Whats Happening in London

[Shaun Dunne]

It's taken me some time to get around to writing this here and I thought that 12:30 am on a Tuesday is perfect. 

I started the LondonLab a while back now, well - I started trying to find a place to host is back in May - and it wasn't until June that it finally found its home at Mozilla's London office. It's a great space and open to all during office hours and they host many events there. I hadn't really heard of many other labs other than one in Amsterdam and the Clearleft one in Brighton, and thought that despite only having a few devices of my own, I would do what I can to get a lab started. I sent out a few emails, hit some people up on Twitter and managed to gather a few donations from HP and Nokia. 

The lab is open - http://shaundunne.github.com/deviceLibrary/ - and I've got a few more devices to drop off when I am back in London. I'm hoping that some local developers might start leaving some devices around, but I am always checking Ebay and Craigslist for Phones with broken screens - surprisingly easy to repair - or phones with 'No Signal' but still work with WiFi. This week I managed to pick up a second generation iPod touch for £15 (cracked screen) and a Samsung Mini for £30 (No Signal) which is pretty good. I usually hit car boot sales and outdoor markets too to look for old Blackberrys.

I run the lab on my own at the moment, @cyberdees has helped out a lot too. 

There are a few projects I'd like to tackle on behalf of the lab and the first two are a modular rack system and a multiport (15 - 20) USB charger. They both become one thing eventually, but they're being tackled separately at the moment.  

I look forward to contributing to the group.