For both mobile workers and consumers accessing the mobile internet can be a nightmare: slow speeds, congested networks and a lack of available coverage all combine to make for a disappointing experience.

However, a growing number of projects are coming to the fore that could well end this situation by providing access to several wide-scale Wi-Fi deployments across London and beyond.

Firstly, Transport for London (TfL) confirmed it is on track to roll out Wi-Fi hotspots to 120 of its stations in time for the Olympic Games later this year, with its chosen supplier set to be announced in due course.

"London Underground is continuing with preparations to install the necessary infrastructure and is on schedule to complete the project as planned," said TfL's director of strategy and service development, Gareth Powell, in a widely reported statement.

"An announcement of the chosen service provider will be made in early spring, leaving plenty of time for this to be delivered to customers in time for the 2012 Games."

Secondly, O2 announced on Tuesday that it has signed a deal with restaurant chain owner Tragus to provide free Wi-Fi access to both customers and non-customers in 120 locations, including Cafe Rouge, as well as Strada and Bella Italia restaurants.

"This agreement takes us a step closer towards our vision of changing the public Wi-Fi landscape within three years, by offering people free Wi-Fi connections in the places they want it most," said the managing director of O2 Wi-Fi, Gavin Franks.

"As O2 Wi-Fi's footprint continues to grow, we hope that more people and businesses start to realise the potential of free and fast Wi-Fi."

The rollout comes after O2 announced earlier this month that it will be creating what it claims is the largest free Wi-Fi network in Europe across areas of Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, also in time for the Olympics later this year.

The confluence of these projects, which will see smartphone and tablet users across London and the rest of the UK able to access a growing number of Wi-Fi hotspots, is a welcome development for the UK.

Hopefully, it will show visitors to these shores that our nation progressing nicely in the digital era.

ORLANDO: As one of the technology industry's biggest spenders on research and development, it was no surprise to find IBM showing off a range of projects that staff in its Center for Social Business are busy working on behind the scenes.

The project that most caught V3's eye was its Gamification Engine for the Enterprise product that looks to offer organisations a way to provide staff with a more engaging way to share knowledge or learn new skills.

The interface is heavily reminiscent of geo-location service Foursquare, with users able to acquire badges if they complete certain tasks or goals, as well as comparing their ranking with other users in a certain group or division on a public leaderboard.

The tool lets users earn badges, rewards and compete with co-workers.

Yaniv Corem, a software engineer at IBM, explained to V3 that, thanks to services like Foursquare, staff in organisations are "no strangers to gamification" and that the tool could have several uses within the business community.

"With this tool you can build databases of knowledge on key topics by allowing staff to share information in a competitive and playful way," he said.

Corem added that the firm is considering adding the tool to its Connections platform at some point in the future, but that nothing was guaranteed as yet.

Another tool the firm is working on is its "time-based storytelling" offering Historio, which it has already used itself to gather together information on its 100th anniversary celebrations that took place in 2011 (see image below).

Each blue dot represents a key moment in IBM's history, which links to more information on that topic, including text, images and video.

Jamie Rasmussen, another IBM software engineer, explained the tool could have uses for businesses to document their company’s history to the public, as IBM has done, or for staff to share knowledge of a product's history internally.
 
Another interesting tool the firm was showcasing was a Twitter analysis platform that attempts to gather 'human data' on users of the site to analyse the likelihood of them responding to a question or their interest in a given topic.

"This will help a brand know if it is worth trying to engage with a user, the best questions to ask and whether they should offer an incentive to encourage feedback," IBM research staff member Jeffrey Nichols told V3.

Such projects show that, after 100 years of being one of the biggest technology firms in the world, IBM has no intention of resting on its laurels and is keen to place itself at the heart of the social business revolution taking place in the market.

UK luxury fashion brand Burberry announced a 21 per cent rise in fourth-quarter sales, after spending the past year growing a social media strategy that leads the retail sector.

The company said its success was partly due to its investment in digital technology that has helped drive customer engagement and partly because of its growth in flagship markets such as China.

At the start of 2011, Burberry rolled out a new web site, Burberry World, which allows customers to connect with all aspects of the business such as its heritage, music, video and product offers through videos and instant chat with customer service representatives.

Burberry also partnered with social media sites and now has more than 10 million Facebook fans, as well as more than 7,000 Twitter followers and has had in excess of 10 million views on YouTube, making it the world's most successful luxury fashion brand on these sites.

Burberry has also launched its brand on a number of Chinese social networking sites. The country is now home to 513 million internet consumers.

V3 attended Salesforce's annual customer event in San Francisco last year where Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts took to the stage to explain how her business had used the Chatter tool to help manage social media.

"To any CEO who's sceptical, you have to create a social enterprise today, you have to be totally connected with everyone who touches your brand," Ahrendts said at the time.

Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, said he had worked with Ahrendts to put the Burberry social media strategy in place.

It's a success story others in the industry and beyond would do well to take note of.

ORLANDO: With IBM beating the drum on the use of social tools and collaborative software, its chief information officer Jeanette Horan, outlined the firm's own work in these areas, to show it practices what it preaches.

With almost half a million full-time employees (currently around 450,000) IBM has a huge workforce using a vast array of tools, both internally and externally and the figures she revealed are truly astounding:

•    On average 360,000 staff use the firm’s instant messaging platform every day.
•    This generates a staggering 50 million instant messages per day.
•    There are 198,000 members of staff on Facebook.
•    A much smaller 20,000 are on Twitter.
•    LinkedIn Is the most popular platform, though, with 281,000 users.
•    20,000 members of staff run their own internal blog on the firm’s Connections tool.

She also revealed its willingness to shake things up by explaining it runs a reverse-mentoring system in the company where some of the youngest new staff members teach its most senior executives how to use the latest social tools.

However, one area the firm admitted it is still addressing is the growing issue of what should happen to employees' Twitter accounts after they leave the company.
 
Carol Sormilic, vice president global workforce and web processes, explained to V3 that it is an area the firm is currently debating internally, but has yet to reach an answer.

One area where the firm is up and running, though, is letting staff bring their own devices to work after the end of a two-year pilot that involved feedback from 20,000 members of staff, which actually equates to just five per cent of its workforce.

This led to the creation of a set of policies that include an enforced eight-digit password for each device to access the corporate network and Horan revealed that she herself uses her own personal BlackBerry phone as her work device.

On the issue of cloud computing, Horan explained that IBM operates six datacentres to help it run a private cloud computing network as the size of the firm makes this a viable return on investment.

“We have the scale to be able to see the benefits of managing the cloud behind the firewall,” she added.

As well as a fascinating insight into the day-to-day IT demands of a firm the size of IBM, its willingness to embrace new trends and give staff the power to take advantage of new tools may give IT leaders in other, smaller, firms the courage to go forward with their own plans in these areas.

One of the nice things about Twitter is that firms on the site often share titbits of information about what they are up to, to help keep customers, partners and other 'interested parties' updated on their comings and goings.

It was with interest, then, that V3 spied a tweet by Intel UK that showed several employees, including its chief technology officer Justin Rattner, posing outside Number 10 Downing Street this morning.

Interested to know what Intel was doing at such a venue, V3 contacted the firm and, after a couple of hours, was sent a fairly vague statement claiming there was nothing unusual about the meeting, but that all discussions held were strictly off limits.

"With regards to Justin Rattner's visit to Number 10 this morning, as with all major companies, Intel has regular catch-ups with Downing St," Intel said.

"The subject of these conversations is always confidential; we will obviously announce anything significant as and when appropriate."

V3 wondered why, if you were so chummy with the folks at Number 10, would you post a picture advertising your presence there. That's when things got really interesting: on returning to Twitter to look at the picture once more, we noticed that, shock, it was gone.

Sadly, not expecting Intel to pull a fast one in this manner, none of the team in the V3 office had managed to grab a screenshot of the Intel folk outside Number 10.

So the firm is happy to admit the meeting took place, but leaving a picture on Twitter showing staff outside the venue was deemed too much?

This suggests the picture should never have been put online and was removed when questions from the press raised the alarm – creating yet more intrigue into what the meeting with the government was about.

Hopefully Intel will come clean in the future and explain what it was doing inside that illustrious residency – perhaps, as one colleague quipped, they were busy implanting a new chip inside Cameron.

It was the beginning of a new era at CES on Monday when Sony announced its first smartphone since the firm bought out Ericsson from their joint mobile phone venture.

Available globally in the first quarter 2012, the Xperia S is the first of the under fire Japanese electronics giant's new NXT series with the consumer heavy-focus as ever on multimedia and entertainment functionality.

Under the covers the device is powered by a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor and runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) although it will be updated to Ice Cream Sandwich by the second quarter.

The NFC-enabled phone has a high res HD screen, 12 megapixel camera and a new design dubbed "Iconic Identity" which Sony says helps emphasise the display.

Other nifty additions enabled by its Android OS include SmartWatch, which allows Android to wirelessly access calls, messages and apps and Xperia Smart Tags, which launch pre-configured, personalised settings when NFC Android phones are swiped against them.

Sony also pushed the device's entertainment credentials, saying it is PlayStation certified and offers access to the firm's Entertainment Network via an HDMI TV connection. Photos can also be shared wirelessly, Sony added.

Whether this device is the one to propel Sony into the top tier of Android smartphone vendors along with HTC and Samsung remains to be seen. Only time will tell whether its €1.05bn buy out of Ericsson was a stroke of genius or the final nail in the coffin of its smartphone ambitions.

Also at CES, Sony showed off its dual-screen Tablet P as well as the Vita portable gaming device and other innovations.

LAS VEGAS: Those of you who were hoping that Microsoft would leave CES with one last spectacular fizzle are in for bad news.

Steve Ballmer's 2012 keynote has come and gone without any power outages, system crashes or video delays. Despite an over-capacity crowd at CES, Microsoft was able to showcase its latest and greatest products with very little in the way of negative attention.

The final Microsoft keynote for the forseeable future highlighted many of the company's flagship brands, including the growing Windows Phone platform, XBox and its Kinnect platform, and the upcoming Windows 8 OS for both desktop and tablet systems.

Ballmer, aided by co-host Ryan Seacrest, was his usual dynamic self to the very end. When asked what was next, he emphatically declared "Metro, Metro Metro!" in reference to the highly-touted Windows 8 interface.

"Together, all of us in this industry, in thousands of new ways, will use the software and services and devices to invent incredible things," he said.

"Metro will drive the new magic across all user experiences."

And with that, Microsoft ends its days of headlining CES. Those of you feeling nostalgic about the whole thing will always have the memories of the company's historic keynote fails to keep you company.

Five years ago today, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs stood on stage at the annual MacWorld event and unveiled a device that would transform the mobile phone market forever.

The device was, of course, the iPhone and it kicked the mobile phone industry into a whole new era, with the effects still being felt today as Google, Research in Motion, Microsoft and Nokia have all been forced to play catch-up in the battle for market share.

Jobs knew Apple was on to a winner when he launched the device, arguing it was far ahead of any other device on the market, which at the time meant unattractive, brick-like machines which lacked the sense of fun and style that were the iPhone's trademarks.

"[The] iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is five years ahead of any other mobile phone. We are all born with the ultimate pointing device - our fingers - and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse," he boasted.

Now, of course, Apple is under more pressure than ever from its rivals, particularly from Android-based handsets from manufacturers like Samsung and HTC, but the continued appetite shown for each new device the firm launches, most recently the iPhone 4S, shows it still has a cutting edge in the market.

The next 12 months are likely to be a key time for the market too after the sad passing of Jobs, with Apple expected to unveil the iPhone 5 at some point in the coming year.

A key figure in this development is likely to be the recently knighted Jony Ive, the head of industrial design at the firm and Jobs' "spiritual partner", whose job it is to produce the next wave of devices at Apple with a clear mission to maintain its status as the top-dog in the smartphone industry.

Certainly, if the firm can achieve the same level of success in the next five years with its iPhone devices as it did in the first five, Ive will have proved himself a worthy successor, with a little help from Tim Cook of course.