The Next Web UK Weekly Re-Cap: Snowballs, football and open data for all

Welcome to the first weekly recap from The Next Web UK’s new Editor, Martin Bryant.

Yes, James Glick, who edited this fine blog since launch in September, has passed the baton to me although he’ll continue to write for us regularly so I’m glad to say he’s still around.

I’m really looking forward to steering this blog towards being the go-to place for tech news in the UK. From bedroom coders working on the next big thing to the latest moves from government and media moguls, we’ll be covering it all.

So, let’s take a look at what the first full week of 2010 held in terms of UK tech news…

A super-fast web full of open data

If there’s a theme this week, it’s that several major steps were taken towards making the UK a more web-centric place. For a start, the government announced investment of £1bn in next generation broadband.

On the same day, London Mayor Boris Johnson announced that vast swathes of public data is to be opened up for free use by anyone. This has given a huge boost to the ‘Open Data Cities’ movement in the UK, something that gained real traction in the USA last year.

Tweeting from the newsroom becomes mandatory

Switched-on journalists have used social media for finding and researching stories for some time now. Sky News has gone a step further by installing Tweetdeck on every journalist’s computer. Let’s just hope they switch off notification sounds in the newsroom or it’s going to become one noisy place.

Forget jumpers for goalposts and oranges at half-time, football wants to get a little more tech-savvy. The Premier League is looking for a tech partner to bring improved real-time online coverage to the game.

Slightly less inspiring news came from Rupert Murdoch, who began blocking news aggregation services, starting by banning UK-based NewsNow from indexing articles from his Times Online site. Based on Murdoch’s previous threats, we wouldn’t de surprised to see more news aggregators added to the list in the near future, but will he go as far as blocking the behemoth that is Google News?

Whiteout

Snow dominated most of the UK population’s thoughts this week, with epic snowfall across the country. Typically for Britain, we all can’t stop talk about the weather and Twitter trends picked up on just how obsessed we became.

Meanwhile, businesses and local authorities used Twitter to keep the public informed during the first major snowfall of the social media age.

Britain lusts after the Nexus One

In the wider world, the big tech news story of the week was the launch of Google’s Nexus One phone. As the UK is one of only three locations outside the USA that Google will currently ship the phone to, we brought you a guide to what to expect when you order your Nexus One.

If you’re worried about having to buy it at full price don’t worry – 3 and T-Mobile look likely to be joining Vodafone in selling the device at a subsidised price soon.

So, join us for another week of UK tech news from tomorrow. Keep up-to-date by following us on Twitter or subscribing to our RSS feed.