Unicef promotes open source in fight against poverty
Unicef has a total of US $ 9 mn. to promote start-ups whose technology can improve young peoples’ lives. However, these must involve open source projects.
Something about Steve Woods
Chief scribe
MEPs for more public sector open source use
The European Parliament adopted its report “Towards a Digital Single Market” in response to the European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy in mid-January, the Free Software Foundation Europe FSFE) reports. The FSFE is pleased the Parliament took an affirmative attitude towards the increased use of free software and its importance to digital single market. In […]
Joint effort to produce first 100% open source, enterprise-grade cloud office suite
Kolab Systems, creators of Kolab, the leading open source groupware and collaboration framework, today announced a partnership with Collabora Productivity, the architects behind LibreOffice Online, the cloud-based office productivity suite. The first version of Kolab with integrated CloudSuite functionality is due to appear around the middle of 2016. Collabora’s CloudSuite web-based document product will be […]
France: draft Digital Law overwhelmingly adopted by deputies
The draft Digital Republic Law presented to the French Council of Ministers by Axelle Lemaire last December has been adopted by 356 votes for and only 1 against.
Bristol open networking solutions company receives major investment
Zeetta Networks, which focuses on the design, development and marketing of open networking solutions, has received funding of £1.25 million to commercialise Bristol University’s software-defined networking technology to smart enterprises and Internet of Things (IoT).
The future of the internet – at the speed light
New research has found a scientific solution that enables future internet infrastructure to become completely open and programmable while carrying internet traffic at the speed of light.
Cross-party group of MPs: BT should be forced to sell Openreach
The British Infrastructure Group (BIG), a cross-party group of 121 Members of Parliament dedicated to promoting better infrastructure across the entire United Kingdom has today released a report (PDF) entitled “Broadbad“, which has determined that some 5.7 million broadband customers (of whom 3.5 mn. live in rural areas0 and 400,000 businesses experience “dire” connection speeds […]
Bristol academic – working quantum computing system a reality by 2020
Professor O’Brien, Director of the Centre for Quantum Photonics at the University of Bristol and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University, is giving a talk today (Thursday) at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, at which he’ll announce that a working quantum computing system is expected to be developed by 2020. Professor O’Brien is […]
EU broadband prices down, but speeds still lagging
The European Commission has just published three broadband studies examining speed, price and coverage. The first study, on broadband quality, concludes that subscribers are getting 75% of advertised download speeds. The second study, on prices, shows that broadband access has continued to become more affordable, whilst the third report, on broadband coverage, confirms substantial deployments […]
Ubuntu to withdraw sponsored search
Ubuntu signed an agreement with Amazon for sponsored searches within the distribution. When it was signed in 2012, Richard Stallman labelled it “spyware“ and polemics became inevitable. Ubuntu now seems to be backtracking. It’s official. This functionality will be dropped from the next version of Ubuntu – 16.04 LTS – which will be released in […]
Belgian government relaunches open data portal
Fedict – the Belgian Federal Public Service for Information and Communication Technology – and the office of Theo Francken, the Secretary of State for Administrative Simplification relaunched the federal open data portal – http://data.gov.be/ – last Tuesday, Belgian news site Datanews reports. Fedict launched the first version of the open data portal in Belgium in […]
UK government still wants to have its encrypted cake and eat it
When the UK government started to prepare the ground for the latest version of the Snoopers’ Charter, the Investigatory Powers Bill, Prime Minister David Cameron was quite adamant that the government should be able to decipher encrypted material. According to The Guardian, the technologically ignorant PM is on record as saying: “In extremis, it has […]
AT&T chooses Ubuntu instead of Windows
It’s been announced that American multinational telecommunications corporation AT&T Inc. of Dallas, Texas, has selected Ubuntu Linux for its cloud and enterprise applications. AT&T is the second largest provider of mobile telephone and the largest provider of fixed telephone in the United States, in addition to which it also provides broadband subscription television services. Canonical, […]
France: government rejects encryption backdoors
It’s rare to find a politician that really “gets” IT. Who can forget Stephen Timms MP? He was the Minister for the Digital Economy in the last Labour government who’s on record for mistakenly stating that the IP in IP address was an abbreviation for Intellectual Property (Doh! Ed.). More recently, British Home Secretary Theresa […]
First Ubuntu Day announced
In a blog post Marcin Kierdelewicz of Ubuntu has announced the first ever Ubuntu Day. Ubuntu Day will be a local event organised with the distro’s partners to support awareness and adoption of Ubuntu technologies in local markets. It will be an opportunity for people to learn about Ubuntu Cloud products directly from the experts […]
Gigabit internet roll-out planned for Bristol
CityFibre, a company which builds, designs and operates pure-fibre networks across the UK and markets itself as “UK’s only nationwide, wholesale provider of dark fibre“, has announced plans to offer super high-speed services at speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s in Bristol, V3 reports. The company will partner with business internet service provider Triangle Networks […]
Happy 15th birthday, Wikipedia
This week, Wikipedia reaches its fifteenth birthday. These days the free online encyclopaedia is the world’s seventh most popular website and now includes more than 38 million articles in 289 languages, all maintained by an army of volunteer editors and contributors. Andy Mabbett, one of that army of editors and contributors, has been musing on […]
Bristol does well in broadband speed stakes
Back before Christmas, telecommunications regulator Ofcom published its Connected Nations infrastructure report (PDF) which examines connectivity in the UK in 2014 and 2015 and the media have just caught up from their festive torpor. According to Ofcom, “superfast” broadband (30 Mb/s and above) is now available to more consumers than ever before, with both industry […]
Server retired after 18 years & 10 months
As part of our network upgrade work, Bristol Wireless has recently retired a couple of Pentium III-powered Compaq Deskpro EN machines that were acting as network gateways and performing other roles too. As these CPUs were only produced for 4 years between 1999 and 2003, that means our hardware is rather long in the tooth. […]
Free wi-fi coming to Shrewsbury and Telford hospitals
Today’s Shropshire Star reports that free wi-fi will be provided at Shropshire’s two main hospitals – the Royal Shrewsbury in the county town and the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford. The overall scheme will cost some £400,000 with funding provided by the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust and Telford and Wrekin Clinical Commissioning Group. […]