O'ReillyGMT - Tech News from 4 timezones either side of the Greenwich Meridian

South London Geek Night 2

After a very successful first meet-up, South London Geek Night is back for a second outing. South London Geek Night 2 will take place at the Bedford in Balham on Wednesday 14th July at 8.30pm. Organiser Steve Jalim has put together a fine line-up of 15-minute keynotes and 5-minute microslots:

Keynotes

NoSQL: what does it mean, how did we get here, and why should I care? by Hugo Rodger-Brown
Hugo is a web technology specialist with particular experience in ecommerce. Having recently left Tesco, where he led the development of the Tesco Entertainment website, Hugo is currently working as a technical director for a web agency in Camden. He blogs at http://hugorodgerbrown.blogspot.com

Pretty Numbers by Simon Plenderleith and Alistair Holt
Simon and Alistair run Makitó Labs - a web consultancy that creates unique, useful and downright juicy websites and apps. They've both been poking around with the web since the late 90s and recently created the popular website Vote for Policies which helped people to decide who they should vote for in the general election based on policies, not personalities. They'll be talking about the data they collected from site, sharing some juicy data porn and telling us how they managed to keep it all working with huge numbers of visitors.

Microslots

Being user-centred: How to design your website (or anything else) better by Colm Brophy"A short introduction to user-centred design, the techniques and tools that are used and how it can make just about anything you design better."

Dynamic Pub Table Configuration Protocol by Mike Hemstock - A humourous look at how pub food can find its way from kitchen to table using different types of computer technology.

Building Security In...to Geeks by Gabe Chomic - Chances are, you or someone you know has been a local business's 'tech guy'. But what about their security guy? Where does a SME find security? They don't, not now. This talk covers a few brief thoughts on the subject, and some work we're doing in the area

There are still spaces for a couple of Microslot speakers if you're south of the river in London and free that night. Register to attend on Upcoming.

The Geek Atlas

Geek Atlas is promising to be a magnificent book, a travelogue of '128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive'. The author, John Graham-Cumming, wrote it because he wanted to read it - he looked around for something that met the Geek Atlas' description, but nothing out there came close to bringing together all the fascinating places around the world which encapsulate the thrill of technological discovery.

We have a series of five videos lined up for the week that the Geek Atlas is published, (which at time of writing is week commencing 8th June in the UK). Each day, John will discuss a different location from his book. In the meantime, here's a taster, Experimental Breeder Reactor No 1, Idaho, USA, filmed in the Faraday Exhibition at the Royal Institution, Albemarle St, London:

National IT Volunteering Awards 08 - Celebrating the UK's Best IT Volunteers

iT4Communities (iT4C) launched its third annual National IT Volunteering Awards 08 last month to recognise and celebrate the very best IT Volunteers and IT volunteering projects in the country.

The awards are supported by the British Computer Society (BCS) and appiChar, a leading IT consultancy to the Not for Profit Sector. This support means we will be celebrating at the prestigious BCS London Offices and that the winning charities will each receive £500 prize money. Visit the Awards Website for all the details or follow the awards blog for up to date news and views.

Last year's winners included a social networking internet site for people with mental health problems for Sevenoaks Area Mind and a secure online meeting space for staff of Halifax charity, 1Voice.

Josh Hoole, iT4C Development Consultant, said:

“IT volunteers make a huge difference to the charities who need their expert help. Without volunteer support many organisations cannot afford IT expertise and suffer on the wrong side of the digital divide.”

You could be a winner next year by registering online to share your time and talent and making a difference in your community.

iT4C is a programme of the Information Technologists’ Company that makes IT work for charities by introducing volunteer IT professionals to charitable organisations that need IT help and support. So far, in just 5 years, the iT4C volunteers have delivered over £3.25 million worth of technological support to the third sector. 

Julia Lerman speaks at London Girl Geek Dinner - 9th October 2008

O'Reilly author Julia Lerman and Researcher Dr Elisabeth Kelan are the speakers at the London Girl Geek Dinner, October 9th 2008, 06:30 PM - 09:30 PM (GMT).

Julia Lerman is the leading independent authority on the Entity Framework and has been using and teaching the technology since its inception two years ago. She is well known in the .NET community as a Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider and INETA Speaker. She is a prolific blogger, a frequent presenter at technical conferences around the world, including DevConnections and TechEd and she writes articles for many well-known technical publications. She is currently working on Programming the Entity Framework for O'Reilly.

Dr Elisabeth Kelan will talk about two pieces of research she conducted at the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at London Business School (http://www.london.edu/womeninbusiness.html). The first research takes a look at the impact gender proportions have on innovation in teams. By studying knowledge intensive teams, the research shows that teams with equal proportions of men and women perform particularly well in regards to innovation indicators. In the second part of this talk, Elisabeth will address the importance of gender stereotypes at work. Drawing on examples from the Ladygeek research (www.ladygeek.org.uk) and cutting edge academic insights, Elisabeth will highlight why making gender stereotypes visible at work is crucial to work with them creatively.

Pick tickets here: http://mslggd.eventbrite.com/

The event will take place here:
Microsoft - Victoria Office (Auditoriums 1 & 2)
100 Victoria Street
London, SW1E 5JL
United Kingdom

iT4Communities Helps Techies Share Their Time & Talent with Charities

Josh Hoole writes:

iT4Communities (iT4C) is the UKs' leading national IT volunteering organisation. We make IT work for charities by introducing volunteer IT professionals to charities needing IT help and support.

There are over 5,000 volunteer IT professionals registered with us and over 2,500 small and medium sized charities and voluntary groups looking for help with their IT. The skills of an IT professional can save months of headaches for small charities and the business perspective they bring can help organisations be sustainable.

There are many ways people can volunteer from a 10 minute telephone advice chat to a 6-month dynamic CMS website project and volunteering can help improve people's skills and boost their CV. iT4C volunteer Matthew Hughes realised there were so many charities crying out for support he could easily give so signed up to help. Matthew says:

Whilst I get a great deal of satisfaction from helping others (as well as good Karma) I also realise the great benefit I get on a career level from working with different people up and down the country. I get to build up my web design portfolio whilst helping people improve their web presence.

Anyone is free to have a look at the hundreds of opportunities available on the RSS Feed and if you see something simple and fun then all you have to do is register online. Once you find a charity you click with you can start creating the solution, although you're not committed unless everyone's happy.

Have a look at the iT4C website for more information or register to share your time and talent. And don't forget to tell us your success stories!

Christian Heilmann - YUI! JavaScript Evolved?

Dominic Hodgson of Northcrew writes:

On Wednesday 20 February, GeekUp Leeds hosted a presentation by Christian Heilmann on the YUI. It was a great evening, and NorthCast were there to record the whole thing for those of you who couldn't make it ... we're nice like that.

To download this video click here

Christian has also been good enough to post his presentation online:
http://www.slideshare.net/cheilmann/geekup-leeds-why-the-yui

It doesn't fly, but it squeaks and moves around.

The time has come to throw away your Lava lamps that alert you when your build fails or when Nagios wants to alert you a service is down.

You'll shortly be plugging a Fish in your USB port which will be the connection to your TuxDroid! 

The TuxDroid is what Kysoh calls "Your smart desktop agent": it interacts with Linux applications without having to be near your computer screen! Tux will read your e-mails, act as VOIP phone, and do lots of other nifty things we still have to imagine.

The fish connects wireless to your Tux, so you can move Tux around, make it blink, beak and flipper its wings. It shows up in your machine as a USB Sound card so with a Text To Speech tool you can make it speak to your loved ones even when not even near to a computer.

People are using it as a mobile sound device, as an alarm clock or just to practise their Python skills and they are having fun with it !

Free Seminar: The Pragmatic Java Architect: In-the-Brain of Simon Brown, April 19th

This seminar is a roundtable discussion with with the members of thepragamaticjavaarchitect.com share their experiences of their roles as Java architects on Finance projects in London. Come along to listen to and ask questions about the following sort of topics:

• Technology selection: Full stack Java EE or lightweight Spring?  Commercial or open source?
• Architecture selection: How do you decide upon an architecture given the vast choice of Java APIs and libraries?  How do you prove the chosen architecture meets your non-functional requirements?
• Service Oriented Architecture: How do you build a SOA with Java EE?
• Deployment choices: How do you decide which platform and topology is right for you?
• Quality assurance: How good is "good enough" and which tools really do add value during development?  Eclipse, IDEA, Netbeans or something else?
• Autmomated testing with JUnit: How combining full stack system tests with traditional unit tests really make a difference.
• Development process: Why understanding your options is important and how to introduce iterative/agile working practices into a "traditional" team.
• Balance: What do you do when you get caught up in the day to day development and forget about your architecture responsibilities?
• Pragmatism: How do you ensure that your project is done right while still meeting your deadlines?
• Do you really need a Java architect?

In-the-Brain of Simon Brown: The Pragmatic Java Architect is on April 19th at Skills Matter, London

Attendance is free for those who register.  Click here for more information.

Free Seminar: Automated Web Application Testing with Selenium: In-the-Brain of Erik Doernenburg, April 18th

Selenium is a test tool that allows you to write automated web application tests in many programming languages. The test uses any mainstream browser with JavaScript support and can target arbitrary websites. This talk starts with a quick demo of creating automated tests using the Selenium IDE and then shows how these tests can be integrated with existing Java, C#, or Ruby test suites. We'll end with a discussion on how to write robust tests and how to structure tests to make them more reusable.

In-the-Brain of Erik Doernenburg: Automated Web Application Testing with Selenium is on Wednesday, April 18th at Skills Matter, London.

This seminar is free to those who register! Click on this link for more details

Wikipedia in Court

Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian writes from Washington:

"It is an encyclopedia written by nobody but Wikipedia is rapidly becoming prime source material for American judges.
A search of court decisions by the New York Times turned up more than 100 rulings that have cited the online encyclopedia since 2004, including 13 from the circuit court of appeals, one rung beneath the supreme court; America's highest court has yet to succumb to the site's call."