Bristol Wireless News

Malcolm, a friendly chartered accountant who helps with our books, recently emailed our treasurer his opinions on Gnucash, the personal and small-business financial-accounting software that runs on GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and that other unspoken OS from Redmond. His words are reproduced below:

Couldn’t resist the lure of FREE* software, so downloaded it and imported a Quicken file into it. It worked pretty well, not 100%, but with a bit of practice it shouldn’t be too hard to work out why some transactions drop out. It certainly looked good and was easy to use.

If you were starting from a blank page, mapping errors wouldn’t be a problem of course, but it might take several trials to finally make sure that all data get mapped from an Intuit file to a Gnu file. More practically, you could import the chart of accounts, but lose all the history and just start with the prior period’s closing balances carried forward.

It isn’t as good as Quicken was, and in particular you can’t pick a payee and run a report of all payments made to XYZ… Instead you have to run a report of all payments made to all payees sorted a-z and then scroll down to XYZ. Standard reports are very few, but the custom report designer is pretty flexible, and lets you choose any start and end date, as Quicken does. It’s pretty much on a par with QuickBooks SimpleStart, which is also free in the US, although there is still a modest charge for it in the UK. If you don’t need VAT or the £ symbol, you can use the $ version though. Good psychology as when users find they need more crunching power, they upgrade to the full product more often than not, on the devil you know basis.

The way Gnu copes with VAT seems quite laborious though, requiring quite a lot of master file maintenance to set up an extra level in the chart of accounts, so that income and expenditure are first separated into VAT/non-VAT and then each of those sectors has to be broken down into the normal profit and loss categories, interest, council tax and wages, etc in one, and sales, goods, stationery, etc. in the other. You then have to build custom reports to select and aggregate the VAT-designated items into one report. Aaaaaargh!

Gnucash seems much more of a replacement for Quicken/MS Money personal finance software than for QuickBooks at this stage, although enthusiastic users could create QB-style standard charts of accounts and VAT templates and compile them into code for the General Good perhaps. However, three or four days of non-volunteer data processing and conversion time costs a lot more than another copy of QuickBooks. It would suit a lot of small traders though. The use of QIF (Quicken interchange format I think) as standard probably means that if anyone has the patience to keep their books on it, it could be exported into real QuickBooks for easier handling, again subject to an accurate mapping template between the two charts of accounts. Definitely worth keeping an eye on, but not quite there yet.

Best Regards,

Malcolm

* = That’s also free as in freedom Malcolm, as well as free as in beer

Our friend Kevin of Connecting Bristol has written to give us another date for the diary. On 19th May Connecting Bristol will be supporting a seminar, in association with Business West, aimed at giving a comprehensive overview of using online ‘new media’ channels and making the web work hard for your organisation - whether it’s in the corporate, community, charity or public sector.

Here are the basic details:

• Venue: Watershed, 1 Canons Rd, Bristol BS1 5TX
• Booking: events@businesswest.co.uk
• Price: £10
• Time: 9 am - 12 noon

Full details are on the Connecting Bristol blog.

Bristol Wireless are hosting an evening of radical geekery at St Werburghs Centre (Horley Road http://www.blex.co.uk/lilurl/96 ) on Sunday 11th May from 5.30pm. You’re invited to try out some of the excellent projects they’ve been developing with free software and discarded computer kit, listen to talks on the rise of the Creative Commons movement, learn about the history of Bristol Wireless and watch a movie (from 7pm) on the rise of the Linux Operating System. Bar open all evening. Tunes & stories from 8.30 to 10pm from Radio Vague ( The Sunday Roast - http://www.radiovague.com/sundayroast/ ) , Eastons biggest free software internet radio broadasting network. Donations Welcome!

Digital Inclusion Conference, The Brewery, London, Tuesday 30 April 08

Only two-thirds of people go online in the UK. The remaining third don’t use the internet at all. That’s 17 million people who are ‘digitally excluded’. This conference set out to address this remaining third. The government are so keen to address this issue that they’ve even created a new ministerial position for it: Minister for Digital Inclusion (currently Paul Murphy).

This conference was hosted by ukonline centres, a quango which administers funding to encourage ICT in the community and is sponsored by the big boys, including Microsoft, BT, Intel and the EU. The conference was well attended by people from government offices, city councils and other national public bodies. When asked to raise our hands if we were from a voluntary project, only four people did out of at least 200 people. Seeing as how much the government is willing to fund large organisations to meet the challenge and BW felt that we are doing our own little bit in getting people connected, we went along hoping for funding opportunities and contacts.

BW also felt able to give an insight into some of the issues being addressed. Half of the 17 million who don’t use the internet are in social groups D and E - the poorest in our society. BT’s attempts to connect the nation fail when they refuse to give connectivity to families with CCJs (county court judgements or poor credit history). BW consider information to be a right, not a privilege, and offer free access for all through our wireless network.

Matters discussed were quite wide-ranging and interesting: one speaker made the comment that kid’s play areas had been cut by 85% in the physical realm, but that 85% had been taken up by the internet and suggested that education was necessary to keep kids safe. However, speakers’ comments and topics of interest varied downwards from this to what a jolly good thing email is, to how great it was to send digital photos by email to the ‘Great Firewall of China’ and how the UK could benefit from such far-thinking policies. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Stephen Gowland, Digital Challenge Programme Director for Sunderland City Council, described how difficult it was to spend the £7m Digital Challenge winnings, having spent nearly a year trying to fill the positions with staff still struggling to meet his objectives. What Bristol Wireless would have done with that £7m (apart from tucking it safely behind the bar of our favourite hostelry) would have been to enhance the projects which we’ve already got running here in Bristol, with the people who are already in place running them: for example, more supported housing community rooms providing access and training, a larger wireless network, financing media companies for local IPTV, radio and so on.

On a lighter note, I did get to talk to some of the ukonline centre’s movers and shakers, who were interested in Bristol Wireless’ open source model. Free software for the masses, low-spec PCs running the latest operating systems and programmes, which means that hardware is easily and cheaply available. (See £50 PCs from BW …)

Thanks to Connecting Bristol and ICT Hub South West for the opportunity to attend this conference.

For more media coverage check out this link.

Ben Green writes:

We are in Debian Weekly News!

We are down the bottom with:

“Co-operative Breathes New Life into Old Machines with Debian”

We’re in the news for the 21st April 2008 and the actual piece in question highlighted by Ben reads:

Co-operative Breathes New Life into Old Machines with Debian

“Bristol Wireless is a co-operative set up to develop a free-to-access broadband intranet using radio, with the emphasis on supplying ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) that are relevant, permanent and affordable to communities that find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide. The group is working together with Voscur and Byteback Computing to provide access to computers built on Debian to the people of Bristol. Byteback provide the wiped machines to Bristol Wireless; we install Debian Linux on them and use the machines in our grant-funded projects in deprived inner city areas.”

Australia’s Computerworld reports that Rossvyazokhrankultura, the Russian Mass Media, Communications and Cultural Protection Service, has a draconian-sounding policy of registration being required for every wi-fi device and hotspot in the country, according to a report this week from Russian news agency Fontanka.

Vladimir Karpov, the deputy director of the agency’s communications monitoring division, said that Rossvyazokhrankultura’s interpretation of current law holds that users must register any electronics that use the frequency involved in wi-fi communications.

Aside from public hotspots, the registration requirement also applies to home networks, laptops, smart phones and wi-fi-enabled PDAs, Karpov is reported to have said, and registration only permits use by the owner. Quite where this leaves travellers taking their laptops or other wireless devices is not mentioned, but for Russian residents this move looks like involving lots of paperwork, bureaucracy and delay.

Read the full story on Computerworld.

Sean Kenny posted the following email to the Bristol Wireless mailing list today:

“A small group of Golden Age* trainees have recently lost funding for their Computer Class/Club at a weekly venue in St Pauls. They are looking to replace the City of Bristol College trainer with a volunteer to teach very basic skills. If you’re interested, please contact me through Voscur on 0117 9330508 or mail seank (at) voscur.org”

Can you help? If so, please contact Sean as outlined above.

* Would these be the same as Silver Surfers? Or are they more valuable? Ed.

Another date for your diaries folks! Richard Blackburn has written to inform us of this year’s UK Embedded Masterclass - a workshop dedicated to using Linux on embedded devices. Working with an ARM processor, the workshop will combine theory and practice and give delegates an insight into the working of Linux in the embedded environment.

Two sessions of the workshop are being held: in London on 8th May 2008, and again in Bristol on 13th May.

“The open source nature of Linux has made it a big hit with engineers,” said event organiser Richard Blackburn. “Being able to get ‘under the bonnet’ of the software holds a lot of attraction for engineers and we have already received a number of registrations for this workshop, places are going fast.”

The workshop will be run by Feabhas, a leader in embedded systems training. Feabhas works with many of the UK’s leading hi-tech development companies and has been at the forefront of using Linux in embedded devices. The workshop will show engineers how to configure a standard Linux kernel for use in a cross development system and the steps to write, compile and download an embedded Linux application with real hardware.

“This is an ideal workshop for engineers wishing to assess the suitability of Linux for their next application or for software engineers who are developing applications for embedded Linux,” said Jo Cooling of Feabhas. “We have been a keen supporter of the Embedded Masterclass since the first event 6 years ago, it will be a good chance for engineers to come along and not only develop new skills but to also explore the latest technologies and learn from industry experts in a non-sales environment.”

Attendees of the Embedded Linux Workshop will need good C programming skills. Some knowledge of operating systems and Unix or Linux commands will be helpful, but not essential. The course presents embedded concepts applied to Linux, using an ARM development board as the target (ConnectCore Wi-9C Digi JumpStart Kit for Linux). The host development system will be a standard PC running Linux. The target will serve as an example of a simple embedded system which can control hardware via a simple digital I/O interface.

The Embedded Masterclass is now in its 6th year, with over 800 embedded engineers having registered for previous events. Each event comprises technical presentations covering issues at the cutting edge of embedded development.

“We want engineers to go away feeling that the whole event has been a productive use of their time,” said Richard. “So we work hard to ensure each presentation imparts really useful knowledge and that each presenter is a true expert in their technology. Often, the presentations can get quite interactive, which is exactly how we want it to be.”

The event also includes a tabletop exhibition. Some of the world’s leading embedded systems tools, hardware and software vendors have already signed up as exhibitors, including MontaVista - a world leader in embedded Linux solutions, Enea - a world leader in operating systems and development tools for mobile phones and wireless infrastructure equipment, SDC Systems - a leading UK supplier of development tools and software testing solutions, Barric - leading UK manufacturer of complex electronics hardware and Telelogic - a world leader in UML system modelling tools.

“The tabletop format for the exhibition has been good for us,” said Richard. “This means that there is more focus on the technology and less on the sales/marketing. It makes for a better environment for engineers to learn about the technology, it simply makes it a lot more friendly and less competitive. As the event has grown, it’s been easier to attract the more important world class players. With people like MontaVista and Enea on board, we feel sure engineers will want to come along and learn about their new offerings.”

The Embedded Masterclass is free to engineers and technology managers. Attendance is limited, so early registration is advised. The Embedded Linux workshop is at a special price of £95; again places are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. For more information and registration, visit the Embedded Masterclass website or contact Richard Blackburn at Energi - richard (at) energi-tech.co.uk

A date for your diaries: on Sunday 11th May next, Bristol Wireless will be hosting an event entitled ‘The Virtual Commons’ at St Werburghs Community Centre. It will form part of Bristol Radical History Group’s forthcoming ‘Down With The Fences’ programme, which runs from Thursday May 1st to Sunday May 11th 2008.

The fortnight of events is dedicated to the struggle for the commons of all kinds then and now.

For our contribution, we’ll be hosting an evening of Creative Commons fun including talks, demonstrations of free software uses and a film screening. In addition, we’ll have the bar open too!

The provisional programme for The Virtual Commons is as follows:

• 5.00-7.00pm - Interactive workshop on Open Source Software
• 7.30pm - Film: ‘Revolution OS’ - a documentary film made in the United States in 2001 and directed by J. T. S. Moore, which traces the twenty-year history of GNU, Linux, open source and the free software movement. This will be followed by a talk and discussion on open source software.

See here for details of Bristol Radical History Group’s programme of events.

Click here to download the trailer for Revolution OS (18 MB).

As part of a longstanding commitment to Dove Street Action Group (DSAG), Bristol Wireless are developing a wireless network around the flats.

This work had been funded by UFI under the user journey project. There is still some infrastructure left to install, but the first two households have now been connected. Both are really pleased with their new connections and are looking forward to learning more about the internet. Neither household has been internet users in the past, so there is plenty to learn and explore for everyone. The project participants will be taking part in several weeks of structured training in their own homes.

Next step is to get everyone set up with email addresses, one family is keen to install and try out Skype so we will probably try that next week.