Video ring to unite islanders: Orkney Island Council and videoconferencing

The Ring of Brodgar stone circle on mainland Orkney
The Ring of Brodgar stone circle on mainland Orkney (published with original article)

First published in Government Computing, September 2002

Orkney Island Council is the smallest full-service local authority in the UK, a unitary body that governs just 20,000 people on 17 inhabited islands.

It is also a place where they love the internet. A council survey last summer, which gathered responses from over 1,000 households, found that 44% had internet access with another 6% planning to go online by the end of 2002. The national equivalent last summer, according to Oftel, was 39%.

So it may come as a surprise that the council is planning to concentrate on video-conferencing, rather than its web-site, in providing electronic access to social services, housing and health.
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Hitting the roof: the technology behind the world’s newest stadia

First published in T3 magazine, July 2002

Both Korea and Japan are no doubt hoping that the world is admiring the work the two countries have put into their World Cup football stadia.

Korea pushed the boat out, spending 1.95 trillion won (£1.05 billion) on building all its ten stadia from scratch. But the Japanese city of Sapporo has come up with perhaps the most interesting technology.
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Richard Branson, Virgin Trains, Thetrainline.com and ‘the best rail network in Europe’ by 2002

The CrossCountry Voyager trains referred to in this article are no longer run by Virgin, and despite the words of Richard Branson, Virgin Trains (or any other UK train firm) is still not the best rail network in Europe.

My article on Virgin Trains’ Pendolinos (and Eurostars) for T3 is here.

For further reading on Richard Branson, try Tom Bower’s biography.
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Hotel rooms under the hammer

Hoteliers don’t like empty rooms, which is why hotel businesses are using online auctions to bring in extra bookings

For many hotel chains, dynamic pricing has become standard, but back in 2002 auctioning rooms on eBay (and its defunct competitor QXL) was pretty smart. It was nice to see Blackpool hotels getting in the on the act, found simply by searches on the appropriate eBay category.
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Track your every move: using the Data Protection Act on supermarkets, ISPs, banks and telcos

In 2012, the government is considering telling companies to provide personal data in a machine readable format. But as long as you don’t mind getting wodges of paper you have been able to get this data for many years, under the Data Protection Act (something I also used to find the base stations used by my mobile phone).

This is what I found out for the Guardian about my own shopping and web-surfing habits in 2002: the costs and time limits still apply, and I have updated links and contact details. Freeserve no longer exists, but in general the following would remain my advice for anyone wishing to access their data, unless there’s very obvious information about subject access request processes on the organisation’s web site.
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