The ICT Hub Unmet Needs Fund is now open for business.

All the details of this round of the fund are here, where you can also download the application form and guidelines. The deadline for applications is Monday 17 September.

Paul Webster of the ICT Hub said, “We are looking to fund maybe 4 or 5 projects out of a fund of £50,000 - it’s not a lot and timescales are tight, but if you look at some of the work that has been done in the past it has met needs that were looking to be fulfilled and has enable some projects to move onto bigger and better things.”

A summary of previously funded projects is here. London projects previously funded include Hammersmith and Fulham Refugee Forum’s - ICT Skill Up for Refugee Community Organisations.

Here at ICT Champ Towers we’ve been busy Google mapping ICT projects supporting London’s voluntary sector. In order to keep it to a reasonable size we’ve only included circuit rider projects, ChangeUp funded ICT projects and Netgain centres that we know to be serving other voluntary groups - so if we’ve missed your project, let us know.

Whilst we’re discussing caveats, we’ve also decided not to include London based consultants and commercial support companies providing support services to the sector - they can be located on the ICT Hub Suppliers Directory.

You can also see Google Maps produced by fellow Regional Champs here.


View Larger Map

Continuing the theme of terrible blog title puns started earlier, the August 2007 London ICT Champion newsletter is now out and reproduced here. For the curious, the only connection here is that we liked the song title, which comes courtesy of country guitar troubador Tom T Hall. Well, it’s different…..

**STARTS**

Here is your monthly round-up of voluntary sector and other ICT highlights from the London ICT Champion. As always, click the links to find out more from the summaries below.

1. East London gets its first circuit rider

Hackney Voluntary Action is looking for an energetic, determined and innovative ICT Support Worker (Circuit Rider) to join their team. Salary £27,000 p.a. plus 5% pension contribution (full time post - 35 hours per week).

It is a 2 year post funded by City Bridge Trust and the project will cover four East London Boroughs - the City of London, Hackney, Tower Hamlet and Newham. The application pack can be downloaded from: http://www.hackneyvoluntaryaction.org/id53.html

2. Guide to Managing ICT in the Voluntary and Community Sector

This in-depth guide covers all aspects of managing ICT and contains over 100 pages of accessible, jargon-free information - that is useful for anyone whatever their level of technical knowledge - on budgeting and buying ICT, managing ICT, security, maintenance and policies and procedures. We think Scipmark did a great job and deserves a few beers next time we see him. The guide is free and can be downloaded as a PDF from: http://www.icthub.org.uk/publications/

3. ‘Sight impairment and computer use’ workshop - 19 September

We’ll be delivering a free half day workshop on setting up a Microsoft XP Computer for people with sight impairments. People will also get a chance to play with the latest in assistive technology.

More details at: http://www.lasa.org.uk/ictchampion/2007/08/06/sight-impairment-and-computer-use-workshop/

4. Symantec joins the CTX discount scheme

Norton Anti-Virus and Norton Internet Security is now available from the CTX shop. CTX is discounted software programme run by Charity Technology Trust whereby eligible UK-based charities are able to choose from over 80 donated technology products from companies such as Microsoft, Symantec and Cisco.

Charities are required to pay a small Administrative Fee to cover the costs of the programme, making savings of between 92-96% on typical retail prices. More details at: http://www.ctt.org/ctx/browse_products/symantec/default.asp

5. ICT Connect
We’ve recently helped connect organisations seeking help with setting up a circuit rider project, internet phone calls, websites, databases and wireless networks with other London based organisations as examples of good practice and expertise.

The ICT Connect scheme enables voluntary and community organisations to explore their ICT needs by visiting another organisation that is using ICT well or in an innovative way. More details from: http://www.icthub.org.uk/ICT_Connect/

6. Costing and Funding ICT Projects
Find out about funding for your ICT project with tips for writing an effective funding proposal and how to fully cost and fund your ICT.

For your free copy contact me at mmaier@lasa.org.uk or download the guide from: http://www.icthub.org.uk/publications/

7. Southall Community Alliance - ‘Know IT Project’
We recently spoke to Know IT project manager Janpal about their new project, which is supporting the ICT needs of 20 BMER organisations in Southall, west London. The Know IT project is building a community ICT hub website to share resources and good practice. More details on this site soon.

8. VOICE

VOICE is a powerful and free web-publishing toolkit available to local councils to help their local groups, from neighbourhoods to schools, to create new free websites - and develop them using tailored tools and templates.

As well as posting content, news, documents and audio-visual material, VOICE toolkit users can easily add interactive eParticipation and eConsultation toolkit options to their sites, like blogs, forums, surveys and petitions.

More details at: http://www.lasa.org.uk/ictchampion/2007/08/17/voice-web-publishing-toolkit/

9. Greener computing

This month the ICT hub is promoting greener computing with a case study from Ability Net. More details at: http://www.icthub.org.uk/articles/greener_computing.html

Find out how ICT Hub partner, AbilityNet use greener technology:
http://www.icthub.org.uk/caseStudies/abilitynet_casestudy.html

And if your organisation uses environmentally friendly technology, contact the ICT Hub’s Louise Brown with your story – louise.brown@icthub.org.uk

10. Free ICT Resources

For practical advice on ICT issues, visit the ICT Hub Knowledgebase at: http://www.icthubknowledgebase.org.uk/

Find local trusted ICT support in the directory of suppliers at: http://www.icthub.org.uk/suppliers_directory/

***About this email and the London ICT Champion*** This is a monthly email from the London Regional ICT Champion, distributed via project funder Capacity Builders and CVS networks.

The London ICT Champion’s mission is to promote voluntary sector ICT and support voluntary sector organisations to understand and use technology to better achieve their goal of delivering high quality services for all. You can find out more about the London ICT champion project and its work at: www.lasa.org.uk/ictchampion

Feel free to forward this email to your friends and give us your feedback by replying to this email.

VOICE is a powerful web-publishing toolkit available to local councils to help their local groups, from neighbourhoods to schools, to create new free websites - and develop them using tailored tools and templates.

As well as posting content, news, documents and audio-visual material, VOICE toolkit users can easily add interactive eParticipation and eConsultation toolkit options to their sites, like blogs, forums, surveys and petitions.

We particularly liked the sites of Kingston’s Rainbow Advice Centre, Humberside’s Street Sport and Birmingham Voice as examples of how VOICE can help community groups bridge the digital divide and get online.

All sites created as a part of the scheme are added to a national directory for community groups. Groups are not limited to using VOICE and may simply register on the directory.

In the news this lately….

Google Pack includes StarOffice 8

Continuing the battle against Microsoft Office with its online Docs and Spreadsheet service, Google has now included a free, non-expiring version of StarOffice 8 in its free Google Pack download suite.

According to Google, the Google Pack version of “StarOffice 8 includes that includes all the major functionality of the paid consumer version, except for the Adabas D database”

Whether Google’s support will be enough to push StarOffice into the mainstream is debatable.

Google, Microsoft and Apple bump up online storage

Google has begun selling additional storage for its Gmail and Picasa photo album . Gmail users can add to their free 2.8GB and Picasa Web albums can expand beyond 1GB with a number of plans ranging from $20 per year for 6GB to $500 annually for 250GB. The additional storage will be made available to Google Docs & Spreadsheets users at a later date. However, storage is limited to content associated with Gmail and Picasa. See here for a discussion on the downside of Google storage.

Likewise, Microsoft has plans to give increase storage capacity of Windows Live Hotmail. For free basic accounts, users will see their storage limit increase to 5GB. Paid-up users of the Plus service will get 10GB.

Apple has also expanded the amount of storage it provides for subscribers to its .Mac suite of Internet services - from 1GB to 10GB - for which it charges £70 per annum.

Mashup Heaven

Google has released a limited beta mashup service - Google Mashup Editor - to compete with Yahoo Pipes. Mashups allow users to combine web data into new applications. See here for a review of Google Mashup Editor and here for comparisons of the two. Meanwhile, over in Redmond, Microsoft has its own mashup service - the oddly named Popfly - in private alpha development. They need to work on the name, if nothing else.

Microsoft SkyDrive launches

Microsoft has released a UK beta version of its new online storage service, SkyDrive, previously known to the world as Windows Live Folders.

• 500 MB of free online storage, available from any computer with Internet access.
• Create personal, shared, and public folders

Microsoft releases new beta Office converters for Mac

Microsoft has released new beta converters for Windows Office documents saved in the Office Open XML (OOXML) format, adding support for PowerPoint.

The new beta converters will enable Office Mac versions v.x and 2004 to open Word (.docx and macro-enabled .docm) files and PowerPoint presentations (.pptx), shows (.ppsx) and templates (.potx). There is as yet no converter for OOXML Excel files.

Apple iWork ‘08 - Microsoft welcomes Office file format support
Microsoft has praised the inclusion of Office Open XML (OOXML) file filters in Apple’s office suite iWork ‘08, suggesting that it indicates that software developers are adopting the controversial format in preference to the open source Open Document Format (ODF). You can get download the free 30 trial of iWork here.

NCVO’s ‘The Good Guide to Working with Consultants’ is designed to help organisations in the voluntary and community sector select and make the best use of the right consultant for each assignment.

The guide is intended for everyday use and to help organisations with all the practical issues of working with a consultant, such as:

• the recruitment process
• planning the scope of the project
• selecting the right consultant for your particular assignment
• briefing and formally engaging and managing the ongoing relationship

The book provides a useful checklist that summarises the stages involved and includes template contracts and agreements which you can adapt for your own use.

We’ll be reviewing the book as soon as we have a copy. It costs £25 or £17.95 for NCVO members and will be published on 15 September. The book is available for pre-order from the NCVO shop.

You can also check out the our resources on working with consultants on the ICT Hub Knowledgebase.

Last in the current series of workshops. You don’t want to have to say you haven’t been to an ICT accessibility workshop, you are not going to be one of the crowd or even hip and cool. Any self respecting IT person should be in ‘the know’ and geeky on this stuff.

 Sign up for this free workshop, you know ,”……….. we’re worth it”.

19 September 2007, Happy Computers, London, E1

Objectives of the workshop:

• Deliver a workshop on setting up a Microsoft XP Computer for people with poor sight and sight impairments.
•  Deliver an introduction to computer options for people with sight impairments or no sight.
• Offer a display of some high visibility keyboards and mice.
• Give an overview of Individual Assessment options for Computer users at work.
• Offer a display of other Accessible/Adapted IT input devices and software.
• To distribute a free resource pack ; Easy, Free and Quick ICT Accessibility’ produced by AbilityNet and the ICT Hub.

Time 2.5 hours

Please note: the workshop is free, however If you don’t inform us that you are ‘not going’ to be able to turn up for the session by the day before the workshop, we will raise an invoice for £25 for you or your organisation to pay, unless there are exceptional reasons. We have had to introduce this condition to enable us to still offer the workshops free. We are finding up to 50% of people who sign up don’t turn up and don’t tell us they are not turning up for the workshop. When you book this workshop you accept this condition.

Book on line at www.happy.co.uk using the word ‘accessibility’ to search or go directly to the workshop page; http://tinyurl.com/2o2d8l  call 020 7375 7300 or Minicom 020 7375 7349.

Who is it for? Voluntary and community organisations, infrastructure organisations, circuit riders

Organiser: London Region Accessibility Champion