London Region ICT Champion

Capacity Builders has announced details of successful bidders into its Improving Reach Programme.  A total of £17,444,123 was awarded across the 9 English regions.

So far, the only details we have are those published by Capacity Builders, which shows a total of  10 grants totalling £2,374,550 (13.6% of the total) awarded to London.  Until we get further information from Capacity Builders, its not clear of any if the winning projects will feature elements of ICT.

Improving Reach awards 2008: London

• Evelyn Oldfield Unit £375,000 (supports refugee organisations)

• London Community Recycling Network £139,683

• Olmec £370,998 (community investment foundation working with disadvantaged communities)

• London wide organisation for disability £121,200 (new second tier organisation for the disability sector)

• Ealing Community and Voluntary Service £55,770 (support for local organisations)

• Islington Voluntary Action Council £297,268 (support for local organisations)

• Harrow Refugee Forum £200,000 (umbrella body for refugee organisations)

• Southwark Community Care Forum £249,000 (supports voluntary sector groups working in health and social care)

• Croydon BME Forum £415,953 (forum for black, minority, ethnic organisations)

• Refugees in Effective and Active Partnership £149,678 (directory of refugee organisations in West London)

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!

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.

Kinda, sort of, mostly a slow news day for ICT news as the Easter hangover continues…and we’re still working on those longer think pieces, so hang in there dear reader.

• Nick Booth reports on how local residents are using Neighbourhood Programme Reward Grants here.
• David Wilcox on the reality of web 2.0 and social change here.
• Gavin Clabaugh reviews Amazon’s new Kindle device moments after custom building a mile of book shelves for his home.
• Google gets serious about its environmental policies and practices. Read ZDNet’s interview with Google’s Dr Brilliant. Yes, really.
• CNET reports on a subscription service that effectively lets people dump Exchange in favor of Google’s cloud-computing infrastructure.
• Techrepublic’s Toni Bowers discusses US moves to combat workplace bullying here.
• PC Pro reports that 7 out of 10 orders for the Eee PC are going unfulfilled due to excessive demand here.

And finally…

• It can’t be long before your local LEA picks up on the idea, but a US judge has ruled that anti-plagiarism software Turnitin does not violate student copyright. Story plagiarised with thanks from articles here, here and here.

Today we’re rounding up resources from the 2008 circuit rider conference 2008.

• Lasa has pulled together all the notes from the 2008 circuit rider conference sessions into a pdf file so you can read them on your non wi-fi connected train, the bus or wherever.
• You can view the UKRiders Flickr Circuit Rider Conference set of photos here.
• To view all photos from the conference which have been tagged with crconf08 look here.
• Thanks to David Wilcox  who did a great job of video-blogging the discussions at the conference here.
• Marc Osten has posted a series of five short video tutorials about Online Community Building and Engagement.  A 2nd installment will air in April.  Yours truly was also ambushed far too early in the morning to talk about web2.0 and online engagement - hopefully that segment is still on the cutting room floor and didn’t make the final cut.

Another ICT Hub publication hit the news stands this week - An ICT Survival Guide for Trustees. Download the free PDF (399kb) from here.

We also have a few hard copies of the publication, so if you’d like one, email us with your contact details and we’ll mail a copy out to you.

The guide says is not about improving your technical understanding
of ICT. It’s about:

• supporting you to better govern your VCO,
• improving your board and organisation’s general understanding of ICT’s role,
• supporting your board to make more informed decisions, and
• enabling ICT to support what your organisation does day to day.

Whether you’re a committee member of a local voluntary group, a trustee of a major charity or a director of a social enterprise, the guide will help you:

• make more informed decisions,
• access relevant and meaningful information (and sources of support) quickly and easily,
• make a tangible impact quickly and noticeably,
• increase your confidence in ICT Governance, and
• help make a difference to organisational effectiveness and your impact on beneficiaries.

Download it for free from here.

STAR (Student Action For Refugees) has launched ‘an all singing, all dancing, one stop shop of information for anyone interested in refugee issues and volunteering with refugees!’. Best of all, it is built by volunteers, for volunteers.

RefugeeMap is an online collaborative Wiki providing easy and accessible information for volunteers, especially young people, working with refugees in the UK. This site seeks to gather in one place easily accessible information on refugee situations, news and policy, and volunteering opportunities around the UK.

If you would like to contribute to the site or have material posted on the site please visit the site at:

www.star-network.org.uk/refugeemap

Another edition of need to know ICT news…

• Phorm - a service backed by BT, Virgin and Talk Talk which will track users’ web behaviour for advertising purposes is believed to be unlawful. Check it out here and here.
• ZD Net reports that Vista Service Pack 1 is now available from the Microsoft Download Centre.
• Infoworld asks if you really need Vista SP1
• Graphic designers beware - Adobe has withdrawn a product update for Photoshop and Lightroom because it was too buggy and has told customers to uninstall it.
• The hitherto unknown DIUS, aka the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills has published a white paper called “Innovation Nation” on the lack of tech skills in the UK workforce.
• ZD Net is grinding its Microsoft axe again, this time as the company slumps towards the relegation zone in the Greenpeace league table, see here.
• Oh, and Channel 4 has joined the BBC in making its shows available for download from iTunes for a whopping £1.89 each. Honestly, it’s cheaper to buy the series on DVD from Play.com or Amazon.co.uk