Month: January 2009

Categories
Business internet

Is The UK An Innovation Backwater?

I’m sure this is a subject that has raised its head on many occasion over the past decade or two. It struck me this morning that all the futuristic development work that I am looking at is based on technologies and services that have originated outside the UK.

In particular Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Digg it Yahoo, Google etc etc etc are all North American inventions. The one British equivalent that springs to mind is Friends Reunited which looks as if it has missed the boat big time on the social networking opportunity yet it was probably the first in the space. Certainly I never used it seriously because there was a subscription cost.

Not only is the innovation in the USA but all the conferences that you might want to go to to network and discuss innovation are in the USA. I used to work for a company that had offices in San Jose and when visiting could always sense the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation that pervaded the whole community. 

Now it is true that due to the nature of the internet and thanks indeed to the ability to communicate and innovate that web2.0 has brought (bit of a generalisation I know) the world is a lot smaller. However there still lacks the forum outside of the USA for getting together with like minded people to discuss and progress.  Jeff Pulver’s “Breakfasts” are a good start and I will be attending the one in London on January 28th.

I periodically hold a “Friday Lunchtime Session” in the office at Timico HQ where innovation is discussed. If there are any like minded people in the UK who want to get together on a periodic basis to discuss innovation, technology, Social Networking, Web2.0 et al please get in touch.

Categories
Business engineering

interview

This is an interview with feargal done for radio by my son tom (then aged 17) last summer. the first file sees feargal talking about the problem of illegal downloading.  the second one has his response to tom’s question re the nusic industry’s approach to cutting off broadband connections.

Feargal 2

Feargal 3

Categories
Business engineering

Train your way out of a recession

I forget whether the UK is officially in an economic recession yet. There is so much talk in the news that it is difficult to see the wood from the trees. What is true is that recession or not the market in which we operate is fast moving and whilst we are currently getting bombarded with hard luck stories this must be looked upon as a real opportunity.

This is why next week one third of Timico’s engineering resource will be going on training courses. A dozen of them will be at it for five full days on a Cisco bootcamp held at Timico’s HQ in Newark. Others will be attending SMB specialisation courses. 

This is a serious investment which we are making early in the year to get the biggest bang for our bucks in 2009. Moreover it is a statement of intent.

It tells our staff that we believe in them enough to invest in their future. It tells our technology partners that we are a business worth investing their time into and finally, it sends out a signal to our customers and potential customers that our workforce is prepared in the best way possible to serve their needs.

I can’t forecast what is going to happen in 2009 but I can say that we are planning to succeed.

Categories
Business engineering

Technology department is in the soup

When we say “in a bit of a stew” we typically mean we have a problem. Well I’m sat here having lunch with the Timico Solutions Team and I have to say we are “in a bit of a soup”.

The mood of the day is, of course, lean and mean and the team is now paying for its pre-Christmas excesses which typically involved biscuits, chocolate, KFCs and Big Macs. We still have umpteen empty Quality Street and Roses  tins lying around the office.

Just for completeness, Julie is on tomato cupasoup, Dean is on chicken and vegetable cupasoup, Gareth is on an indeterminate chicken, Wayne has gone posh and is on Covent Garden Wild Mushroom (on offer for £1 we understand and containing a small trace (0.6%) of wild funghi), Will hasn’t made his mind up depending on what they have on in the canteen and I am very pleased to say that I have had an excellent spinach and lentil with chillies, made by the fair hand of Mrs Anne Davies.  

I’m sure that you all get the vibe here. Engineering at Timico is going to be running superfit in 2009.

PS no product endorsment is intended. Other fattening  junk  food is available and soup is not guaranteed to offset the effects 🙂 .

Categories
Business internet

Changes afoot to the landscape of the digital highway

The economic downturn seems likely to spring some surprises in the internet world . In an interview with the Guardian Newspaper over the weekend Prime Minister Gordon Brown discussed his plans to fund the employment of 100,000 people in the UK. He was quoted as comparing the need to invest in a high speed digital infrastructure for the UK with the way that Franklin D Roosvelt spent his way out of the US recession in the 1930s by investing in capital projects.

This comes at the same time as a Sunday Times article that suggests that Lord Carter, the UK Communications Minister is about to do away with BT’s Universal Service Obligation. This is the law whereby BT has to guarantee to provide a fixed line communications service to everyone that wants it in the UK.

It would appear that the large mobile operators are likely to have to share the cost of this with BT. In difficult to service rural areas the fixed line network could be replaced with mobile technology. 

What will be interesing is to see who is likely to benefit from Gordon Brown’s investment plan. I would imagine that there will be a number of network operators lining up with their hands outstretched for Government money. We shouldn’t assume that it will just be BT, although they are clearly well placed to take advantage.

With mobile operators having to support USO it looks to me as if we will be going back to the old days where a network operator (BT in those days) was both a fixed and mobile player This time round perhaps we will see a true competitor to BT emerging from the pack.

Categories
Business internet ofcom

Growth In Internet Usage Since 1995

On a journey around cyberspace came across a very interesting website. It tracks the growth of the internet since 1995. Almost a quarter of the world’s population is now using the internet.

Interestingly what I think these statistics tell us is that the internet age is still only beginning. There are another 4.5 billions users yet to join the community.

Even if you use Ofcom’s UK penetrations statistics of 58% penetration for ADSL and assume that the UK being a fairly mature market, is approaching saturation point, it still leaves us with 2 billion more people yet to connect. That’s a massive market opportunity for online services somewhere.

I have graphed some of the statistics for easy reading:

growth in internet usage since 1995.
growth in internet usage since 1995.

 internet-usage

PS – sorry about the quality of the graphics. I never was any good at art at school.
Categories
End User spam

Sources of Spam

Spam hotspots
Spam hotspots

I’ve been talking to a number of anti-spam and anti virus technology vendors recently.

It is important to keep up with what is going on in this field. As we move into 2009 it is a subject I will be writing more about.

In the meantime I came across this map of sources of SPAM. There are a number of them floating around online. It is interesting to see that all the usual suspects are there: South East Asia, Russia, Brazil.

I was quite surprised to see so much activity in the USA and Europe. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been.

Categories
Business fun stuff

Happy New Year

This, as you will I’m sure understand, is an automated post. Written in the dying working hours of 2008 it has been scheduled for an unnaturally early time on New Years day as a precaution against the extremely unlikely event that anyone will want to read this blog today. Most of us will still be in bed.

To those who have made the effort, a Happy New Year to you and may you prosper in 2009.