Archive for the ‘technology’ Category

It’s taken me a while to write about Timetric after I saw Andrew Walkingshaw present their software with Emma Mulqueeny at Local Gov Camp last month.  Essentially, Timetric is a set of web services which allows you to do a number of nifty things with datasets.

Yeah, really.

As their name suggests their raison d’etre is “graphing, tracking and comparing the movements of data over time”. Which is a subject both interesting and, like a lot of statistics, much abused. One of the things that I really like about Timetric is that they reference the source data they construct their graphs from. More – Timetric: Letting you tell a story

4iP, Channel 4‘s innovation fund for digital media, has started announcing its grant awards and it’s good to see that Birmingham has a part in them.

Will Perrin‘s Talk About Local is a collaboration with UK Online Centres to establish a network of tools with support for individuals and community groups to set up their own online presence.  Because of the strength of blogging talent in Birmingham, more particularly the many people using social media to increase civic engagement and give people a voice in their community, Talk About Local will be doing a lot of it’s early work in the Midlands.  Much of this will be in Birmingham but the Black Country and Stoke should get a look in as well. More – 4iP Projects Announced

Anyone living or working in Birmingham can now take advantage of the Citysave credit union scheme from the comfort of their own home if they have digital tv.   Subscribers to Sky Digital, Virgin Media and Freeview broadband services in Birmingham can use their remote control to access information about the scheme by choosing “Looking Local”. More – Beat the credit crunch! Start saving through your TV.

….or at least that’s the fancy title of the pilot project we’re running with funding from the department for Communities and Local Government. As announced by Hazel Blears, Birmingham is one of ten English councils who secured funding for a ‘Timely Information for Citizens’ pilot project.

The idea behind ‘Birmingham – Open City’ is to develop a community of practice around developing new resources to empower citizens. When Digital Birmingham were working up the bid we went on the basis that we shouldn’t presume what kind of services could be developed, or indeed, what kind of data sources could be made available to develop them. Instead we’re focusing on putting some resource into generating the collaborations, discussions, creativity and debate from which new services can spring.

More – Birmingham – Open City

Gaming fun in the digital family house joined by Ian Binks, BT and Birmingham City Council Deputy Leader, Paul Tilsley

Our Digital Family are now 8 months into their digital journey and have taken their technology skiing, used it to keep up to date with the football right down to the local league level of 9 year old Kieran and shopped online for holidays. This month is dad Simon’s turn to get some one-to-one support and a digital makeover for his business.  Dave Harte here will be giving Simon, a self-employed builder, some advice on setting up a website and promoting his services through online business communities such as BT Tradespace. More – Digital Family soon to be a green family

Google Maps

As someone with an unfortunate combination of a terrible sense of direction and the complacency to assume I’ll somehow find the way (not to mention the common male trait of being reluctant to ask for directions), online maps have saved me many an hour of aimless wandering around unfamiliar areas. Any tool that helps me to spec a place out must, then, be a Good Thing. More – I can see your house from here!

Logo for Spotify

It seems as though the coming-of-age for any new Web 2.0 start up nowadays is its first security scare.  Spotify, the new online music sharing application, had theirs a week or two ago when they announced that a flaw was discovered back in December which could expose users’ passwords.  The company have reassured paying customers that their bank details are still safe.

I’ve been enjoying using Spotify for a while now, after jumping on the LastFM bandwagon a little bit late.  The features that make it distinct are that you do not own the music, just the access to it; its free, although a subscription removes the advertising and it has a large store of music with blindingly quick searching and access to the tunes. More – Have you been Spotified?

Wow Media – truly a WOW … Birmingham teenager Matt Lovett has set up his own online marketing business called WOW Media, which is a collection of cash-back websites and makes its money by charging the retailers to advertise on the site, an inspired teenage entrepreneur who could be the inspiration for more Birmingham youth.

Swinging against the tide of current headlines about young people and their antisocial and criminal behaviour it is very refreshing to read about a local youth whom, even after a less than positive experience at school and failing most of his GCSE’s except ICT, has managed to turn his life around and at the tender age of 17 is running his own international company employing six people and with a monthly turnover of £25,000 per month … that can’t be bad!

WOW Media currently has 400,000 UK subscribers as well as 35,000 in Australia and 24,000 in Sweden and looks set to go from strength to strength – the website looks engaging and easy to navigate and smacks of a level of professionalism that belies Matt’s years.

With the current numbers of 17 – 18 year olds in Birmingham currently in education (or work-based learning) at 81% and the regional unemployment figures continuing to climb, due in part, to the current economic climate; the influx of young adults due to be seeking vocational support will increase come the end of the summer term and although dotcom start-ups have had a bad press over the last few years, this story just goes to show that with a bit of thought, imagination and a little business acumin … the worldwide web could be your oyster.

The next generation of superfast broadband was given approval by Ofcom on Tuesday … the new £1.5 billion fibre-optic network will be 25 times faster than today’s speeds. Songs will take just two seconds to download and DVD-quality films less than two minutes in the 100 megabit per second system.

“There are no regulatory barriers in the way of investment in super-fast broadband, we want to promote investment but also ensure that there is fair and effective competition for the future.” stated Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards.
So, here at Digital Birmigham we are making the assumption that BT will no longer be subject to Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) as they were under the ADSL roll out, which will no doubt be a huge impetus for its implementation.
BT is investing £1.5bn in a fibre optic network that will deliver download speeds of 100mbps to UK broadband users. The move follows increasing competition, particularly from Virgin Media, which plans to introduce a 50mbps broadband service in September.

BT aims to put 10 million homes on the fibre network by 2012. To control costs, the network will be built in two parts. One million new-build homes will receive the fibre network directly. For the remaining nine million residents BT plans to replace the copper cabling that connects kerbside cabinets in streets to the local BT exchange with fibre optic cabling.