Anyone who works in events will understand why me (Kerry) and Chloe are very tired this morning! However, I must say we are rather pleased with ourselves…

Over 2 months of planning, 6 weeks of promoting and 1 day of printing, producing and organising led to one good Tech Talks!

(For those who haven’t been, Tech Talks is a technology themed event for small business to learn, network, and be inspired).

The first of our speakers was Jo Reid of Calvium who spoke to us about mobile phone apps. Jo gave us some great ideas about how we could go about having a mobile app for our business and of course, why.

Some tweets throughout Jo’s talks:

#techtalksbristol over 50% of uk now have smartphones! (@arthursoft)

Jo Reid @appfurnace talking about app games company RedWasp & their new gameow.ly/1HmVRA #TechTalksBristol (@DickieArmour)

#techtalksbristol excellent parallel between the liberating effect of the early PCs & now with smartphone apps. (@kevleighton)

#techtalksbristol Great to know Bristol is such a creative and technology hub!!! (@IanThorneBrown)

Up next was Fred George who came across from London to deliver his talk: Developer Anarchy.  He spoke about the organisation Forward, and their approach to management systems; which is, they have none. This one sparked a lot of intrigue!

Some tweets throughout Fred’s talks:

#techtalksbristol I am glad there is a development methodology that describes the way I work. Anarchy. (@JeremyBassett)

@fgeorge52 talking about ‘programmer anarchy’ at#TechTalksBristol – looks and sounds crazy! (@mattrowntree)

Programmer anarchy! Awesomeness!#techtalksbristol (@CVC_Wizard)

Loving Fred George’s passion for his developer anarchy!! #techtalksbristol (@DickieArmour)

Our final speaker, Geoff Roberts, gave an information-packed talk about the vast opportunities in data.

Some tweets throughout Geoff’s talks:

The greatest barrier to success is fear of failure! Like it! #techtalksbristol (@KevLeighton)

Geoff Roberts recommending NetBase for social search ow.ly/i/u5i3 #TechTalksBristol (@DickieArmour)

How to maximize revenue using the RFM model at#TechTalksBristol (@Mattrowntree)

And the tweets continued!

Sadly the venue needed us to vacate at 6 so networking was cut slightly short. Some ventured to the pub afterwards though, Chloe and I included (can we get away with claiming that as expenses…?).

If you wish to get involved in the next Tech Talks on the 25th April you can book your place now, the line-up is a little special…

Thanks to all that came to Tech Talks #2 we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did… And our under-eye bags are not in vain

SpiderGroup issued a survey to local businesses this month, which revealed similar results: That 60% of those questioned thought ‘working from anywhere’ to be the most attractive quality of the cloud.

Perhaps this shows that keeping up-to-date with technology is more important than saving money? It certainly seems to represent society today – that people are much more mobile – which is in fact an enormous benefit to businesses.



What is it?

The Cloud is just another word for the Internet.

Over time it has been adopted by the marketing department as it sounds sexier than the internet and has now moved into “common” terminology for the internet.

Logically, cloud computing is computing delivered from the internet.

Depending on the type of cloud service you opt for, you can obtain software or systems to provide:

In other words all of the things you use on your computer, plus more, without having to buy the software and have it installed.

There are other names that are used that essentially refer to the same thing, a few examples are: Software as a Service (SaaS), Application service providers (ASP), Utility Computing, SOA and Infrastructure as a Service.

Over the years, Cloud Computing has gained huge popularity, starting in the mid 1990’s when several services started to pop up such as Hotmail, one of the very first cloud computing examples.

Over time many more services have been developed, did you know that services such as Yahoo mail, Google mail, Facebook, Twitter and even Amazon are classed as examples of cloud computing?

One of the predictions I made a couple of years after starting SpiderGroup back in 2004 was that eventually the PC as we know it would be replaced by browser and internet enabled devices, this is slowly happening. I’m sure many of you already possess an iPad.

We are now at a point where you can run a business from your office, home, in fact anywhere you are. The IT industry has evolved to a point where it has significantly matured so that it isn’t an expensive black-hole of expense but a key business enabler, a utility such as water or electricity.

Why should I care?

• Save money because there is no need for Onsite servers, IT Support contracts, Backup systems and Anti-virus
• Software is always up to date
• Managed by experts
• Monthly licensing for all your IT
• Scalable per/user pricing and predictable budgeting for your business IT and support
• Increased security on your data
• In-built Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Summing it up

With the emergence of the Cloud; no you don’t need an umbrella, you just need to know what it can do for your business: Cloud computing is the future of business technology.

A sneak peak video of the awaited HP Palm webOS tablet has turned up online ahead of its launch next week at the MWC.

The very brief nine-second ‘teaser’ which was posted on Palm’s YouTube channel unfortunately doesn’t show a lot except for its curves and rounded edges.

So what do you think of the Palm webOS tablet? Competition for Android’s Honeycomb and Apple’s iOS

Post your comment below.

-Via TechRadar

The new UK police crime map website, www.police.uk, has supposedly become one of the most used government websites ever.

According to the Home Office’s official twitter account, they tweeted that their website received a staggering 5,000 hits per second or 18-million hits an hour.

Sources online say that the most violent street in the UK is a quiet street in Portsmouth. With four crimes every day in December alone, the street which is supposedly no longer than a football pitch has made locals rather ‘flabbergasted’ that their quiet neighborhood was a crime hotspot.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the years the IT industry has gotten a bad rap because some companies and “IT Professionals” have promised far more than they are able to deliver. I now meet people that seem to have the impression that IT is a nightmare, doesn’t work properly and costs a lot of money (not our clients I’d like to add). I spend quite a  bit of time explaining to them how it should be and that there are companies out there that just make sure it works, all the time and that the costs are scalable and dependable.

Here are a few things I think you should expect from your IT support company:

• The ability to understand your business requirements and translate them into IT provision
  • Looking to help solve immediate problems
  • Ability to identify new technologies that will enhance your business
• Knowledgeable and friendly staff
  • Your staff should not feel intimidated calling for help and should feel that someone cares about your problem
  • Wherever possible it is important to educate your staff allowing them to become more self sufficient
• Transparency around cost and contract
  • There is nothing worse than getting an unexpected bill
  • A three month rolling contract should be the longest contract length unless hardware is involved

These things aren’t a nice to have, they are essential for any business to ensure they concentrate on their core offering and not IT.

Microsoft has released their mobile version of Microsoft Office’s OneNote app for iOS.

The purpose of the iOS OneNote app allows users to keep notes of thoughts, ideas and pretty much anything important, as well as a to-do-list. The app is compatible with all iOS platform devices running v4.2 or later.

Microsoft said “the notes made on OneNote are automatically synced to user’s SkyDrive account for universal access”.

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With only a few weeks until Apple is supposedly to unveil their new iPad2, the release date, specs and price are still secrets. But does that stop rumours – No.

Reports indicate that Apple is anticipating a huge demand for their second generation iPad, so much in fact that they have ordered six million units per month.

So what do we know so far?

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According to an intelligence blog posted by Kevin Rose, Apple is going to be unveiling their second generation iPad in a few weeks’ time.

In the past, Rose has usually been ‘spot on’ with his predictions and is also known to have a number of sources ‘inside Infinite Loop’.

Rose stated that – The iPad 2 will “possibly [be on] Tuesday February 1^st”. Rose said that the iPad2 will feature a ‘higher DPI display’ specifically for the iPad and two cameras – one back and front facing which had already been predicted a while back.

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Avatar Kinect

Revealed earlier this morning by Steve Ballmer at his CES 2011 keynote speech, Avatar Kinect is Microsoft’s new online chat service for all Xbox Live Gold members. The new service allows Microsoft Live members to talk to one another in a cyber environment whilst their Kinect is tracking their expressions – raise your eyebrows and your avatar’s is raised.

The service is ready for release in spring 2011 and available for all Xbox users with the Kinect peripheral.

Avatar Kinect has definitely hit a new milestone for Microsoft’s gaming but will avatars stop there? Will Second Life (online platform for users to create an avatar and live in a cyber world where they can meet other avatars, have cyber marrige and more) start to incorporate a ‘Kinect’ peripheral to make gaming online more realistic?

-Via YouTube