It’s easy to be critical of Bristol City Council; any long-term resident will vouch for that. However, amongst British local authorities it has been a pioneer for its willingness to dip its toes into the waters of open source, although even here it has not had an easy time (news passim). News emerges today on […]
On Friday your humble correspondent was avoiding doing paid work and discussing online the glacial pace of the UK public sector’s deployment of open source (news passim) with Mark Taylor of Sirius IT and IT journalist and writer Glyn Moody. During the discourse, Mark came up with the term ‘OSS Please!’. Glyn then picked it […]
Last week Mark Turner, CEO of Sirius IT and the lead for the Cabinet Office’s ‘New Suppliers to Government’ Workgroup expressed his frustration with the slow pace of implementing changes to the UK Government’s IT and embracing more open source (allegedly to go along with open standards and open data. Ed.) as follows via Twitter: […]
The Register reports that secondary school pupils could be taught coding, programming and how to write their own software at GCSE level as part of a major overhaul of the IT curriculum for UK schools. An initial trial will involve 100 pupils at 4 schools (Manchester Grammar, Bradfield College, Reading, Park House School, Newbury, and […]
Will wonders never cease? The chief scribe’s jaw dropped wide open when he heard the latest open source news from the depths of Whitehall, particularly as its content runs counter to the usual UK public sector open source news theme. Read on… According to OSOR, the UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) has signed a new […]
Our friends in the UK Ubuntu community want to hold more regular events in the real world, but don’t want to concentrate everything in one location. Consequently, they are going to hold an Ubuntu Hour at a pub in some part of the country roughly once a month. This way every couple of months everyone […]
In the flood of news about open source deployments by the public sector around the world, the UK public sector is beginning to look increasingly isolated with its devotion to closed source, proprietary IT (I believe this is what the experts call vendor lock-in. Ed.). The latest bit of news to reach the lab is […]
Our friends at Circle Interactive report that on 7th June LASA will be hosting a head-to-head comparison of 3 database software systems, featuring an in-depth analysis of the facilities of each. The Circle article continues: This is an ideal opportunity for any organisation, who [sic] is considering investing in a complete CRM system, to compare […]
Today the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne MP, is speaking at Google Zeitgeist 2011. As a matter of fact, he’s not just giving any old speech, but the event’s keynote address. HM Treasury has very kindly released the Chancellor’s speech in advance and it does make very interesting reading indeed. Perusing the speech, your […]
Yesterday, adelayde posted the following email to the Hacktionlab mailing list. Hi all, Am very pleased to announce that the booking system is now on-line at: http://registration.hacktivista.net If you’re intending to come please get on over there and book as soon as possible to secure your place. There are limited places this year as there […]
The Lancashire village of Wray (population approx. 500) became a true global village on Easter Monday with a world first – the live streaming of video and audio coverage of a village cricket match over the internet. The protagonists were Wray CC* vs the Rest of the World. The result: Wray won by 1 run, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
As announced a few weeks ago, a meet-up for CiviCRM users and developers was held on Thursday 10th February last at Bristol’s CREATE Centre (news passim), ably led by Circle Interactive‘s Dave Morton, who was being assisted by our old friend Sean Kenny. The main aims of the get-together were to discuss how the CiviCRM […]
Computer World UK reports that a survey of wifi networks around NHS Trust hospitals in the United Kingdom has found that fewer than 1 in 5 secure data connections using encryption. Worse than that, over half have not changed the manufacturer’s default wifi access point settings, potentially making them easy targets for anyone with malicious […]
H-Online reports that the main exchange of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is now live trading with a Novell SUSE Linux based system, following final step set-up procedures on Saturday 5 February. The system has been trialled for several months and the LSE’s move to Linux continues what appears to be a trend for stock […]