Chief scribe
Via its blog, The Document Foundation has announced the release of LibreOffice 4.3; this is the 8th major release of the free and open source office suite since the birth of the project in September 2010. LibreOffice 4.3 offers a large number of improvements and new features, including: Document interoperability: support for MS’ OOXML Strict, […]
Writing yesterday on the Free Software Foundation (FSF) blog, Libby Reinish states that UK citizens will soon be able to fill out government paperwork with their freedoms intact. The British government announced last week (news passim) that Open Document Format (ODF), HTML and PDF will be the official file formats used by all government agencies. […]
A New York-based start-up has produced a portable antenna which can take over communications networks in the event of mobile services outages. The device, which is connected to by Bluetooth Low Energy to a smartphone, enables encrypted messages to be exchanged over distances from 1 to 80 kilometres.
Great news for all lovers of open standards! It’s goodbye to the ubiquitous use of MS Office formats in Whitehall; and what’s more, the government has decided not to sanction the use of Microsoft’s OOXML ‘standard’ despite lobbying by the US software giant and its supporters. The open standards selected for sharing and viewing government […]
We’ve gleaned from our friends at Connecting Bristol that online takeaway meals ordering outfit Just Eat is sponsoring a hackday this coming Saturday, 26th July at the Engine Shed in Bristol from 8.00 am to 9.00 pm. The programme of events is: 8.00am – 8.30am: Breakfast 8.30am – 9.30am: Team formation and pitching 9.30am – […]
Yesterday, while David Cameron was rearranging his Cabinet, one significant piece of news (apart from the DRIP Bill. Ed.) seems to have escaped the personality-obsessed British media. The news was the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills announced that Companies House is to make all of its digital data available free of charge. It has […]
The European Commission has recently renewed its commitment to a proprietary desktop and secret file formats, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) writes. The Commission is refusing to make a serious effort to break free from vendor lock-in and is ignoring all available alternatives. In doing so, the EU’s civil service fails to practice what […]
Bristol City Council is working with the Future Cities Catapult and the Connected Digital Economy Catapult on a new open data initiative that will help Bristolians improve their city with the help of local authority data. The partners are working together to release Bristol civic data sets such as traffic management and land use databases […]
In response to Mozilla’s announcement that it is reluctantly adopting DRM in its Firefox Web browser, Free Software Foundation executive director John Sullivan made the following statement: “Only a week after the International Day Against DRM, Mozilla has announced that it will partner with proprietary software company Adobe to implement support for Web-based Digital Restrictions […]
On Friday evening the Open Rights Group organised one of a series of nationwide European Digital Rights hustings at St Werburgh’s Community Centre in Bristol. This was a chance for local people to quiz MEP candidates from the South West about their views on digital rights and ask them to sign up to the 10 […]
Were you aware that Bristol’s University of the West of England (UWE) has a Professor of Unconventional Computing? Professor Andrew Adamatzky (for it is he! Ed.) and a German colleague have recently been engaged in some interesting research according to a UWE press release. Professor Andrew Adamatzky and Theresa Schubert (Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany) have constructed […]
Today is Document Freedom Day (DFD) 2014. DFD is an annual celebration of and opportunity to promote the use of open formats and standards for digital documents and takes place on the last Wednesday in March each year. Document freedom means documents that are free can be used in any way that the author intends. […]
The Gnome Outreach Program for Women (OPW) helps women get involved in free and open source software and has just announced the opening of a new round of internship applications. Women can apply for an internship to contribute to an open source project from May to August; and OPW is not just asking for applications […]
It’s Friday, so it’s Pi day! 😉 Bristol Wireless volunteer Michal has currently got a Raspberry Pi – the credit-card-sized single-board computer developed in the UK – up and running as an LTSP thin client. Could this be the future of cheap computing devices?
Bath University has published its programme of forthcoming public lectures. Of these, one in particular caught our eye. Entitled “Drowning in data: who and what can we trust?“, it’s being given by Professor David Rhind from 17:30-18:45 on Wednesday, 2nd April 2014 in the Chancellors’ Building, Lecture Theatre 1.10. It has been estimated that in […]
With about an hour to go before the shutters came down on Friday afternoon, Bristol Wireless responded to the Cabinet Office’s consultation on file formats for sharing and collaborating on documents with government. Our response is reproduced below. Background: we are a volunteer-run IT co-operative which has been active in the west of England for […]
Our friends over the road at Bristol Hackspace are having a beginners’ Arduino session tonight, according to their Twitter feed. interested in #arduino and you're a beginner? Come along tonight at the hackspace! 7pm till 9pm. led by @will_price_94 #BristolCity — Bristol Hackspace (@bristolhackspc) February 19, 2014 According to the manufacturers, the Arduino is an […]
Free software, we love you! 🙂 Don’t know what free software is? Find out here. Show your love for free software today by using the #ilovefs hashtag.
Malta’s new open data website is running on open source software, according to Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site. The site, which is run by the Maltese Local Councils Association, uses Centos Linux as its underlying operating system, the MySQL database management system, the Nginx web server and WordPress as its content […]
This Friday 14th will be – as it is every year – St Valentine’s Day and the whiff of romance is in the air as restaurants, the greetings cards business and florists gird their loins and reinforce their tills for increased turnover. On 14th February, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is asking all free […]