Scotrail has just secured £250,0000 of funding from the Scottish government for a three month pilot project to trail the provision of free wifi on trains. According to Guardian Government Computing, the pilot will run from June until September on trains travelling primarily between Glasgow and Edinburgh. An ethernet backbone will be installed a total […]
Jules, our esteemed treasurer, is currently several thousand miles away from Bristol. Nevertheless, he was able to participate in our last monthly meeting fully due to the wonders of IRC. When he’s been away before, Jules has always emailed his report. However, this time all contact was via IRC and Mr Secretary is delighted: instead […]
We first became aware of this campaign via a Tweet from EU Vice-President Neelie Croes: We’re hiring! More volunteers needed to measure #EU #broadband speeds w @samknows http://ow.ly/8EuGV http://ow.ly/8EuMm The European Commission and SamKnows are together aimin to provide Europe with reliable and accurate statistics of broadband performance across Europe. They are currently recruiting volunteers […]
We learn today from Bristol 24/7 that the city’s Cabot Circus shopping centre (Bristol’s out of town shopping centre at the city centre end of the M32. Ed. 😉 ) is to become the first shopping centre in the South West of England to offer free wifi to its visitors. This is due, we are […]
The CiviCRM Community site reports that a UK User Group meeting is to take place on 8th December 2011 from 4.30 pm to 6.30 pm at The Create Centre in Bristol (map). This will be an informal way of meeting others from the community and learning more about CiviCRM. The organisers say they’ll try and […]
Bristol City Council and Bristol University have reached an agreement that will result in several hundred more free wifi spots being made available in the city, the Bristol Evening Post reports. The council currently has some 50 free wifi spots around the city in places like College Green and St Nicholas Market via its B-Open […]
Yes, you did read that correctly. It’s not very often the freetards of the Bristol Wireless lab recommend you spend any money. After all, we like our software to be free in both the beer and speech senses! 🙂 However, for once we’re changing our usual philosophy and encouraging you to go and grab some […]
Some Bristol Wireless members have just returned from a week’s holiday on Crete – Greece’s largest island. While there they visited Heraklion and Rethymno, 2 of the largest cities on the island, as well as staying in a small village on the south coast, and thus had ample opportunity to assess the island’s wifi. A […]
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, […]
Last week BW volunteers Rich and Acesabe paid a visit to the Rosevear sheltered housing scheme in Newtown to see if their link to our network could be restored. One of the last things they expected to find there was wildlife interfering with our infrastructure… Rich takes up the tale below. “As I was unscrewing […]
The Register reports that File Transfer Protocol (FTP) celebrates its 40th anniversary this weekend. FTP itself was initially proposed by MIT‘s Abhay Bhushan in April 1971 for transferring large files over ARPANet, the forerunner to today’s internet. However, it still has its uses, unlike some earlier protocols (gopher anyone? Ed.), and its future looks assured. […]
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 […]
Some years ago Bristol Wireless were involved in a project with a wild life sanctuary called Secret World on the levels in deepest, darkest Somerset. Recently we were approached again to stream more critters. How could we refuse? Needless to say, a couple of us went to Somerset to see what we had to achieve […]
To some people network neutrality may seem an esoteric subject, but it’s absolutely vital for the way modern information technology functions. Last Wednesday, Government minister Ed Vaizey told the FT World Telecoms Conference that ISPs could soon be allowed to drop net neutrality and prioritise content providers prepared to pay to ensure a better quality […]
It’s before 10 am on a Saturday morning and there’s a dozen or so Bristol Wireless folks huddled together in Hamilton House. Besides amazement at our weekend early rising proclivities, readers are probably wondering if this gathering served some useful purpose; and of course it did – we’d all come together for a day’s networking […]
The Wireless Community Weekend (WCW) hosted annually by Freifunk is taking place at the end of May (22.-24.05.2009) and will be staged once again at c-base in Berlin. The event programme has not been firmed up yet and will be arranged by participants. Proposals for the programme can be submitted before the event. Further details […]
Bristol Wireless volunteer Tony Stone has been experimenting with increasing the range of USB wifi dongles and has come up with a splendid bit of home-made kit. In Tony’s own words: I was having trouble picking up my local WiFi hotspot. I was using a USB dongle and added an extension cable to put it […]
At the start of the weekend Matt Toseland sent a message to our general list announcing he wouldn’t be able to make our monthly meeting in November. Apart from being a bit early, there’s nothing unusual in apologies from people unable to attend meetings. However, Matt has a good excuse: he’s moving to Scarborough (in […]
Following a talk down the pub the other night, Mike Harris of Psand went and checked the unused, 5 years old, home-made wireless cantenna on the roof of his current digs that used to connect to Bristol Wireless’ network and it still worked! Anyway, here’s the story in his own words: Hi All, Just thought […]
Bristol Wireless is well known in the open source world for its love of playing with the bleeding edge of technology and this occasionally has some unexpected benefits. One of these is that today we publicly announce the development of a new networking protocol – WCTP – or wireless cider transmission protocol. Almost since its […]