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September 29th, 2009 by Speed Budapest (Matt)

Daily News 29/09

Computer World UK – Google wants to make the web faster. Good news for the enterprise?
Raise your hand if you’re nostalgic for the days of waiting for web pages to load. That’s right, the days of going to make coffee while you wait for Netscape to load pictures of your five-year old niece’s birthday party on Geocities. We’ve come a long way since the “World Wide Wait” and thankfully today we take for granted instant access to high bandwidth services such as video and browser-based SaaS.

Computing – Too many tools, not enough communication
Despite advances in technology, organisations find that a proliferation of communications tools is thwarting collaboration and slowing down their decision-making process, according to a survey sponsored by mobile network operator Orange. Orange surveyed more than 600 CIOs from multinational corporations across a number of industries in Europe. Nearly half – 45 per cent – of respondents said multiple communication channels cause severe delays in the response time from colleagues which can negatively impact business processes and productivity.

CBR – Technology democracy hits the workplace
Employees are demanding a greater degree of freedom to choose the IT applications and devices the use in the workplace – but are finding that enterprises are struggling to adapt to revolution.
The findings appeared in a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which found that users are adopting for work use the applications and devices that they use in their personal lives.

IT PRO – One in five homes broadband-connected by 2010
The number of households with broadband continues to grow, with one in five households worldwide predicted to have a fixed broadband connection by the end of 2009. This would mean that 422 million households have a fixed broadband connection in 2009, according to Gartner, up from 282 million in 2008.

Total Telecom – Twitter users twice as receptive to advertising
People who use Twitter appear to be much more open to advertising than those who use other social media, a tendency that might pay off for investors in the micro-blogging service. The finding, published in a report by Los Angeles-based research group Interpret LLC, provides a shot in the arm for the wildly popular micro-blogging service, which has so far been unable to make money.

June 12th, 2009 by Chris Measures

Opening up government data – more difficult than creating the World Wide Web?

As part of Gordon Brown’s latest reshuffle, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the architect of the World Wide Web has been appointed to open up access to government data.

On paper an extremely positive move. It is taxpayer’s data after all and citizen involvement via the web is increasing. Providing real, accurate government data will deliver the transparency that people need to understand what is happening on key issues.

There are big differences between this project and the creation of the World Wide Web. The web provided a platform for people who want (and in some cases are desperate) to share information. Can anyone (let alone someone based in the US) persuade notoriously secretive local and central government mandarins to give up information – particularly when it might show they are not doing a good job?

This is a major cultural change – if Sir Tim can crack this it will arguably be a bigger achievement than inventing the hyperlink…….