Posts Tagged ‘ digital birmingham ’

Brum to have “digital district”

Whatever that means. In a speech welcoming Lord Carter to the Digital Britain regional launch. Cllr Paul Tilsley (Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council and the Chair of the Digital Birmingham partnership) is announcing a “digital district”: “Birmingham will create a ‘Digital District’ that brings together the innovative, learning and creative sectors enabled through a next generation hi speed broadband infrastructure. Spanning several hundred acres from the creative industries in Digbeth, our science and technology sectors at Birmingham Science Park and our world class developments at Eastside, it will provide an exciting environment for our creative industries and young entrepreneurs. “ But what does that really mean? It sounds a little too much like another pointless branding exercise, one of those phrases that seems to only exist in order to be used in speeches to people that it includes (see also “Creative Industries”).  At worst it sounds like giving a “natural” cluster of some institutions, buildings and companies a name and a heady promise that may come to naught. It also sounds like it’s conflating “digital” and “creative and media” a little too much (but Brum certainly isn’t the only place doing that). That’s what it sounds like at...

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Second Place

Second Place

Birmingham might not be shit, but on first glance ‘Virtual Birmingham’ is. Launched today is a special version of Birmingham in Second Life — b-scape (yeuch) (link to it in Second Life, you must have Second Life thing installed and a bloody fast computer). From reports of the launch event (from Simon Gray here and others on twitter) and trying to access it myself I can’t see a coherent argument for Second Life itself, or for a public body to spend time on it. I’d love to see this sort of thing work, I don’t want to join the chorus of boos, I want nothing better than to see Birmingham lead the way in technology. Please someone explain to me why this exercise is worthwhile. As I see it Second Life itself is an unbelievably clunky way of interacting with anything. It’s too slow and your actions lag behind your controls that much that even if you’ve found something interesting you spend ages overshooting it and turning round to go back. All buildings become obstacles to your movement, you can’t ‘walk’ so you end up pressing the ‘fly’ button and not being able to see anything as it’s all...

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Busy with the Fiz-zy

I was waiting until I’d had a chance to have a go of it before I mentioned Birminghamfiz – Digital Birmingham’s “free wifi information zone”, I don’t carry my laptop around with me that much (and the wondrous iPhone won’t be out til November) so I hadn’t done it yet. I wanted to have a proper look after being a bit critical of Digital Birmingham’s literature in the past, so as to be fair. It’s just dawned on me that it’s a WEBSITE tho’ and I can access it ON THE INTERNET. So I just have. Birminghamfiz is essentially a mobile website – it’s special because it will be the only thing that is free to access on BT’s Openzone (which is a paid for wi-fi service that covers much of the city centre). It has (copied and pasted from the site) access to : Listings for local cinemas, theatres, music venues and sports events; Ideas of where to eat and drink; Train, metro and bus timetables; Where to park and where to find a taxi; Places to stay; Where to shop; Toilets and baby-changing facilities; News and sport; Local weather forecasts; Emergency services; Jobs; Schools, colleges, term dates...

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digital birmingham – all naughts, no ones

if you popped along to digital birmingham‘s marquee in Victoria Square (to celebrate their first birthday)- as did my other half’s parents – you may well have been impressed with ‘our new digital age’ and all it can do. Visitors got to play with their Wii (hem hem) and find out a little more about podcasting, amongst other techno-marvels. No doubt you’d have come home drenched in leaflets, for all sorts of services and about a wide variety of subjects. Good. I’m glad someone’s trying to open up a few minds. Not good, however, is one particular leaflet “The Guide to Broadband at Home” (published by digital birmingham themselves). It’s littered with advice that is at best dumbed down (its definition of downloading is almost a perfect definition of streaming, for example) and at worst woefully out of date and inaccurate. If you had no idea to start with, you’d be even more confused. Some examples: (from the glossary) “Netscape Navigator. Software. One of the most popular browsers for accessing the world wide web”. not since about 1990 it hasn’t been. There’s no mention of IE, let alone Firefox, if you were trying to access the web you’d be...

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BiNS is mostly by Jon Bounds a Birmingham based social web consultant, producer and writer., You can hire him to work on your social web campaigns or anything really—he's not fussy. Follow him on twitter or drop him an email.

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