Author: Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

Categories
4g Business mobile connectivity

4G cost an issue?

4G EE LTEI note the Beeb is reporting today that people are saying the cost of signing up to an EE 4G plan is too high.

There are always going to be whingers. Either people will like the pricing or they won’t. It’s a straight business decision on the part of EE. Network operators are under constant margin pressure because they have chopped their pricing too much in the past. 4G represents an opportunity to build value into their businesses.

My biggest concern is how successful they will be in adding additional margin generating services to their portfolios. If you look at the EE pricing then everyone gets unlimited voice and texts and they are just offering variable charging based on data consumption. On its own this isn’t enough but I’m not sure I see networks successfully adding other services that people are willing to pay for.

Agree?

Categories
Business fun stuff

Alex and Andy Smile for the camera

I’ve just come up for air after having my head down in my PC all day. It’s getting dark out. It’s just started raining – I can hear it on the roof of the office – one of the downsides of having the penthouse suite.

Welcome to winter. I hope you have your warm, waterproof coat ready and plenty of fuel ordered to keep you going through to spring. A car drives by with its headlights on. It is around 4pm.

All of a sudden the only sounds I hear are the rain, the air conditioning (climate control) and my laptop’s hard drive.

All sounds a bit melodramatic doesn’t it?…

PS at this point I usually get up and go and make a cup of tea. The office is vibrant and buzzing and brightly lit. The phones are humming and Alex and Andy, two of the best sales guys in the industry, smile for the camera.

That’s all. My tea has brewed. C ya.

 

Categories
Apps broadband End User social networking

Home broadband data usage growth

home broadband data usage trends for Trefor Davies

Broadband data usage growth driven by photo uploads

I’m installing a RaspberryPi computer at home carrying an IPCortex PBX with SIP trunks. I just needed to find a free IP address and found myself checking out available addresses so that I could provide a static one to the IPCortex.

I just happened to find myself looking at my home broadband data usage and came up with some interesting stats.

The first chart plots the growth in my overallgrowth in upload data usage for home broadband - Trefor Davies usage for the last four years. It actually shows almost an order of magnitude (20GB to 160GB) growth from the lowest point in 2008 to the highest point this year.

I realise this is not scientific but you can easily see the trend. The rise in upload usage in the May/June time frame (2nd chart) this year coincides with my taking proud possession of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the fact that all photos now get backed up to Google+. Trefor Davies photo storage requirements ytd 2012

The final chart shows the growth in photo storage needs this year and you can see a very good correlation between photo storage and the growth in bandwidth upload usage.

The numbers don’t exactly match because we use the home broadband connection for other applications and I, being both gregarious and fertile, do not live alone.

I haven’t drilled into specifics but a reasonable chunk of the photo storage space is now used for video. I do both a daily (ish) video diary for the kids and take lots of “generally interesting” videos. Check this one out from the weekend visit to the Beamish Open Air Museum in county Durham.

 

Categories
Business online safety social networking

Parliament and Internet Conference – Privacy

portcullisThe Parliament and Internet conference wound its annual way to Westminster yesterday. The conference usually comes up with a nugget or two and made the BBC news site with a comment from Andy Smith, PSTSA1 Security Manager at the Cabinet Office that he wouldn’t recommend using your real name when registering with sites like Facebook.

Lord Merlin Errol also noted that he used to give his date of birth as April 1st 1900 but that drop down boxed rarely went that far back these days. I guess there are still one or two 112 year old people around though whether they would be interested in social networking is another  issue.  Privacy  on the Internet, or lack of it, is something I’m still trying to get my brain around.

This came to the front of mind again this morning as a Facebook message appeared in my timeline asking me to confirm my mobile phone number. I did so, particularly as a mobile number is one way of recovering a lost password. Didn’t feel particularly comfortable doing it though. I don’t trust Facebook though

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Categories
End User social networking

social networking participation on trefor.net – clicks wanted :)

social network sharing on the trefor.net blogIt’s interesting to see that reader engagement on this blog is increasing and that people are starting to use social networking share buttons more.

However a post that attracts a lot of Facebook “Likes” doesn’t necessarily get many LinkedIn “Shares” and so on. A quick scan over the last months or so worth of posts shows that the most shares each social network has had for any given post is as follows:

Linked In Shares 24
Tweets 18
Facebook Likes 22
G+ 3

Google Plus is still clearly low down in terms of people using it. I was surprised that LinkedIn comes out top though I don’t think I should have been – after all Timico is a supplier of business services and presumably this reflects some proportion of the readership being either customers or people from the same industry. Pinterest scores are not gathered but I’d bet the number of “pins” is low.

As a bit of an experiment can readers please click on one of the social network buttons? Just choose the network you use most. No prizes here and nothing to be gained by clicking more than once but I’ll leave this post at the top for a day or two to see what the results look like.

Ta.

Tref

Categories
4g Business

4 G E E L T E 4 ME?

4G EE LTEEE is doing a good job at building up market expectation. Today the mobile network operator launched its pricing plans, available from the end of this month.

Consumers can have unlimited calls and texts with 500MB of data for £36. Remembering that I used 60MB of data in one minute on the O2 LTE trials I suspect that not many people will stay on this plan. The options are:

500MB £36
1GB £41
3GB £46
5GB £51
8GB £56

I assume that this comes with a phone though it isn’t clear. Their site suggests you can get the Nokia Lumia 920, 820, Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE and Note 2 LTE, HTC One XL and the iPhone5 plus a few other also rans (sorry).

If you use up your data allowance you won’t be able to access the internet until you buy a data add-on (ok). It isn’t entirely clear but it looks like the cost of a data add on is £6 for 500MB or £15 for 2GB so it makes sense to get your plan right in the first place.

I note there is a roaming package for £5 a month though this doesn’t seem to apply to data which in my mind is what I am most likely to use when roaming – checking restaurants, bars, local attractions (library locations etc).

The speeds are quoted at 8 – 12Mps on average.

It also looks as if they will not be blocking VoIP

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Categories
End User fun stuff

The Harrison H4 timepiece and other historical nautical memorabilia (the Cutty Sark)

Sometimes you get the opportunity to see something totally historic – like the Olympics for example. On Saturday I saw two things in the same afternoon that were in the same league. First of all the Cutty Sark was hugely impressive. Then we went to the Royal Observatory and saw the Harrison H4 timepiece. It was a lot smaller than I had imagined and a fraction of the size of its H1 – H3 predecessors. I could have stood there a lot longer than the impatience of offspring allowed.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about look em up. Here are some photos – slightly different perspective to normal:

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Categories
End User fun stuff

Facebook promoted posts – uh?

Facebook promoted posts screenshotI linked to that last post on why I want my Samsung Galaxy S3 back from Facebook. I wanted to make sure that none of my friends missed the post otherwise no-one might read it:).

For the first time ever I got this popup/toast/whatever they call it suggesting I might want to pay to promote my post.  I could “move my important news, links and photos higher in the news feed” and the post “will be marked as sponsored”.

payment options for Facebook Promoted postsI’ve never seen this before and certainly wouldn’t dream of giving money to Facebook for the “privilege” of them promoting my post. What’s more there is no mention of how long the promotion will last, what position it will have in the feed, basically nothing that specifies what I get for the cash.

I clicked through as if I was going to buy and found that they wanted £3.47 for this privilege. It was almost tempting to pay theFacebook promoted posts cause a bit of a stir - on Facebook money to find out what happens but I’m sure that most of my friends would think I was off my trolley if I did this.

In an attempt to find out what I would get for my money I searched Facebook for “promoted posts” but it only came up with a few user groups protesting about the fact that Facebook was now offering promoted posts.

Frankly who cares? I guess some businesses might want to sign up but Facebook haven’t exactly done a good job of selling it – at least not to me.

Ciao…

Categories
End User phones

Looking forward to getting my Samsung Galaxy S3 back

Sandown Park panorama taken with Samsung Galaxy S3Quick brain dump. I’ve been using the HTC One S for just over a week now. You may recall I’ve had to send the Samsung Galaxy S3 off for a new screen.

The keyboard keys on the One S are smaller than I’m used to and I have to be very careful when typing things in not to get it completely wrong. The User Interface seems not to be quite as slick – more button presses than required for the S3. This might be totally wrong and I don’t have a specific example, particularly as I haven’t got both phones side by side to compare, but that’s what it feels right.

The smaller form factor of the One S is good except that it means that things are smaller on screen (ref keyboard above). I also like the “ring pull” feature you use to activate the screen but this in itself is not a major reason to buy.

I guess the One S must be cheaper than the S3 which is probably how it is positioned and sold and in reality it does have a great many of the benefits of Android ICS. The One S doesn’t have an SD card slot so I haven’t swapped my music across although I suppose I could have done it via cable – it does have 32GB on-board memory. I don’t listen to music often enough for me to have bothered.

Also I don’t like the zoom function on the camera. “pinching” the screen doesn’t work. You have to use the +/- slider to zoom in and out. The One S doesn’t seem to have the panorama feature though the burst mode of the S3 is there by default – you just hold the shutter button down and it just happens. The header photo is reused from a previous post – notionally to show off the panorama feature of the S3 but in reality so that I can “pin” the blog on Pinterest – it won’t let you do it without a photo (yes I know I’m a tart).

I don’t know whether these features also apply to the HTC One X but I’m not going to find out. Bring back my Galaxy S3 – as soon as possible – I will try and be more careful with you in future (strokes an imaginary phone lovingly) 🙂

That’s all folks…

PS I realise I have to be careful here. I don’t want to appear too much like an Apple fanboi. Samsung fanboi? Nah.

PPS this post is for Jonathan – he will understand.

Categories
End User travel

…the train has stopped…

…the train has stopped and there is no cellular data coverage…

The Internet has gone to sleep. Around the world power stations idle and time stops. Life is not so efficient – things take longer to happen. Children go out to play and people sink gracefully into old age not categorised as “digitally excluded”. Families begin to talk, rediscovering relationships previously unseen in the light of day.

The clock on the mantelpiece counts its interminable seconds; tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock…

…eventually the journey continues, time speeds up and normal service is resumed…

Categories
End User security

Payment Protection Insurance – are you eligible for £7,500 compensation?

Just had a phone call from an Indian sounding gent called Harry Connor. Actually he wasn’t totally sure what his name was because when I asked him again at the end of the call he said it was Sean Connor (not sure how he spells Sean – could be Shaun or Shawn – sorry). Perhaps he flips between both names without thinking – kind of split personality.

He was calling me about my Payment Protection Insurance and said I was eligible for £7,500 compensation.  It was all above board because he said the Ministry of Justice was behind it.

I like to make sure I’m dealing with reputable folk when being asked about financial stuff so I asked for the name of his company (ukfinancial.com) and their phone number (020 881 907 01). He said they were headquartered in London but had an office in Manchester.

Unfortunately I must have mistyped both the name of the company and the phone number and now not only can I not ring him back but I can’t even track down his website.

Ah well – another opportunity to make a fast buck lost. Never mind. I dare say he or one of his colleagues will call back. They have already called about 6 times.

I realise that the Telephone Preference Service doesn’t work overseas but someone needs to come up with a solution for this problem.

Listen to the phone call by clicking on the image of the phone below:

Image in the video is courtesy of Wikipedia

Categories
Business online safety Regs

More Draft Comms Data Bill analysis & Gary McKinnon

blogspot broken link landing pageGary McKinnon has been in the news this week. Unless you have just surfaced for internet air you will remember that he is the guy with Aspergers who hacked into the Pentagon computer and who the marshalls Feds in US of A wanted to extradite so that they could extract revenge.

This post is not about Gary McKinnon or the rights and wrongs of his case. It is about the fact that he was able to hack into what must surely be one of the most secure computer systems in the world (wide web).

Next up is the breach of Google’s webmail service in December 2009.

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Categories
broken gear End User

Apple iPhone faults

An apple - grown in my back garden at homeWe have an excellent team in our logistics1 department. Phillipa has efficiently found me a temporary HTC One S whilst my trusty Galaxy S3 is sent back for a new screen. This time it wasn’t a fault of Samsung – the last two times were faulty headset socket and a faulty connector that meant the phone wasn’t charging, or at least only intermittently.

This time the phone was accidentally dropped on a hard floor and unfortunately the display smashed. Ok s*&t happens. It’s gone off to the menders for a week or so and in the meantime I have a temporary HTC One S.  The One S is ok but smaller than the Galaxy S3 so I keep hitting the wrong keys. It’s also not quite as high a spec but hey, I only have it for a week or so.

Setting up the One S was very simple, as for all Android phones though I note that with Samsung all the apps I have previously downloaded are re-installed on a new phone whereas this hasn’t happened with HTC. This is probably a Samsung service that might well be replicated by HTC but I clearly haven’t signed up for it.

Anyway when I handed the S3 in to Phillipa in logistics1

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Categories
broadband Engineer

When Things Go Wrong…

broadband Network Operations Centre

Broadband Network Operations Centre spots when a line goes down

I was in the broadband Network Operations Centre  the other day talking to the guys. We were looking at our instance of the Solar Winds network monitoring tool. Then I remembered I was on the way to see a customer later that day so I asked to see their network status.broadband

Blow me down if one of their sites wasn’t showing up as red – connectivity problem. I sauntered over to first line and to my delight one of the team was already looking at it. It was an ADSL connection. As we were watching the status reverted to green. ADSLs sometimes lose and reestablish connections on their own – that’s the vagaries of copper for you.

It’s nice when systems work like this. With ADSL we have a suite of tests we can run to see where the problem might lie. Sometimes the customer has unplugged the router for some reason. If we can’t find out the answer we spring into action depending on what we have agreed with the customer. Maybe it’s just a phone call asking him to switch the router back on. Maybe its a site visit.

Anyway I suspect that on this occasion the customer hadn’t even noticed there was a problem, but we did…

c ya

Categories
End User media

@TomAndThat presents – conservation appeal on behalf of the liberal democrats & zane lowe interview

Because I have complete editorial control over this blog I can publish anything I like. I take responsibility for the content. On this occasion I am doing the proud dad thing and offer a couple of vids published by the Davies heir. Enjoy…

Categories
Archived Business

Timico is the most innovative business yay

winners need to celebrateOn Friday night we won the award for “Excellence in Innovation” presented by the Nottinghamshire & Derbyshire Chambers of Commerce. Yay. A good night was had by all.

neil armstrong grinsThe photos tell it all. Click on the header pic to see more of what me, Kirsty, Kate and Faye are up to. The bloke behind Neil clearly didn’t win, a condition exacerbated by the fact  that he was driving and not quite in the same “joyous” state of mind.

The Most Innovative Business Award goes to TimicoThere have been times when we entered awards expecting to win but came away with nothing. I specifically remember the time when we had just reached 4th position in the Sunday Times/Microsoft Techtrack 100. That means we were the 4th fastest growing privately held tech company in the UK.

That same year we entered the local Newark Business Awards (I think it was for the fastest growing business but time fuddles the memory). We thought it must be a shoe in. In the event it went to a small local gardening business we had never heard of. I guess we must have read the brief wrongly (growing – pun – never mind!).

The lesson there is you have to take these things with good grace. Win some lose some.

Anyway this present award builds on the Best Business in Newark gong we won earlier this year and on the Best ITSP (Enterprise) cert we got at the ITSPAs. A reasonable haul for a 12 month period.

There are some who think these awards are not worth anything. I disagree. They send out a message, both to the outside world and to staff inside the company.

To our staff I say well done. You are a great bunch of people and I am proud to be working with you.

That’s enough emulsion. Ciao…

PS the award was based on our Mobile Access Management product – see here and here for more.

Categories
Business fun stuff

Call that an office? This is an office

from the office of Trevor Jones - Lincoln University

You walk into some high flyer’s office, sink into the lush undergrowth that is the carpet, disappear into the soft leather interiors of the sofa at one end and gaze down on the worker ants swarming around the city, dozens of floors below.

Size of the office, backed up with exclusive accessories = status.  Its a fair bet noone in the city has a ping pong table in their office though.

I walked in to meet Trevor Jones of Lincoln University’s School of Computer Science to be greeted with a table tennis bat and ball. Super cool and akin to the Google offices in Victoria. We batted round a few ideas while I was there. Trevor teaches courses that cover networking and cloud technologies – just our kind of stuff at Timico.

At the start of this year we hosted a bus load of second year students at the Newark data centre and are planning to do the same again after Christmas. It’s all good stuff. We want to be a natural choice of employer for graduates coming out of the department.

I won’t say who won the table tennis. Lincoln University where offices have ping pong tables…

Categories
Engineer internet

The history of the Isle of Man Postal service by Kelly from the Isle of Man

Mail of MannJust reading “The Mail of Mann” – the story of postal services in the Isle of Man written by Robert Kelly. A fascinating read  if you like that sort of thing which I presumably do.

On September 3rd 1837 the Post Office in the UK despatched a surveyor to the island to assess what might be done to improve its postal communications. The transmission of data packets (ie letters) was very much adhoc, asynchronous if you like. In particular the service to outlying rural parts of the island was pretty hit and miss.

Unfortunately for those rural dwellers, which in particular included the Lord Bishop whose residence as you probably know is on the far side of the island between Kirk Michael and Ballaugh, the surveyor decided that it would be too expensive to set up a regular service to anywhere other than the main towns which would in any case cover most of the people sending and receiving mail.

The rural areas were left to people to sort out themselves. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Categories
Engineer webrtc

ITSPA Leeds workshop Adelphi Shabab

Shabab LeedsITSPA held its first ever out of London workshop in Leeds last Thursday, chaired as usual by yours truly. We had three interesting talks. The first was by Adam Beaumont from AQL on mobile VoIP and why mobile networks will need regional peering for voice over 4G. Next up was Thomas Mangin of Exa-Networks/IX Leeds who discussed QoS for VoIP and finally Rob Pickering from IPCortex on WebRTC.

We were also given a tour around AQL’s new data centre in Salem chapel opposite the old Tetley Brewery in the city centre. The brewery has been knocked down and turned into a car park – criminal 🙂 IX Leeds is hosted free of charge in the new data centre and is developing as an alternative northern POP for people looking for connectivity in the area.

The workshop was highly successful and is something we will have to repeat sometime next year. Afterwards Adam Beaumont very generously bought the Timothy Taylors at the Adelphi pub and then a traditional Yorkshire curry at the Shabab.

Categories
End User Regs surveillance & privacy

Draft Comms Data Bill written submissions #CCDP #commsdata

portcullisThe written evidence submitted to the Joint Select committee on the Draft Communications Data Bill amounts to 448 pages and is a surprisingly interesting read. Some of you may not have the inclination to plough through the whole lot so just for you I’m going to jot down  few choice bits in a number of posts over the next few days.

In case you didn’t remember the Draft Comms Data Bill is what was labelled the “snooper’s charter” and which caused an outcry a few months ago. There were 91 written submissions in response to the call for evidence. Trawling through them I’d say that 10 were supportive, 69 were out and out against the Bill with most of the remainder having some sort of reservation.

Those for included organisations such as the Home Office, HMRC (they want your money), The Serious Organised Crime Agency and the UK Border Agency. All quite understandable. The Local Government Agency was also supportive but complained that the scope needed to be extended to include them.

The 69 opposing submissions included many from private individuals and also the following organisations:

JANET, Just West Yorkshire, Liberty, LINX , The Newspaper Society, Open Rights Group, Society of Editors, Timico Ltd, The Tor Project, Wikimedia UK, Equality & Human Rights Commission, The Coalition for a Digital Economy, The Bar Council of England and Wales, Privacy International, Big Brother Watch, JUSTICE, The foundation for Information Policy Research.

Many large organisations take a supportive stance when it comes to helping to prevent crime. The larger UK ISPs have a technique whereby they

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Categories
Business datacentre

To whom it may concern

"legitimate" spam exampleThere is nothing more annoying than being spammed. Anti spam software is pretty good these days and I rarely get spam spam if you know what I mean.

Spam spam is the bad stuff trying to sell me  viagra, handbags, penis enlargements etc etc etc.

Unfortunately these days the spam spam problem has been replaced with “legitimate” spam. This is the stuff sent by genuine companies who have bought my name off some database.

Over the last 24 hours I have had emails from Apposite Technology Parters (que?), datacentres.com News, Retail Week Jobs, OFFTEK, easyjet, BLiNQ networks, Sparks, SAP, Telecoms Tech and others. I go through phases of unsubscribing from mails I get sent but it’s like pushing water uphill. The cat is well and truly out of the bag.

Most of them I can just ignore. There isn’t much point in marking the sender as junk because it usually comes from some non descript mail server address. The ones that are really annoying come with Subject line content such as “Your enquiry” or “Re: ” There should be a website where we can name and shame senders of such emails.

That’s all – had to get it off my chest.

So long.

PS Akismet is brilliant at catching spam comments in wordpress blogs. I’ve just looked and I had 2,600 items caught in the spam folder. The flavour of the day seems to be ugh boots, nike gear, longchamp bags, louis vuitton and other such dross.

Categories
End User events

The all round good guys go first but there is room for a free thinker

Bar at London's Phoenix Artist ClubThat’s “All round good guys”, “VIP exclusives” and “Champagne drinkers” sold out with only 6 each of “Free thinkers” and “Party animals” left.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about you’re probably not planning on coming. It was interesting to see that the good guys went first closely followed by the VIPs. I think that free thinkers and party animals are a good match – I suspect they are one and the same though there is always the odd exception.

Once they’re gone they’re gone though if you have already had a person invite and not got your name down don’t worry – just remind me and I’ll stick you on the list at the door. That’s it for now.

Categories
Engineer engineering internet

the leaving of #UKNOF23 TfL bus number 205 to Paddington

Never let it be said that this blog fails to deliver. This time I present for your delectation a journey on the TfL number 205 bus which left Old Street for Paddington yesterday afternoon.

I had been at UKNOF23 at the Google Campus near Old Street and was headed for a rendezvous at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel with Paul Schwartz. Paul is an interesting bloke. He is CEO of Danish router manufacturer Icotera and member of the board of the Fibre to the Home Council (Europe).

Now some of you might wonder what on earth I am doing showing a video of a bus ride. This video is actually of a single hop between two stops: Old Street and Moorfields Eye Hospital on the City Road (of “in and out of the Eagle” fame). It represents a short window on the life of London and will potentially, when considered in conjunction with millions of other snapshots, contribute to the historical record of our great capital city.

The bus enthusiasts among you will also complain that a single stop is not enough. Give me more, more – I hear the clamour. Well there were two factors that prevented me from filming more. Firstly most people will not even watch the 52 seconds of this single hop. Then there was the fact  that my battery was running low and I needed to conserve it in anticipation of the need to call Paul because I had no idea what he looked like.

So there you have it. Those wondering why I left UKNOF23 during the afternoon coffee break now know and those who simply like to ride at the front of the top deck of double decker busses (which could well be the vast majority of the UK population) should also be happy.

And so to the video…

PS these videos are becoming increasingly popular. The one of “How to make steak tartare” has hit 60 views on YouTube! Life is good:)

Categories
Engineer engineering

Notes from UKNOF23 – Cinnamon, Brick Lane & Google Campus

blackboard at Google Campus near Old StreetThe title is somewhat disingenuous because the notes are from the night before UKNOF23. Before UKNOF everyone pops out for a curry sponsored by one of the fine networking companies that support the organisation. In last night’s case it was IX Reach and we all went to Cinnamon on Brick Lane.

Fair play to Cinnamon the food was great and included dishes called Naga containing the world’s hottest chilli pepper. Not for the faint of heart and certainly not for me though Adrian kennard of AAISP seemed not to break into sweat as he tucked in to his. More of a man than I’ll ever be.

Fair play also to IX Reach who took the decision to cover all the cost of the booze as well as the food which meant I could indulge in that second half of lager. I was in bed by ten though as I have a speaking slot today, albeit after lunch.

The photos are a random selection from the Cinnamon curry house, Brick Lane, the Google Campus where the meeting is being held and of Bonhill Street where the Google Campus is located. I took the picture of the urns because it is unusual to see two urns for hot water and only one for coffee. Clearly engineers drink more tea than coffee.

Photos below.

That’s all folks…

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Categories
Apps ecommerce End User

How to avoid giving Apple credit card details for iTunes setup

peel castle from fenella beach car parkOne of my beefs with Apple has been that you have to give them your credit card details when setting up an iTunes account. For the uninitiated, the independent of mind majority, you need to sign up to iTunes to be able to download apps onto your iPad/Pod/Phone, even if the apps themselves are free.

The signup process involves filling in payment method details which I have always objected to.

Last weekend my dad acquired an iPad at the tender age of 78. He understandably didn’t trust Apple with his credit card details. We set him up without iTunes but it was clear that he would need to install some apps to make full use of the device – Facebook, Google+ and Skype in particular.

The www told me it should be possible to not to have to provide the card details but none of the instructions seemed to match what I could see on the sign up screen.

In the end

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Categories
Business Regs security

Now where did I leave that important information? #commsdatabill

You will of course recall my recent post on Big Data in which I related how many laptops are left in the back of taxis. 10,857.14 of them every year to be precise. Well I was wrong. Not only did I underestimate how many cabs there are in London but the average number of laptops left in them every year was wrong.

Today I was picked up by a driver who estimated he had found 8 laptops over the last 5 years (up from the previous 4 in 7) and that there were around 25,000 black cabs in London (up from 16,000).

This bumps up the averages. To  make it easy on myself if I assume only one a year that suggests that 25,000 laptops are left in London black cabs every year.

Now I know someone will pipe up and say that this is not very scientific and

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Categories
competitions Engineer

winner of the most home networked devices is @NeilMcrae

Neil came in clearly ahead of everyone in the competition for who has the most home networked devices. He gets the mug. There were some great entries and it was all a bit of fun so I’m going to give everyone a fabulous Timico pen for entering. What’s more if you really want a mug you can have one of those too:)

Can everyone wishing to take possession of their prize (s) please email me their address and I’ll try and sort it out on Wednesday when I am next in the office.

PS don’t forget to sign up for the Trefor.net xmas bash. It’s gonna be a goodun.

The competition is now closed…

Categories
competitions End User

Caption competition winner is Stuart James

The caption competition got some great entries but someone has to win. I’ve run it past the editorial committee and after long deliberation (oo at least half a second on each entry) I have chosen the winner who is Stuart James. His excellent effort can be found here.

Stuart I will be in touch to give you details of your terrific prize which is a six month’s membership of the fabulous Spirit Health Club in Aylesbury.

Well done… 🙂

Categories
End User fun stuff

letter from 1975

looking out to sea from Peel breakwater in the Isle of ManJust visiting my folks on the Isle of Man for the weekend and mam showed me a letter I’d written to dad dated 2nd March 1975. We were in the process of moving to the island from Caernarfon. Dad had gone on ahead whilst we finished the school term.

The letter was written in formal schoolboy Welsh and I note that my handwriting is still as bad as it was then!

I guess my observation is that I had to write dad a letter in those days. He was living in rented accommodation with no telephone. It was before the days of mobile telephony and tinterweb. That’s unimaginable for a kid these days.

I recall that at the end of that spring term in Ysgol Segontium, Caernarfon we had exams. When I arrived at Ballakermeen High School in Douglas they were about to have exams! A serious bummer for a 13 year old kid. I sat the exams and fwiw came 3rd in class without having done the syllabus (breathes on fingernails and polishes them on lapel). It all went downhill from there:).

The photo is a panoramic view gazing out to sea from the breakwater in Peel, Isle of Man. Paradise on earth and one of my favourite places.

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Announcing the 2012 trefor.net xmas bash – SOLD OUT

Bar at London's Phoenix Artist Club

welcome to the Phoenix Artist club

I’m really really excited about this year’s trefor.net Xmas bash. Last year’s was a raging success at the Booking Office Bar. This year we are moving to the Phoenix Artist Club. Where do I hear you say?

The  Phoenix Artist Club is a super cool members only joint (yes I am a member) slap bang in the middle of SoHo. It’s got bags of character and a piano which is going to be put to good use by international jazz pianist (and my kids’ piano teacher)piano at Phoenix Artist Club Colin Dudman.

We are talking 5.30pm until 2am on Thursday 13th December for this year’s most anticipated party. Dress code is party gear, or whatever you like really – fancy dress even, though you might be the only one…

This year’s bash has been made possible by some very generous sponsors to who I would like to extend my sincerest thanks: Timico, NewNet, Redwood Telecom, PowerNet, Genband, RTP Solutions, O2 Wholesale, Fluidata,  Siphon,  ProvuThe bar area at the Phoenix Artist Club Communications and IPCortex.

Tickets are free and can be obtained here. members lounge at Phoenix Artist Clubsmile all you like at this crocodile at the Phoenix Artist Clubbar at Phoenix Artist Club