Directgov was meant to be a one-stop shop for all your government enquiries; it even describes itself as “the place to turn for the widest range of government information and services“. Sadly, it’s never delivered on that promise, mainly because it’s awkward to use, difficult to find information, and no-one knows about it.

Enter Directionlessgov.com. Directionlessgov.com cost a fraction of Directgov’s multi-million pound pricetag, and, despite overrunning its original schedule by a good 50%, was developed in a mere ninety-four minutes. In brief tests it seemed both faster and simpler to use than Directgov, and it certainly came up with the goods.

Large companies have always had the pick of government contracts but smaller compaines will soon be getting bigger slices of the pie. Soon businesses nation-wide will have access to local and central government contracts, thanks to an new web service. The Small Business Service and the Office of Government Commerce jointly announced the new scheme that will allow smaller companies to find and bid for government contracts.

99% of companies in the UK are considered small or medium (SME’s), and it is hoped the national portal will allow them access to numerous government tenders. Small Business and Enterprise Minister Nigel Griffiths said: “I want to make sure that small firms of all types have access to a slice of the public sector procurement cake. By developing a national portal to bring together buyers and sellers we can cut the time and effort that small firms spend hunting for contracts while increasing the options available to public sector buyers, helping to ensure better value for money for the taxpayer.”

The TV license dodge is a student tradition, like pot noodle and baked beans for breakfast. After all, it’s much better to save the money for the mobile phone bill. Now students may have to save for the dreaded licence anyway, if the government gets it’s way.

The UK licensing authority announced that it is planning to follow Germany’s lead in charging owners of phones that can receive live TV broadcasts. The German government will be extending their license fee from April to cover mobiles and PC’s with built in TV cards. Both licenses are aimed at young people who own no TV set but who do own mobile phones and broadband capable PC’s.

O2 and NTL are set to trial TV transmissions to mobiles in the UK this year and it is predicted that the markets will really hot up if they prove a success. Internet TV is booming, with more and more programs and channels available online. Including the ‘Millennium gig’ in aid of the victims of the recent Tsunami, due to be broadcast live across the web on the BBC.

In three weeks Iraq should hold it’s much awaited democratic elections. Across the world, the web is being enlisted to let expatriat communities in 14 different countries know they can have their say too. The ‘Out-of-Country Voting Program’ has been organised by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) using the web, radio, TV, posters and leaflets to ‘get the vote out’.

It is estimated that there are around 250,000 Iraqi’s living in the UK, 150,000 of which are of voting age, although there will be no exact data until voting registration is complete. Voting registration is taking place in London, Manchester and Glasgow from Monday 17 January to Sunday 23 January 2005. The vote itself will take place between Friday 28 January and Sunday 30 January between 08:00 and 17:00 GMT. More details can be found on the OCV website.

Iraqi citizens will also be able to vote in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, the UAE, Britain and the US.

Peter Erben, IOM Iraq OCV Director said: “This is an historic Out-of-Country Election and we are looking forward to a high registration and voter turnout.”

Fingers crossed, that they have more success with over-seas voting than in the recent US elections.

Weird names don’t come any weirder than Yahoo Dragoman. Mr and Mrs Dragoman, a Romanian couple, have named their son ‘Yahoo’ (thankfully minus the exclaimation mark) after they met online and married after a 3 month affair. They decided to name their son Lucian Yahoo in tribute to the internet and his mothers father.

Modern policing is much like modern everything else, slow and hidden in a mountain of paperwork. Now, however, officers of the Lancashire Constabulary have become guinea pigs for the latest technology for the bobby on the go. 250 police officers and 30 support staff will be testing the new O2 Xda II pocket computers, following a previous six-month test involving only 30 officers. The device is aimed to let officers run backgrounds checks on suspects, receive briefings, access the Lancashire missing person’s database and complete some reports and activity logs. If the Lancashire trial is successful it is hoped that the system could be extended to another 1,500 members of the national police force.

Stuart Fillingham, Head of Lancashire Constabulary ICT, said: “It is envisaged that this will help officers to be more effective and visible to the communities by having to spend less time in the police station.” In a ‘pre-trial’ test, the time taken to register a missing person dropped from two hours to twenty minutes. The time saving system should allow more time for officers to be ‘on the beat’ and everyone will be glad to see the back of all that paperwork.

First it was hands free, now it’s keypad free. Samsung Electronics in South Korea have developed the first mobile phone with ‘motion-recognition’ capabilities. Using a ‘six-axis sensor’ to interpret human gestures, the phone lets users draw symbols and numbers in the air, which the phone will then dial, and a shake will end the call. The imaginatively named SCH-S310 is due to be released in South Korea in March.

Those among us who view their mobile as an extension of themselves will be delighted that they can interact with their phone on a whole new level. On the other hand, the notion of standing around in public and trying to draw numbers and symbols in mid air for your phone may not exactly appeal.

Ever wondered exactly why gangrene is green or how a lobotomy works? No, we haven’t either, but if the wonderful world of medicine is your cup of tea, the NHS has got you covered.

The 10 January saw the launch of the new ‘single search environment’ on the National Library for Health website. The search amalgamates the national and local resources of 500 NHS libraries across England. Dr Muir Gray, Secretary to the National Knowledge Service and Co-Director of the National Electronic Library for Health (NeLH) said: “There are over 80,000 articles on bronchitis alone in just one source: PubMed, Doctors and librarians need to be able to power search such electronic resources alongside traditional sources to find the articles that are relevant to them… to deliver critical information to clinicians quickly.”

The software (handily open for public access) searches websites, full journals and ‘physical resources’, making information access even quicker for time-starved medics, concerned parents and hypochondriacs everywhere. The search results are easy to navigate, divided into ‘Guidance’, ‘Evidence’, ‘Clinical databases’, ‘Journals and Books’ and ‘For Patients’ so there is a little something for everyone. The NHL website is hoped to be able to provide an integrated resource of up to the minute information for all NHS staff. Anything to cut waiting times.

The days of missing urgent voicemail messages may soon be gone for good. Researches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing new software called Emotive Alert, which measures the speech patterns of a caller to determine their emotional state. The programme works by measuring the volume, pitch and speech rate in the first 10 seconds of a message and then sending a text message with an emoticon to let you know weather the message is happy, sad, urgent or formal. The idea is to use the system in phone exchanges and ‘smart answer phone’.

Stephen Furner, a researcher in human-computer interaction for BT says; “At the moment, communicating with machines is like an autistic experience. In the future, machines will know more about our emotions and respond in accordance with them.” In that vain, an Edinburgh-based company, Affective Media, will soon be selling software for cars that detect drowsiness and frustration in a driver’s voice when they ask the in-car navigation system for directions, and try to wake the driver up or calm them down. On the other hand, your car telling you to ‘chill out’ may prove not to be very soothing.

In practise, the Emotive Alert system could well run into some other problems. Tailored spam calls could artificially be altered to bump them to the top of your priority list or misinterpreted emotions could mean you miss important calls. The software would obviously be extremely useful in an emergency services call centre to prioritise calls. However, it may find difficulty when dealing with callers with autism, those who have trouble expressing emotions, or from that rare breed of person able to remain calm in any crisis. Sometimes there really is no replacement for human interaction.

Yesterday’s Times reports on a £20m scheme to create Europe’s largest active broadband community - in Shoreditch. The Shoreditch Wired Network will bring high-speed internet along with digital television and phone lines to a huge community that would otherwise have remained on the wrong side of the digital divide. The scheme has been developed by the Shoreditch New Deal Trust in partnership with IBM.

IBM are providing set-top boxes to every household allowing previously offline households to connect to the internet through their television. This connection will also allow householders to access a wide range of local community resources, including online NVQ courses, local classifieds, GP bookings, and community discussion forums. In addition to these services, the scheme is also promoting the group buying of utilities. By allowing residents to buy utility services in bulk as a group, they will receive a sizeable discount and thus a modest gain in their disposable income. That rise in disposable income could be enough to cover the £3.50 per week (approx.) of the network subscription fee. It’s not only residents that will benefit; businesses will be able to access a wide range of network services and business support, including the ability to check CCTV security systems online.

Shoreditch is home to over 1,000+ Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SMEs), a third of which are in “knowledge economy sectors” such as design, IT and new media. Unfortunately, the area also is one of the most deprived areas in Europe - 40% of residents are “economically inactive” (ie. not making any income through work). The Wired Network aims to improve this situation. The online courses and support it will bring should help residents gain the skills they need to become part of the local knowledge economy that is situated on their door step.

The Shoreditch Wired Network is a strikingly well-rounded project, because it provides not only connectivity, but also hardware, services, and benefits to both businesses and individuals. As a result, it could turn out to be one of the most successful community broadband projects yet. The brief for the Network states that it “is self-financing and scalable outside of Shoreditch, across London and beyond”. If the Shoreditch scheme is as successful as it promises, we could see similar projects across the country in the not-too-distant future.