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Bristol leads UK in work wifi use

The chief scribe has been known to sit in his local café writing posts to this blog using the establishment’s wifi whilst waiting for his full English and toast to arrive; and it seems he’s not alone. Quoting a study by Rupert Murdoch’s Sky, Bristol 24/7 reports that nearly 1 in 3 Bristolians – 31% […]

Open Rights Group: Censorship and Surveillance Campaign Training

Today the UK Government introduced its Snooper’s Charter proposals (aka as the draft Communications Data Bill. Ed.). To coincide with the announcement of this proposed draconian legislation, the Open Rights Group has announced a series of censorship and surveillance campaign sessions. The ORG is billing these sessions as “training that will equip activists to help […]

What if computers could enjoy music?

Bristol University puts on a steady stream of public events and talks throughout the year and next Wednesday 20th June sees the latest of them, when Dr Tijl De Bie of the Department of Engineering Mathematics gives a free public talk entitled “What if computers could enjoy music?” The event starts at 6 pm and […]

It’s Pi day

Now that “Queenie’s little bash” (© Mr Treasurer 😉 ) is over, we Bristol Wireless volunteers are shaking off our torpor and shuffling back to the lab. When the chief scribe arrived, he was most taken with a hardware donation we’ve had. We’re no strangers to hardware donations: indeed, some of our earliest kit came […]

Belgian Province of Luxembourg moves to open source VoIP

The Belgian Province of Luxembourg (yes, there is such a beast! Ed. ) was for a long time a user of VoIP telephony services based on proprietary technology supplied by Cisco (Call Manager + SCCP protocol), Joinup reports. A few months ago and following a public tender, the Province decided to rid itself of vendor-lock-in […]

A look back at Monmouthpedia

The dust has now settled over the launch of Monmouthpedia on Saturday, when Monmouth was officially launched as the world’s first Wikipedia town (news passim). Monmouth, an historic town close to the border between England and Wales, is now sell covered in QR codes, enabling visitors with smart phones (e.g. Android, Jesusphone) to scan them […]

Council shells out so Hackspace can lay eggs

Connecting Bristol inform us that our friends at Bristol Hackspace will be arranging a workshop to build some Air Quality Eggs which will then be deployed around Bristol. Air Quality Eggs are low-cost environmental sensors capable of sensing NO2, CO2, O3, VOC and radiation. The workshop will take place in August (the exact date is […]

Dortmund considers an open source strategy

In the opinion of Christian Nähle, an employee of Dortmund City administration in Germany, Dortmund should prioritise open source software over its proprietary equivalents. According to Joinup, Nähle has written an open source proposal for Dortmund, which is currently being reviewed by the city’s IT department. The strategy paper’s explanatory statement has also been posted […]

Use Windows or risk a fine?

Disturbing news from Slovakia reaches the lab via the FSFE. The east European state recently introduced legislation to help cut red tape by mandating the use of electronic filing of monthly VAT returns by businesses. However, the Slovakian state’s web application failed to observe interoperability guidelines and only works in Internet Explorer on Windows. EURA […]

4th May 2012 – International Day Against DRM

Yes, our world these days is littered with three letter acronyms and days. Today’s target is DRM or Digital Rights Management, aka Digital Restrictions Management. DRM is applied to media by media companies and vendors to restrict their portability and reuse. While DRM has largely been defeated in downloaded music, it is a growing problem […]

Hong Kong is the venue Wikimania 2013

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on Bristol’s (ultimately unsuccessful) bid to host the annual Wikimania convention in 2013 (news passim). James Forrester, Moderator of the Wikimania 2013 Jury, has sent the following email to the Wikimania mailing list announcing the 2013 winning bid as Hong Kong. On behalf of the Wikimania 2013 selection […]

Greece: municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis migrating to LibreOffice

Joinup reports that the Greek municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis, just east of Thessaloniki, is migrating all of its PCs to LibreOffice with the assistance of Greeklug, the Greek Linux User Group. Greeklug explains in a statement (in Greek) published at the end of March that it has completed the migration of 91 PCs from a proprietary […]