The BT Community Connections scheme offers the opportunity for community groups to be awarded a year’s free BT broadband if they help their community access the Internet and improve people?s ICT skills. The scheme welcomes applications from groups able to demonstrate how they help the local community learn about the benefits of the Internet and how they will train people on how to use the Internet. Priority will be given to applications from community groups that operate in areas of deprivation.

Mark Reckless MP said: ?Currently there are nine million people in the UK who have never used the Internet. Learning how to use it can be truly transformational for those who don?t currently do so, for whatever reason. It opens up a whole new world, whether that relates to work, keeping in touch with friends and family or just doing the weekly shop. I would urge any group which helps people access the Internet and improves their ICT skills, to apply for this opportunity to win a year?s broadband.?

Applications close on Thursday 13 January 2011. Community groups can get more information and apply for the awards online: www.bt.com/communityconnections.

Rochester and Strood MP Mark Reckless has been nominated for an award in the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT,?MP Web Awards.

Mr Reckless, who was recently voted 43rd in the Total Politics Top 100 Conservative Blogs poll, and 11th in the Top 30 MP Blogs poll, will be up against 25 other MPs in the ‘social media’ category.

‘I am delighted that the work I have been doing to raise the profile of the constituency is being recognised further afield,’ Mr Reckless said after being nominated. ‘Like most politicians I realise we need to do more in terms of engaging with the public using social media such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, as well as by more traditional means.

‘I certainly think younger voters particularly appreciate being able to engage with their representatives using new and developing social technologies.’

The nominations will be scrutinised by a panel of judges, including the Daily Mail‘s Quentin Letts, Government Computing editor Mark Say, Rachel Gibson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester, and Youth Parliament member Matthew Windle.

The judges will be looking for sites that successfully engage, excite, provide information and encourage two-way communication between MPs and their constituents, before deciding on a winning MP.

‘There are some great colleagues shortlisted for this award so I won?t be holding my breath,’ Mr Reckless continued,?’but being nominated so early in my Parliamentary career is very welcome and it is something I hope to build on. Plus, it can be great fun and doesn?t have to cost the taxpayer a penny!’

The awards ceremony will take place next Monday, 15th November, in the House of Commons, and will be hosted by Rt Hon Alun Michael MP, who is Chairman of the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee.

Although the reason for the downtime is presently unknown, it has meant residents needing to use council services, including paying bills online, have been unable to do so.

Residents needing to find information on council services have also been told that they must go to their local Contact Point instead, or wait until the issues have been resolved.

At present, there is no indication as to when the website will be restored.

I use Google Apps to the max; I write University notes and essays on Google Docs on my laptop so I can access them in University seminars on my netbook, I use Google Calendar to plan my life and synchronise it to my phone (which is powered by Google’s open source Android), I use Google Mail for my emails and have integrated my university email account to send and receive from the same place (the University of Kent uses Microsoft’s live@edu) and my contacts online synchronise with my phone whilst being organised into handy, easy-access groups online (also courtesy of Google).

Some would say my obsession with the cloud is unhealthy, and to an extent I would agree. But the cloud enables an easy transition from one computer to another (the principle Google’s Chrome OS is built upon) and makes life a lot easier.

It also makes your data more vulnerable. Forget worrying about your email address or phone number being shown to the world on Facebook, imagine someone discovering that one password that would lead them to all your personal details, those of hundreds of your contacts, thousands of your emails and all your important documents.

Within a few clicks, thanks to the ease with which cloud computing operates, all could be downloaded, edited or removed without your knowledge.

The essential question, then, is whether you have secured your data as best you can by opting to use a difficult password.

To my shame, I used to have a password of 7 letters (all lower case) and 1 number, which friends from school could easily have guessed. Indeed, some obscure accounts that i no longer use may still have said password.

Nowadays, however, I am more astute. Potential hackers must bypass passwords of at least 15 lower case and upper case letters, numbers and permissible characters, with each account protected by a different password, stored nowhere but inside my head. And if I fear any account may have been compromised, all account passwords are changed.

So my question to you today, in an age where data is more freely accessible to the right (or wrong) people is thus: is your data secure online?

The Lib Dems had re-registered their domain name (or, more specifically, Alan Jefferies had) the day after I made my warning post. Their website now contains little more than a holding page – but it is, at least, better than some anonymous webster* to register it for them and create for them a potentially damaging spoof website. I was, myself, considering buying the domain name and selling it back to them at the same amount as I’d paid for it to protect them from such underhand tactics, before I came to my senses. After all, if I’d have done so, I’d have been open to the accusations that I was going to be said anonymous webster*.

Their holding page indicates that their website is being completely changed. There’s nothing wrong with this – I too am currently in the process of re-designing and re-programming the Gillingham Conservatives’ website – I just hope that they learn from their previous website and don’t make it off-putting to potential supporters.

They also link through to the not-been-update-since-Noah-built-the-ark websites of their two parliamentary candidates, Andy Stamp (Gillingham and Rainham) and Geoff Juby (Rochester and Strood). Tactical use of the Internet is important to all parliamentary candidates – so it’d be interesting to know what these candidates think when they search Andy Stamp or Geoff Juby on Google and see the list of results. Number one is the official Lib Dems’ national site, then for Andy I am number two and for Geoff I am number three and John Ward’s backup site is number two. Their own websites don’t even feature!

Contrarily, Rehman Chishti has been making good tactical use of the Gillingham and Rainham Conservatives’ website to send his message out to voters. He too is now branching out – both rehmanchishti.co.uk and rehmanchishti.com have been registered. The former heads to a holding page and the latter heads to a page reading “This site is currently unavailable” – with the Conservatives’ tree logo as the favicon.

The importance of the Internet can be over-stated by many, but is also often underestimated by a large breed of politicos. The best advice this humble blogger can give to all interwebically silent politicos is thus: at the very least, register for a Blogger account and blog away. Alternatively, you can find someone like myself to help build you a website contianing many features to best make the use of the Internet for political activism.

*Please note: my references to websters are not references to cloth weavers, but my second made-up term, referring to Internet-savvy people with a web presence, such as myself.