Bristol Wireless News

There’s a new addition to the website which many of you might have missed — we now have a videoblog.

What’s that, then?

Simple really — but first, a technical aside and word of thanks: we’re using a debugged and slightly amended version of Garrick Van Buren’s WP-iPodCatter Plugin for WordPress to produce a special RSS feed from these news pages. Garrick has released the plugin under the GNU General Public License for the benefit of the WordPress community and deserves our thanks for his efforts. If you’re feeling particularly well-disposed, you could drop him a donation through Paypal — see the link on his WP-iPodCatter page.

So then: a videoblog… well, it’s basically just a category in this news section, but you subscribe to it using the Videoblog RSS link in the right-hand column. When you do that using a video-enabled RSS aggregator, something wonderful happens. Each time we publish a new item in the video category, the corresponding video file (usually MPEG4) will be downloaded for you to watch. And, er, that’s more or less it! It’s as if Bristol Wireless had it’s own intermittent TV channel.

For more information on RSS feeds, there’s a page on the wiki which explains what they’re about in more detail — it also has links to some of the more popular videoblogging software should you need it.

And so here we go: this is what makes this an entry in the videoblog — a link to the re-encoded HesFest video in MPEG4 format.

 Bristol Wireless at HESFest [9:14m]: Play in Popup | Download

Bristol Wireless are pleased to be able to have relaunched its PC giveaway project. We have distributed another 15 machines in the first month of 2006. Receipt of machines is linked to completion of “First Time on Line” the UFI funders basic skills assessment website. PCs donated by Institute of Physics Publishing (av.800Mhz/256MB/40GB) were data wiped and refurbished by volunteers with the Linux Operating system at the Lab. The new owners picked up their machines on one of our “giveaway Wednesdays”, and after a quick familiarisation tour and personalisation were very pleased to take them away. Support with the machines is available from the Community Centre drop-ins.

Bristol Wireless volunteers are now staffing the IT suite at Easton Community Centre 5 days a week, from 12 to 4pm for drop in Internet access and free computing advice. We are looking forward to working with the new management in February.