News & Events > ICT Bulletin Archive

London ICT e-Bulletin - September 2010

By Lasa Information Systems Team

A summary of the best bits from the Lasa ICT eBulletin - September 2010.

Mobile English language courses from BBC

BBC Janala is using mobile phones to offer audio English lessons and quizzes to callers – and in a short time has seen rapid pickup across Bangladesh.

Guide helps not-for-profits become more visible online

The Internet Advertising Bureau, the trade body for digital marketing, has launched a free guide to help not-for-profit organisations make their websites easier to find, Third Sector reports. The guide also gives advice on search engine optimisation.

Microvolunteering

Cofacio builds help engines, a new and social way to get help to charities and causes featured on their site, Civil Society IT reports. Find out how Cofacio will be helping disabled children’s charity Whizz-Kidz.

Digital Heroes Awards 2010

TalkTalk, in association with Citizens Online and The Daily Mirror, are launching the Digital Heroes Awards 2010 to find this years UK Digital Heroes. Twelve regional winners will receive £5,000 in prize money plus free broadband for 18 months. The overall winner will receive £10,000 in prize money plus free broadband for 18 months. Applications are invited until 30 September 2010. Be a Digital Hero!

Skinners’ Company Grants

The Skinners' Company Lady Neville Charity provides one-off grants of up to £1,000. The priority areas are disability, local heritage, local community and performing and visual arts. The Charity will accept applications from registered charities or not-for-profit organisations based in the UK and organisations employing less than the equivalent of four full-time paid staff.

Funding is available for items of non-recurring expenditure (e.g., equipment, an event, a particular element of capital building works) Grants should make a clear and significant contribution to the project. You are welcome to discuss a potential approach with the Charities Administrator. Contact them on 020 7213 0562 email:charitiesadmin@skinners.org.uk   Details on application process from the website.

Request a free accessibility scan

HiSoftware Compliance Sheriff™ is an enterprise accessibility validation solution which scans your web site for over 172 separate issues and delivers the results in an online report. Request your free accessibility check today.

Sustaining Switched on Communities

Are you a voluntary organisation supporting individuals within your local community with ICT or is ICT part of the service you offer within your local community? With funding from the Big Lottery, AbilityNet will provide your organisation with an accessibility kit, initial and ongoing training and support, access to the our extensive loan bank of equipment, the full range of individual assessment options, and advice about adaptive technology for your centre and individuals using your centre. If you would like to be part of this project please email switchedon@abilitynet.org.uk or call 0800 269545.

Top ten social media resources

Connecting Up Australia rounds up a bunch of their favourite social media resources giving inofrmation about digital storytelling, Facebook, Twitter and suchlike.

User generated content and the law

Scribd has a helpful (and lengthy) legal guide to managing user generated content

Lock up your data

Out-Law.com reports that customer data is the most likely item to be stolen from a company by departing employees and contractors, according to a survey by an IT security company. Amazingly over half of the UK workers it talked to said they would take company property on leaving a job.

NetSquared launches community organisers handbook wiki

This useful guide to organising communities contains help on using tools such as Meetup, Ning, websites, social media and email. NetSquared welcomes input to the wiki and will release the handbook as a pdf in due course.

Integrating social media with a conference

David Meerman Scott over at WebInk  looks at how you can use the web to help with a conference

Want to translate a Word document into French or Spanish?

This Microsoft resource page shows you how.

Global office in the cloud

Efrat Ben-Dor Erez, NPTech Israel looks at how PresenTense uses the cloud to run their campaigns.

Google apps for project management

IT BusinessEdge looks at the top ten apps for online collaboration project management.

Need a diagram in a hurry?

Gliffy is an online diagramming tool - create professional-quality flowcharts, diagrams, floor plans, technical drawings, and more. Try it for free, no sign up required.

Keep it clean

TechSoup looks at third party Windows registry cleaners and debate whether they do any good (or harm...)

Where am I?

Last month John Kenyon looked at FourSquare - this month Facebook catches up on geo-location with Facebook places - Allyson Kapin on FrogLoop checks it out.

Free cloud computing for your organisation?

PC Pro security expert Davey Winder says that "storing data in the cloud is less of a concern than storing it on a series of unsecured thumb drives or netbooks, which almost inevitably get lost at some point."