Category: Business

Business

Memorable Gigabit Broadband Day

Post author By Lindsey Annison
Post date Wednesday, 16 April, 2014
6 Comments on Memorable Gigabit Broadband Day

Gigabit broadband makes for memorable day

What with all the kerfuffle over poor broadband in the UK (read: BDUK, BT’s superfarce rollout…and possibly superfalse advertising, too?), it was quite nice to wake up yesterday to good news from the fibre broadband world. There have been far too few of these days over the years, as in actuality the believed-to-be good news is normally followed by reneging, backward shuffling, failure to deliver, etc. I am more than just cautiously hopeful this time, though.

Interestingly, towards the end of a week of TechQT shows on the broadband subject last week (which culminated on Friday eve with Prof Peter Cochrane), after the Thursday show (the one with our international colleagues) I raised a question on Twitter regarding investment:

Despite the missing hyphen, I am sure you get the drift. Not that I am by nature an impatient person (I am!), but after 18 years of battling for decent, affordable, ubiquitous (preferably full-fat fibre and FiWi) broadband for all across Britain, sometimes I find it all very frustrating. Investors as a whole seem to believe the hype that Broadband Britain actually exists, or at least that it will one day soon(ish), hence job done. Clearly, though, the job is not done and — much to Britain’s detriment — nothing close to what is required on a national basis yet exists.

Obviously, communities have been trying to resolve the gigabit broadband issue for quite some time, and there are start-ups that are rolling their sleeves up too (e.g., Gigaclear, Hyperoptic). It seems, though, that large corporations have also become bored of waiting for gigabit Britain to occur. Go York. (The last time I spoke to CityFibre it was with regard to using their York Core to reach outside York to offer community project backhaul in the rural areas, so perhaps someone who lives in North Yorkshire should now pick that discussion back up?) Also, there are rumours that Virgin is on the verge of announcing a rural expansion of its network as well. All of this should, of course, please the bods in Westminster and Whitehall no end, as they are always ranting on about how vital competition in Telecoms is, although in reality their support for such an end has been difficult to clarify.

broadband Business

Easter is a coming

Broadband data usage revenues for ISPs affected by Bank Holidays

Easter is a coming and the goose is getting fat. Don’t know why I said that. I’m not aware that goose is a fowl traditionally served¹ at Easter. Very rarely served at all in our house anyway because you don’t get much meat on one and there are six of us when the full team is assembled. Also it’s a bit of a faff cooking a goose although the goose fat by product is very useful for doing roast potatoes on subsequent Sundays (we rarely have roast potatoes on any other day).

In the service provision game holidays such as Easter are a real nuisance, especially if you are in B2B. Monthly revenues are directly related to the number of days in a month so a month where two days are wiped out by bank holidays and the high likelihood that people use annual leave to take the rest of the week off, revenues are normally down a little.

This is more relevant to services that are billed on a usage basis – fixed and mobile calls. Broadband tends to be a flat rate bundle although towards the end of a month when users are hitting their limits they can “break out” of their bundle and thus incur juicy excess data charges. Same is true for mobile bandwidth and minutes.

I’m particularly paranoid about mobile data as excess charges can be quite steep. It would be interesting to see how much data was used on my mam and dad’s broadband last week with 6 additional heavy users compared with the light surfing the line is normally exposed to. At least they are on an unlimited package (for £30). I’d guess that ordinarily Manx Telecom come out ahead on that one.

Had a go at fixing dad’s router whilst I was there. WiFi connectivity is a bit dodgy. Did a firmware upgrade and tried a couple or three different channels. Concluded the wifi card was on its way out so called Manx Telecom and dad is going to go into their shop in the week to get a new one. Will have to sign up for another 18 months but he ain’t going anywhere and doesn’t need the upgrade to FTTC for an extra six quid.

So the Communications Service Provider goose does not get fat at Easter although funnily enough not as not so fat as at Christmas which is when it is traditionally served.

PS I didn’t have a pic of a goose to hand so I’ve used a rib of beef instead 🙂

¹ Don’t forget that whilst revenge is a dish best served cold this is not the case for goose which should be hot with some nice stuffing and gravy.

Tags bundle, charges, excess

Business voip voip hardware

Cisco SPA303 phone at @harbour_lights < the photographic evidence

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 14 April, 2014
1 Comment on Cisco SPA303 phone at @harbour_lights < the photographic evidence

As a wrap up the the name the IP phone competition here is the photographic evidence – taken on Sunday morning before leaving the Isle of Man for the mainland.

Also a hot chocolate as served up at the @harbour_lights – spot on I say.

Business ecommerce obsolescence

Windows XP ATM failure

There’s a Post Office down the road from my mam and dad’s place with a Barclays ATM. Yesterday I strode up to said ATM with a view to extracting some cash. Totally legally of course.

Imagine my surprise when I was confronted with a screen showing what appeared to be Windows XP booting up. Wow I thought and reached for the ~~gun in my holster~~ phone in my pocket to capture the moment in pixels. I was too slow. I’d never have made a good cowboy.

By the time I had unlocked the phone and fired up the camera (checked the film, taken a light reading, adjusted the focus etc) all I got was a curt apology stating that the cashpoint machine was currently dysfunctional and would I mind awfully trying the one at the Isle of Man Bank down the road.

Disappointed I turned my back on the machine and walked dejectedly towards the IoM bank. I thought that might have been a scoop. “XP brings down global banking system”. Wasn’t going to be the same without the photographic evidence.

I parked the thought whilst we spent the afternoon enjoying the delights of Onchan Park on its opening day of the season. Crazy golf at its best. The pitch and put and the bowling were closed due to waterlogged greens but that didn’t spoil our fun.

This morning my thoughts returned to the global banking crisis but research suggests that nothing untoward had happened. No doom laden headlines. Shock horror probe. Must have been a local issue.

I did find a few timely articles discussing the fact that all the world’s ATMs appear to run on XP. Speculation as to whether this was a ticking time bomb together with quotes from Microsoft suggesting that a move to Windows 8.1 would be very sensible from a security perspective. No news at all really.

One does wonder what the next generation of ATM o/s will be. Microsoft doesn’t exactly feel right but there again it would probably be easiest from a backwards compatibility perspective. I’m not that interested. It’s Sunday morning and I’m typing this post with my thumb on my droid. There is bacon to be cooked.

Easy like Sunday morning…

Tags ATM, bank, Microsoft, problem, windows, xp

Business UC

Churn and Drang

Far from the richest of subjects for 500-plus words of clever (one hopes) pondering, Unified Communications (UC) does, though, seem to generate its fair share of pixelated words across the Internet on any given weekday. Breaking “news” on the subject seems to pop quite often, in fact, regarding this award or that award (yesterday, for example, it was reported that 8X8’s Cloud-Based Unified Communications and Contact Center Suite had won the award for “Best Midmarket Solution” at the Midmarket CIO Forum), and there is a constant trickle of hot scoops as to which company has been awarded which UC contract entailing this feature and that. Then, of course, there are the compelling tidbits detailng which executives from which companies are moving to whatever positions in whatever companies.

Thus, like any other industry doing business today, a ton of fill-the-space churn is being kicked into view — into print? — with the primary intent of filling space and selling advertising (and don’t for a second think I am deaf/dumb/blind to the blatant irony threading through and wrapping around that sentence). Still, there has to be some honest-to-goodness need-to-know UC news out there…somewhere. And, by gum, I am going to be the one to find it and bring it into the light, right here…right now?

Down the UC Rabbithole

According to ITWeb, “Unified communications (UC) is becoming a necessity in the South African workplace, yet many organisations are still grappling with why it needs to be adopted as an integral part of business operations.” Not that pointing out contradictions is much of a sport, but…what? A survey declares UC is becoming necessary in business, yet organizations (the U.S. spelling this time) particpating in the survey do not know why this is so? I provided the link, so you are welcome to go read the piece if you haven’t already wasted your time doing so.

My effort up to now at bringing hard UC news into the light? Not really going so well. I’m a gamer, though, so I’ll pound the dust off and try again.

Headline: VoIP increasingly considered thanks to features like flexibility.

Ah, this could have a little juice in it…lessee. According to a survey — so many surveys, so little time — 84% of organizations that “specialize in technology” (can only shake my head in wonder at how entry into that exclusive circle is secured in these “an app that will ping you to empty the dishwasher” days) are thinking seriously about integrating UC to the way they do business, though only 40% of businesses are using such services today. So how does that break down? Assuming the 16% of technology specializers who have no interest in UC are not among the 40% currently using it, the cited statistic means that nearly 50% of the 84% who are considering putting UC to work are already doing so?

broadband Business internet

FTTP – Fibre To The Polar Bear

Post author By Lindsey Annison
Post date Thursday, 10 April, 2014
1 Comment on FTTP – Fibre To The Polar Bear

Superfast broadband FTTP is said to be uneconomic for rural areas but Telenor thinks otherwise

We hear all the time that rural FTTH (Fibre to the home, or FTTP – Fibre to the premises) is unviable. The reality, though, is that it is only unviable when we view it purely from the deploying Telco point of view AND we understand that infrastructure providers are no longer the holders of patient money (many thanks to Ben Verwaayen for this term). And while this argument has slowed Britain down for a decade (blame the Analysys Mason report that looked at the costs and ROI only from a Telco POV and not from the standpoint of every Brit, council, business, industry, sector, and ROI in social capital, etc., etc.), the lack of such thinking continues to allow other nations to leapfrog the UK in digital development.

A case in point is last week’s news regarding the small, remote, and isolated near-North Pole community of Bjørndalen, where Telenor has helped to bring fibre to 43 early adopters (even I know Bjorn means ‘bear’, a good indicator of the usual passing traffic). The treatment of this tiny peninsula in the Svalbard Archipelago by Telenor as a miniature version of mainland Norway indicates that they consider it an ideal testbed, giving the Telco an opportunity to “scrap older technologies like copper, coaxial cable and older generation mobile networks”.

Other such testbeds could be rolled out in similar places in other countries, and in particular the UK, though Britain seems to be getting lost in defending the obsolete tech (otherwise known as “sweating the asset”) rather than focusing on resolving the key problem of setting up rural areas for the future. For instance, who could have known that champagne tourism would become a factor in Svalbard, and that even in a global economic crisis access to decent connectivity could have a positive effect on that new and thriving industry?

Business voip voip hardware

ip phone competition @harbour_lights

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 9 April, 2014
7 Comments on ip phone competition @harbour_lights

This picture was taken at the @harbour_lights caff on the prom in Peel IoM. It shows a traditional seaside cafe but with a twist. The @harbour_lights, as regular followers of holiday blog posts will know, has free wifi and a Twitter account. It also has an IP phone which impressed me greatly.

There is a prize of a pot of tea for two at the Harbour Lights Cafe for the first person to tell me the brand of the phone and where it is in the picture. Clicking on the image gets you a full size version which should help.

Air France has Me all A-Twitter

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Tuesday, 8 April, 2014
No Comments on Air France has Me all A-Twitter

Decided to leave the cave and go mobile to do the writing thing today. And why not? Both of the pieces I hope to crank out are of a mobile ilk, the weather on this early April Paris Monday is Spring Fever inducing, and a new local wifi-enabled coffee house (Le Café Lomi) has opened its doors nearby…a perfect storm!

The battery icon says I have 2:11 before all goes dark, so let’s start clacking.

This past 21-December I packed up My Missus and The Boy for a 5-day trip to visit family in Chicago (far more accurate to say that My Missus packed me and The Boy up, but I don’t see any reason to ruin a good story with facts…except, paradoxically, I do). We left the flat early that morning, all media-delivery devices fully charged and ready for the 12+ hours we would spend in the air travel envelope (bubble?), and headed for the RER B train that would deliver us to Charles de Gaulle (the airport, not the long dead general and president). En route I decided to check our flight status, and having successfully carried that out I then thought, “Let’s see if anyone is awake at the Air France Twitter switch on this fine Saturday.” Not being the most avid Twitterer, this was actually a bit of personal evolution on my part.

Within just moments I received a response, and a somewhat personal one at that (as evidenced by the reference to my day’s destination)! Shocked and delighted, I immediately tweeted back.

Then my wheels started turning…hmm…yes, I would look for ways to keep my @AirFranceFR friend apprised as we moved through the system.

Business google

We currently don’t support that webmail service – LinkedIn

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 8 April, 2014
1 Comment on We currently don’t support that webmail service – LinkedIn

I’ve started to use LinkedIn a bit more than I used to. It is looking more and more useful for me in finding handy contacts for my startup business and less and less like just a recruiting ground for head hunters.

I’ve never used it’s “find other people you might know” type function though but this morning I’m up early doing stuff and casually entered my email address and clicked “continue”. Imagine my surprise when it told me LinkedIn didn’t support my webmail service. trefor.net is Google based so Linked in is missing out big time. I didn’t bother continuing.

Punters rush to sign up to funky new LinkedIn group
LinkedIn should know better
Your password here? Oh Dear. LinkedIn

Business travel

The view from the office – Lincoln Cathedral seen from Sparkhouse

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 7 April, 2014
No Comments on The view from the office – Lincoln Cathedral seen from Sparkhouse

Gotta tell you Sparkhouse is a great place for an office. It’s attached to the University of Lincoln and is slap bang in the middle of town. A pleasure to walk there every day. This is the view from the front door. The river to the right is the Witham.

Business surveillance & privacy

Telegraph totty – politics and page impressions

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 4 April, 2014
2 Comments on Telegraph totty – politics and page impressions

Websites that carry adverts are typically paid based in terms of £/$/E¹ per 1k page impressions. The more visitors the more page impressions and the longer you can keep them on site browsing through different articles the better. It’s all about dosh.

If you look at any particular post you see many inducements to stay in the site. “Related articles” or “More from the Telegraph”. You will see that recently we have started to add such links on trefor.net and are in the process of getting to grips with whether this can be automated when the new site goes live.

It’s quite amusing therefore when reading a serious article on calls for DCMS Minster Maria Miller to resign to see that the Telegraph’s presumably automated system of determining which links to include come up with what appear to be “female” related posts. They don’t appear particularly relevant unless the Telegraph knows something we don’t².

I make no comment here on whether Mrs Miller should be sacked or not.

¹Pounds $hillings and pEnce
²The screenshots are from the mobile version of the site which seems to have different links to the desktop site but hey…

Business Mobile mobile connectivity

I see Vodafone are opening some shops

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 3 April, 2014
2 Comments on I see Vodafone are opening some shops

The “big” news this morning is that Vodafone are planning on opening 150 shops in the UK creating 1,400 jobs in 2014.

This is an interesting PR headline. The reason Vodafone will be opening the shops is because people want to touch and feel a phone in a shop and check out the different tariff options with a real person. Trying to decide on a mobile package can be a nightmare (how much bandwidth etc).

The big high street retailers such as Carphone Warehouse offer this facility but they are not fixed to a specific network. Because of this the networks have to dangle big marketing subsidies to them to make them want to sell their services. For someone like Carphone Warehouse I imagine it will probably be in the tens of millions of pounds a year. You might think the shop is giving you a good deal but it is the cash being injected by the network that is making it possible.

So the Voda thinking will be to have more control over the offers and direct contact with Joe public which in theory should also give them more control over their spend. That they want to do this is understandable even though there is an obvious additional fixed overhead of running retail premises.

What nobody has bothered to report is that in creating 1,400 new jobs the chances are that they are just moving the jobs from the independent retailers to Vodafone themselves. The market won’t be any bigger. The money is just moving around and the jobs are following.

I don’t really have an axe to grind here. Just observing…

PS the header photo is an old one – it was easier to link to that than find a new one:)

Business UC

Oh, the Places We Won’t Go!

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Thursday, 3 April, 2014
1 Comment on Oh, the Places We Won’t Go!

Travel Communications Survey Report 2014, a new survey released last week, shows that although customer service and staff productivity to be at the top of the list of concerns by those in the British travel industry, only 9% of the businesses are currently implementing some form of unified communications technology. The survey, performed by leading unified communications provider, Elitetele.com and UC manufacturer Swyx, in conjunction with Travolution magazine, breaks the entire pool down as follows:

9%      Implementing unified communications in their business
18%    Know of UC, but have not yet applied it in their business
13%    Know of UC, but do not understand how its potential benefits
60%    Are completely unaware of what unified communications is

Yes, you correctly read that last bullet point. When asked about unified communications, SIXTY PERCENT of the travel executives surveyed responded by stating that they have no knowledge or awareness of UC whatsoever! And curiously enough, despite this lack of UC understanding this same pool cited cost as the prime showstopper to upgrading their systems, while also forwarding the notion that improving customer service and the flow of communication amongst the business Holy Trinity (staff, customers and suppliers) are more important than cost reduction.

L1120439

Clearly, there is a significant amount of confusion amongst UK travel industry technology decision makers with regard to unified communications system pricing, installation, and maintenance. The Travel Communications Survey Report 2014 acknowledges this fact, too, placing it at the center of their conclusions, saying “…we presume that because unified communications technology is ‘new’ and marketed as an ‘upgrade’ companies may believe it to be more expensive when it actually isn’t. The platform evolved to simplify cost management and save money and resources across IT and telephony.”

Business social networking UC

Meet Kory Kessel – an American in Paris & editor of trefor.net

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 1 April, 2014
1 Comment on Meet Kory Kessel – an American in Paris & editor of trefor.net

Happy to introduce Kory Kessel as the first editor (not counting me) of trefor.net . Here is his bio wot he wrote.

Kory Kessel’s 25+ years in high-tech span a remarkable roster of companies both large and small, and include such universally recognized brands as Grey Advertising, Dell, IBM, and Apple. His past successes, though, are not limited to ubiquitous commercial giants, as he has also completed government contracts for the Texas Education Agency, co-founded a London-based Internet gaming start-up (Quingo), and led the documentation effort for a first-generation mobile Internet services platform.

More recently, Kory has found himself deeply interred in Internet-based communications, serving a long stint as Jeff Pulver’s communication specialist for his various companies and ventures (e.g., Free World Dialup, Pulver.com, pulvermedia). He has also written (and ghost-written) a bevy of industry-specific white papers and articles on a freelance basis.

First among Kory’s achievements in information architecture is helping to develop and then subsequently documenting Apple Computer’s first PowerBook support and service program in 1993. Soon after he joined Dell, helping to lead the company’s nascent intranet initiative. His chief accomplishment at Dell, though, was serving as a key member of the IT team that conceptualized and then built the company’ first data warehouse, a project that comprised not only the construction of global financial and human resources databases, but also included the development and deployment of a proprietary suite of reporting software applications.

A proud Chicagoan by birth, a Texan by transplant, and a New Yorker by choice, Kory has made his home in Paris since 1999¹. He has a foodie’s soul, goes in heavily for sport, is an aficionado of jazz (pre-electric) and blues, and is constantly focused on his photography with a considered aspiration for eventual relevance in that field.

With his wide and varied background in technology Kory is going to be a great asset to the site. If trefor.net was a place where suits were worn and the CEO put out encouraging messages to the troops I’d be saying to you all “join me in welcoming Kory to the business and please say hello to him if you see him in the corridor.” Well I’m not that kind of guy and this is not that kind of business.

We don’t have corridors but we do have comments sections so feel free to say something in response to his posts. Nothing too soppy now. Just a firm handshake and a look in the eye:)

¹ I think I first met him in a bar in London though I’m a bit hazy on that one.

Business UC

Journey’s Start

I can hardly have a conversation with anyone these days without being asked, “Hey Kory, what exactly is ‘Unified Communications’?” As such, I will attempt to provide a definitive answer to that oh-so-ubiquitous question by copiously leveraging/paraphrasing/appropriating/borrowing/stealing from various authoritative (or authoritative-ish, at least) online resources, using my handy-dandy search engine and my remarkable knack for pulling effective keyword criteria out of my noggin.

Here, as they say, goes nothin’.

Back in 2006, Unified Communications Strategies defined UC as “Communications integrated to optimize business processes.”, and I daresay a crisper, more to-the-point description is not to be found anywhere. It has big words, a jargon-y swagger, and suffers not a lick for punctuation. Kinda dry, sure, but it is an excellent start, and when you consider that it was first floated some 8 years ago that really is all it needs to be. That is, except for its strict confinement to business.

Since first defining UC way back when, Unified Communications Strategies has fine-tuned their “foundational” definition, and today their quite useful publication What UC Is and Isn’t leads off with their New And Improved take on it all: “UC integrates real-time and non-real-time communications with business processes and requirements based on presence capabilities, presenting a consistent unified user interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types.” A more fleshed-out delineation of UC, to be sure, but still overwhelmingly business-centric.

A little less than a year ago RIC Services’ Rick McCharles offered his UC definition:

Business chromebook google H/W

Acer C720 and Samsung XE303 Chromebooks – using different devices for personal and business

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 27 March, 2014
2 Comments on Acer C720 and Samsung XE303 Chromebooks – using different devices for personal and business

I bought the Acer C720 Chromebook for use at home and the Samsung XE303, which up until now was my only laptop is to be designated as my business machine. It is somewhat misleading to suggest that their respective uses are solely for personal and business. Reality is that in the modern always on world it is difficult to separate work and play but at least I would get a feel for the user issues in respect of each environment.

Switching between work and personal accounts is a fairly straightforward matter. You click on your image in the top right hand corner of the screen and can choose the relevant account you want to access. This seems to be true across all Google Applications, at least as far as I’ve been able to see. So for example I can easily switch between Drive, Gmail and Calendar for each of my Google accounts.

There is added complexity here because I actually have multiple Google Apps accounts for different businesses but to keep it simple I’m just going to talk about trefor.net.

One of the purposes of having a separate business identity is to

Business chromebook H/W

Comparison of Acer C720 and Samsung XE303 Chromebooks – physical differences

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 24 March, 2014
2 Comments on Comparison of Acer C720 and Samsung XE303 Chromebooks – physical differences

I have a shiny new Acer C720 Chromebook (in Granite Gray¹) at home. I also have a shiny not so old Samsung XE303C12 Chromebook that I have been using as my main office laptop since last Autumn.

I decided I needed two devices because I want to separate my business and personal life and having both sets of credentials on my one and only laptop means that the line between the two is somewhat blurred.

Due diligence was cursory in nature. There aren’t many useful reviews out there and no useful comparison of the differences between the two. Unless I’m not doing a good job of looking this seems to be the case whichever Chromebooks you might want to compare. In general hardware reviews often boil down to a comparison of specifications. Intel vs Arm hardware, screen size, battery life etc etc. This seems to be true regardless of the type of hardware – mobiles, tablets, laptops, TVs etc etc etc.

In the absence of what I considered to be useful guidance I decided that battery life was the most important feature and all other things considered I might as well go for the cheapest. I got a result here in that I ended up paying £20 less than the advertised price of £199.99. Check out how here.

The Acer C720 I went home with turned out to be just as good as the Samsung I paid £230 for (it’s now £199.99) and in some respects even better. The screen sizes are the same but the battery life is notionally better in the Acer than the Samsung.

Being at work I just unplugged the Samsung from its power supply and am told there are 4hrs 43 minutes of battery left. It varies depending on how much power the Chromebook is taking from its battery at any given time.

The screenshot on the right shows the Acer, unplugged after fully charged for the first time, with a whopping battery life of 11. hours 41 minutes. Once the Chromebook properly realised what was going on this settled down very quickly to 7 hours 40 mins (pic here) – still more than respectable. Clearly also better than the Samsung although lets remember that the Samsung is a few months old now. A quick Google suggests the Samsung battery life spec is around 6.5 hours cf 8.5 hours for the Acer.

My test was far from scientific but the Acer does certainly seem to have a longer lasting battery. I’ve had the Acer now for 4 days and only charged it up twice.

Weight is also a concern. The longer battery life needs to be accompanied by something that is not so heavy to cart around. The Samsung Chromebook is great for this at 1.1Kg. I don’t really notice it is there, certainly compared with the Dell Microsoft Dinosaurusbook I used to use. Also the Samsung is only 17.5mm thick.

~~The Acer is much heavier than the Samsung~~. Only kidding. It’s 1.25Kg and 19mm. Nothing in it really. The two photos below show one on top of the other. With the Acer on top it looks quite a bit thicker than the Samsung. However when you stick the Samsung on top there doesn’t seem anything in it.

acer samsung chromebook size comparison stacked

The other views also show very little difference. Front on or side by side they are pretty much the same.

Acer Samsung chromebook comparison side on

The Samsung has slightly more sophisticated looks but on balance I prefer the Acer. The touchpad on the Samsung has occasionally locked up on me and with the Acer I don’t sense this is going to happen. It is somehow more clickable.

The final point for this first Acer C720 comparison with the Samsung X303 Chromebook is about power supply connections.

It is such a shame that the two use different connectors. This is presumably down to different Voltage specs – I’ve not bothered looking. Life would make so much more sense if everyone used the same one. Then I’d have a backup if one ever broke on me. As it is if that happens it will be a faff buying another. Hasn’t happened yet but I don’t think I’ve had a laptop where the power supply hasn’t died on me at some stage. Maybe the better battery life signals less strain on the power supply and longer component mtbf.

Remaining reviews this week are going to focus on the practical experience of using two different Chromebooks for personal and business use. The software is the same for both. I have already made my mind up on a favourite and that is the Acer. The feel of it, the better battery life and the fact that the touchpad seems better has clinched it. I also managed to get the Acer at a lower price than advertised though both Chromebooks are notionally the same price. Not sure I’d bother going for any more expensive alternative.

Until tomorrow…

Chromebook week on trefor.net

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 24 March, 2014
No Comments on Chromebook week on trefor.net

Look out for a series of posts on the Chromebook this week. You may recall I bought an Acer Chromebook last week to complement my Samsung. The idea was that I’d have one in the office where the main sign-on is the trefor.net Google Apps for business account and one at home where I used my personal account to log in.

I’d then not need to carry a bag into town when I walk to work. Freeeedom. Friday was the first day in which this was put into operation. This was a specially useful day for the freedom to kick in as I met some mates for beers after work and then headed to the Lincoln Drill hall where Kid3’s band was headlining the bill in the special Drill Hall tenth anniversary concert. The last thing I needed was to have to cart a bag around.

Today I find that the bagless society has not completely arrived as I have to carry the carrier bag with the packup so lovingly prepared for me by Mrs Davies. I’ve also found that due to circumstances totally within my control I’ve ended up with the logons arse about tit¹. The Acer machine, which is at home has the business logon and the Samsung at work has the personal one. Will sort that out later.

It has been an interesting experience getting to grip with the fact that the machine logged on to the business accounts has had services denied to it that are easily accessible by the personal machine. This is a good demo of the strength of the Google Apps service where a business is concerned.

More on all this later after I’ve climbed on Shanks’ Pony and hit the road to the office.

Hasta la vista amigos.

Read other posts on Chromebook – there are loads:
Samsung Chromebook crash fix and print drivers – who needs em?
Footnote to Samsung Chromebook Free Galaxy Phone offer
Samsung Chromebook offer not very customer friendly
or search chromebook for lots of useful articles

PS It’s a beautiful sunny day. Yu need to be walking to work on a day like this.

¹ That’s trefor.net now blocked by all the consumer ISP porn fiters.

agricultural Business Weekend

Green shoots

Green shoots, hope, optimism, anticipation, certainty, confidence, elation, enthusiasm, expectation, happiness, idealism, trust, assurance, brightness, buoyancy, calmness, cheer, cheerfulness, easiness, encouragement, exhilaration, positivism, sureness, good cheer, looking on bright side
More good reads:

Lunberjack weekend special & trailer maintenance tips
Should badgers get the vote and other jolly wheezes

Business business applications mobile apps xaas

Using FreeAgent for personal expenses & discount referral code

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 20 March, 2014
No Comments on Using FreeAgent for personal expenses & discount referral code

Following on from my post on FreeAgent yesterday I got home to find the details of the online banking for trefor.net. Time to get the accounts sorted out.

All of the set up costs for the business have come out of my personal account. This includes a chunky legal bill as well as ad hoc events such as ~~champagne celebrations in the Savoy~~ a few pints of half and half in the British Legion. Now that the bank account is accessible and money is starting to come in it is time to square things up.

At lunchtime today I fired up FreeAgent.

Business xaas

Using Freeagent as the accounting software for startup trefor.net

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 19 March, 2014
No Comments on Using Freeagent as the accounting software for startup trefor.net

Things are fairly hectic here on the trefor.net startup front. We are trying to set the business up so that everything is automated. This hasn’t been a total walk in the park due to the time it seems to have taken to do some basic things such as set up a business bank account, get online banking, VAT number registration etc etc etc.

Customer accounts have now been set up on FreeAgent, invoices sent out and the first cash is in the bank – yay. We chose FreeAgent partly because it is being used by people in other offices near ours and party because in theory it has all the APIs we need to automate processes.

Also when you search online it is very difficult to see the wood from the trees when it comes to accounting packages. The big ones get the SEO rankings but products such as Sage come with the baggage of being early runners in the game.

FreeAgent really has been a piece of cake to set up. Importing contacts is easy, generating invoices a dream. We haven’t yet got to the reconciling bank balances bit yet as we are still waiting for internet banking to be set up but it won’t be long now.

Stay tuned…

Use this 10% off discount referral code for FreeAgent 43ls3wr5 – check it out via this link . We can both save cash

Business gadgets

I have the power….. (now anyway!)

Post author By Peter Farmer
Post date Tuesday, 18 March, 2014
1 Comment on I have the power….. (now anyway!)

I’m a professional nomad.

I neither work from home, nor from a specific office. I live from my rucksack – in fact, my Swiss Gear laptop job, thanks to the slimness of my laptop, is sufficient for me to travel for 4 days without anything else. OK, so the shirts get a little creased, but no more so than on the daily commute, and before anyone asks, there’s always daily clean underwear and shirts.

It’s not uncommon for me to go 12 hours in London between umpteen locations for meetings and never touch a desk. This poses a problem; modern electronic equipment, such as the branch of Dixons in my rucksack (two phones, iPad, laptop and a MiFi) seems to have gone full circle with battery life. The first Motorola mobile phones lasted for just a few minutes…… then Nokia in the late 90s appeared to have produced a hydrogen fuel cell by accident as the 6110 and its ilk would last for what seemed like years, even playing Snake constantly. And now, I am lucky to get 2-3 hours full use out of the Apple equipment and maybe 4 out of the laptop with the extended life battery.

If Shakespeare wrote Richard III today, I am sure the famous line would be “A socket, a socket, my Kingdom for a socket!”.

I know you can eek out more life by using more Wifi over 3G/4G, or disabling 3G/4G and relying on 2G/Edge and disabling push email/notifications and lowering screen brightness, clearing background apps and whatnot. That essentially, with each step, reduces the smartphone more and more back towards its Nokia 6110 ancestor and, for the professional nomad, makes life more and more difficult.

I’ve long known about portable battery backs, things to give a quick boost in charge to a phone; brilliant if you’re broken down at 3am on the side of the road, but an extra 20% wouldn’t cut it, not in the slightest. I then discovered there are packs out there that (in technical lingo 14000 miliamp Hours in capacity) can charge the devices that demands 10W/2A outlets, like the new iPads. Not only that, some can charge another device at the same time, albeit at the lower rated output used by older devices. In layman terms, 14,000 mAh is about 7 full iPhone 5 charges, or just short of one full iPad 4 charge.

This was a godsend of a revelation; not only could I do a full 12 hours out and about without a socket, I could do another day too. Best of all though, it gets over the fact that almost every Premier Inn in the country doesn’t have a socket by the bed, which is infuriating for the average smartphone user.

It also has an unintended side effect. Despite the model I chose being brickish and garish white, it attracts attention. On more than one occasion pretty ladies have inquired as to what it is at the bar; so it seems I have somehow lucked upon the modern day equivalent of a Gucci filofax!

Google+ Peter Farmer

The @asda Golden Cone #peeringweek

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 18 March, 2014
No Comments on The @asda Golden Cone #peeringweek

The Golden Cone. Sometimes you come across something quite by accident that lights up your life. It’s similar to finding a ten pound note in a pair of trousers you haven’t worn since last summer, but different.

This morning we were on our way to the 24th Euro-IX Forum in Leeds and Rob Lister decided we would take a different route to the one we had been using. This took us past the ASDA offices which was where we discovered pure treasure. Traffic cones of bright gold lined the parking spaces nearest to the front door. Position A.

The second photo shows you why they were there. Rewards for good behaviour/good attendance/top performance/name drawn in a raffle¹. One wonders whether there is the obverse incentive at the point at the end of the car park farthest away from the door. Or maybe naughty employees aren’t actually allowed to park and are made to get the bus in to work (nothing wrong with taking the bus – I don’t know what they were thinking!).

Of course this HR morale booster could also work the other way. Staff might actively seek not to win to avoid approbation by jealous peers. Still, it was a good idea, I suppose…

Other Peering Week posts on trefor.net include:
UK internet history – The Early Days of LONAP by Raza Rizvi
INEX’s IXP Manager – Tools to help manage an Internet Exchange by Barry O’Donovan
Regional Peering in the UK by James Blessing
Co-operation makes internet exchanges future proof by Pauline Hartsuiker
Experience of launching an IXP in North America by Ben Hedges

¹ delete as you see fit – I don’t actually know the answer.

Business fun stuff

Editorial job vacancy at trefor.net cc @techjpr

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 16 March, 2014
No Comments on Editorial job vacancy at trefor.net cc @techjpr

We at trefor.net are looking for our first member of editorial staff.

trefor.net has been going since May 2008 as a personal blog with opinion pieces covering emerging technologies and platforms. The site is now widely read by people working in the internet technology related industries both in the UK and overseas.

At the beginning of 2014 trefor.net became an independent business and we already have our first developer on board. The ambitions of the company are to grow to become the premier site for comment and information on tech matters in the UK and to extend its reach in other regions.

The site, whilst covering a range of tech areas such as Cloud, Unified Communications, Mobile and Networks also has threads that are of specific interest to Engineers, Business and End Users. The type of content we are looking to provide ranges from deep diving technology subjects, largely expected to come from expert guest authors to coverage of peoples experiences in using these technologies.

We are now looking for a journo to become our first editorial member of staff. You should have a minimum of two years experience of writing for the tech sector and will ideally be based in the London travel to work area although we will also consider candidates wishing to work out of the Lincoln office. The flexibility to write on any tech subject is important as is an understanding of how web publishing works and the general principles of SEO. This is not a 9 – 5 job and although as the business grows there will be deadlines related to specific “focus weeks” this is an ongoing online business. You have something to write? jfdi.

Initial salary on offer is £20k – £25k depending on experience plus an uncapped year end bonus related to company profitability. There is also a budget to cover the acquisition of additional content where it can help to boost visitor numbers for specific keywords.

Drop us a line with your pitch and links to your published work. The right candidate can start as soon as possible. trefor.net is a business that has attitude. The bland need not apply.

broadband Business

RightMove, wrong data?

Broadband speed data used by Estate Agents to sell houses needs keeping up to date.

To an ever-increasing number of us, broadband is pretty darn important. So much so, that access to it (or not) can affect major life decisions. Such as where to have a coffee, or even which house to buy or rent.

If you are trying to run a business from home, broadband is essential. If you are a farmer, you need a decent connection for all the online cow passport, animal movement, SFP etc forms. If you are of school age, you need to study and upload homework. If you are isolated, it can give you access to friends, family, and the world generally. Basically, it is the 4th utility which many of us cannot live without and many people are catching up with this reality.

Tags broadband, estate agents, house values, pointtopic, rightmove

Business net neutrality ofcom piracy Regs

The Copyright Enforcement Enigma

Post author By Peter Farmer
Post date Saturday, 8 March, 2014
No Comments on The Copyright Enforcement Enigma

When I was on a panel at the Eight Parliament and Internet Conference last year, I was approached afterwards by an academic – Monica Horten. We had a chat about a few things regulatory (notably ITSPA’s work in the field of Net Neutrality) and she mentioned she had written a book on copyright, called the Copyright Enforcement Enigma.

I eventually sourced a copy and then eventually read it (it took a while as there were quite a few on my bookcase I hadn’t read that had military hardware on the cover, you see). It’s quite an excellent romp through the beginnings of copyright, from printing presses and State censorship all the way through to recent European pronouncements on piracy and counteracting it, along with comparing and contrasting different national approaches to intellectual property.

I’ve always found that the view on copyright, intellectual property and piracy generally correlates strongly with political views. These range from “you can’t own an idea” on one end of the scale through to basic property and contract rights saying you should have the right to protect and exploit your creations. Obviously the debate around piracy tracks the political leanings with the preferred sanction often generally correlating with that political niche’s view on criminal sanctions and it is good to read a balanced and non-partisan approach to the topic; if it raises its head again I would suggest this book as a good refresher.

In any event, the primary legislation focusing on this issue today in the UK is the Digital Economy Act 2010, which covers the obligations on Internet Service Providers to restrict access of (or even disconnect) some users or some content depending on the will of the court at the time in the face of an army of barristers from various large entertainment companies. BT and TalkTalk sought a judicial review of the legislation as it had been accelerated through Parliament as a general election had been called, but lost. Then lost the Appeal. So there we have it, Ofcom are now front and centre in managing a lot of this stuff.

There’s one out though; if you are an Internet Service Provider with less than 400,000 subscribers, as it stands, you are not in scope for much of the legislation. I am surprised that so far this gaping loophole has not been exploited; after all, surely you could charge a substantial premium for Napster Broadband? A high bandwidth service that guarantees it will never exceed 399,999 subscribers? I am sure the regulator would soon move to close the loophole, but that takes time. And on that note, I am off to find some seed capital 😉

Google+ Peter Farmer

Tags copyright, piracy

Business fun stuff

One kiss or two kisses – mwa or mwa mwa?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 7 March, 2014
6 Comments on One kiss or two kisses – mwa or mwa mwa?

Was at the trefor.net Exec Dinner on Tuesday night. Great time, as usual. If you’ve never been you want to think about coming.

We had one female attendee, Sally Fuller who is Director of Products at KCOM and a top industry person. Now when I meet a woman for the first time I usually shake their hand but if I’ve met them a few times and am starting to get to know them it’s usually a peck on the cheek.

The problem is sometimes a girl will expect one peck but sometimes two – one on each cheek. Being from the shires I’m not totally sure of the etiquette here. It doesn’t seem to be based on how well you know them. It might be a north south thing¹.

Readers of this blog would probably like to know the answer. It’s been quite some time since some engineers have even seen a girl. I’m not counting the one that works at the kebab shop. As they work their way up the technical ladder and perhaps one day even make it to an Exec Dinner the aspiring engineer will need to larn.

Help 🙂

¹ actually in some parts of the north it’s just a full on smack on the lips – ya southern woossies :))

Business gadgets voip voip hardware

Android DECT VoIP phone from Gigaset and the all new R630 waterproof handset

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 5 March, 2014
2 Comments on Android DECT VoIP phone from Gigaset and the all new R630 waterproof handset

Android DECT VoIP phone by Gigaset is impressive piece of kit

Probably spent more time on the Gigaset stand than any other. Party because I kept bumping into people I know there and partly because they had a couple of great products being demo’d.

The first video is a demo of an Android DECT VoIP phone. It’s basically a tablet mounted on hardware that turns it into an useable telephony device with a DECT handset on the side. There is a wired version available.

The phone costs £500 but you have to consider this in relation to the cost of a high end business phone together with the functionality on offer.

Business UC voip

Report from Connected Business show

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 5 March, 2014
No Comments on Report from Connected Business show

Went along with Dan Winfield of Voxhub to Connected Business – the show formerly known as UC Expo. UC is so yesterday isn’t it? Trouble is all they have done is change the name. The content was much the same as ever. Things don’t move particularly quickly in the connected business game (there were a few interesting toys which I will expound on in a later post).

I suspect what will happen is that one day we will look up and the whole world will have changed. A gradual process that we will only be able to observe when looking back, or browsing through an internet archive somewhere (if you have time to do that kind of thing – loser).

Getting the important things out of the way first below is a picture of me and Dan with “the girls”.

Business business applications

How intelligent are your employees? Do they need managing? Shirley

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 4 March, 2014
No Comments on How intelligent are your employees? Do they need managing? Shirley

The question is whether this van belongs to a company that manages intelligent employees or is it into managing employees intelligently? I’m not sure. Were I the thinking man I could look it up on their website – address prominently displayed (and proudly no doubt) on their van. Nah.

There is a supplementary question and that is at which point does an employee rate as having sufficient intelligence to qualify ~~for~~ ~~management~~ ¹ to be managed. Or is this a red herring? Presumably all employees must have some degree of intelligence.

This could be a tool for HR departments to improve morale. If they were to tell everyone that they were intelligent and were therefore employing methods for managing intelligent employees it might give everyone a boost. Mightn’t it? Even those staff without PhDs. Yes even if the sum of proof of your intelligence is your Cubs Scout 25m swim badge (freestyle) you could start to feel good about it. Yes master.

One does hope that in the course of managing intelligent employees it is done

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