St Albans City and District Council is to launch a free internet guide to disabled access with DisabledGo. It will detail over five hundred establishments in the area that are deemed disabled-friendly, including pubs, shops and restaurants. The purpose of the guide is to facilitate the smooth running of everyday activities for those with hearing, vision or mobility impairments.

To nominate an establishment for inclusion email anna.borthwick@disabledgo.info by Thursday 21 July. Otherwise you can turn up at The Community Consultation between 11am and 1pm at St Albans City and District Council Chamber on the same day.

DisabledGo is also of value to those not in the St Albans area. It allows users to search the site by area or destination and covers towns and cities including Brighton and Hove, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds and York.

In line with start of the G8 summit and the large focus on world poverty, seven internet training centres have been set up in developing countries around the world.

The Internet Training Centre project organised by the International Telecommunication Union and funded by the EU, provides two streams of Internet and ICT training to end users and advances users.

Through a train-the-trainer approach, this capacity-building project also supplies learning courses on “How to design and set-up an e-secure web-based business” using free and open source solutions.

The ICT centres are currently taking place in the following countries:

- Syria: Training Centre at STE, Damascus
- Suriname: Training, Research and Development Centre
- Bhutan: Royal Institute of Management, Thimphu
- Mongolia: Mongolian University of Science and Technology
- Fiji: University of South Pacific
- Kenya: Kenya College of Communications Technology, Nairobi
- South Africa: University of Venda for Science and Technology

One of the main aims of the project is to organise the start of student classes, for around 700 students per year with special focus on marginalised communities.

Librarians in England, Canada and North America have joined forces to produce a new live service, answering people questions around the clock.

The People’s Network, Enquire , service is led by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and has pulled in Hampshire County Council and other library authorities around the globe to provide a continuous information service.

The web site is quick and easy to use. Simply log on to www.peoplesnetwork.go.uk, type in your name and e-mail address and submit your question, the magic begins. Within a few moments a new window opens and a librarian somewhere in the world sends the answer to your question through an instant message box.

According to e-Gov monitor librarians are aiming to turn the questions around as quickly as possible- although in some cases the question may be answered more fully later on that day or the next day.

Librarians in England run the service from 9am-5pm on Mondays-Fridays and librarians in the USA and Canada take over, answering queries the rest of the time.

The Hansard Society is to release a report on the 5th of this month called ‘Spinning the Web: Online Campaigning in the 2005 General Election’. The panel for the launch event will include the director of the society Clare Ettinghausen and MP Lynne Featherstone, whose website has been shortlisted for our own New Media Awards.

The report will detail how new technology impacted upon the election and its voters. Online resources were considered crucial by all parties in the campaign. The report follows the society’s consideration of the online element of the 2001 election. With the advance in new media in the four years since, the findings should make for interesting reading. Innovations made by both the political parties and citizen-led campaigns are to be the focus.

10 concerts, 100 artist and a projected 2 billion viewers –Live 8 is set to be a huge world event. While the focus will be on the plight of the world’s poorest nations, marketers such as AOL are hoping a few consumers take notice too.

Time Warner’s America Online will broadcast every performance from all the Live 8 concerts around the world. For a further six weeks after the event, access to streaming video archives will also be made available. Marketers hope that this move will help raise consumer awareness of AOL’s upcoming switch to free, all-access, ad supported operation. As means to drive users to their online channel - AOL Music - it will also provide exclusive content free.

Jim Bankoff, AOL’s programming chief said: “You will literally be able to jump back and forth with a mouse between the concerts in London and Rome and Philadelphia.” He added: “There’s no better way than with a massive global event to proclaim we’re now open for business on the Internet around the world.”