DIGIT’S Top Five Stories This Week

1. DIGIT’S Movers & Shakers: August 2017 – Featuring recruitment, appointments, expansions, mergers, acquisitions, rebranding and growth. This month we have: Eden Scott, Sainsbury’s Bank, Represent, DeltaDNA, QikServe, Glasgow University, Pyreos, Napier’s Cyber Academy, Commsworld, Skills Development Scotland, Insight Legal, Codebase, ZoneFox and MORE…
2. Blockchain Breakthrough For University Of Strathclyde Research Team –  In a “ground-breaking” experiment, researchers from the Strathclyde Business School time-stamped financial stock trades using atomic clocks, and recorded the trades directly on a distributed ledger.
3. City Of Glitcherature: IT Leaves Edinburgh Libraries Bare – Failure in two core IT systems have left libraries in the capital unable to catalogue, reserve or order nearly 80,000 items added to the library over the last year.
4. DIGIT LEADERS: Scotland’s Cyber-Security Challenges – In the run up to the 2017 Scottish Cyber Security Awards, DIGIT will be speaking to leaders in the cyber sector about the challenges facing Scottish businesses. This week it’s PwC’s John Whitehill and Colin Slater.
5. Dundee Council IT Worker Jailed – Mark Conway, the former IT officer for Dundee City Council, who stole over £1 million over the course of seven years has been jailed for five years

Scottish Digital Tech News

• More Scottish companies have signed up to the new Graduate Level Apprenticeships scheme, designed to combat Scotland’s digital skills shortage. NHS Grampian and EnerMech have signed up for five apprentices taking the IT Management For Business Course
• Two tidal turbines in the Pentland Firth have broken the world record for monthly production from a tidal stream power station, producing enough energy in August to power 2,000 homes – with a third turbine now installed, the station produces 700 MWh of electricity
• DIGIT’s favourite crypto-contributor and official national treasure, Professor Bill Buchanan OBE, has announced his new book, Cryptography, is due out on November 30th 2017. Order your copy NOW
• Menzies distribution has acquired Gnewt, the delivery specialist which operates the country’s largest all-electric fleet. “This acquisition gives us a stronger, cleaner presence in the London market. and with our national reach, gives us a platform to introduce all-electric distribution to other city centres in the UK.”
• However, Britain’s infrastructure may not be able to cope with the growing number of electric vehicles, according to a new report by Reuters. “Britain already faces a power supply crunch in the early 2020s as old nuclear reactors come to the end of their lives and remaining coal-fired plants are phased out by 2025.”
• Robert Gordon University will demonstrate it’s new Virtual Reality training to the Offshore Europe event in September
• Businesses, developers, innovators, academics and council representatives wanted! The Perth Idea Exchange is a 24 hour HACK to help Perth generate and develop ideas, and prototype data-driven solutions to identify the economic challenges and opportunities facing the city and surrounding region

Global Digital Tech News

• Following a review of the life sciences sector, Oxford University’s John Bell has called for a new regulatory framework to allow NHS datasets to develop machine learning algorithms for medical diagnosis and tracking
• In a rare display of cooperation and customer focus, Microsoft and Amazon are allowing their voice assistants – Cortana and Alexa to speak to each other. All hail our new softly-spoken Voice Assistant overlords!
• A US judge has ruled that Yahoo must face ‘nationwide litigation’ brought on behalf of over 1 billion users, who had personal information compromised in three massive data breaches
• A UK man has been extradited from Germany to face charges of cyberattacks against some of the UK’s biggest banks

Download Of The Week

• Taps Aff: The Scottish Summertime Simulator is the first – and as far as we can tell – only homage to the great Scottish summer. It’s a classic Tap-To-Tan game: Sun’s oot, tap on your wee pasty Scottish people to get their tap’s aff. Rain comes on: tap them again to cover up and stop them getting shivery. Avoid popping birds, pick up as much Irn-Bru as your teeth can cope with. Developed by Edinburgh’s Ant Workshop and featuring an all-Scottish voice cast, it’s FREE (no IAP!) for both iOS and Android.
  • Taps Aff – iOS
  • Taps Aff – Android