WALES LAUNCHES LOOKING LOCAL AWARENESS WEEK
The Welsh Assembly Government has just launched a pan Wales competition, only on Looking Local, to promote usage of and access to DiTV services as part of a Welsh Looking Local Awareness Week. On offer is the chance to win two tickets to the forthcoming Ryder Cup, this is a great idea and should drive usage dramatically. Looking Local is coming up with plans to help and support Awareness Weeks in other regions. More detail will be made available here on that soon. And more good news from Wales…
WALES ON DITV IN MEDIA SPOTLIGHT
Welsh partners and the Welsh Assembly Government have been getting great press coverage following releases from Cardiff, WAG and Caerphilly. BBC Online and ITV have carried stories about the pan Wales Looking Local service and the individual sites and what they offer. Cardiff’s press release included a great citizen quote to give it a realistic slant as well as commentary from elected members.
BBC Online piece can be found here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-10762786
SMART PHONE SALES RISE
Looking Local’s emphasis on mobile phone development looks to be well placed as sales of Android Phones have soared according to a recent GfK Retail and Technology report: "Sales of Android-based phones more than quadrupled in the UK during the most-recent quarter.... Smartphones as a group accounted for exactly two-thirds of all contract sales in the second quarter of the year."
Full story from The Register here: www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/27/uk_android_sales/
Looking Local is currently developing an improved mobile phone offering which we will launch in the autumn, find out more detail here in the coming weeks.
BEYOND 2010: SMART DELIVERY SEMINAR
Looking Local Operations Manager Guy Giles has confirmed he will be delivering a seminar at the Beyond 2010, alongside Digital Birmingham – a partner of Looking Local. The event will be held at the ICC on the 21st October (Looking Local seminar from 13h30-14h45). The event looks like is has some fantastic speakers and should be a good day. More event details here: http://www.beyond-2010.com/
See what other events we shall be at here: http://lookinglocal.gov.uk/site/bookdemo.html
HULL CITY COUNCIL LAUNCHES CHOICE BASED LETTINGS ‘LITE’
Alongside a number of housing partners who offer viewing and bidding via integrated choice based lettings schemes (for more see here: http://lookinglocal.gov.uk/site/case_studies/cbl.html) Hull’s Looking Local service now offers choice based lettings in a ‘CBL Lite’ way. Now Hull’s residents are able to view properties, but not yet bid on them, that will be the next step… See it here: http://www.lookinglocal.gov.uk/digitv/cds/hullcouncil/Netgem/screen.html?id=147651
LOOKING LOCAL & THE NETWORKED NATION MANIFESTO
In the recent Networked Nation manifesto (http://raceonline2012.org/), Digital Champion Martha Lane Fox highlighted the ten million adults in the UK who have never used the internet. Of this number four million are from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, 39% are over 65, 38% are unemployed and 19% are families with children. We believe that Looking Local is part of the answer in reaching these people, particularly as research shows that this figure increases significantly for tenants of social landlords, in some areas being up to 80%.
Looking Local has been successfully publishing public sector services and giving people access to everything from reading circles to jobs, 24-reporting, choice based lettings and a huge range of local information and services for over six years. Our usage, number of partners and business case (http://lookinglocal.gov.uk/site/businesscase/headlines.html) shows we are giving access to people across the digital divide; widening access, broadening choice.
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