News & Events > ICT Bulletin

ICT E-Bulletin - January 2012

By Lasa Information Systems Team

A source of technology news, resources and advice for small to medium sized third sector organisations.

News

IT4Communities are recruiting organisations needing ICT support

Wanted - 150 London-based charities, voluntary organisations or community groups that are committed to improving their IT. IT4Communities introduce charities, voluntary organisations and community groups needing help with IT-related projects to volunteer IT professionals. See case studies and testimonials to see how other organisations have been helped and call 020 7796 2144 for further information.

Media Trust to run citizen reporting project

Funded by the Big Lottery, the Media Trust has taken on 3 consulting companies to help it plan, implement and evaluate its three-year newsnet citizen journalism project.

Cisco dumps a video-conference service we’ve never heard of

ITPro reports that Cisco has ditched umi, its "rival" to Skype, less than two years after launch. This comes less than a year after Cisco decided to get rid of its Flip camera lineup.

Facebook malware hits UK users

A nasty bit of malware making the rounds on Facebook has reportedly made off with the usernames and passwords of more than 45,000 users from the UK and France.

Telecoms complaints revealed by Ofcom

Ofcom received over 100,000 complains about telecoms (fixed line, broadband and mobile) between October 2010 and September 2011. The report reveals which companies received the most (and least) complaints.

Events, training & learning

London Events Calendar

For London technology events please see our Events Calendar. Forthcoming events include Paul Ticher's data protection webinars, Cloud Expo Europe, Government ICT Conference, Do You Know What Your ICT Costs Are? and a CiviCRM meetup.

School ICT learning branded “dull” by Gove

The BBC reports that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, speaking at the annual education and technology BETT show, has described the current school ICT curriculum as outdated. He plans to give more freedom to teachers to devise their own “open source” learning plans on technology.

Funding and awards

Web Services Survey

The Office for Civil Society (OCS) in the Cabinet Office and the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) are running a joint survey to seek views on how the web is used by civil society organisations to access advice and support, funding information and networking opportunities. BIG and OCS want to know how online services help organisations build learning, and develop skills and capabilities. The survey closes on 20 January.

Funders should help grant recipients tell their stories

Sounddelivery’s Jude Habib argues that funders should ensure that their grant recipients are able to tell their stories digitally.

Find & Remind toolbar

Created by online shopping fundraising site Easyfundraising, the Find & Remind toolbar adds a drop-down reminder every time the user visits a retailer that is participating in the affiliate marketing-based programme.

Writing successful funding applications

Mary Jane Edwards over on the Guardian’s Voluntary Sector Network Fundraising hub gives some useful tips on succeding with funding applications.

London Funders e-bulletin now available

Funding news (pdf, 312Kb) from the umbrella organisation for London’s grant making bodies  including news from members The Big Lottery, Media Trust and Trust For London.

Resources, legal and accessibility

How mobile apps can help charities engage with supporters

Jacob Payne and James Brown from Public Zone reveal five mistakes to avoid when designing a smartphone application.

Developing a BYOD and Mobile IT Strategy

With smartphones and other mobile devices getting more popular  these days, what’s your BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy for using them on your network? This Techsoup article looks at the risks and suggests policy decisions that will need to be made.

London's Digital Economy report

A new report (pdf, 1.4MB) from the GLA on technology trends in the capital says there are over 23,000 ICT companies in London, and London adults are more likely than those in the rest of the country to access the internet by mobile phone.

Facebook told to stop indefinitely holding users' advertising data

The Guardian reports that following rulings by the Irish data protection commissioner, Facebook has been told to end its practice of indefinitely retaining data about which adverts its 500m users outside the US click on.

Practical tips

Designing for mobile apps

Heather Gardner-Madras over at Idealware attends an app designing seminar and comes away with some excellent tips.

Bring your social media accounts together

David Daw looks at using Ping.fm to bring together your disparate social media accounts.

Measurement and Infographics

Beth Kanter pulls on a cool hat and, on her blog, applies the five stages of marketing accountability to infographics, which are gaining popularity as a way of summarising key principles, ideas, and themes.

Office 2010 accessibility tips

Ben Teoh at Connecting Up in Australia looks at 3 ways of increasing accessibility - sub-titling text in PowerPoint, the DAISY add-in and built in accessibility tools.

Increase your email open rates

Corey Eridon on HubSpot Blog provides 11 sure-fire ways of increasing your email click-through rates. Meanwhile, Jay Leslie over on the Idealware blog runs through building an effective email list.

Use that data!

Kurt Voelker of Forum One over on the NTEN blog gives six tips on utilising all that data you have collected to help your organisation meet its mission.

7 ways to use Slideshare

Stanford Smith on Pushing Social lists some ways to attract audiences to your blog.

Tools and applications

Windows XP continues to dominate OS market share

Windows XP is still the dominant OS worldwide after more than 10 years, but Windows 7 narrows the gap, cnet reports.

Screencasting tools

If you need to record what’s happening on a computer monitor, for example for training purposes, this Sitepoint guide to 17 tools could help you find the ideal application.

10 tools to analyse Twitter

Mark Braggins examines a number of Twitter reporting and analysis tools for your words of wisdom including twitter sentiment, The Archivist, Twitalyzer and tweetreach.

5 tips for OneNote

Karen Hong over on TechSoup gives some handy hints to keep your notes organised in Microsoft OneNote.

London travel - mobile tools and apps to make it a little easier!

If your job involves travel to meetings or outreach delivery of services, there are a wealth of tools available to help plan your journeys and find out about disruptions in advance. Transport for London (TfL) list tools which include:

• Check before you Travel - travel planning tools e.g Journey Planner and Timetables
• Out and About - mobile services including Journey planner by text and the amazing Live bus departures where you can select a bus stop and see the times of the next buses due

TfL also have three Widgets available to embed in your website - Tube service updates, theTube map and Journey Planner. If you travel by train check out National Rail's tools. Both have made live information available to third party developers and a host of mobile apps have been developed for smart phones including Android, iPhone and Blackberry.

Opinion

Exploring open data with Nominet Trust

Tim Davies on a day looking at how charities can engage with open data

Linked In

Jayne Cravens has a love-hate relationship with the social networking service for “professionals”. Jayne also urges organisations to use Flickr rather than Facebook for showing their photos.

ICT in the “developing” world

“But, technology for technology’s sake is downright stupid.” David Barnard on Sangonet’s (South African NGO Net) blog looks at ICT and rural development in Africa.

Dot Mailer interviewed

NFP Techno talks to Tink Taylor, Cheif executive of Dot Mailer bulk email service (as used by CTT Mailer and CharityEmail)

5 predictions for the next 5 years

IBM have been gazing into their crystal ball and make a number of predictions - no more passwords (hurrah!), junk mail will become priority mail (boo!).

And finally

Things that happen online every sixty seconds

2 (somewhat garish) infographics - amazing!

The loneliness of the social media hipster

“I can’t seem to enjoy anything without trying to digitally capture it or spew it onto the Internet.” Nicholas Carr on the New York Times’ Nick Bilton and his internet addiction.