Local Hubs - win-win options
March 11, 2008 Posted by julzswitch in : Environment, South West region, Flexible Working, Guest Bloggers , 1 comment so farI am doing some research today ahead of an event next Wednesday in Devon which is bringing together people from public, private and third sector organisation to look at the development of local ICT ‘hubs’. The event is being promoted by Community Council of Devon and COSMIC jointly and has already engaged interest from the County Council, BT, University of Plymouth, RDA and others.
There are several counties already running projects in the UK which provide ICT resources in local communities using facilities such as village halls, post offices, libraries and pubs and its interesting to see how these are now developing a new level of support given the need for everyone to take environmental issues more seriously. Examples I am looking at include - Somerset Broadplaces, Connecting Dorset and Switched on Shropshire
By providing access to services and resources in local communities we should be able to reduce the need for travel and our ongoing reliance on so many vehicles. I also think that if we extend this to shared work-based use of local facilities such as community centres and village halls it becomes a win-win situation. Many of us know about the issues with homeworking (isolation, lack of social support, etc) and so if we developed locally shared workspaces which could be used by a range of employers not only do we provide people with improved working arrangements, but we also develop new and much-needed income streams for local venues. I am going to encourage many more people to think about local hubs in this way and increase the debate as much as possible, starting with next Wednesday.
Julie Harris, COSMIC
Offload: Systems for survival
August 9, 2007 Posted by Clare in : Bristol, Media, Events, Environment, Technology , 1 comment so far
Futurefarmers (US) present their ‘Gardening Superfund Sites’, which looks at the influence of technical or eWaste around the Silicon Valley and across other US site. (more…)
Use Blackle for more energy efficient Googling
July 26, 2007 Posted by Stephen Hilton in : Bristol, Innovation, Environment, Technology , 4 commentsThanks to Helen Goulden from CLG for sending this -
When your screen is white - an empty word page, or the Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when its black it consumes only 59 watts. Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved. In a response to this article Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white version, but with a lower energy consumption…. it is also helpful for people with visual impairments too
Try it here
Waste Man
June 25, 2007 Posted by Clare in : Bristol, Community Media, Environment , add a commentWASTE MAN, one of six films made for Bristol Natural History Consortium’s Think or Swim project to raise young people’s awareness of climate change, is part of a video competition on Scenewon.
Created by local film maker Nathan Hughes working with young film-makers from City of Bristol College, the competition closes on 30th June. To watch and vote for WASTE MAN go to - http://www.scenewon.co.uk/scene_movie.php?movie=585.
