p2b bright[on] ideas

Big day tomorrow

All's set for the big day - the p2b launch and the web awards. There should be about 50 there for the launch at lunch time and 70 or so in the evening.

I had thought that it would be handy to double up on the events and run them on the same day. I'll let you know what I think afterwards, but at the moment it seems like all's set and I'm really grateful for the help of Sarah at Midnight, Tara at Wired Sussex and the wonderful Sam at SCIP.

One or two grumbles about one of the sites on the shortlist - no names no pack drill - but I think we can live with it. All set for another good night out and lots of fun and some great sites being given awards.

Technorati Tags: web awards, brighton , p2b.net, scip, markie

Visit to Maidstone

My third visit to Maidstone today and I feel like we're really starting to make progress already.

Tracy is getting rolling with the Training Needs Analysis and wants some help understanding how to assess IT training needs. SCIP has developed a simple framework for this as part of its ICT plans, which can be viewed online at <a href="http://www.scip.org.uk/ictplans/">ICT Plans</a>

We met with Doug Smart from the Kent County Council's IT support service. They offer technical support to schools as well as having three bases for IT training across the county. We hope to run some traiing there in January - the traiing rooms are the size of a typical school classroom but have only eight workstations - lots of lovely room for people and some nice little gadgets for tecahing like a large tablet screen pc for the tutor machine.

Caroline [Toher] and I then identified a couple ofm opportunities ofr building more links locally, especially on the back of the fundraising course she came to that I ran in Brighton a couple of weeks ago. Digital Maidstone has a new directory of funding information and we've arranged to visit David, the man behind it, when I visit next time.

We also made contact with the pople organising the Kent Funding Fair in February, so that we can deliver the 30 minute fundraising training course. This will help raise the profile of the project as well as providing a useful addition to the Funding Fair and help SCIP to begin building wider links in the area.

Next visit 21 November

Voipfone - Brighton company spreading VOIP joy

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | London calling?
Interesting story about london becoming even more attractive as a business location thanks to VOIP providers offering virtual 0207 numbers.

The company behind the story is Voipfone, who are based in Brighton - omne more feather in the cap for the digital city claims?

Launch event 10 November

The p2b.net search engine will be launched to the public on Thursday 10 November, at Fabrica Art gallery in Ship Street, Brighton.

More details at www.p2b.net/launch

Technorati Tags: brighton, search engine, search

DIY wireless networking

Wireless networking is already popular in Brighton - we have the Pier-to-Pier project and the people from Loose Connections doing their best to promote wireless usage.

More on both at www.looseconnection.com and www.piertopier.net.

Further afield are the good people of Oregon, building a network of people willing to share their radio networks and the bandwidth they alreayd buy. Take a look at www.personaltelco.net.

Wi-fi offers a lot of possible benefits as its usage grows and the cost of the technology falls - but perhaps we need a bigger push to make it come together in Brighton and Hove?

Your life in a box [on the internet]

Microsoft is looking at how it could enable us to log everything about our lives and make it searchable - this includes every email you ever send, every telephone call you make and video of every significant event you wish to record...

They've decided that fitting it all on a hard disk is the easy bit - it's the tagging that's more difficult, so they're looking at clever ways of automatically tagging content. A similar issue is being looked at as part of developing theplacetobe.net search engine.

See the story on the BBC site.

Integrating traffic and travel information

theplacetobe.net submitted a speculative bid for funds from the Government's eInnovations funds, asking for £200k to fund the development of intergated traffic and travel information, delivered through channles including text messaging, syndicated feeds to web sites and digital TV.

The proposal starts with SMS-enabling the existing bus information. This is already available through the Council and delivered through information boards at bus stops. This information would be re-purposed and delivered through SMS and syndicated as a custmised feed to local web sites and intranets. Amex, for example, could choose to display latest bus times from stops close to each office.

In further phases the information will be augmented by working with other key local agences, including the Police, who have access to detailed traffic flow information. The channels will also be developed, to include Digital TV, which is seen as a key technology in reaching people who are not likely to adopt the internet.

Initial feedback on the bid's success are expecetd at the end of January, after which a more detailed plan would be required if the proposal is selected to be funded.

Download bid document

Dynamic noise maps

High levels of noise are becoming a key health and environmental issue and a number of cities have started mapping noise levels on dynamic mapping systems. These use both live information collected through a network of microphones and models built on predicted noise according to traffic volumes.

The mapping system in Paris is a good example, although such systems are also being developed in London and other European cities.

More information can be found in a recent article on Yahoo [now found on the Almeda Times].

X-ray picture messaging

Welsh doctors are using picture messaging to share x-rays and speed up the diagnosis process. There's a story about it on the BBC site

Can we digitise community history?

According to story in the latest issue of Wired Magazine Amazon is close to scanning every one of the 120,000 books in its catalogue and making every single page searchable. When searching for books you can now see inside them - ie see the text on any and every page - and read a couple of pages eiether side of any reference it has found to your search term.

So now you can find information which relates to your search which is currently hidden behind the title on the cover, the name of the author and/or the description...

Perhaps we can do this with the many books published in and about Brighton & Hove. Look at the local Library's searchable catalogue to see how handy it could be to see inside books in this way...

References:

Search Inside a Book at Amazon

Story in Wired Magazine

search the local library catalogue

City Stats

Brighton & Hove Council has taken a lead in developing a web-based information servcie for local publicx sector partners - check out to see the range of information they have and how they are using geographical information systems to make information more accessible and more useful.

How about being a smart conferencing city?

Dave Greenop, SCIP's Board member for theplacetobe.net, suggested looking at how p2b can help with conferenceing facilities.

He suggested looking at using technology like smart badges [see www.ntag.com ] which know who you are and have details about you and which can communicate with other tags, such as:
* other users [swap contact details/interests/whatever]
* service providers [discount at restaurant/two sugars please/hotel bookings]

Is you bluejacking me?

Have you tried bluejacking? Using bluetooth phones to send messages to other bluetooth enabled phones in your vicinity? Try this site for more details: www.bluejackq.com/whatis.htm

At the moment it's the basis for childish pranks, but as more people get bluetooth-enabled phones this could be a way of making contact with people just because they happen to be in the same place as you. So at a local meeting or forum you could ask people to turn on their bluetooth and swap reqests for help, or make announcements, in the style of text messages.

What else could it do?

Shazam music thing

To use Shazam [www.shazam.com] dial 2580 on your mobile phone, then hold the phone up to a music source, like a loudspeaker in a pub, which is playing some music you'd like to identify. The source needs to be loud and clear enough for 20 seconds. A few moments later you receive a text message to the same phone telling you the name of the song [or telling you it can't identify it].

It costs 50p to be told what the song is, or 9p if it can't - either because it doesn't recognise it or because you didn't get near enough to the source.

It works by taking a sample wave form and matching against a database of millions of songs. So how can such advanced audio-matching techniques be use in other settings? Perhaps it's voice-recognition that knows it's you calling, as the basis for personalisation services?

[NB I have no interest in Shazam, I just think it's very clever...]

Bring us your bright ideas

theplacetobe.net is looking for bright ideas that use new technology to improve the information available to people who live and work in Brighton and Hove.

We're going to be pitching for funding for new projects and we're looking for ideas that reflect local people's needs and could be developed through ouir network of partners.

The first big project is p2b.net - the search engine for Brighton & Hove. find out more about it and give it a try at http://www.p2b.net

Next project is Brighton & Hove Community Server - a shared online space for local not for profit organisations. More on that soon.