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 […]
The Internet Archive, the place where – inter alia – old websites go when they die (and a damned fine resource it is too!. Ed.), has launched an appeal for donations. Brewster, the Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, posted the following on the organisation’s blog yesterday: Dear Supporters of the Archive, In […]
According to the OpenStreetMap Foundation blog, the organisation is growing fast, having just welcomed its 500,000th signed up user, and logged the 10,000,000th update to its map of the UK. The Foundation is a UK-registered not-for-profit organisation that supports the OpenStreetMap Project and some years ago, Bristol Wireless volunteers spent a pleasant day or so […]
As part of the Government’s Autumn Statement, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne yesterday announced that ‘world-leading’ (ahem! Ed.) commitments by the Government to open up public sector data will make travel easier and healthcare better and create significant growth for industry and jobs in the UK, according to the Cabinet Office. The Open Data […]
The regional assembly of the Italian island of Sicily is to consider a law encouraging the public sector to use of free and open source software, OSOR reports. The bill was presented last month by Democratic Party member Massimo Ferrara. According to Blog Sicilia (in Italian), this is a “legislative initiative that reduces the digital […]
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’ […]
Last week Mark Turner, CEO of Sirius IT and the lead for the Cabinet Office’s ‘New Suppliers to Government’ Workgroup expressed his frustration with the slow pace of implementing changes to the UK Government’s IT and embracing more open source (allegedly to go along with open standards and open data. Ed.) as follows via Twitter: […]
Yesterday Bristol Wireless volunteers Jim and your correspondent attended the afternoon session of the two Wiki Wildlife Edit-a-thons (news passim) that were jointly organised by Wikimedia UK and Wildscreen’s ARKive project, the Bristol-based digital archive of the world’s endangered species, which has kindly donated 200 items from its text archive on endangered species to help […]
Some weeks ago we gave advance notice of the forthcoming Bristol Girl Geek Dinners and Wikipedia event on Thursday 18th August (news passim). Further details have now emerged. It’s being held at the Merchant Venturers Building, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UB (map) and starts at 7.00 pm. The main aim of the […]
As previously announced, the second run of the Bristol Wiki Academy took place on Monday this week up at the BBC’s Broadcasting House in Bristol (news passim). We got off to an early(ish) start at 10.30 am with a round of introductions, followed by a brief presentation on Wikipedia’s mission of free knowledge for everyone […]
Today the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne MP, is speaking at Google Zeitgeist 2011. As a matter of fact, he’s not just giving any old speech, but the event’s keynote address. HM Treasury has very kindly released the Chancellor’s speech in advance and it does make very interesting reading indeed. Perusing the speech, your […]
When: Saturday 19 March 2011. Arrive at 9.40 a.m. for a 10.00 start, continuing until 4 p.m. Lunch will be provided. Where: Room 1.06, Merchant Venturers School of Engineering, Woodland Road, University of Bristol, BS8 1UB (map) What: A non-technical event for individuals and organisations interested in working with Wikipedia and its related projects. Explore […]
I was going to start this post with the words ‘In the wee small hours I was listening to the wireless and a man came on doing Stephen Hilton impressions’, but, after some consideration, thought better of it. 😉 This week’s broadcast of the BBC World Service’s Digital Planet programme featured reporter Tracey Logan in […]
Next Thursday up at Auntie Beeb’s place on Whiteladies Road, Bristol (map), Bristol Wireless’ Ben Green will be taking part in a panel session entitled ‘Innovation Academy: Digital Bristol – Imagine a City where…” from 1.45 to 3.00 pm. The event’s publicity blurb states: Imagine a city where you could tap into the gigs, films, […]
For a couple of hours earlier today, Bristol’s Victoria Rooms, a part of the University of Bristol, today became the Wikitoria Rooms, courtesy of the presence of Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, who was in Bristol as part of Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary celebrations (Wikipedia was actually launched on 15th January 2001. How the world has […]
Over at Connecting Bristol, a forthcoming event has been announced for the end of the month. Entitled “Apps for Communities”, it will be held at the Council House, College Green, Bristol, BS1 5TR (map) on 28th and 29th January 2011. It is being jointly hosted by Bristol City Council, Local by Social and the Connecting […]
Yesterday, Rich, Jules and yours truly were representing Bristol Wireless at a Connecting Bristol event (news passim) at the Watershed entitled ‘The Digital Challenge is Over – The Digital Opportunity is Here’. It was good to see some old (not in the geriatric sense. Ed.), familiar faces: Kevin and Stephen from Connecting Bristol, Stephen Dodson […]
Public administrations in Norway are increasingly turning to open source, says Martin Bekkelund, business developer at Friprog, the country’s open source competence centre. This year, all 19 county administrations are using some form of open source, compared to 76 per cent in 2005. Uses vary from server operating systems and content management systems to OpenOffice. […]
Following on from the release of government data earlier this week (news passim), comes an announcement that Young Rewired State will be taking place again this year from 2nd to 6th August at various places around the country. Young Rewired State is a hack week for young developers across the UK to go and build […]
The passing into law of the controversial Digital Economy Act 2010 in the dying days of the last Labour Government focussed plenty of attention on peer-to-peer software (P2P), such as Ktorrent, which is built for the Linux KDE desktop. Indeed as torrent software can be used to download material that infringes copyright (such as illegal […]