The Digital Villages Research Network

I thought I would pass this on to you. It is a very good way for creating strong, unique and most importantly, memorable, passwords without the need to write them down. This idea came to me in a Newsletter from SocialOomph. With all the recent hacking scares I’ve been thinking I should diversify my passwords and cease to use too many of the same. The problem  is how can you make a password memorable and yet not obvious. The article below is a good start. I’m not planning to use exactly their method but a hybrid will be good I think. Perhaps you can see how you could adopt the idea.

Continue reading Stronger Passwords

According to the latest research from the Champion for Digital Inclusion, there are currently one in five adults who still don’t use computers and the internet. It’s often the people facing the toughest times who have the most to gain from what technology has to offer, and as the internet rapidly becomes a tool for everyday life, those without the access, skills or motivation to use it are increasingly left behind.

Government figures indicate there are six milion adults currently offline who are socially and digitally excluded. Today, the Prime Minister made it clear that digital inclusion had become both an issue of social equity and economic common sense.

In his speech at the Royal Society of the Arts on Wednesday, Gordon Brown launched ‘Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government’. He said: “Our aim is – within the next five years – to shift the great majority of our large transactional services to become online only – and this has the potential to save as a first step 400 million pounds but as transaction after transaction goes on line billions more….But in order to achieve our ambitions for this third generation of public services we must ensure that no one in Britain is left behind in this communications revolution. Through our programme for Digital Britain – high speed broadband will be extended to every home so that we can create genuinely interactive service… And today I can announce that we will invest a further £30 million with UK online centres, championed by Martha Lane Fox’s digital inclusion taskforce, to get at least another one million people online by 2012.”

In October 2009, a report published by Champion for Digital Inclusion Martha Lane Fox in conjunction with Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) showed the economic benefit of getting everyone online in the UK was £22 billion. As well as increasing employability and business performance, online citizens mean government can use more efficient online channels to deliver services, and conduct less face to face or paper-based transactions. PwC calculated that getting all digitally excluded people online and making just one transaction with government services each month would save £900 million annually.

The financial benefit of getting everyone in the UK online is clearly huge, but on a smaller scale the research found the benefits equally compelling. People save an average £560 a year by shopping and paying bills online, kids with internet access at home do better in their exams, and most jobs are now advertised and applied for online. What’s more, people with basic IT skills earn up to 10% more than their offline counterparts

It was great to see some of our Community Researchers at the newly launched Community Media Club run by Steve last week. What a great atmosphere, lots of laughing to match the learning. Poeple were getting to grips with new technologies and how they could help them, their families or the people and groups they work with.

The fun continues every Wednesday afternoon, next stop Managing Images!!

The Government has recently commissioned a paper looking at what should be deemed a minimum level of ICT knowledge that allows people to make full us of our digital society. The paper was researched and written by Estelle Morris with contributions from a broad cross section of organisations including BECTA, DCMS, BIS, UK Online OFCOM and NIACE. There findings regarding what ICT skills should be attained by every citizen, and how, is interesting.

The document in full and precis can be here

http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/Detail.aspx?ReleaseID=403527&NewsAreaID=2

The Mayors Jetty Visit (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

I made some assertions in a couple of workshops that on reflection were truths I had known for such a long time I had forgotten the basis upon which I made those arguments and I was simply telling people that this is the way things are but unable to offer any supporting evidence.  I have just run a test on both of these “theories” and here are the findings:

1) Image Compression

I stated that images uploaded to a Wordpress blog should be optimised to 1000 pixels wide and compressed to a 50% (media) ratio. Wordpress compressed images anyway but by reducing the picture first it saves upload time and server load. Wordpress itself will further resize our picture to a choice of 150 pixels wide (thumbnail), 300 pixels wide, or 540 pixels wide. We can present our image in any of these sizes or the original which is 1000 pixels (the one we uploaded) The example to the right shows a picture presented at 300 pixels whilst clicking on it offers up the 1000 pixel wide image.

The question asked was – if we reduce the image to 1000 pixels wide why ALSO perform a compression on it. Well I just ran a test on the image above and created three copies listed below. The file sizes are shown and you’ll see there is a file size saving by reducing the images physical size but by also compressing it there is a futher significant saving with NO DISCERNABLE DEGRADATION of image quality (and therefore optimised for quick web viewing)

• original @ 3456 pixels wide with no compression = file size 4,034 KB view
• resized @ 1000 pixels wide with no compression = file size      483 KB view
• resized @ 1000 pixels wide with  50% compression = file size     78KB view

You can view these images in their various states by clicking the links to the right but it may tale a long while for the original to load. I uploaded these examples via FTP so there is no Wordpress optimisation taking place (“crunching”)

2) Picasa Edits

I stated that tweaks, edits and touch-ups in the free tool Picasa don’t actually affect the image (or video) but just as the way you view it in picasa. I tested this with an image and performed a quite sever crop. I closed down picasa and opened it again and the picture appeared in its severely cropped state. I then closed Picasa browsed to the folder where I knew the image to be and when I opened (viewed) it, the picture appeared in its original un-cropped state. This feature is both useful and anoying depending on what you are trying to achieve. If you want to make your changes permanent you must export a copy. It is in the Picasa export process anyway that the option to resize and compress a picture appears. Emailing the picture sends the editied, in this case, cropped version and not the original.