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by Hanna

Manchester digital community needs “balls”, says tech journalist

December 14, 2011 in News Roundup

Martin Bryant, the new managing editor of the tech website The Next Web, has called on the Manchester digital community to have more entrepreneurial spirit.

Martin believes his city is capable of producing top internet companies if the digital community had “the balls” to get going.

“I really think we could be doing a lot more in Manchester and the Northwest to promote and help develop the technology scene here”, Bryant told local news website How-Do.

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by Hanna

Smell the internet with Olly

November 8, 2011 in News Roundup

Thanks to a new gadget, you can now smell when you have been mentioned on Twitter.

Olly‘ is a USB-powered device allows you to add smells to your internet experience.

How about a lovely smell of fresh coffee or refreshing fruit whenever you’ve received a calendar notification or a new email has dropped in your inbox?

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by Ardrich

York to trial free wi-fi

September 20, 2011 in News Roundup

york_wifiThe historic City of York is set to mix medieval with modern in its experiment to offer free wi-fi inside its city walls.

The plans are part of the Digital York initiative and Coney Street and St Helen’s Square will be the first places to offer free connectivity this Autumn.

If the pilot proves successful, free wi-fi will be rolled out across the entire area within the city walls.

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by Ardrich

Vint Cerf takes blame for 'Internet Armageddon'

January 26, 2011 in News Roundup

vint_cerfOften titled as the “father of the internet”, Google’s Vint Cerf has admitted it’s his fault the world’s running out of IP addresses.

“Who the hell knew how much address space we needed?”, he said in an interview by The Sydney Morning Herald last week.

Cerf created the web protocol IPv4 which connects the world’s computers to each other. He said that back in 1977, he had no idea his “experiment” wouldn’t end.

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by Ardrich

Quote

January 21, 2011 in Micro-Bites

Quote

Quote

“One of the Internet’s strengths is its ability to help consumers find the right needle in a digital haystack of data.” ~ Jared Sandberg

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by Ardrich

Gems of early web design

January 14, 2011 in News Roundup

disosauria

A blog post by Asylum.co.uk brings together a selection of some of early web design’s “finest” achievements.

Sites that were once cutting edge – well, maybe not all of them – now have us hooked for all the wrong reasons.

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by Ardrich

What does the future hold for the 20-year-old Web?

November 25, 2010 in Features

linkeddata2

After making it through its teenage years, the World Wide Web is getting ready for the huge task of organising all of its information.

Last Monday, to mark the 20th birthday of his creation, Tim Berners-Lee published an article in the Scientific American.

“The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity—and even our liberty. Like democracy itself, it needs defending”, Berners-Lee opened.

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by Ardrich

Communications minister hails cloud computing

November 25, 2010 in News Roundup

CloudCloud computing will be the solution to the storage problems created by the explosion of portable devices, communications minister Ed Vaizey has said.

“[Cloud computing] is especially significant today, at a time when we are seeing an explosion in the number of portable devices with limited storage capacity,” Vaizey said at the China internet forum in London this week.

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by Ardrich

The internet before Google

September 30, 2010 in Features

old_computer (1)Last Monday, Google celebrated its 12th birthday. The search giant’s journey from a garage in Silicon Valley to a huge global success is without doubt an inspirational subject for a feature article, but we looked at what the internet was like before Larry and Sergey registered Google.com in 1997.

Dave Hartland has been working with the internet since the early 1990s. Currently the director of a staff development organisation JISC Netskills based at Newcastle University, Dave’s first job in IT was in 1991 as a user support officer for Mailbase, a national email-based internet service.

We asked Dave to talk about the early days of the internet and life before Google.

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by Ardrich

Smartphones give new boost for radio

July 20, 2010 in News Roundup

iphone_radio2 (1)Radio apps are proving popular among smartphone users, Radio audience measurement body Rajar reveals.

According to new figures, 20% of smartphone users have installed a radio app and more than half of them are using it at least once a week.

The survey concludes that radio users seem to be adapting well to the internet with 31% of listeners tuning in online. The catch-up services are also gaining a foothold with 16% having downloaded a podcast.

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