Month: April 2021

How can open data help small commerce?

Posted on by Comunicació

One of the winning pilot projects has been presented from the urban innovation grant call “The Proactive City: Data x Commerce”. The project should help small commerce use open data for decisions to improve their business and gauge customer behaviour better.

The project has been developed by the Barcelona Open Data Initiative Association, with support from the Sant Andreu Shopping Hub, the Mirall de Pedralbes Retailers’ Association and La Marina Retailers’ Association.

The pilot project allowed for the development of a new wesbite and a new app for interactive viewing of open data, easy to interpret and enabling establishments to analyse the situation and potential impact of action and bridge the digital divide in this sector. The tools will be tested until the end of July in three shopping areas which have supported the project. The final versions will then be presented with a view to rollout in other areas.

  • The mobile app displays data for a specific establishment in comparison with others in the area and generates graphics, basically transforming data into information and knowledge. Individual user areas mean each business can carry out personalised follow-up relating to:
    • their invoicing
    • their customers
    • perception of success
    • other parametres
  • The website features interactive viewing based on open data and providing structured information useful for local commerce. Specifically:
    • data on the economic structure of the neighbourhood
    • data on consumer habits
    • data on population
    • data on social dynamics and associations

The project is one of the winners from the urban innovation grant call ‘The Proactive City’, launched by the City Council and implemented in June by the municipal foundation BIT Habitat. The goal is to find solutions to the new challenges generated or accentuated by the crisis in the spheres of social inclusion, sustainability, urban resilience and the promotion of the local economy.

Got your .barcelona?

Posted on by Comunicació

The .barcelona domain is open to all individuals, organisations, businesses and administrations with links to the city. Domains are now available at a unique price of 15 euros for any new registration, renewal or automatic renewal using one of the registration companies taking part in the special offer.

Anybody interested in a domain should check its availability, make sure it complies with the conditions of use, that there are no negative effects for third parties and that it can support content in any language.

Existing domains can be renewed at any time before the registration period ends, without having to wait until the renewal date. The registration company will give the option of automatic renewal and provide instructions on how to do so.

This promotion expires at 10 am on 31 May.

For any queries, please check the FAQs or contact domini.barcelona.

Why do they call it an address when it’s a domain?

Posted on by Comunicació

When we decide to create a website, whether personal or for business, we need to take various things into account. Just like when we set up a company, we need an office and an address for it. In the language of technology, this has its own concepts. People know them, but it’s always useful to clarify which is which.

Domain

In the comparison with a company, the domain would be the postcode. This is the name of your website, which users must type into their browser when they look for you. It needs to be as clear and as simple as possible, ideally with the name of your company or initiative and a familiar extension which helps identify your business. The extension is what comes after the “dot”. A clear example of an address would be www.latevaempresa.barcelona.

The .barcelona domain accepts a broad list of special characters. What does that mean? It means you can use letters with accents or the ç or the ñ when you create your domain. If your company name contains one of these letters, it’s better to use it so that you can be recognised more easily.

Thinking of a name for your .barcelona domain can be a complex task, which we spoke about in one of our articles. Perhaps it will help you!

Hosting

When we talk about hosting, we’re referring to where all our website information is housed. This would be our office. Once we’ve created the name, we need a space for all our material.

Hosting refers to the server where all our website information is housed, and so we need to choose our provider well. There are plenty of options to choose from and a wide range of prices, but we need to be sure our hosting is secure against internet attacks and that regular back-up copies are made. The information on your website is very valuable. It’s also important to have good technical support in case there’s an issue to resolve, which tends to happen more often than we think!

IP address

All websites have an IP address, but very often we don’t even see it. An IP consists of a set of unique numbers which identify our server. To go back to the comparison with a company, these would be the GPS coordinates to get there. We normally put the street name (domain) into our browser and not the coordinates, which are very complicated to remember. Yet what the browser really identifies is this specific IP.

ICANN70 first annual meeting

Posted on by Comunicació

The ICANN Community Virtual Forum was the first of the three annual meetings organised by the body which regulates the two basic technical infrastructures for the internet: the domains and IP addresses which enable users to find content housed on the internet.

This was the fourth of these meetings to adopt a virtual format, given the impossibility of congregating a large number of representatives from governments, associations and industry.

This first meeting of the year is used for planning the tasks of the various workgroups during the rest of the year. This year will see the groups centre on the development of mechanisms which allow domain owners to be contacted without their privacy being compromised, and on the improvement of efficiency in remote work carried out by the ICANN. The group which was analysing the impact of new internet domains has submitted its report and consideration is now being given on how to open up to new domains.

The meeting covered two subjects in depth which directly affect internet users, particularly in Europe: internet crime using domain names and the new European legal framework on the right to the internet.

Crimes with domain names

Recent years have seen surge in internet crime, particularly cases where domain names are used to deceive users by displaying pages which appear to be official, or where email addresses are used to send fraudulent messages.

Internet registers are a key element in identifying these crimes, and we are working on technical initiatives and regulations which will enable us to offer our users greater security.

New European legal framework

The European Commission has put together a series of new regulations which represent a greater degree of protection for European consumers and internet users. The regulations will establish stricter obligations for all companies operating on the internet, particularly large platforms such as Google and Facebook.

While the regulations are not due to be approved until early in 2023, we are studying them and giving our input to EU representatives to improve the aspects relating to domain name users.

GeoTLD general assembly

The GeoTLD group is an association which represents the interests of geographical, cultural and linguistic domains, of which .barcelona is a member. Its representatives work to give the communities they represent a more prominent role in the internet.

The main goal of the assembly was precisely this new European legal framework for the internet. Our goal as the representative for the .barcelona community with the internet’s governing bodies is to offer the citizens and internet users we represent the chance to express themselves and voice their concerns.

This annual assembly was also used to present the new design of the website geotld.group, which features a collaborative section for news items by all its members. Another highlight was the presentation of a new international promotional video to explain what geographical domains are and the main advantages to them.