Kathryn

Nigel Shadbolt gives keynote talk at Open Knowledge Conference

The conference took place on the 30th of June and 1st of July and the subject of the talk was “The Power, Promise and Perils of Open Government Data.”

The Open Knowledge Foundation is an international not-for-profit organisation and was set up in 2004 to promote open knowledge.

In the talk the Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives were introduced and the lessons learnt and the challenges for the future were discussed.

Wendy Hall and Nigel Shadbold speak at conference on the next generation of the Internet

The conference, entitled “Profiting from the New Web,” took place on the 23rd of May at the Royal Society.

Other speakers included Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Charlie Beckett of the London School of Economics, Bill Thompson from the BBC, Ralf Herbrich from Microsoft Research Cambridge, Hector Arthur from News International and Graham Spittle, Vice President of Software Group Europe for IBM UK.

The conference mission was to “Discover new and better ways to do business, run our countries, and lead fulfilling and sustainable lives via the intelligent, innovative and diligent development of the New Web, and to make progress faster than otherwise.”

A video of some of the attendees of the conference talking about the New Web can be found here.

A Low-Power, Distributed, Pervasive Healthcare System for Supporting Memory

Research paper in MobileHealth on a new and innovative electronic memory aid by Dirk de Jager, Alex L. Wood, Geoff V. Merrett, Bashir M. Al-Hashimi, Kieron O’Hara, Nigel R. Shadbolt and Wendy Hall.

→ http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/22211/5/dejaview.pdf

The paper describes a system which reminds people with memory problems of details and memories of their surroundings in real time. The system is called DejaView and has 3 components: a wearable sensing device, a mobile phone and an Internet service. The wearable sensing device will allow a full day’s operation on a single charge and will also recognise faces and and display the peoples’ names on the mobile phone.

Nigel Shadbolt appointed chair of midata

mydata is a new initiative to enable consumers to access data which relates to them held by businesses.

Midata is a joint initiative between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Cabinet Office. Professor Shadbolt will chair the midata working group which will decide the format of and mode of access to the data. A number of high profile companies will be represented on the working group, including Google, Microsoft, HSBC, MasterCard, Lloyds TSB and Centrica.

Hugh Glaser talks at JISC conference

The talk at the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) conference was part of the session entitled “What is the Business Administrative Case for Linked Data?”

The JISC provides leadership and support for the use of I.T. in post-16 and Higher Education establishments in the U.K. The annual JISC conference is aimed at a range of people, including those responsible for I.T. policy, those responsible for I.T. resources and researchers in the area. It was held in Liverpool on the 14th – 15th of March 2011.

The session explained the concepts of Linked Data, described how it can enable data to be shared and discussed how it can increase efficiency.

Keynote speech at Web Science and Technology Symposium

Professor Dame Wendy Hall and Professor Nigel Shadbolt gave a keynote speech entitled “Web Science: a New Frontier” at the Web Science and Technology Symposium
in Seoul, Korea.

The symposium, which took place on the 24th of February 2011, was a gathering of the world leaders in the field of Web Science and Technology.

Amongst the many issues discussed in the speech were the processes that have driven the Web’s growth, the function of the Web as a socio-technical system, the drivers that led to the establishment of Web Science as a new academic discipline and the grand challenges facing Web Scientists.