Archive for the ‘Digital Birmingham’ Category

We’re pleased to be welcoming Martha Lane Fox, Champion for Digital Inclusion and some of her Digital Inclusion Task Force to Birmingham today. We have a full morning planned with visits to meet families who have benefited from the award-winning Aston Pride Computers in the Home project; and residents of an Erdington tower block (Windsor House) who have been provided with computers and broadband connectivity in a six month trial to promote broadband uptake in social housing.

In addition to meeting the city’s residents, Martha Lane Fox will also be holding talks with community representatives, regional policy makers and business heads to discuss key priorities for the Race Online 2012 strategy and the city’s drive to address digital inclusion in achieving economic recovery. She will be meeting with Deputy Leader, Cllr Paul Tilsley where Martha’s ‘Ask’ to Birmingham will be to look at ways in which we could act more as a corporate citizen by engaging our workforce in helping to reduce the digital divide.

The full day’s programme is here for more information and we’ll let you know more about the day as it unfolds.

Some of you may already subscribe to our e-newsletter, Go Digital.  If you don’t, please do!

More - Go Digital: One Year On

From 2nd to 4th February 2010, the best Digital specialists from around Europe converged upon the RAI centre in Amsterdam for the Integrated Systems Europe 2010 event. Now in its 6th year, the ISE Show allows companies to showcase their hardware to audiences that over the three day event now is in excess of 25,000 attendees. The businesses vary from audio to visual hardware and in a visual format, from small format to large format screen.

The attendees also come from a wide spectrum of businesses, with the wish to see the best cutting-edge digital technology available and how the technology is used in a multitude of environments. Pebu represented Digital Birmingham at the event to look at the opportunities for project partners linked to innovations in digital signage particularly in connection to the digital events that we are delivering in autumn 2010.

Pebu have delivered cutting-edge technology before this event, at Hello Digital 2009 having a number of touch-screen technology pieces, including the Panasonic 103″ touch-screen, which at the time of the event was the World’s largest touch-screen.

The following Case Study highlights the key areas of the show and allows the partners of Pebu an insight into how these technologies will enhance the propositions that Pebu will look to deliver.

The Multipack is “a community of multi-talented Web professionals from across the West Midlands” who meet every fortnight in the Old Joint Stock.  Paul Lloyd from the group is arranging a hack day as part of his a.green:focus project on Saturday 20th February at One Black Bear, 191 Fazeley Street.

The aim of the day is to

build a Web site or app that encourages Web people like us to think about how we can reduce the size of our carbon footprint, both in the office and on the road.

Paul has provided the following details for the day

## Date
Saturday February 20, 2010 (and possibly Sunday if we decide we need more time)

More - Multipack: Hack the Planet

Recently read an article which reported that Alzheimer’s could be staved off by becoming web-savvy.  Dr Gary Small, an expert on ageing at the University of California, Los Angeles, said “Our findings point to an association between routine internet searching and neural circuitry activation in older adults.

Google, more than ordinary reading, stimulated the brain regions controlling language, reading, memory and vision.”

The study of UCLA’s Memory & Ageing Research Centre, used 24 adults aged 55 - 76, half of whom were used to performing web searches.  Dr Small added:  “it seems people who are more adept with internet technology are likely to remain mentally agile.”

If the above is true, I think the DB team must be the exception to the rule as we all seem to be suffering from one mental dysfunction  or another, but just not Alzheimer’s!

I’ve been thinking about this a bit recently as Digital Birmingham have been looking at the way that using the social web can help Small and Medium Sized businesses to drum up work.

Recently, Pete Ashton had a problem with his boiler and he asked Twitter for recommendations.

Now, having been on various Moseley related lists in the past ten years or so I knew that it wouldn’t be long before somebody recommended Clive the Gasman. Sure enough, Jon Bounds soon popped up and did exactly that.  I’ve used Clive myself because Bill Lees from the old Moseley Free group recommended him.

More - SMEs: Don’t bother with the Social Web

Online accounts at risk

The number is up for any who thinks they can count on a simple online password to keep personal details secure.  Choosing an easy-to-remember sequence of numbers is so widespread it is making it easy for cyber-criminals to hack into accounts.

Andrew Penman wrote an article in the Daily Mirror on 22 Jan 10 detailing the Top 10 passwords, I had to have a quick look down the list to see how many of them I’m guilty of, and with some relief my usual passwords are not listed, but I bet it still wouldn’t take the Hackers long to crack them!

How well do you fare in the The Top Ten Passwords list:

• 123456
• 12345
• 123456789
• Password
• iloveyou
• princess
• rockyou
• 1234567
• 12345678
• abc123

17 minutes … in that time 1,000 accounts will be hacked!  Tips on safe passwords including picking a gibberish word or taking a sentence like ‘this little piggy went to market’ and turning it into ‘tlpWENT2m’ - you should mix upper and lower case letters, avoid short passwords and don’t use the same one for several sites (well now they tell me!!) and finally, never trust anyone else with your passwords to sites such as personal banking!

The Pope has issued a new commandment to priests: Thou shalt blog - and make animated videos too!  His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI advised clerics around the world that using multimedia tools would help read the gospel. (released Vatican 23rd Jan 2010) 

The Pope may be 82 years old but he obviously has understood the huge importance of using digital channels for communicating messages.  Pope Benedict’s own online activities include a YouTube channel, a website and Pope2You even features a Facebook application that lets you send postcards with photos of Pope Benedict to friends.  I’m hoping that me spreading his good news may get me one step closer to the pearly gates in years to come!

Image from the Vatican

I’ve just read an interesting article from the BBC site which makes reference to London’s attempt to free up some of the public sector data in order to see how people might use it.  Birmingham is doing a similar project called Timely Information - but I hadn’t realised until now that 4ip Channel 4’s innovation fund are offering a £200,000 reward for the best of the ideas that come out of the mashup.  If I were a hacker, that would give me another good reason to work into the small hours.  And when you’re analysing the released datasets, why not check out the Council’s ‘Be Heard’ database.  This is an online portal for all of the City’s consultation.  Eg. what people want.  Hackers, you have the data, and you also have a font of information from the public, on what services they need or would like to see developed. Check out the piece from the BCC here