The Register : AMD's move to offer free Wi-Fi comes as a number of budget hotel chains in the US have similarly started to offer gratis wireless Internet access in a bid to compete with higher end hotels for business customers. All 2300 Best Western locations will offer free Net access by September. Marriott's 1200 budget Courtyard, Residence Inn, TownePlace Suites, SpringHill Suites and Fairfield Inns will get free Internet access this year.

Another sign of the continuing drop in hotspot prices to zero. It's not clear exactly what AMD are doing and it may be nothing more than a branding exercise on existing sites. But it's still to be welcomed by consumers. [from: JB Wifi]

When: Thursday, 25 March - 6:00pm to 11:00pm

Where: Smiths Of Smithfield, 67-77 Charterhouse Street, London, EC1M 6HJ, UK

Description: A meeting originally organized by the Orkut London community. Now spreading into the Tribe, Ecademy London communities as well. Members from a community beginning with R and ending in E are also invited.

URL: http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=4419

Which makes me wonder. Why isn't there an all-purpose London Ecademy club? [from: JB Ecademy]

When: Thursday, 25 March - 6:00pm to 11:00pm

Where: Smiths Of Smithfield, 67-77 Charterhouse Street, London, EC1M 6HJ, UK

Description: A meetup originally organized by the Orkut London community. Now spreading into the Ryze, Tribe, Ecademy London communities as well.

URL: http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=4419

Which makes me wonder. Why isn't there an all-purpose London Ecademy club? [from: JB Ecademy]

Project: FREE IRAN![activistchat.com] :: View topic - JUST UPDATED Mar 14th CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE/PROTEST NEWS!!!!!! :

There's something going on in Fereydunkenar in Northern Iran on the Caspian Sea. I only mention this because firstly I've been there and second there seems to be nothing on the conventional news channels about it.

It seems that the local political leader (elected under questionable conditions in the recent elections) has resigned and there's a large demonstration going on which is fighting the revolutionary guards.

I don't give the current regime 5 years and probably not one year. [from: JB Wifi]

3 years before I was born …

… Let’s put it this way:
on ‘view intro’ and saw -2

Project: FREE IRAN![activistchat.com] :: View topic - JUST UPDATED Mar 14th CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE/PROTEST NEWS!!!!!! :

There's something going on in Fereydunkenar in Northern Iran on the Caspian Sea. I only mention this because firstly I've been there and second there seems to be nothing on the conventional news channels about it.

It seems that the local political leader (elected under questionable conditions in the recent elections) has resigned and there's a large demonstration going on which is fighting the revolutionary guards.

I don't give the current regime 5 years and probably not one year. [from: JB Ecademy]

Yahoo, BT team on VoIP application : Yahoo and British Telecommunications Thursday announced they are extending their partnership to offer consumers in the U.K. the option of making telephone calls over Yahoo's messaging product.

The integrated call management product, called Yahoo Messenger with BT Communicator, will include VoIP services like PC-to-phone calling, Internet call waiting and directory lookup, bundled with instant messaging features, according to Yahoo U.K. spokeswoman Sue Jackson. The service will allow users to easily switch from instant message conversations to a telephone conversation, she said.
Advertisement:

Yahoo Messenger with BT Communicator will be made available for trial in May, Jackson said, and the product will be formally launched later in the year, though she declined to specify a date. The companies are in the midst of running trials of the product with both Yahoo and BT customers, Jackson said.

Hmm. Yahoo Messenger? I wonder if it will be standards based, such as SIP or SIMPLE? [from: Ecademy Broadband]

Do you run a Club on Ecademy? Have you got one or more Meetings set up for that club? If so please do the following:-

- Find the meeting
- Click on it to see the meeting detail
- Click on Edit to change the detail
- Scroll down to the Meeting Type and Club fields
- Set the Club from the drop down list
- Hit Submit to save the meeting

I've recently changed the link between meetings and clubs so that it's easier for people to go from your club home page to a list of the meetings for that club. But to do that I need to know which club a meeting is for. It's very hard for me to work this out for anyone who runs more than one club. So unfortunately I have to ask you to do this.

Thanks for your cooperation. [from: JB Ecademy]

Judging by the current poll there's a whole group of people here who don't know about RSS. Let me try to explain. But to hook you in, if you need to track a business area for your job, RSS is absolutely indispensable. It's like having your own personal cuttings service. Anyone who's job includes tracking a business or topic area really should use it.

So what is RSS?

Perhaps the simplest explanation I've found is on the BBC site.

Sites with fairly rapidly changing content, like Ecademy or the BBC, publish their content in an alternate form as well as the web pages. This is the RSS standard and is machine readable. It consists of a short list of headlines, usually with a link to the original article and an abstract of the original.

An application called an aggregator or RSS reader keeps a list of the sites you want to track. This application could be a local program, a plugin for something like Outlook, or another website. Every so often, say once an hour, it works down the list of RSS feeds and collects the latest copy. It then presents the headlines to you in an easily read form. You can scan them quickly and then click on things that look interesting to bring up the original web page that they came from.

So now instead of trying to remember to visit 10 or 20 favourite websites each day only to find they haven't changed, the content comes to you. This means that you can now track 200-300 websites.

Here's the Google directory for RSS Readers. A good place to start is Bloglines which is a web based system. Then you may like to move on to local PC based systems like Newsgator, Amphetadesk or Sharpreader.

To find RSS, look for XML or RSS gifs on your favourite websites. Syndic8 have a very large directory as well. You might also like to browse around this list of popular feeds.

To get another idea of how this works, take a look at Dailenews on Ecademy. It's entirely driven by RSS.

ps. If you are one of the people who described yourself as "Addicted" to RSS, why not add a comment here about the news reader you use. [from: JB Ecademy]

Here's good one inspired by a Slashdot post.

Let's say I buy an Apple iPod or Sony CD MP3 player. Is there any completely legal way in the UK for me to obtain the MP3s to play on it?

Of course reality is that I'll simply rip my CD collection to MP3s. When I hit a CD that has been knobbled so it won't read on a PC, I'll download the copies via Kazaa.

What I don't know is the current status of fair use in the UK. Am I allowed to rip media I have paid for and repurpose it into another form for use on a different style of device? If the media contains copy protection, how far can I go to get round this in order to listen to the music I've paid for.

This is a condensed version of a much larger post I made last year exploring the extent of the laws view of common music sharing issues. [from: JB Ecademy]

If you are a club owner and have existing meetings set up for that club, please edit the meetings and set the club that should be associated with them. [from: JB Ecademy]

We've just made some changes to the meetings system and in the process pensioned off the Events system.

Club meetings are now tied to the club that they belong to. If you run a club and have meetings setup, please edit the meeting and set it to "Ecademy Club Meeting" and set the club it belongs to. Clicking on Meetings on club pages then shows just meetings for that club.

Club, Ecademy Events and meetings you are attending are identified in the meeting lists by a gif to make them stand out.

Meetings can be set to auto-remind attendees by email. In addition the meeting organiser can email all attendees to warn of changes or cancellations

A CSV download of attendees is available to organisers to print labels or attendee lists

A "Print" option is available with a printable page(s) of meeting details and photos of attendees

If you include a postcode with the venue details a map link is automatically created for UK and USA

Meetings are auto-filtered to only show meetings in your country.

Any problems, drop me a line. [from: JB Wifi]

BurnhamsBeat: Social Networking: Partying Like It's 1999 is a VC's take on Social Networking sites. Ecademy got mentioned but he didn't "get" what we're doing. [from: JB Wifi]

I've come across a suggestion for embedding an IM system in Ecademy. Probably Jabber. the problem is that I can't work out what the benefit would be.

Any ideas on what we'd do with an embedded Jabber server? [from: JB Wifi]

We've just made some changes to the meetings system and in the process pensioned off the Events system.

Club meetings are now tied to the club that they belong to. If you run a club and have meetings setup, please edit the meeting and set it to "Ecademy Club Meeting" and set the club it belongs to. Clicking on Meetings on club pages then shows just meetings for that club.

Club, Ecademy Events and meetings you are attending are identified in the meeting lists by a gif to make them stand out.

Meetings can be set to auto-remind attendees by email. In addition the meeting organiser can email all attendees to warn of changes or cancellations

A CSV download of attendees is available to organisers to print labels or attendee lists

A "Print" option is available with a printable page(s) of meeting details and photos of attendees

If you include a postcode with the venue details a map link is automatically created for UK and USA

Meetings are auto-filtered to only show meetings in your country.

Any problems, drop me a line. [from: JB Ecademy]

I've come across a suggestion for embedding an IM system in Ecademy. Probably Jabber. the problem is that I can't work out what the benefit would be.

Any ideas on what we'd do with an embedded Jabber server? [from: JB Ecademy]

BurnhamsBeat: Social Networking: Partying Like It's 1999 is a VC's take on Social Networking sites. Ecademy got mentioned but he didn't "get" what we're doing. [from: JB Ecademy]

Plink have now got a Mobile (SMS) Service. So you can retrieve biographical and some contact information via an SMS call. This is a clever link between SMS and existing data. And another reason to turn FOAF export on from Ecademy so your details are in Plink.

What with Plink, Local-News and AnyRSS, Dom Ramsey is doing some interesting stuff. Somebody give him a job! [from: JB Ecademy]

Further to my blog about Downing Street Says Just got a note from Tom Steinberg who says,

Thanks for the coverage of our new site, but I must make clear that Publicwhip.org.uk is the work of Francis Irving, and FaxYourMP is the work of James Cronin, Tom Loosemore and others. Furthermore, other than suggesting the logo and some of the ideas, none of the work on www.downingstreetsays.com was mine at all - I just help bring it all together. [from: JB Ecademy]

Downing Street Says... is a blog from Tom Steinberg that takes Downing St press briefings and turns them into a quickly readable form. Tom is the guy behind other UK projects like FaxYourMP and Public Whip. As he says "Keep poking the system with a stick".

[from: JB Ecademy]