Category: End User

End User

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End User mobile apps storage backup & dr

Photo backup to #NAS box solved #SweetHome Android

Photo backup to ReadyNas problem solved.

You may have been following my attempts to back up my photos from my Samsung Galaxy S4 Android to my NAS box. This has become an issue since starting to play with the Samsung Chromebook which doesn’t recognise the phone when it’s plugged in via USB.

I tried a few methods including downloading from the Dropbox folder to the Chromebook and then dragging the folder into the relevant share on the NAS. This is very inelegant and you end up with a zipped file.

The answer was an app. I tried a number of them including Netgear’s own ReadyNAS Remote which doesn’t generally get good reviews. I got ReadyNAS Remote one to work but found that I could only upload single files manually which wasn’t going to be good enough. No response from the ReadyNAS forum on that one either. I also tried Airdroid with no success.

I got excited with “Upload 2 NAS Lite” last night when it appeared to be successfully uploading the files. However it was very slow and I left it running overnight. This morning the app told me it had finished but there were no files to be found on the NAS box. Looking at the forum for this app I can see others having the same problem with no apparent resolution. Using Upload 2 NAS Lite looked as if it was going to be a complicated job so I looked elsewhere.

Lying in bed this morning I then came across “Sweet Home“. This one worked like a dream and did the job far more quickly than Upload 2 NAS Lite. The User Interface was also by far the easiest to use. I am a happy chap. I am actually going to buy the pro version it is that good. Very easy to use.

The only thing left to nail is the fact that I usually backup to both the ReadyNAS and a separate 2TB palm drive that I keep in my desk. I’ll have to see if the Chromebook can see that drive and then look at backing up from the NAS box. The alternative is to have two separate NAS boxes which is somewhat industrial strength and over the top for my personal needs or to run with only using Google+ and the NAS.

Ve shall see…

Categories
chromebook Cloud End User

Chromebook on the move

No science here but I’m using the Samsung Chromebook hanging off the Huaweii MiFi with an EE SIM whilst on the train to Laandan. The Chromebook didn’t like the on-board WiFi so I’m not using that but the MiFi works well so no probs.

Although I’m accessing WordPress on what is essentially my private cloud it isn’t particularly sensitive to the bandwidth available so I can’t say I’ve noticed whether it is affected by the speed of internet access provided by the cellular connection. If I was using YouTube I suspect that would be a different experience, unless in a 4G coverage area.

As I continue to use the Chromebook it does occur to me that it is strange that every screen I look at is a browser window. Other than that it is very much business as usual. Expecting to be able to give you an update on the photo uploading tomorrow. Meetings in town today.

Read other posts on Chromebook – there are loads:
Just bought an Acer Chromebook Ash – review to follow.
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

Categories
Apps chromebook End User

Samsung Chromebook keeps losing WiFi connection but reboot is very fast

samsung chromebookThe Samsung Chromebook has lost its WiFi connection twice now and I’ve been unable to reconnect it without rebooting. I guess I could have added another connection instead of rebooting but the process of rebooting is very fast.

If I had to do that with the Microsoft laptop I could have gone away and made a cup of tea during the reboot.

I think the device is 95% of the way there. Still need to nail the photo transfer issue. The other test is going to be mobility. I’m travelling to London on Monday and will see how I get on with it on the go. The issue won’t be portability etc because the Chromebook is delightfully light. It’s how the connectivity goes plus in tandem with that how well it works offline which I haven’t really looked at yet.

Ciao…

Read other posts on Chromebook – there are loads:
Just bought an Acer Chromebook Ash – review to follow.
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

Categories
Apps broadband chromebook End User mobile apps

Photo xfer from Samsung Galaxy S4 to NAS backup via Chromebook

backup time based on broadband speed

Backup to NAS better than cloud when using slow broadband.

Photos get backed up from my Samsung Galaxy S4 to Google+ and via my Microsoft powered laptop to a separate local NAS box. This doesn’t work for the Samsung Chromebook as the laptop doesn’t recognise the presence of the phone when I plug it in. Also in any one month the photo storage requirement can easily exceed the storage available on the Chromebook – it’s a machine for the cloud.

As it happens when I got my S4 I also got 50GB of Dropbox space free for two years and the photos from the phone have been happily backing up to Dropbox. Why not if it is free? Of course this means that the internet bandwidth I use for backing up the pics has effectively doubled (ish – Google+ doesn’t upload the full size I don’t think).

Last night I downloaded September’s photos from Dropbox to my Chromebook. Dropbox zips the files so it isn’t ideal but it did mean that they were available on the Chromebook for me to drag into the upload box of the NAS box (Netgear ReadyNAS 2TB). Looks as if it has worked though the zipped file on the NAS is only 640MB compared with 1.6GB on Drive so will have to check the contents are all there. I don’t really want to zip the pics anyway. I want them easily accessible. I have plenty of storage space.

This is a bit of a long winded way of backing up locally. There has to be a simpler way of doing it. Also like I said before it also assumes you have enough free storage space on the Chromebook.

The one thing I’ve noticed during this phase of tyre kicking is that you really know when you’re connection is offline, even if it is only for a few seconds. Either my WiFi is not rock solid, which is believable or the FTTC connection is not rock solid, which is also believable.  I don’t think I’ll be totally happy until I get FTTP.

I just had to reboot the Chromebook because it totally lost the WiFi hookup and there appeared to be no way of reconnecting it via the settings page.

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chromebook End User

Samsung Chromebook power consumption and battery life

I’ve been using the Samsung Chromebook just on the battery pretty much non stop since 9am, give or take a cup of tea, and I still have 53% or 3 hours 59 minutes left. It is now 12.56. That’s pretty impressive. It suggests knocking on 8 hours of battery life which is more than the 6 1/2 hours spec.

Could just be because it is new or maybe down to the WiFi signal strength in our house. Anyway it is good.

I’ll give y’all an update at the end of the day.

Read other posts on Chromebook – there are loads:
Just bought an Acer Chromebook Ash – review to follow.
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

Categories
chromebook End User

Samsung XE303 Chromebook, E5250, 2GB, 16GB, 11″, Silver first impressions

samsung chromebookMy new Samsung XE303 Chromebook, has arrived and is up and running. It’s the first time I’ve had such a slimline laptop and in my own small way am very excited. This is also my first solid state hard drive which I presume contributes towards the light weight.

First thing I did was to read the manual (RTFM) but it was hardly worth the effort. You intuitively knew what to do. In fact all I had to do was tell the machine which country I was in, which language I wanted to use, bung in my gmail credentials and hey presto, my uncle’s name is Bob1.

This is a bit of an adventure. I’ve dabbled with Windows 8 but I’ve ditched it. My office laptop is a Dell and the hard drive just crashed. The old hard drive had Windows 8. The new one is getting Windows 7 back. I never got the hang of Windows 8, couldn’t find things and screens kept disappearing because I’d accidentally drag them.

I’ve also stopped using Windows Phone 8 on the Nokia Lumia 920. The User Interface just wasn’t intuitive enough. It would take a lot longer to find things than with either iOS or Android. Google Apps is (are?) gaining real traction in businesses so I figured it was about time I gave it a go.

“Giving it a go” entails using google applications that replace the workhorse of business, Microsoft Office. Having used these tools for pretty much all my working life one gets used to certain ways of working. I’ve only dabbled with Google Docs before now and my first impressions were that it wasn’t as easy to create a doc with Google than with say Microsoft Word. However now that I am forced to live and breathe Google (I probably won’t be able to pick up my laptop again until Wednesday next week) I’m quickly getting to grips with it.

Although Google seems to do some things differently to Microsoft as I get used to Google Docs some of the differences seem obviously better. For example I’m composing this blog post in Google Docs. I was looking around for a mechanism to save the doc but I didn’t need to. Google saves it in real time. That then made me wonder how to name the doc. All you do is type over the “Untitled Document” text and you’re there.

Because I am a gmail user everything on the Chromebook is already familiar.

Back to the Chromebook itself I was struck by the clarity of the screen at startup. Might just be because it is new with no smudge marks:)  It did seem to take more than the seven seconds or so it is meant to for bootup but that could be because this was the first time.

chromebookThe touchpad is taking a bit of time to get used to but  I think that is likely to be sorted out in time – I imagine that most manufacturers will have a different feel to their touchpads.

I’m now fully up and running with the Chromebook. Claiming my free 100GB of Drive storage was very simple. I Googled it and found a link straight away. I think this online storage is pretty expensive though. 100GB is $4.99 a month. My views may change with time as I get more into the ecosystem. Maybe as our worlds edge inexorably towards the cloud we will all become conditioned to paying significant chunks of cash for online storage.

Connecting the Chromebook to my WiFi network was a piece of cake. I don’t have the version with cellular connectivity. I also got straight in to my NAS box so all the docs I have backed up from my Windows machine together with all my photos and music are easily accessible.

I’ve also noticed that having sat here for an hour or so playing with the machine it hasn’t got hot. That is good. Bodes well for battery life. Might see how long it lasts just using the battery tomorrow.

One of the things I’ve been worried about is how I’m going to do photo editing on the Chromebook. On my Microsoft laptop I use irfanview but I don’t think there is a web based version of this. I needn’t have worried. There is a brilliant free online photo editing site called pixlr.com. It’s far more functional than irfanview and extremely user friendly. Makes me wonder why I’ve never used it before!

I bought the Chromebook from Tesco. It was only £229 and there was an offer of a free Samsung Galaxy phone bundled in if we ordered by 30th September – it didn’t say which Galaxy but you can bet it isn’t an S4 🙂 When the Chromebook arrived today there was no sign of the phone and no instructions on what to do to get hold of it.

I called Tesco and when I eventually made it through to a person that person had no idea of the offer. As far as he was concerned it wasn’t a Tesco offer but a Samsung offer that I had to source directly from Samsung. Not good enough in my mind but together we managed to find a link to a Samsung web page that supposedly allowed me to register to get the phone.

The annoying thing is that Samsung won’t let you register for the phone until 14 days after you’ve bought the Chromebook. That is rubbish. I imagine it is to stop people buying the Chromebook just to get the phone and then returning the laptop and getting their money back. However it didn’t leave me with a good taste in my mouth – you just got the impression that Samsung were making it difficult for you to claim the phone so that you would give up.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll provide another update when I’ve spent more time kicking tyres but so far so good.

This post was brought to you courtesy of the Chrome OS 🙂

Read other posts on Chromebook – there are loads:
Just bought an Acer Chromebook Ash – review to follow.
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

1 He isn’t really. I’ve never had an Uncle Bob. I do have an Uncle Mick though I don’t get to see him that often. Should make a bit more of an effort.

Categories
chromebook Cloud End User

Samsung Chromebook

Just ordered a Samsung XE303 Chromebook from Tesco. £229 inc VAT. At Timico we run a Microsoft environment so this will just have to be the platform for my Google account which is fair enough.

A few things have struck me during the process of making the buying decision. My work laptop died this morning, or at least the hard drive did. Most of my stuff is backed up so that isn’t a major worry. Had I been using a Chromebook all along, aside from the cost of the online storage,  I wouldn’t have even had to give the backup issue a second thought.

The second thing that struck me is anti virus. We have 6 laptops in our house, all protected by a variety of anti virus solutions.  Keeping track of what is up to date and what isn’t is a bit of an effort. If the family were all using Chromebooks then that problem would go away.

Only problem is that whilst the Chromebook would be fine for most things there are some games and programmes used by the kids that are currently only available for Apple and Microsoft platforms. This will change in time.

One bemusing thing about buying the Chromebook from Tesco was that when I’d finished the website suggested that I might be interested in buying Microsoft Office or Office 365. Suspect the Tesco product managers don’t really know what a Chromebook is.

PS I bought the WiFi only one. I think the day of an additional SIM for your laptop are numbered.

Categories
End User piracy

TV detector vans – the truth

Was listening to the Jeremy Vine show on my way to the shops this lunchtime. They were talking about TV detector vans and were there really such things.
Someone came on an said that he used to drive one but that there was no equipment inside, or at least nothing switched on. The TV license people used to use them to scare people into buying a license and they would have a team of people blitz an area checking on addresses that had not been registered as having a license.

We didn’t have a TV until my oldest son Tom was 13 years old and I do recall a knock on the door once from someone who declared himself to be working for the licensing people. I told him we didn’t have a TV and he went away. Simple as that. Check out my other TV license story (previous story about TV license).

Wind the clock forward a few years and one question I have been asked recently is whether you need a TV license to watch TV on tinterweb.

The answer is yes if you’re talking live TV.  However I am not aware that anyone has ever been done for not having a license whilst watching TV in this way.

There are probably two factors in play here. Most people do have a TV license and therefore are already covered. For those rebs that don’t have a license then it isn’t an easy thing to track you down.

The music industry, which is through the Digital Economy Act, going to be sending letters to people it believe has been infringing copyright (ie downloading stuff without paying) tracks down the alleged miscreants from the IP address being used for the torrent. Prior to the DEA it needed a court order to obtain the name and address of the subscriber.

The Licencing Authority can probably source similar information in a similar way from the BBC. It would need separate court orders for Sky, Virgin et al but would find it very difficult to deal with any overseas entity, of which there are many. The effort would have questionable value remembering that the LA doesn’t know who already has a licence and who doesn’t in these circumstances.

This will be an interesting situation to follow as more and more people rely solely on online sources for their media fix.

Tapped and dictated into my SGS4 whilst the boys see if my hard drive really is dead!

Categories
End User online safety piracy scams

Gone phishing

pirate flagHad a wonderful little phishing attempt over the weekend that I feel compelled to share with you. I wonder how many people got this one and what its success rate will be. I imagine these guys are running a business with a dashboard and KPIs. There must presumably be a ROI for them to bother.

They do need a graduate entry scheme though or to employ some former civil servants to get the lingo right because the construction of the email isn’t totally convincing. Did anyone else get this one? I would say “bless em” if they weren’t such thieving b@$%@&^%.

DIRECT GOV

LOCAL OFFICE No. 3819

TAX CREDIT OFFICER: Rodney Williams

COUNCIL TAX REFUND ID NUMBER: 983258661

REFUND AMOUNT: 324.39 GBP

Dear Applicant,

Unless expressly authorised by us, any further dissemination or distribution of this email or its attachments is prohibited.

I am sending this email to announce: After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of 274.39 GBP

The dispute follows miscalculations of Pay As You Earn (PAYE) liabilities last year, which DIRECT GOV originally also denied when reported in this space but later admitted affected millions of people. You can now reclaim your over paid tax now by complete the tax return form attached to this message.

After completing the form, please submit the form by clicking the SUBMIT button on form and allow us 5-9 business days in order to process it.

Our head office address can be found on our web site at DIRECT GOV

Rodney Williams

DIRECT GOV Credit Office

Preston

COUNCIL TAX REFUND ID: UK983258661-HMRC

DIRECT GOV denies profiting from tax refund delays which leading accountants claim are becoming more widespread and make taxpayers wait months to get back what they are due.

Copyright 2013, DIRECT GOV UK All rights reserved.

Categories
End User fun stuff

What goes on tour stays on tour

As the old saying goes – what goes on tour stays on tour. Having said that some stories are far to good to be kept from the public and today I picked up a couple of stonkers. Names have been withheld to protect  the innocent.

First up was a text that came in this morning. This was very much the morning after the night before. The sms read “woke up in f%$£*&g Brighton. This individual, the CEO of a company in the internet business, came to the Lonap ISPA Party Party last night. He had reservations about coming as he was flying to Las Vegas the next day and for want of a better word wanted an early night.

He checked in to a hotel in Gatwick then headed into town for the bash. One thing lead to another and he caught a train at some blurry hour in the night, fell asleep and woke up in Brighton. His return train got him to the hotel at dawn and he was able to snatch an hour’s kip before getting up to go and check in for his flight:)

The next story was related to me over lunch by the Chief Operating Officer of a major multinational business. One of the world’s most recognised brands actually. My friend had taken his family out for dinner including his brother in law who had a reputation for always ordering the most expensive item on the menu.

My pal, who remember was paying for the meal, nipped to the toilet and got back to find a magnum of posh champagne at the table. At this point he snapped and had a go at his brother in law. “I don’t mind paying for your meal but this really is taking the p!55“. At this point his wife, who is a midwife, pointed at one of the waiters and said she had delivered his wife’s baby a couple of weeks earlier. The magnum was a thank you present from the waiter.

The rest of the meal was eaten in silence:)

It’s a funny old world innit? 🙂

Categories
Apps End User

Gmail scoop

Call me thick but I’ve just noticed that gmail comes through far more quickly on my Samsung Galaxy S4 Android phone than it does using chrome on my PC. Obvious really innit?

Suggests a natural evolution towards native applications. Will the Chromebook one day really take the place of the Microsoft PC. In one sense this thinking flies in the face of my predictions that the PC will die off but I guess that this will be a long and agonisingly slow death and there will be room for other plays in the meantime.

Ve shall see.

Categories
End User mobile connectivity wearable

Le Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch est arrivee

It’s 07.11. I’m on a train again, headed to London again. I’m wearing shorts. It’s going to be 30 degrees Centigrade. In front of me is a copy of The Times. I very rarely read “the paper” these days. Only when it’s shoved in front of me as a freebie.

The headlines in the paper say “Obama calls on the world to fight Syria ‘barbarism’”. I’m sure you will have noticed that the news rarely covers good news. Only when “our Andy” wins a major or when there is a royal baby (etc). We also get an occasional “hottest summer since 1976”. Not very often, any of them.

Yesterday we also heard about Samsung’s new Galaxy Gear smartwatch. I don’t wear a watch. Not since my early twenties. They always used to break or go wrong on me and even in those days there was usually a clock somewhere that you could see to tell the time – PC or car dash.

The last time I owned a watch was when I was on my way to visit a customer in Stanmore. I was in a company pool car and blow me down if the clock on the dashboard was broken. It must have been an old car – I worked for Marconi Electronic Devices. Don’t know if that says anything.

No problem I said to myself. I’ll turn the radio on and keep time that way. Now the meeting was at 10.30 and at 10am they started an hour long programme so I wouldn’t know the time at the half hour. Hmm.  I wanted to be punctual but did not have the resources to make it so other than maybe being sat in reception for too long.

No problemo. I’ll stop at a passing garage and by a cheapo watch. Unfortunately the cheapest watch was about £15. I’d been expecting a sub fiver piece of junk that I could ditch when I’d finished the meeting. A £15 piece of junk (as it turned out to be) was a different thing. In those days you could buy a pint for 50 pence. That watch represented 30 pints!

I bought the watch and made it to the meeting on time. Two weeks later the watch stopped working/broke/something like that. It got thrown away and I have never worn a watch since.

This is a long way of saying that I am unlikely to wear the Samsung Galaxy Gear. The question I suppose is whether such devices will take off. My bet is that they will, despite me not wearing one (:) ). I ask myself will people look a little daft holding a watch up to their ear? Will they be self-conscious doing it? Is that any different to holding a phone to your ear?

Maybe of you have the watch bit on the inside of your wrist then it will be exactly the same gesture. It will look as if you are just scratching your head when actually you are on the phone. Could work though not for me as I don’t want anything on my wrist. Maybe a watch pinned to my lapel would do the job – bit like a nurse’s watch. It would get around the problem of not wanting something on my wrist.

However how would I make a phone call? I could use my phone I suppose or have the lapel device on in speaker mode with perhaps only a low range so that only I could hear it. Probably won’t work that last bit.

There must be a market for a device that stops people being buried in their small screen all the time. Something that is always there and noticeable without staring at your hand.

Musings over. If you already wear a watch then you might find the Samsung Galaxy Gear ok. It’s another drop of tech news on the unstoppable tide.

It’s now 7.49 and the train has stopped at Newark Northgate. All is quiet and I’m on the way to London, wearing shorts. You will have to wait a day or two to find out why. Catch ya later.

PS don’t ask me why I wrote the title in French. It has no bearing to the rest of the post and just came out that way. Ohohiho!

Categories
End User online safety piracy

Credit card – phone line scam from a friend of my sisters on Facebook

pirate_flag_thumbCredit card-phone line scam from a friend of my sisters on Facebook. I’ve just reposted it verbatim as it says everything it needs to say. It does make you wonder what on earth can be done to stop these. If everyone had an intelligent line that allowed you to block number withheld calls that might go some way towards sorting it though scammers would just start using a fake CLI.

An alternative might be to have a voice rec asking you who you wanted to talk to. Anything other than Tref, Anne etc would just go straight to voicemail. Schools should cover this sort of thing in lessons. It goes along with safe internet use.

Anyway the Facebook post is repeated below – the author stated that she wanted it sharing:

 

“Received a phone call from BT, informing me that he was disconnecting me because of an unpaid bill. He demanded payment immediately of £31.00 or it would be £ 118.00 to re-connect at a later date. The guy wasn’t even fazed when I told him I was with Virgin Media, allegedly VM have to pay BT a percentage for line rental! I asked the guy’s name – he gave me the very ‘English’ John Peacock with a very ‘African’ accent – & phone number -0800 0800 152.

Obviously the fellow realized I didn’t believe his story, so offered to demonstrate that he was from BT. I asked how & he told me to hang up & try phoning someone – he would disconnect my phone to prevent this. AND HE DID !! My phone was dead – no engaged tone, nothing – until he phoned me again.

Very pleased with himself, he asked if that was enough proof that he was with BT. I asked how the payment was to be made & he said credit card, there & then. I said that I didn’t know how he’d done it, but I had absolutely no intention of paying him, I didn’t believe his name or that he worked for BT.

He hung up. I dialed 1471 – number withheld I phoned his fictitious 0800 number – not recognized. So I phoned the police to let them know. I wasn’t the first! It’s only just started apparently, but it is escalating. Their advice was to let as many people as possible know of this scam.

The fact that the phone does go off would probably convince some people it’s real, so please make as many friends & family aware of this. How is it done? This is good but not that clever. He gave the wrong number – it should have been 0800 800 152 which takes you through to BT Business.

The cutting off of the line is very simple, he stays on the line with the mute button on and you can’t dial out – but he can hear you trying. (This is because the person who initiates a call is the one to terminate it). When you stop trying he cuts off and immediately calls back. You could almost be convinced!

The sad thing is that it is so simple that it will certainly fool many. By the way this is not about getting the cash as this would not get past merchant services – it is all about getting the credit card details which include the security number, to be used for larger purchases.”

The end – for now…

Categories
End User scams

+447456700496 – another accursed intrusive PPI text

I’m sure I’ve signed my mobile up with the Telephone Preference Service but I just got another sms from +447456700496:

“We have been trying to contact you regarding your PPI claim, we now have details of how much you are due, just reply POST and we will posts you a pack out”

Either they are lying or they know that I am due nothing whatsoever in which case you wonder why they would go to the effort of sending me a “pack”.

The power of the www suggests to me that this number is owned by Gladstone Brookes and looking at their website there is indeed a section to fill in to start your PPI miss-sold claim.

I do wonder what sort of individual runs this sort of operation. I also wonder whether, in the light of what I said re the TPS, there is any comeback against them for sending me a text. I will enquire & let you know.

Categories
End User fun stuff

It was 25 years ago last week

Had my Silver Wedding Anniversary Bash over the Bank Holiday weekend. A great time was had by all. Lots of people turned up to find out how Anne has managed to put up with me for all that time.

It’s made me think of what technology was available in 1988. Mobile phones existed. They were analogue and for the most part had to be plumbed in to the car battery to work. I had one when I was working as a Field Applications Engineer. I recall turning up outside Anne’s house in London and calling her from the car. It was an uber impressive thing to be able to do in those days (from my red Cavalier SRi).

When we got married her Uncle Harry did the wedding video. We watched it again for the first time in 25 years last week. Had to convert it from VHS to mp4 which we did after an appeal on twitter resulted in @ClivePetty bringing the kit around to the house the weekend before. Thanks Clive. There was no such thing as editing a video in those days, at least not by a layman. It came out raw and unexpurgated.

None of the guests would have had a mobile phone, an email address or an internet connection. Internet? Wossat? All the invitations would have been sent out in the post and the venue for the bash selected after physically driving around all the options to find out which dates were available.

The map telling people how to get from the Church to the Hotel was printed out on sheets of A4 with handwritten instructions. No Sat Nav.

The wedding photos are kept in an Album in the cupboard. We don’t have the negatives. Probably many of the guests have never seen them.  I’m not sure we have seen any other photos from our wedding. Sharing was too difficult. The inventor of Facebook might have been born, but only just.

We had typists at work and I once remember faxing a large US Government Contract proposal to our New York office and having to refax individual pages once they had been amended. It took too long to fax the whole contract again.

Moore’s Law was first described in 1965. By 1988 whilst people would be able to use it to forecast things like the memory size on a computer it isn’t something that would have been in the minds of most. Even businesses would have very few PCs around. Certainly the average household wouldn’t have had one. They were too expensive and there wasn’t much you could do with them.

I’m going to stop here. I’m not sure all this “showing my age” business fits with my life philosophy – and after all I’m only a kid.

Having seen all the developments in tech in the interim 25 years it’s quite exciting to think about what might be coming along over the next quarter of a century. Read all about it on trefor.net 🙂

Categories
End User internet online safety

Government surveillance and the issue of personal privacy

The whole issue of government surveillance seems to have reached a crescendo over the last few days. It makes you wonder what the whole Draft Communications Data Bill was all about if “they” can already see everything.

I don’t even know whether encrypted communications are particularly secure anymore. I thought they were but does government secretly have the capability to do really advanced tech that is not in the public domain. Quite probably. We expect it of our own side and hope that we are better than the opposition (whoever they are) – the James Bond movie Skyfall confirmed that it goes on 🙂

I don’t know what to think about the whole privacy thing anymore though. Every online platform seems to know an awful lot about us. Tesco knows the intimate details of my lifestyle from what I buy from it. Google knows absolutely everything about what I’m doing with all my waking hours.

The old joke about a bloke having an affair with his secretary after work and then rubbing snooker chalk on his collar so that his wife would think he’d been playing with his mates doesn’t work any more. She just needs to follow his movements online, or have the difficult conversation about why he switched his phone off for an hour (5mins? 🙂 ) on his way home from work1 .

The Domesday scenario here is that all this information is opened for all to see, accidentally of otherwise. Worst case is that our bank accounts could be emptied.

Aside from ferociously safeguarding your bank password details, though it seems that crooks use back door techniques for breaking into accounts these days rather than brute force password hacks, it seems to me that we need to up the profile of the whole issue of security of our own personal data.

I can’t see how we can stop people/organisations from collecting this data but if they lose it or expose it for others to see then the penalties need to be suitably robust. The world needs to fast track a move to an online security conscious culture.

1 On Sunday I nipped out to the pub for a swift one before dinner and forgot my phone. When I got home there was a text message from my wife asking which pub I was in! Nothing was mentioned though.  I did feel an element of freedom being out without the mobile phone but was also conscious that the clock in the window of acceptability was ticking away.

Categories
broken gear End User phones

50% of smartphones have broken screen

50% of smartphones have a broken screen. This is based on an extensive survey of the six phones in the Davies family.

The sceptics amongst you will say huh, what kind of sample size is that? My response is that we are just a normal family & I’d like to bet that pretty much most of you out there have had a screen go on their phone at some stage or other.

My kids use protective cases for their phones and despite this one of them has just had a crack in their screen. He hadn’t dropped the phone or bashed it in anyway to his knowledge. This isn’t good enough. Glass tech needs to improve.

It might be interesting to conduct a little survey here. How many of you have had a screen break on their phone at some stage? This isn’t a scientific survey but it will be interesting to see the results. I might also ask people to let me know if they have never had a screen break.

Let’s see what the results look like – answers as comments please.

Ciao…

Categories
End User internet

I bought a barbecue

bbqWe used to have an Australian Gas Barbecue. It was great. My wife isn’t a big fan of barbecues because you never know how long the charcoal is going to take to get to the right temperature for cooking. With 4 kids to feed this was important. It was an expensive piece of kit but did a terrific job, passed scrutiny with Mrs Davies and we used to use it pretty often during the summer.

Unfortunately it eventually rusted away and the price of spare parts was such that I could almost have bough a new one instead so we left it to rot around the back of the playhouse at the bottom of the garden. It was taken to the tip last year.

To replace it we bought a stainless steel charcoal barbecue that turned into a fire pit once you had finished cooking. This, like its gas predecessor is also a great piece of kit. We have had marvellous evenings sat outside drinking beer and strumming the ole geetar. The wood smoke keeps the mozzies away – I’m particularly prone to being bitten by insects. They love me.

The downside of this charcoal barbecue is of course that it doesn’t get used as often for reasons you already know. That’s life Jim.

Now I have a big wedding anniversary coming up later this month and we will have 80 or so guests coming to lunch. In our back garden. We are pushing the boat out – barrel of TT Landlord, some posh pop and a barbecue (dress code – Hawaiian shirts). Unfortunately our charcoal barbecue is not big enough to cook for 80 people in a timely manner.

I’ve used this as an excuse to invest in a new gas barbecue. A Weber. Comes with a warranty for all parts and has “Flavoriser®” bars. Other than the fact that it needs assembling I am a happy Tref. Our guests shall have sausages 🙂

When you buy an expensive piece of kit you don’t do it without significant online research first. I feel I already know our barbecue in intimate detail  even though it doesn’t get delivered until next week.

The problem I now have, and this is really the point of the post, is that having made my buying decision and paid for the product Google is still bombarding me with ads for Weber barbecues. I no longer need these ads. There needs to be a box for me to tick telling Google and their paying advertisers that they are wasting their time. Someone else now has my money (B&Q).

I realise such a mechanism would be open to abuse – people who haven’t yet bought their barbecue might also tick the box thus denying sellers of Weber barbecues the opportunity to get their pitch across. This I feel is a risk worth taking. The feature is clearly a winner. It is surely just a matter of time.

I’ll finish off this technologically tenuous post by letting you know that the old charcoal barbecue will still get used, mostly as a fire pit I imagine. Anyone in Lincoln over August Bank Holiday weekend should listen out for sounds of a guitar and strains of cumbaya emanating from a back garden. It’ll be me.

Video below is of the barbecue betting its annual clean.

Categories
End User internet social networking

Google Author Ranking

Acting on advice I recently signed up for Google Author Ranking. Google is apparently changing the way it rates content for SEO purposes by looking for quality original content. One of the ways Google determines original content is by linking that content with a specific author.

Having gone through what appeared to be a hit and miss process in establishing the “Authorship” (you will notice a Google+ link at the bottom right of the main page of this blog) I’ve suddenly started to get a lot more Google Alerts highlighting mentions of my name. These links can be quite old but that doesn’t matter. It’s a sign that the Google system knows it’s me being mentioned in online articles.

So it does, at a very cursory glance, seem that getting signed up for Google Author Ranking is worthwhile. There is a long dialogue going on about what Google is trying to achieve in evolving its methods of search ratings. Not the least of the debating points is the idea that Google is trying to increase monetisation of its search product at the expense of traditional PR Agencies – check out this ZDNet article here.

Now I am a Google fan. I use a lot of the company’s products. However this does make you wonder whether the company is using its significant market power in an anti competitive way. Google is certainly being very clever.

One the one hand who can argue with changes that improve the quality of your search results. On the other hand tying people more and more to the Google ecosystem is in the long run likely to lead to less choice and a more costly product.  The market is too complicated and global for anyone to regulate against this as we did in the UK for example with the old BT monopoly of the communications market (we also seem slowly to be regressing to the old monopolistic state in the UK).

I’m not sure anyone would be able to articulate how you would make changes to a Google monopoly in any case. In the meantime I think we just have to get on and figure out how best we live in the Google world. What are we going to do? Stop trying to get online visibility just because we think Google is trying to make even more money out of us?

That’s all folks.

Categories
Cloud datacentre End User social networking

We interrupt this vacation with a public service blog #bloggade

Trefor Davies (@tref/Timico/trefor.net), Matt Russell (@mattdrussell/WebHostingBuzz), Neville Hobson (@jangles/Neville Hobson/For Immediate Release) and Andrew Grill (@AndrewGrill/Kred) cordially invite you to Bloggade, Newark, 21st August.

Bloggade, the collective noun for a gathering of bloggers, is a meeting of minds where you will learn tips and tricks about blogging and WordPress.

The focus of this first Bloggade is on the underlying technology that powers many WordPress blogs. You’ll experience a tour of Timico’s £5m Midlands datacentre that opened in 2012, and see at first hand the technology that powers the web including many WordPress blogs hosted with WebHostingBuzz at the datacentre.

We have round table discussions planned on WordPress hosting, hardware, search engine optimization and more, all addressing the topics from a non-technical perspective, but in the true round table spirit – anything and everything to do with WordPress is up for discussion.

Bring your questions, comments and experiences!

After the discussion, we’ll migrate to a top class local pub where light snacks and drinks will be provided courtesy of Timico. We hope to continue the WordPress-oriented discussion and share tips/success stories/ideas.

Agenda:

12.30 Arrive at the Timico Newark Datacentre – intros & coffee

13.00 Blogger round table – hardware, servers, hosting and more including a look at the latest WordPress release 3.6

14.00 Data centre tour

14.30 Blogger round table – SEO and how to your WordPress blog a highly effective business tool

15.15 Panel discussion – experiences and best practices for getting the most from the WordPress content management system

16.00 Migrate to pub for light refreshments (pub name/location tbc)

18.00 Refreshments finish, event ends.

Tickets, which are totally free of charge, can be found here

Travel Guidelines

The event is being held at the Timico Datacentre in Newark, NG24 2AG. If you are driving then you should come directly to that location where there is ample secure parking.  If you are coming by train – Timico’s HQ (NG24 2TN) in Newark is a 15 minute walk from Newark Northgate railway station (1hr 20mins from Kings X). This is an easy walk alogn a footpath that runs parallel to the railway line or a 2 minute taxi ride. The Datacentre and HQ buildings are next to each other.

There are trains every half hour or so from Kings Cross – the 11.08 will get you in at 12.30 which should be perfect timing unless you wanted to get there earlier and take in a little of “Historic Newark” beforehand.

Categories
competitions End User

Royal baby name competition winners

And the winner is… Well 27 of you got one of the names right and 4 of you got two of them. If nobody got it completely right I was going to pick one “innovative” winner but this doesn’t seem fair considering the 4 “2 namers” and I’m not about to buy 4 bottles of champagne. I’m going to give everyone a fabulous Timico mug (assuming we have enough otherwise it’s first come first serve)  and the top four will also get some other stuff that I can find in the marketing cabinet. You will have to let me have an address to send these things to (tref at trefor dot net).

Alternatively if the top four would like to write a guest post on a subject of their choosing then that would be perfectly acceptable – keep it clean – the editor’s (ie me) decision is final. Let me know.

I’m on holiday for two weeks after this Friday so delivery might be slightly delayed unless I can persuade someone do do the fulfilment for me in my absence.

It’s been a great competition and a big thanks to everyone for entering. Also it’s such a relief that we won’t have to worry about the royal succession for  long time now innit? 🙂 Old Henry VIII would be v jealous if he weren’t dead.

The list of people with at least one right guess is provided below. If you think your name should be on it by all means let me know. I’m only human you know:)

Dantiumpro: Alexander Harold George Windsor
The fishing Gardener: George , Philip, Louis, William,
paul h: Louis George Philip Arthur
Mike P: David George Richard Louis Wales
maggie fawcett: George
Matt Benson: Henry George James
harry singh: George Charles Windsor
Kate b: George Arthur
Phil Veale: Philip, George and Andrew.
Alistair: James George
Jayne: Henry George Edward
Victoria: Galbraith George William
craig: George
Sam Trendall: George Richard Samuel Windsor
Lucy Knighton: James George William Windsor
Emma H: George William Richard Windsor
Erica ward: Frederick Alexander
Rob Pickering: Louis Charles
Brian Sentance: Charles Louis
Gary Hough: George, Michael, Edward Windsor
hansk: George William Charles
chris: Arthur George Henry Philip Windsor
Andrew Ellis: George
Kate B: George Charles Edward James
Beverley: James Charles Louis William
Liz Cowley: Edward James George
Ewan: George Charles Mountbatten Windsor
Annette Sames: Peter Louis William. Windsor.
Faye: George, with Charles, Richard and James
Michael Green: George Reginald
Lee: George William Charles Windsor

Categories
End User internet security voip

How to tell if a phone call is going to be a scammer

Most people have picked up scam phone call at sometime in their recent short lives. I’ve noticed that they all have similar characteristics in that when you pick up the phone there is always a second or two of silence followed by a foreign voice saying “can I speak to Mr Davies please?” (replace Davies with your own name obv). It’s down to the latency over the internet.

It’s also because they are using some cheapo poor quality VoIP service. Thinking about it, their conversion rate would be much higher if they spent a bit more cash on better quality comms. The quality of their internet access is particularly important although in their case it might not make that much difference as I suspect the packets are traversing the internet for most of their journey. A good quality VoIP provider will hardly touch the internet, if at all.

I’ve adopted the practice, upon hearing the noisy silence before the attempt at a con, of being very familiar “I thought it was you. I wondered when you were going to call”. This tends to confuse them momentarily. All these scammers sound the same to me anyway. It’s probably the bad line but it might always be the same person. Would explain how they always seem to know my name.

That’s how you tell it’s a scammer. It’s all about the noisy silence before they realise you’ve answered the phone.

A public service blog post from trefor.net

Categories
End User internet online safety security

The return of the “virus on your Microsoft PC” scam #speedytechies @TeamViewer

The “you have a virus on your Microsoft PC” scam is back. I thought they had locked up the people responsible and this was dead. Like everything related to the internet crime – spam, botnets they always find a way back.

I got home from work on Friday and took a call from Anna of http://speedytechies.com/. They apparently have thousands of staff servicing thousands of customers every day despite the fact that the website is only around 3 months old. Pretty impressive business growth.

Either that or Anna is lying and she doesn’t work for speedytechies. She sounded as if she was from India or maybe the Philippines – that general part of the world anyway.

http://speedytechies.com/ is owned by a small business based at a residential address in Houston Texas. You can easily find out lots of info about the business and its owner by shelling out a few dollars to an online resource that does this kind of thing. Not worth it because the chances are the scammer has nothing to do with this guy. Slightly suspicious that the website is only 3 months old though.

Anna wanted me to go to www.teamviewer.com so that she could take over my laptop to check out the virus. www.teamviewer.com looks like a legit site though it would be interesting to audit their list of paying customers to get a trail back to the scammers.

Anna gave me a phone number to call back if I had a problem: 18007137734. The line with Anna was not great so it might be wrong and don’t know where it terminates as I’ve not tried ringing it. Her line quality kept disappearing so she was probably using Skype or some similar OTT service.

I guess it would be possible to trace where Anna was calling from and compile a list of times that her ilk had tried the scam. It isn’t easy though for a punter and it would take a concerted effort from a number of stakeholders. It would be easier if the whole world was VoIP but it isn’t. Also the level of individual harm that will probably accrue from a single incident is not worth the effort it would take. This would have to be coordinated on a wide scale to build up a body of evidence for cross border efforts/cooperation to kick in.

That’s all for now. Ciao.

Categories
competitions End User Weekend

Royal baby name

tom graduationWent to our first born’s graduation yesterday (pic inset). It was a proud moment for us parents though I couldn’t quite reconcile the fact that most of the people in the audience were grey and must clearly have been a lot older than me and Anne (!? 🙂 ).

“Uhuh” I hear you say. “Okaay. I thought this post was about the royal baby? It’s the only reason I’m reading it!”

Well the point of this conversation is that when Tom was born, Boxing Day, 21 1/2 years ago Anne and I went out every night for a month before the due date. Anne in particular wanted to cram as much social life into her last days of freedom because she knew it was about to vanish, for a long time.

On one of those nights out we decided to have a sweepstake, pound in, to guess the arrival date of the baby. He or she (we didn’t know the sex then) was due on the 12th December. The only date that couldn’t be chosen was the 26th because had the baby not arrived by then Anne would be going in to have the birth induced. Blow me down if he didn’t arrive on the 26th which apart from blowing out Christmas night was fortuitous because on the way home we had blown the money on a curry.

Today is the due date for the royal baby and we are going to have a name the baby competition. I don’t think the sex is known. It certainly hasn’t been made public. You can have two guesses  – boy and girl (obv). The winner will be the closest to the actual name remembering that royal babies tend to have lots of names – Reginald William Arbuthnot George etc.

Get your entries in quick because it could arrive any time. Leave a comment. I’ll find a suitable prize for the winner.

PS our Tom has started working at the BBC, initially reading the travel reports on Radio Oxford. It’s a very competitive world out there. The royal baby is entering an uncertain world and will have to work hard to make sure his or her CV looks right for the job market of the future 🙂

Categories
End User Regs surveillance & privacy

PRISM and the currently shelved Draft Communications Data Bill

PortcullisThere’s been a lot of noise about the PRISM surveillance program (American spelling because it’s American). There’s a ton of stuff about it on Wikipedia.

A few people asked whether I was going to write a blog post about it. I wasn’t. Lots of people earn their living just looking at this kind of stuff.

There is one thing worth considering though that particularly springs to the forefront of my mind and that relates to the Draft Communications Data Bill that was recently dropped by the Government from the Queen’s Speech.

Without understanding fully what PRISM actually does and what data it accesses I imagine that the capability is pretty similar to what might have been demanded of the ISP industry by the Comms Data Bill.

My biggest objection to that Bill was that it was a serious threat to the personal privacy of every individual in the country because of all the data that would have been gathered. Availability of the data = inevitability that the data would have been leaked. The only way to not have that data leaked would be by not gathering it in the first place.

History shows that the most likely source of such a leak is internal to an organisation, be that within the ISP storing the data or from the negligence (laptop left in taxi etc) of the civil servant or member of the security forces looking after said data.

Well the fuss about PRISM has demonstrated that this is exactly so. Important information was leaked from within the US security establishment by an insider, Edward Snowden. The same can be said of Bradley Manning and Wikileaks.

The only way of not having the data in the public domain is not to keep it in the first place.  I’m not going into a lengthy debate re the rights or wrongs of what the USA is actually doing with PRISM. Just that we should bear that in mind whenever the next attempt to introduce the Draft Communications Data Bill comes along, as it inevitably will.

Categories
End User nuisance calls and messages piracy

08452865284 nuisance call

Just in an ITSPA council meeting and rejected a call from 08452865284. This was a bit of a result as a quick google shows people complaining about answering a call from that number and getting a recorded message.

You may have noticed me posting more stuff like this. I’m going to do it every time I get a spam call for a while as a record for how much I get. Otherwise we have no data on the subject. Lets see how it goes.

Categories
End User nuisance calls and messages

08000641087 – another number to stick in your block list

skull & crossbones - broadband internet copyright infringement

pirate_flag_thumbAnother scam number for you to stick in your block list is 08000641087.

My 16 year old son had a missed call from these guys 08000641087 and rang my mobile thinking it might have been my office number.

A search reveals that this number comes from LBM Direct Marketing Ltd, a legit organisation that allegedly does telemarketing for O2 and Vodafone amongst others. They may be legit but it doesn’t mean we have to like them. There is a lot out there about this organisation if you Google it or the number.

In the direct mail world I’m sure that legislation was introduced years ago saying that only people who had opted in to receive direct mail could be bombarded with it. It’s about time they introduced a similar system for telephone numbers to replace the TPS.

The returns on cold calling are very low anyway and you wonder why people bother. The job is soul destroying and I doubt that people can stick it for very long. An inbound sales strategy is far more successful. Get people to want to call you and then it is easy.

Btw I know I said to block the number but in reality this is impractical. There are probably thousands of such numbers in use and cold calling organisations can easily change them.

Wonder what this blog is about?

Post on where to complain about nuisance calls and messages here.

Footnote 21/2/2014 since this post was written it has had 9,853 visitors. That’s a lot of people being pestered.

LDM Marketing up to more antics here.

More scam number info here.

Categories
End User travel

tref is on holiday

shadesbacksoon

on 1st July

 

Categories
End User fun stuff

Review of @ITISLENNYHENRY & @colinmcfarlane in #Fences at the Duchess Theatre

Fences at the Duchess TheatreOne of the nice things about writing a blog is that you get invited to all the top showbiz parties in London. I very rarely go to them but on this occasion I happened to be in town anyway so took them up on the offer.  Ok I can’t continue with this lie. I’ve never been invited to a showbiz party before:) Last night I went to one. This is the story.

tref with lenny henryYou may remember way back in November of last year when I was on my way to LINX79 I bumped into a neighbour of mine, Colin McFarlane. Colin is an actor and he was on his way to a second audition for a part playing opposite Lenny Henry in August Wilson’s Fences. Fences is one of a series of plays written by Wilson specifically for black actors.

We sat in the quiet coach and I read out some of Lenny Henry’s lines while Colin responded with his own. All done in an American drawl, y’awl. Well the great news is that Colin got thattref tom lenny part and Fences had a highly successful touring run before hitting the West End which it did this week. Feeling in no small part responsible for Colin getting the job I decided to go and see him in action. I was also invited with my son Tom to the after show drinks party where we got to chat with the cast.

The photos in this post come from that after show party because I know what you lot are like. Wanting to know all about the celebs and the gossip. Well I’m sorry. This is not Hello magazine or OK. It’s trefor.net. Yes there were celebs there but as far as gossip goes what goes on tour stays on tour, darling. Anyway we chatted about WebRTC, Agile computing and the internet.

Later when the theatre kicked us out we ended up in a bar called PJs which is near to the Marquis of Anglesey – the venue of “the day we nearly lost the internet.”

tref outside duchess theatreIt wouldn’t be fair of me to not mention the play and I have to come clean here. I cried through most of the second act. Fences is an utterly brilliant play. I’m not going to tell you the plot. I don’t want to spoil it for when you go which you should do 🙂 This one was a real emotional roller coaster. It made me want to go home, kiss the wife, hug the kids and tell them I loved them. You need to understand that when it comes to things like plays and movies I like nice simple happy ending stories – stuff like Mary Poppins. I was kept gripped to the seat and was exhausted by the end of it.

The performance got a standing ovation and Tom and I, as you know by now, decamped to the bar to meet Colin, Lenny and rest of the cast. They were all really lovely people and happy to indulge tourist Tref with some photoshoots which of course  I only did for journalistic reasons. Special thanks to Colin for the invitation.

Note the photo of Tref and Tom taken by Lenny Henry – nice touch I thought. Tom’s idea.

That’s it. That’s today’s post. It has only a loose association with technology but hey. It’s my blog… It’s also quite nice to round off the story from last November of the script reading on the train.

I’m off next week. Taking my daughter on a jaunt to Barcelona for a few days so there won’t be any blogging unless I feel like a break from the culture and the infernal heat.

The last photo is of me, Tom, Colin and Tanya Moodie who played Lenny Henry’s wife on stage. They were both top class. Catch ya later.

tref tom colin tanya

Categories
competitions End User

Short announcement on royal baby naming competition

Crown_thumbJust so that you can start thinking about it I will be posting a name the royal baby competition at the beginning of July. It’s due on 13th July according to the Daily Mail which presumably knows its stuff when it comes to such gossip.

The name the Beckham baby competition attracted a load of entries but I expect this one to get a lot more. Will probably have a few side bets going re weight etc

That’s all for now. Ciao…