London Region ICT Champion

Hola! Another day in non-profit ICT….

Knowledgebase:

• Check out the latest articles on Mac OS X server, Microsoft licensing and telecom suppliers.

Long-live the web:

• Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect has admitted that the PC’s reign at the centre of the digital home and office is over.  According to PC Pro, here.

Security:

• A new version of AVG’s free antivirus package- AVG Antivirus Free Edition 8.0 - is available for download.  Check out a review here.

Telephony:

• Many of us have at least 3 personal phone numbers - mobile, home and office. Now launched as a limited beta service, Google GrandCentral promises to give you - free, for life - one phone number that will bind all your existing numbers together. The potential for home-workers and remote workers could be great - but then again Google and its laissez-faire attitude to privacy strikes again.

• Silicon reports on the iPhone effect and how it compares against Google’s upcoming effort

Today we focus on security and privacy news…

Web 2.0:

• We all use many collaboration tools for work and home - blogs, wikis, calendars, photo sharing, tagging, etc - and now Groups has created a service that lets you run all of your group’s collaboration tools from one Grou.ps domain using a single login.  More here.

• BT and NetSuite have joined forces to bring web-based on-demand software to BT’s 1.6 million business customers.  Sugar CRM - a web based customer relationship management tool - will follow soon.  More here.

One question is whether you trust BT to manage your data, which leads us nicely to…

Security:

• According to ZD Net, the UK is nearing 100 reported data losses since last November’s blow out by HMRC, with the public sector accounting for over 60 losses.  The ICO says this rate of data loss is “no worse than usual”.

• Sites such as Facebook and YouTube are amongst the least trusted websites in the UK, with each brand only trusted by 12% of the population, it says here.

• Privacy disaster at Twitter - one user gets her private tweets aired in public, it reports here.
  

• Over half of UK workers have sent emails to the wrong people according to a new poll by Sendmail, with one in five office workers sending up to three emails to the wrong people everyday.

• Worried about IT security?  You should be - research conducted by the US Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert) estimates that almost 40 percent of IT security breaches are perpetrated by people inside the company.

• According to an article in the Financial Times, Google has reneged on a commitment to improve the way it manages consumer data in light of its DoubleClick acquisition.

It’s been at least a week since the last round-up of ICT goodies, so….

Internet:

• British broadband customers are paying hundreds of pounds in hidden costs, according to a PC Pro news report

Web 2.0 and video:

• Interested in instructional videos to get you started on that ICT project? Look no further than 5min, Howcast, Expert Village and Instructables.

Mobile ICT:

• O2 is the latest UK operator to launch a mobile broadband package. The fees are astronomical. Close your eyes or look here if you can stand it.

• BT Business Total broadband punters can now set up their own wireless hotspots. Should you wish, this means subscribers to BT Openzone, BT Fon and other roaming packages will be able to join your hotspot.

• Skype has launched a series of new “unlimited” call plans, allowing customers to call UK landlines for only £2.25 a month. See here.
  

Legal:

• The folks at Pinsent-Masons report on a French court that has punished web publishers because of snippets of text that appeared on their sites via an RSS reader.

Events:

• 27-28 May, San Jose, USA: We’d love to be there as this year’s Net Squared conference will feature a Mash-up challenge

• You can read about the UK’s very own mash-ups at the recent Social Innovation Camp here, and the innovation winners, Rate Your Prison here.

A new report surveying the adoption of web 2.0 technologies by non-profit organisations found that “blogging was viewed as a sure, effective way to reach net citizenry”, whilst non-profits were “less optimistic about the prospects of social networking technologies to help raise significant monetary or goods donations for their organisation.”

The report also found non-profits were:

• optimistic about the value of social networking technologies to “organize an event” and “spread news” about the organisation.
• increasing their “web traffic” through use of various technologies.

Read more below the fold.. Continue Reading »

Interesting stuff over at Tom Slee’s Whimsley, which dissects a new report from the Linux Foundation, documenting how the world’s biggest open source project has shifted during its 17 year life from a volunteer effort to the realm of mega-bucks corporate development.

According to the report, just 4 companies -Red Hat, Novell, IBM and Intel - are responsible for 30% of the “significant changes” made to the Linux kernel or the core of the operating system.

To quote:

“The top 10 contributors, including the groups “unknown” and “none” make up over 75% of the total contributions to the kernel. It is worth noting that, even if one assumes that all of the “unknown” contributors were working on their own time, over 70% of all kernel development is demonstrably done by developers who are being paid for their work.

What we see here is that a small number of companies are responsible for a large portion of the total changes to the kernel. But there is a “long tail” of companies which have made significant changes. There may be no other examples of such a large, common resource being supported by such a large group of independent actors in such a collaborative way.”

As Nick Carr observes, web based “social production” or open source projects are “no more immune, or even resistant, to being incorporated into established market systems than any other type of labor that produces commercially valuable goods.”

Quite how the thousands of unpaid volunteers who altruistically contributed their expertise to the development of Linux as a viable operating system feel about this is not documented in the report.

As Tom Slee puts it, “open source has crossed its commercial Rubicon, and there is probably no going back.”

Thanks to a brutal regime of monitoring and evaluation we’ve seen more punishment than Frank Bruno’s gum-shield (for those of you who remember the great man), but hey! We’re back with another round-up and then some longer stuf that might contain an opinion or two.

Events are in the air:

• 25th of April 2008 - Abilitynet’s “Accessibility 2.0″ conference focusses on web accessibility in a Web 2.0 world. Find out more about the stellar list of speakers, download podcasts, etc, all from here.

• 10 June in London - NCVO and Microsoft UK are hosting an interactive conference combining case studies, workshops and keynote speakers to explore the potential of ICT for small and medium sized charities. It’s free of charge to all charity employees on a first come first served basis. Online registration will be open from 23rd April 2008 here.

• 8 July 2008 it’s the London Connects 2008 conference at QE II Conference Centre, London. It’s primarily for the statutory sector and technology enabled service delivery, but could be useful for VCOs with an interest in this area. See here.

Security:

• Spam is a sad fact of life and Symantec’s April State of Spam Report is out. According to the report, backscatter, social networking sites and a “419″ (a.k.a. Nigerian) scam being spread promising users they’ve won big money in a promotion for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, are the spammers current favourites.

• Google is not liking an EU report that says that “search engines, in their role as collectors of user data, have so far insufficiently explained the nature and purpose of their operations to the users of their services,” It concludes there is “no basis for a retention period [for user data] beyond six months,”

• Norton Internet Security has now fixed 2 bugs here, so go run Live Update now.

Web 2.0 and applications:

• MANSEO is short for Mother of All Nonprofit Search Engines Optimized - and is a search engine that only searches nonprofit technology websites. Why might that interest you? Type in keywords about web design (we just tested it by typing “drupal” and “web 2.0″) and all the results should all be specific to nonprofits’ use of these technologies. Our old friend Jason King has been spotted poking around there.

• Concerned about kids and social networking sites? More here and here.

• The Google Email Uploader desktop utility uploads email and contacts from desktop email programs (like Outlook) into your Google Apps mailbox. Only works with Google Apps pro to date. Read more here.

• Yahoo! is parking its tanks on Google’s lawn by getting into the analytics business and opening flickr to video uploads.

• A United Nations project - with help from Google Earth Outreach - is using Google Earth to raise the public profile of refugees and vulnerable people once far from the public eye. You can also check out Google Earth maps of the ‘Crisis in Darfur’ here, Greenpeace here, and World is Witness here.

• And lastly, Tech Crunch blurbs on the future of mobile social networking here.

Another bag of goodies for you…

UK news:

• Third Sector reports on a web brokerage service that donates 30% of each client’s fee to the charity of their choice, here.
• The Rural Community Carbon Network riffs on the importance of ICT to rural communities, here.
• The Broadband Reach Project in Scotland is working with the Scottish Parliament due to award a £3.5 million contract to a company who will then work to fill in the ‘not-spots’ gaps in broadband cover. It could be replicated in England, says a riff here.
• Kablenet reports that good citizens who join the National Identity Register will be able to vote online from 2012 for general elections, referenda, council and parish elections, and for trade union posts and building society boards.

Web2.0, applications, data protection

• From buttinski bosses to spies and spooks, Infoworld says there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the vulnerability of your data and the potential loss of your privacy.
• Laura Whitehead on 40 free web based tools to help with graphic design jobs
• Brian Kelly says IT departments need to engage with web 2.0 services, here
• CNET news reports on a new online data back-up service called iDrive, here.

And that’s your lot until tomorrow, enjoy!

We were delighted when this abstract piece from the NTC New Orleans arrived in our post last week. Thanks to Hilary Garner of Superhighways Partnership for the great art - keep ‘em coming, Hilary.

Capacitybuilders has today launched a new web resource for the nine new national support services - which started running today.

For those who’ve already lost the map to the promised land of Destination 2014, Improving Support increases the number of programmes from 6 national hubs to 9 national support services, all on a slimmer budget.

Workforce and ICT have been given additional funding to continue until June because they are not being directly replaced.

The previous regime of 6 hubs of national expertise expired last night on 31 March. Mourners present at the ICT Hub’s bedside said that it had left a “lasting legacy of high quality support materials for the sector.” Hub publications will continue to be free to download from the Hub’s website.

The nine programmes are:
• Collaboration, run by Bassac,
• Equalities and diversity, run by the Women’s Resource Centre
• Income generation, run by Acevo
• Marketing and communications, run by the Media Trust
• Modernising volunteering, run by Volunteering England
• Performance management, run by Charities Evaluation Services
• Campaigning and advocacy, leadership and governance, and responding to social change, all run by the NCVO

It’s 1 April and we couldn’t make it up…..

UK news:

• Institute of Fundraising Technology Groups’ conference is at LVSC on 14 May.  See the programme here.
• CharityComms has just launched a benchmarking survey to gain information on how the investment that their organisation makes in communications compares to other similar organisations.
• BT has issued details of the first 868 exchanges to get its next-generation 21CN (24Mb/sec) broadband service, see here.

Web 2.0 and applications

• House raided by mob in Craigslist hoax ad, see here.
• Yahoo has launched Shine, a new content portal aimed at women aged 25 to 54.
• Learn how to record Skype calls for free with Call Graph here.
• Voipfone launch £45 unlimited broadband package, details here.
• The Folks at CivicCRM report from the NTC 2008 on the array of tools Google is offering non-profits here.
• WordPress 2.5 has been released with a major overhaul to the interface and a range of new features.