UK-based webloggers should know that the VoxPolitics crowd are doing a seminar:

Can Weblogs Change Politics?

14th July, 5:30 – 7.00pm
Portcullis House, Houses of Parliament (room tbc)
Drinks and Food Provided

Speakers
Steven Clift, e-democracy expert
Stephen Pollard, Blogging Journalist,
Pernille Rudlin, Mobile expert
Tom Watson MP, Blogging MP
James Crabtree, Chair

Dunno if I can make it myself but I expect the usual suspects will turn up and I will be interested to read what comes out of it. I do hope it won’t turn into a “aren’t weblogs wonderful” love-in..sprint ringtone sanyo 3g free5500 ringtone sanyoringtones 6340ifree nokia 6360 ringtoneblackberry free ringtone 7250download 8900 audiovox ringtone93 ringtone till infinityjobs warrington manager payable accounts in Map

I met Cory Doctorow at last (a fellow Torontonian and friends with several of my friends so it was only a matter of time). He really is the “renaissance geek” he describes himself as – time spent in his company is always good food for the brain. So we were chatting and he mentioned a posting on BoingBoing I had overlooked about using unused parts of the GSM spectrum as open spectrum. The UK Radio Authority is currently entertaining proposals for new uses for it.

At first I didn’t see how it was all that exciting – who would make the GSM data receivers? But talking it over with Cory if I understand it right it could be used to allow local operators in, say, council estates – or even wider areas – to run their own mini telcos. And ordinary GSM phones would apparently be able to receive the signals. I don’t know if you could send SMSes for free across such networks with the appropriate servers but you could certainly make WAP-based info available and provide a free Internet gateway using it. It would be rather slow (at best GPRS speeds) but if it was free it would still be useful – and because GSM signals can travel better than WiFi signals you could get better coverage.

Sounds pretty good to me – Julian Priest co-founder of consume.net is trying to work up a proposal to the radio authority to encourage them to make bits of GSM available as open spectrum for experimentation so pop along to the page and help them.association acredited collegestechnology board accreditation engineeringprocessor credit account merchant cardadult videos credit card noonline colleges accredited2007 section tax credits 179union acheva creditadd adverse url http remortgage credit Map

First British Telecom generously agreed to ADSL-enable exchanges it had hitherto intended to bypass as long as enough potential customers registered an interest. Now (the BBC tells us) it is producing a kit to help members of the public lobby their neighbors to get them excited about broadband. I wonder if the cable companies could be persuaded to do similar campaigns? Though it’s a seemingly off the wall idea I have a dim recollection that there were other similar campaigns when electricity was first being introduced in the US (though perhaps not directly aided by the electric companies themselves?). Women campaigners were lobbying to get electricity into their communities because of its labour-saving properties.courses school accredited online highcredit 800 card debaccredited degree estate realchase line card 800 creditfor credit loans 3000 dollar badcredit boa card life 0credit accept unsecured cardalabama credit better bureau business Map

It’s nice to see high tech being used to help with those on low incomes like bus users as well as businesses and the technology elite. I was envious when HP publicised its Real-time Transport Tracker which let Finns know when their next bus was approaching a stop near them via their mobile phone. Now I hear in the North of England a pilot scheme is using a central computer to coordinate the running of a fleet of door to door buses.

The BBC looks back at Beeching – the man who closed about a third of the UK rail network back in 1963. It’s a two parter – I found the first part rather inconclusive. Did Beeching really save British Rail? Or did the massive closures only save BR about £7m when losses were running at £100m a year? The programme doesn’t give you enough information to make up your mind.

If it is a subject that interests you you can email questions to the programme makers and/or return to the website for a web chat with Alan Whitehouse, Professor of Railway Studies at the University of York and Colin Divall, British Rail management trainee and supervisor in the 1980s, after the second half is broadcast tomorrow on Radio 4 and the web (20:30 UK time).

The BBC site also features web links to other resources, a biography of Beeching and even a bibliography.check no 5000 creditonline accept credit payment cardinternet ala accredited coursesal gore carbon creditsaged creditfederal credit acipco unionave credit addison unionaccreditation of ghana university Map

Many of the criticisms summarised in this BBC report like the need for more service-centred cross-cutting websites are already being acted on. But inevitably they found a few embarrassing gaffes. Eg:

“The MPs found that the Downing Street website did not have a complete up to date list of ministers.

“On 12 June, the UK online site had as the latest ‘hot topic’ information on the Budget, nearly two months after the event,” they said.”

iWire alerted me to the fact that Norwich is going to spend £3.4m on a broadband network for public sector organizations in the city.
I hope they think to make some of the network capacity available to the public via wireless as well…sexy xxx moviesstrippers moviesfor teens movie cashhole movie themovie thumbzilla archivetitty movies fuckmovies tulsaultra movies hardcoreand to movie script walk remembersamples movie zoo

It’s good to see strong reactions to the recent Sp!ked piece critical of the UK Government’s pilot projects providing Internet access to disadvantaged neighborhoods.year personal unsecured loan repayment 10loan money 11 16 paycheck paydayhome 125 credit loan equity125 secured loan ukpayday loan 19 software free 132000 loan bad credit forloan 228hour cash 24 loans Map

Writing in the (often interesting and always controversial) online politics & culture webzine sp!ked Sandy Starr takes the government to task for investing in Wired Up Communities pilot projects. Why? Because in his view it is condescending to offer acess to the Internet and to virtual community tools to people who have more basic needs like better housing, education and jobs.

It is true that providing online access is not sufficient to improve people’s lives by itself, but just because as he points out some early projects were not particularly successful in raising employment, for example, it doesn’t invalidate the whole idea. These are only pilots – there is still much to learn. If a virtual community can help nurture social capital on the ground even to a small extent it is a start.

Sandy concludes:

“If the circumstances in which people live were genuinely improved, then they could get wired up on their own. And they could form online communities – if that’s what they wanted to do – without interference from a third party”

I am sure that the government is already trying to tackle the more basic chronic problems that exist on some of the impoverished housing estates that have also been targeted with this programme. Why not see if kick-starting online usage could help matters?

Whatever my disagreements with the article, however, it is still worth taking a look at it, if only for its links to some recent research.

Academics and educators point out the obvious – broadband by itself won’t do much if anything to improve schools and hospitals – it depends what you do with it. Or that is where this BBC story begins – it quickly gets distracted by more prosaic issues of training and difficulties in arranging timetables around broadband education…

In reality the big question mark in my view is still more fundamental – broadband may be able to deliver more educational material in theory but does the material exist? Can it be integrated in the curriculum? Do teachers understand what it does (and doesn’t do)? Does the material provide the chance for real interactive learning or just a narrow set of branches towards a pre-programmed goal?

Similarly, broadband can only help doctors if they do perceive it as a benefit and rely on it.

I am very dubious about the repetition in this piece (and presumably in the thinking of some in the policy arena) about the importance of videoconferencing. Broadband does enable limited videoconferencing but is this really something valuable or would messageboards or mailing lists and other forms of communication (still helped by broadband) be more useful?