

Jules, our esteemed treasurer, is currently several thousand miles away from Bristol. Nevertheless, he was able to participate in our last monthly meeting fully due to the wonders of IRC. When he’s been away before, Jules has always emailed his report. However, this time all contact was via IRC and Mr Secretary is delighted: instead […]

For sale: USB wifi adapters

In addition to our usual fare of refurbished computers for sale, we currently have for sale 10 802.11g USB wireless adapters as shown in the picture below. If you’d like one, please arrive at the lab with £10 and it’s your’s or contact us by email to secure one! Once they’re gone, they’re gone!

Bristol Wireless on Techradar

Regular readers will remember that we had a visit from journalist Jonathan Edwards (news passim) which ultimately resulted in Bristol Wireless being the subject of a four-page feature in the Christmas 2011 edition (issue 158) of Linux Format (news passim). For those who did not take our above advice and go and buy that edition […]

Reasons to be cheerful – 2 parts

2012 is fast approaching and there are two reasons for celebration in the New Year. Firstly, the United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives as an acknowledgement of the fundamental role of cooperatives in promoting the socio-economic development of hundreds of millions of people and have released a little […]

It’s festive closing time (soon!)

In common with the rest of the country, we heathens at Bristol Wireless shall be taking a festive break and closing the lab. Our arrangements are as follows: we shall be closing from lunchtime on Friday 23rd December (aka beer o’clock on POETS Day. Ed.) and will re-open for business on Tuesday, 3rd January 2012. […]

Lab report, Friday December 16th

It’s been an interesting day in the lab. Your correspondent arrived early in the lab and found Rich and Acesabe getting ready to out on a cabling job, running Cat6 round a new office for a client. After a while Jim turned up, followed shortly after by Chris, our newest volunteer. It’s interesting working with […]

Announcing CiviCRM 3.4.8 and 4.0.8

The latest post on the CiviCRM blog announces the release of versions 3.4.8 and 4.0.8 of this popular open source CRM system (as used by Bristol Wireless. Ed.), which runs of the Drupal or Joomla content management systems (CMS). The developers also announce that this release features a number of bug fixes. In addition, CiviCRM […]

Wikipedia testing new visual editor

One of the barriers frequently mentioned to getting involved in editing Wikipedia is the clunky editing interface; indeed it has come up at sessions attended by Bristol Wireless volunteers cunningly disguised as Wikipedians (news passim). Your scribe has some vague memory of the topic of the clunky editor even coming up in the course of […]

Web developers – can you help Easton Arts Trail?

We’ve been contacted on Twitter by Easton Arts Trail of Bristol with the following request: @BristolWireless We’re looking for a web designer to relaunch our website. Do you know anyone who might take it on as a project for free? The Easton Arts Trail was founded in 2006 by a group of local artists and […]

The MP, Creative Commons and Bristol Wireless

Yesterday morning, Bristol Wireless’ chief scribe held a conversation on the Twitter micro-blogging site with an old friend of the co-op, Will Pollard of wifiExeter. The discussion was prompted by a visit to Exeter by Shadow Culture Minister, Dan Jarvis MP and revolved around matters such as the use of Creative Commons and other open/‘copyleft’ […]

Now in the shops (in Portugal): Ubuntu netbooks

As of this week, Asus Eee PC 1215P netbooks preloaded with Ubuntu Linux are available in the shops – as long as you do your shopping in Portugal. 😉 The Canonical blog reports that the ASUS Ubuntu netbooks can be bought in 100 Vobis and Worten stores across the country. The Eee PC has a […]

Tip of the day: go and buy Linux Format

Yes, you did read that correctly. It’s not very often the freetards of the Bristol Wireless lab recommend you spend any money. After all, we like our software to be free in both the beer and speech senses! 🙂 However, for once we’re changing our usual philosophy and encouraging you to go and grab some […]