Broadband – City Cleanup – n0tice – Poetry at the Central Library – Five things no more?
Edinburgh wifi and super broadband are in the news today. But there are actually two parts to the news. First of all Edinburgh is one of the cities pinpointed in yesterday’s Westminster budget which will receive part of the super broadband funding. The Chancellor’s statement said that the government will:-
“make Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, London, Manchester and Newcastle super-connected cities, as part of the £100 million investment announced at Autumn Statement 2011. By 2015 this will deliver ultrafast broadband coverage to 1.7 million households and 200,000 businesses in high growth areas as well as high-speed wireless broadband for three million residents. The Government will also provide an additional £50 million to fund a second wave of ten smaller super- connected cities;”
The Department for Culture Media and Sport said yesterday:-“The 10 cities will share £100 million to help deliver ambitious plans to use super-connected status to drive growth, attract new businesses and transform the way services are provided and accessed.” It has been confirmed that Edinburgh will receive something between £8m and £11m for this.
But as well as this superb announcement for our capital the council’s Finance Committee agreed to spend £1.9m from the BT Efficiency Fund to develop free city centre wifi.  The capital now has until 1 July 2012 to develop a detailed strategy and plan around the outline proposal. The council must then deliver the project by March 2015. Good news indeed particularly for us as we are often seeking Free wifi around the city centre. It may however render our Free Wifi guide useless – but that is a good thing!
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More good news in the announcement that the city is spending £153,000 in sprucing up some areas of the city. Further details here!
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We were asked ages ago to take part in a trial of The Guardian n0tice project but just did not find the time till now. However we have now set up our own board and you can see it here. It will be an easy way for people who know about unmissable events in Edinburgh to share them with our other readers. Try it – you can add your own events to our board!
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Tonight at Central Library a new kind of poetry installation will be unveiled to the media. A Room with our View is a unique art installation created by Young Edinburgh Writers who all share a passion for writing. It is a recreation of a teenage bedroom with pieces of poetry written on almost every surface. We are going to the launch and will bring you an audio report on it tomorrow. The work will be exhibited until 27 April 2012 on the mezzanine level of the library.
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We were stung by recent criticism of our journalistic skills at curating some interesting things you might like to know each day, and we have been casting around for other ways to highlight Edinburgh news of interest to you in a less labour intensive and perhaps more interesting fashion. We have created a news magazine on Scoop.it! which you can read here. Perhaps you would like to tell us what you think of Today’s Edinburgh News? It may be that we will discontinue our Five things article in favour of our magazine….
