Archive for the ‘Digital City’ Category

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.

If we are to believe the “slip ups” from Cabinet members about the date of the General Election, the 6th May 2010 is only three months away.  Although many people will try, no-one can estimate who will be the country’s next Prime Minister and government party.

However, as time gets closer to the date in May, the three main parties are starting to release snippets of their manifestos to encourage would-be voters.  The Conservative Party are no different…..
More - Digital Manifesto

France & Germany line up to bash Internet Explorer

Here’s a link to the article that might be of interest to you!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/18/browser_hole/

As an avid magazine reader, I subscribe to one of the most popular women’s magazines in the country, Cosmopolitan.  From month to month there are (in my opinion) always interesting articles about the three main subjects the magazine focuses on love, life and fashion. 

However, this month’s edition had a report that really got my interest, as the focus appeared to be….technology!

More - The next decade…….

As we nudge closer to 2010, here is a look back at some of the digital highlights from our 2009 work programme that we have been involved in with our partners and colleagues across the city. We look forward to a successful 2010 - Happy New Year.
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It has been widely reported that British singer, Lily Allen, has decided to de-activate all of her social networking profiles (Twitter, MySpace etc) because she believes she has become addicted to the phenomenon.  Many press photographs of her over the last couple of years have usually shown her with a PDA of some description, updating her profiles.

However, the initial explanation for this was that Allen used MySpace to promote her music when she first started out.  This is done by a lot of musicians wanting to get their singles noticed.  But for Allen, and many others, it appears that their use of digital devices and social networks has taken over their lives.

So, for many of her fans, Lily Allen will not be as visible any more - but as her music is known widely and critically acclaimed, she has perhaps used these forums as much as she has needed to.  It is interesting to hear about ‘celebrities’ admitting their over-use of social networks, or the internet and digital devices in general.  It has brought more attention to this issue, as an individual must balance their existence in the digital and real world.

According to many recent news reports, the email will be defunct in 10 years as the growth of social networking sites and instant messaging increases ever rapidly.  But is this really true?  Will people actually stop using emails to communicate in their personal and professional lives?

More - Is it really the end of the humble email?

In Birmingham we are currently trying to find ways of measuring our usage of Social Media tools. Suggestions we have are based very much around measuring the number of times an organisation Tweets, how many followers it has, how many comments are on its blog, what the analytics are, etc.

Now, my level of interest in such things hovers somewhere around zero, to be honest. But the discussion did make me think about another way in which we could categorise our use of social networking tools, particularly in relation to other means of communication.

For instance, if we look at how widespread the adoption of a communications tool might be, we see quite a range. Most organisations right now have individual enthusiasts who have set up their own social networking presence, often without the knowledge of the wider organisation. We can compare that with a communications tool such as the telephone which is available to anybody who has contact with the public. And in between these two ends of the range, there’s another which is typified by one or more employees within each section or department being given the responsibility of using that particular tool. More - Social Media and Councils: A Fragmented Adhocracy?