Month: January 2012

This has been a very long time in coming, finally national travel planning become easier as Google Maps now includes information on National train routes and timetables. The National Rail information joins local transit data, to offer true national multi-modal travel planning to users of Google Maps on the web, and more importantly mobile via Google Maps for Mobile.

This is a great example of the benefits of opening up public data sets, the national rail timetable data is been provided via the people at thetrainline.com who have great expertise in dealing with the complexities of the unique railway system in Britain.

It’s now possible to get step by step directions from your Hotel in Bristol to Edinburgh Castle only using public transport, a combination of walking, bus and train travel delivered to your mobile phone.

If you are a tech-savy parent and are wondering how you can help your children learn useful ICT skills after the well deserved criticism of the GCSE IT curriculum, buy a Raspberry Pi when they go on sale and let your kinds discover computers perhaps in the way you did ?

Oh, did I mention they will only cost $35 !

I’m planning to order a Raspberry PI, when they go on sale, but the latest update from the team producing the cheap hobbyist computer should be required reading for UK politicians trying to restart manufacturing capacity in Britain.

Bottom line, UK companies are too slow, too expensive and perhaps most importantly it is more tax efficient to import a device manufactured outside the UK than it is to build one here !