Philips has launched a device, ‘The Smart Companion’, that owners can enjoy dialogue with as well as order to perform tasks. Part of their ‘Home Dialogue System’ (HDS), the companion can respond to voice commands to display photos, search the Internet and recognize different faces. Ideally, ‘Dimi’ will be networked to a household’s computer, enabling information gleaned from the Internet to be communicated in a quick and friendly way.

The robot has been given a simplified human-like shape, with a flexible ‘head’ unit that can nod in response to requests. Much of Dimi’s body is covered with light panels, meaning emotional responses can be conveyed by the use of different shades. ‘Because the Smart Companion is so humanlike, users feel they are dealing with a friend - a living assistant. As trust and ease grow, interacting with the Smart Companion becomes an ever more pleasurable experience’.

A simple elastoplast can now be used to transmit important health information. A small ‘digital plaster’, containing a silicon chip, can be incoroporated onto the elastoplast which then processes data relevant to a number of bodily processes. Temperature, blood pressure and glucose levels can be monitored by this super-plaster which transmits its results via a PDA or mobile phone to a computer.

If the levels fall or rise to dangerous levels the patient will be alerted. Patterns and trends can also be tracked by the device, making elderly or vulnerable relatives ideal candidates for affixation. Acting as a remote monitors these seemingly innocuous items may provide reassurance for those with others to keep an eye plastered on.

The government IT centre, The National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) has recently come under organised electronic assault. The NISCC exists to protect the critical national infrastructure that, if harmed, might ’cause large scale loss of life, have a serious impact on the national economy, have other grave social consequences for the community or be of immediate concern to the national government’. It is being bombarded regularly with a series of Trojan viruses that sought to penetrate any defence and infect as many computers as possible. The NISCC warn in a security briefing that ‘Once installed on a user machine, trojans may be used to obtain passwords, scan networks, exfiltrate information and launch further attacks’.

The attacks have been ongoing but have recently increased in intensity. The viruses are difficult to detect because they ‘use social engineering to appear credible, with subject lines often referring to news articles that would be of interest to the recipient. In fact they are ’spoofed’, making them appear to originate from trusted contacts’.

The Hansard Society will soon have a new website made both for and by young people. ‘Being Heard’ is a result of Web Design Challenge, a competition run for schools by The Hansard Society and The Design Museum. Three pupils from the winners, Whitgift School in Croyden, have designed the website, which is to encourage political involvement in young people.

‘Being Heard’ will contain information on current affairs and provide a forum for young people to discuss their views. What marks the site apart from others attempting to engage politically with youngsters, such as the Hansard’s own HeadsUp, is the nature of its design. No other website of this type can boast members of its intended demographic audience as designers. Perhaps this factor can engender the hoped for engagement.

Avoiding heavy pollution in Croyden is now easier, thanks to Croyden Council, who are providing ratings and maps of pollutants on their website. Levels of individual pollutants are rated on maps by a scale of colours and are updated each day. It is possible to zoom on the maps and ascertain levels on individual streets. This service is of special relevance to those with asthma and other health problems.

The council is also offering a service called AirTEXT that alerts medically vulnerable people via SMS messages. Patients with respiratory and heart problems will be targeted for participation at chest clinics and GP surgeries. They will be notified, before 8 a.m., when pollution levels reach moderate or high levels. The occurrence of this is estimated to be around 45 days per year. Alternatively, users can receive alerts via email. This initiative will prevent residents from having to discover pollution levels first-hand, and enable them to plan their days accordingly.

Following thier criticism of museums today the Museums Association should visit Cornucopia.

Cornucopia is a searchable database that collates the collections and resources of thousands of museums, galleries, libraries and archives. The information may be browsed by cultures, time-frames, place and people.

Another site with similarly laudable aims is 24 Hour Museum. In addition to collection information it boasts listings of events, maps of UK cities and their collections, online object trails and quizzes for children. Perhaps together these sites can demonstrate that access is not simply a physical matter – people must know about the collections in the first place.

MySociety continue to roll out their launch projects, with the launch of Pledgebank today. Pledgebank explains itself with the tagline ‘Tell the world “I’ll do it, but only if you’ll help me do it”‘. Pledgebank hopes to connect people with similar interests at heart, who want to make a change but often “feel powerless” to do so.

A Pledgebank user makes a promise online, and sets a threshold for the number of people who also need to agree to it. The website provides automatically generated promotional flyers for a particular pledge, to help promote the pledge locally. Anyone can then join the pledge either through the website, or by texting their support to a dedicated number that is written on each flyer. The Pledgebank website then tracks the interest in a particular pledge and informs its participants when the target is successfully reached. There’s no guarantee that people will do whatever they promised, but the creators’ faith is placed in the “psychological bet” that a show of support will spurn desire to carry out a task.

Only time will tell how successful Pledgebank will be, but it deserves credit if only for its attempt to foster local communities, and in its excellent explanation of how important offline engagement is for local pledges to succeed.

All social services files will now be kept electronically. To meet government requirments, all councils must switch over from paper to digital file systems by October this year.

The new system, Electronic Social Care Records, is exactly what it says on the tin. All files, including case notes, visit schedules and letters, will be kept on computer, rather than on paper. This includes past health records, such as allergies, current medication, pre-existing conditions and recent treatments. The information is accessible across England, so staff can have up-to-date information no matter how far the patient is from home.

Dudley Council, the first in the country to implement the new system, hosted 80 visitors from 37 local authorities over the weekend to learn about the ESCR and how it’s been working for them. According to local councillors, the feedback has been mostly positive.

Only authorised staff will be able to access records, however, it does offer immediate access to information, an improvement over the current paper system. Health Minister Lord Warner set out 12 commitments to ensure patients have control over their records and who will be allowed access. For example, patients will be able to close sections of their file from anyone—including NHS staff—except in emergency. While the government is promising data security and patient confidentiality, it is not yet known exactly how this will be achieved, or how patients will be able to control access.

UK students can now take their studies back in time to the 18th century, as the Joint Information Systems Committe has purchased a digital library of 135,000 titles dating from 1701 to 1800 from Thomson Gale. The Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) features full-texts of 26 million pages, allowing readers to look at the actual scanned page of 300-year-old texts from the British Library, Oxford and Cambridge libraries and many others.

Univerities pay an annual fee of pay an annual fee between £2,250 and £3,500 to access the material.

With materials from the UK and across the world, across a range of topics, the collection means researchers and students can view books that previously would have been difficult or impossible to access.

You may be spending the day hiking in a Scottish National Park, but that now doesn’t mean you can’t check your email. Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park has installed a broadband network of information kiosks and wireless hotspots to provide free web access for visitors, so they can check weather, tourist information and send email. As park information centres are closed during the evenings and all winter, the kiosks will provide visitors with event and activity details at anytime. It’s unknown how useful the kiosks will be for safety, as there are only 18 installed in the 1,865 sq km park.

Though several of the kiosks are located at shops near entranceways, the rest are situated through the park. Designed to avoid impact on the surrounding landscape, the effect their presence has on people trying to escape technology remains to be seen. If this pilot scheme succeeds, expect to see touch-screen web access in National Parks across Scotland, England and Wales.