Recently by Pete Ashton

Since I seem to be using this Post blog as a platform to campaign for better wireless internet provision in Birmingham it would be remiss of me not to draw your attention to a new initiative to map what currently exists.

Wifi in Birmingham is a simple Google map which anyone can edit. If you know of a wifi node in the city simply add a marker and write a short description of the place.

It was only started a few days ago but already there's a nice stream of points (seemingly on a route from Kings Heath through Digbeth to the Jewellery quarter, but that might just reflect the folks who've been contributing so far). Interestingly all of them are free. You could say there's no need to map the paid-for nodes since we've got blanket coverage. You could say that. Or you could say paid-for wifi is a fools errand and no-one is interested. I'll let you decide what you want to say.

But for now, if you're a digitally nomadic laptop slinger in the city please add your haunts to the map. It's hoped that this will be useful for visitors, not to mention make residents aware that they can get online for free in the city.

(Apologies to Magritte and the French language)

A few days ago Tom Watson MP pointed us to a row between Offcom and mobile phone companies (FT.com, so you may need to log in) about the opening up of the radio spectrum and asked "Is there away of opening up for the little guy?" I replied, somewhat glibly, "When mobile co's accept voice and text are no diff to internet data and price accordingly then their opinions will have merit." Tom then asked me directly how me might move that proposition on in government and, like the cowardly pontificator, I admitted I had no idea. But the issue of how mobile providers distinguish between the stuff they carry does bug me. Since it's all electronic bits being sent around there's no difference between calls, texts and Internet data so why are the costs so dramatically different? Voice I can kinda understand as there's a routing issue (though Skype has shown us this isn't necessarily that complicated) but text messages costing multiples of pence for a few bytes of data? What's that all about?

Last night and into this morning the Council, presumably under the inspired guidance of Director of Public Affairs and Communications Debra Davies, set up a simple but effective live video stream of the election results hosted by Adrian Goldberg aka The Stirrer. When this project was announced there were the usual cries expecting it to be a car crash of classic proportions but whatever way it swung this was going to be pretty unmissable.

What was interesting for those of us who find this sort of thing interesting was that for the first time the Council was providing what you could call "the online community" with material for them to discuss. There wasn't a feedback loop direct to Adrian and his team (next time maybe) but given that it was being broadcast over the internet those communities that gather online were able to converse about it on their own terms.

Naturally The Stirrer board had a lively thread and there may well have been other blogs and forums following proceedings (links in the comments please!) but I was over on Twitter, the microblogging text-based social networking thingy Editor Marc talked about the other week. There's a few hundred of us in Birmingham using Twitter in varying degrees from the harcore digerati/nerds (delete according to your prejudice) to perfectly normal folks and a few of them stayed up to keep a record of Adrian's show. Which was handy as it doesn't look like it's being archived anywhere yet. (Tip: whack it on Google Video or something - this is historic stuff which needs to be preserved.)

I'm going to reproduce the whole transcript here so that it's on the record and because I can. But first, a brief explanation of some of the terms as like all online environments Twitter has it's own language to a certain extent.

As someone who doesn't own a television the BBC iPlayer has had an interesting effect on my viewing habits. Normally if I fancy watching an hour of so of moving pictures I'll hit the torrents. Now I have a quick glance at the BBC4 page and see if anything catches my eye. Tonight, over dinner, it was Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press which was highly enjoyable as most things with Mr Fry are. (Do check out his podcasts, especially the odd-numbered ones which consist of him rambling about whatever takes his fancy - bliss!)

When you become someone without a TV license you enter into a strange world of moral grey areas as the TV license also funds BBC radio, online and a host of other minor services many of which we, by dint of not having a TV, use a fair bit. Radio 4 is always on when I'm in the kitchen and news.bbc.co.uk is my first port of call for breaking news. I like that these don't carry advertising and would feel obliged to pay for them were it not that they cost but a tiny fraction of the BBC's television bill.

Birmingham tuned in to wireless revolution reported this august organ on Monday and since I posted a long screed declaring the current wifi provision in the city to be a bit rubbish the other week I feel the need to respond.

Since the actual report this is based on appears not to be online we only have Steve Pain's article to go on, so let's Fisk this beast and figure out what it actually means. (No offense intended to Steve here, I hasten to add. He's just reporting what they give him.)

A while back there was much noise being made about Birmingham being the first city in the country with city-wide WiFi Internet access. This was be supplied by BT Openzone with free access to essential council services and entertainment guides being provided by Birmingham FIZ. In this last year I've been working in the city with my laptop and no permanent office and recently I succumbed to the iPhone which works much faster over WiFi, so I've had first hand experience of what it's like to be a mobile worker here. Added to this I was in Austin, Texas last week for the South By South West Interactive Festival, a tech-heavy event where constant access to the Internet was a necessity and where part of my remit was to see what lessons and knowledge I could bring back to Birmingham.

Mike Whitby's favourite slogan - "A Global City with a Local Heart" - seems to be getting about a bit.

It was recently spotted in connection with the Best Bar None award, a scheme set up by the Home Office to promote sensible drinking and all that. But according to Vale Mail "Birmingham organisers are setting their entrants an extra task. Landlords have to explain, in no more than 250 words, how their establishment contributes to Birmingham's vision of being "a global city with a local heart".

Cue publicans scratching their heads as they wonder exactly what that means, something some of us have been trying to figure out for a while now. Let's have a go.