Chief scribe
Today is Document Freedom Day, an annual event that aims to educate the public about the importance of free document formats and open standards in general. Here in the Bristol Wireless lab, we’ve been telling visitors about why open standards and free document formats are important, such as avoiding the pitfalls of proprietary formats and […]
It’s 8.30 on the morning of Saturday 26th March and your ‘umble scribe is standing on a sunny Stapleton Road station waiting for the train. One and a half hours later, he alights at an overcast and chillier Hereford station and goes ambling into town in search of 2 things: firstly, breakfast and secondly, All […]
Over the Christmas vacation, Bath University took advantage of the absence of students to install 50 new computers on the 5th floor of its library. These new machines are faster, smaller, quieter and generally better to use, as well as being part of a demonstration of a new method of distributing energy. These computers are […]
Over at Computer World UK, Tony Collins currently has a most revealing report on the state of UK government IT procurement taken from a House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee session, during which it interviewed Martin Rice, CEO of software company Erudine. Besides references to cartels and an “oligarchy of government IT suppliers”, the […]
News arrives in your correspondent’s inbox that it’s only 8 weeks to go to this year’s Silver Surfers Day the national campaign that aims to get older people using computers and the internet. Silver Surfers’ Day is specifically aimed those over 55 years of age (such as the author of this dire drivel. Ed.). Since […]
Bristol Wireless has been using wikis for years to document and plan the development of the co-operative and its work, so we were delighted to accept an invitation to attend the Bristol Wiki Academy at the weekend (news passim). To the best of our knowledge, this was the first Wiki Academy to be organised in […]
Via the medium of Twitter, the co-op’s chief scribe learns that Bristol’s Girl Geeks are having a get-together, a bite to eat and some food for thought in the middle of next week. The event’s publicity posted on Eventbrite reads as follows: I am very glad to announce the 7th edition of Bristol Girl Geek […]
It’s a busy day in the lab, with volunteers Michael, Jim, Rich, Acesabe and yours truly present and it’s a real hive of activity, the silence punctuated by the gentle tapping of keyboards. Acesabe is up to something to do with networking of which ordinary mortals like your ‘umble scribe is not meant to wot […]
Next Thursday March 24 our friends at Knowle West Media Centre will be organising My Friends Online – an opportunity for for people to learn basic computer skills and enjoy a free lunch at the centre too! The event runs from 11:00 am to 3:30 pm and is free of charge. Those attending are invited […]
Osor reports that the Dutch could save €1-4 bn. per year, if the public sector moved to open source software, according to calculations done by the Ministry of the Interior. The ministry deemed the report ‘unsound’ and wanted to keep it under wraps, but Dutch Members of Parliament demanded access to the report. The report […]
Bristol Dorkbot has announced it’s having its regular monthly meeting tonight (Tuesday 15th March) at 7.00 pm at the Pervasive Media Studio (map). Tonight the Dorkbotters will be looking to introduce a new spot entitled ‘Tech Heroes’; this month there will be a short talk about John Harrison and the Longitude problem.
Whilst the venerable Debian distro names its releases after characters in the Toy Story film, the popular Ubuntu distro – a spin-off from Debian – uses a formula of an adjective plus wildlife name to characterise its twice-yearly releases. Mark Shuttleworth, an early space tourist in a previous life and now the leading light behind […]
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 […]
Regular readers will know that last week, Ben – one of our long-serving volunteers – was invited to take part in an Innovation Academy event entitled ‘Imagine a City where…’ (news passim). Sam Downie has now uploaded Part 1 of the audio for the event, which features the following guest speakers: Tomas Rawlings (Peer-to-Peer Foundation) […]
LibreOffice, the free, power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Linux, Macintosh and Windows that forked from OpenOffice following the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle in January 2010, has now got a new website. So reset your bookmarks to http://www.libreoffice.org/ LibreOffice is community-driven and developed software and the project comes under the wings of […]
JH writes to the Hacktionlab list: Richard Stallman is doing 5 talks at various locations around the country in early March. It seems his main current activity is around raising awareness against anti-downloading legislation, corporations imposing Digital Rights Management and cracking down on copyright infringements – so it’s not the standard rant from him about […]
Over the past couple of days we’ve gone and updated our WordPress install and, as part of the update, we’ve also added the WPTouch plug-in to enable customisation of the site’s theme especially for folk with smartphones. Apparently it delivers a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to touch mobile visitors, without modifying […]
On 16 March Bristol’s Circle Interactive is hosting a one-day Introduction to CiviCRM with tutor Sean Kenny. Earlier this month, Circle held a CiviCRM user group meeting (news passim). The course will give an overview of CiviCRM use in small to medium-sized organisations and the first session will offer hands-on training in everyday tasks, such […]
Kerala IT News reports that the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) was inaugurated on 24th February by Kerala’s Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan in Thiruvananthapuram. ICFOSS will focus on providing technical assistance for using FOSS to implement various government projects in Kerala in an endeavour to promote open source software. In […]
From Bristol24-7 comes news that will gladden the hearts of Dorkbotters, the Bristol Hackspace crew, anyone else interested in doing strange things with electricity and technology, plus football fans with a bent for the cybernetic: next year Bristol will play host to the world’s most advanced autonomous robots competing against each other and the expertise […]