Category: End User

End User

Leeks, Daffodils, and Lincolnshire Broadband – Happy St. David’s Day

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 1 March, 2012
2 Comments on Leeks, Daffodils, and Lincolnshire Broadband – Happy St. David’s Day

I’m missing tricks here. Yesterday I came into the office with the intention of writing something highly entertaining yet informative around the subject of February 29^th – leap day as it seems to have been labelled on Twitter. Instead RaspberryPi came along and hijacked the slot. Fair enough, though I did follow the Twitter deliberations of one female friend as she mulled out loud the prospect of proposing marriage to her partner. It didn’t happen. She is content with waiting another 4 years 🙂

Today is March 1^st. St David’s Day or Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant as we say in the principality. It is also a beautiful spring day though there are no daffodils out in the garden yet for me to have wantonly torn the heads off to wear into work. Also my wife didn’t like the idea of my nicking a leek – she has been tending to them with loving care all winter and they are destined for the table.

So here we are pinching and punching into March and I have no idea how to weave the fact into a technical blog post.

In other news yesterday

Tags broadband, daffodils, Leeks, Lincolnshire, St Davids Day

End User fun stuff

A time of innocence – phone boxes and Meccano train sets

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 25 February, 2012
2 Comments on A time of innocence – phone boxes and Meccano train sets

When I was a kid in the Isle of Man I used to play sports after school – cricket in summer and rugby in winter. Afterwards I’d walk down Bray Hill to the phone box at the bottom and call home for a lift. I didn’t need cash. When the pips went Mam would know it was me and she would set off to Douglas to pick me up.

Mobile phones had not been invented. I really don’t know how we managed but somehow we got by. At university there was one phone to serve the whole hall of residence – 350 or so students. I must have called home every now and again but probably no more often than once a week. I recall I used to write letters. I had terrible handwriting in those days which has since deteriorated – I only ever type these days.

This morning we went to the Museum of Lincolnshire Life on Burton Road in Lincoln. There was an exhibition of old Meccano toys. I used to have a Meccano kit. Today’s layout had a train set from the 1930s. A bit before my time.

A time of innocence.

End User nuisance calls and messages Regs security

The Telephone Preference Service seems no longer to be effective

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 17 February, 2012
13 Comments on The Telephone Preference Service seems no longer to be effective

We used to get junk phone calls, I’m talking years ago now. Double glazing, that sort of thing. My favourite was from people trying to call “Service Washing Machines”. These weren’t trying to sell me anything. The company had misprinted an advertisment with our number instead of theirs so we would get their calls. It did get a bit tedious after a while though.

Once (and you might not like me for this) I was at home during the day showing a builder around to get a quote. The phone rang and I said “watch this”

Tags Telephone Preference Service

broadband End User internet mobile connectivity

Being Back in the Land of Broadband Connectivity Feels So Good – Center Parcs WiFi

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 17 February, 2012
4 Comments on Being Back in the Land of Broadband Connectivity Feels So Good – Center Parcs WiFi

We have just been away for a holiday for a week. 2 days visiting the in laws and a 5 day break at Center Parcs in Cumbria. We had a good time. We go every year with the kids to Center Parcs and do the same things every year. I won’t trouble you with the details.

This year we took with us some electrical equipment: 5 laptops, 1 iPad, 2 HTC droids, 1 Samsung Galaxy S2, a Nokia N97 and another Nokia so old that I can’t even remember the model number – it belongs to my wife.

The laptops did see some use but not nearly as much as they might because of the paucity of broadband connectivity. The iPad struggled with (failed actually) getting on the free wifi at the pool or Cafe Rouge (my Galaxy S2 worked from both locations). The mobile reception in most places showed typically no bars and occasionally crept up to one or two bars. Two bars did not necessarily mean available data connectivity.

Fortunately Twitter is sufficiently lightweight to not mind the poor connectivity too much. My wife couldn’t understand why the internet didn’t work on the iPad. It did work but in her mind waiting two minutes for a page to load = not working.

So where am I going with all this? Should I mind that I can’t get connectivity on holiday. After all it’s a holiday and connectivity often = work, at least working “in the internet business” as I do. Last summer I had a camping break that was completely offline. It was planned that way and we had a great time.

I must say though that the experience of having a holiday that was only partially offline was a frustrating one for all. It would probably have been better to have no connectivity at all than poor connectivity. The experience would have been better for all.

Center Parcs is also missing a trick. Having forked out £800 or so for 4 nights I can’t imagine there would have been many guests not willing to stick another £20 say on their bill to get decent wifi in their villa – especially considering the demographic of their customers – not many “holiday parks” stock Veuve Cliquot in the camp shop I’ll bet.

Just for their benefit I’ll do the sums. £5 a day per villa, say 200 villas taking up the offer on average adds up to a £365,000 revenue stream a year. For that kind of money they could afford to wire up the site, provide a 1Gig connection and have a hugely profitable contributor to the bottom line.

If Center Parcs want to get in touch I’ll tell them how to go about it.

That’s all. I’m still on holiday but back in the land of Wifi and HSPDA – yay.

PS no comments about the amount of electrical kit taken on holiday – this is the 21st Century, the internet age – get with it man

Tags c

charitable End User

Skegness – it aint bracing – it’s a sub zero frozen windswept wasteland with good points

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 10 February, 2012
1 Comment on Skegness – it aint bracing – it’s a sub zero frozen windswept wasteland with good points

Have you ever been afraid? That helpless feeling when adversity looks you in the eye, evil veins popping out blood red against the whites of its own terrible eyeballs and the feeling of breath swirling up around your nostrils looking for a victim. When the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you feel a cold sweat under the collar. Have you ever felt like that?

Me neither.

However I did have to go to Skegness today. I know, I know, Skegness you say!!?? In February, with the glass reading minus two in the full glare of a dazzling Lincolnshire winter sun barely rising above the white tops of a cold and inhospitably grey North Sea, just visible across the vast expanse of beach that allegedly contains sand below its frozen snow covered crust?? Yes Skegness in February.

Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a mans gotta do and in the interest of technology, the readers of this blog, and the RNLI I did it.

Regular readers will remember the World Record attempt for the most comments on a blog post in 24 hours. Well we didn’t get the world record though there is a strong case that we might have a British record. However we did raise £6,034 for the RNLI and today I braved it over the Lincolnshire Wolds, looking austerely beautiful in a fresh coat of snow and ice.

My destination was the Skegness Lifeboat Station to meet coxwain John Irving, RNLI Press Officer Russell Matthews and some of the 30 crew that man the RNLB Lincolnshire Poacher.

I must say it felt a privilege to meet these guys. In all it takes 80 volunteers to man the lifeboat station at Skegness, including people serving in the shop, fundraisers etc. When I arrived John sent out a call for volunteers just as would happen in the case of a real emergency and in short order a full crew turned out for the photo opportunity. It takes 7 men to man the big boat you see in the picture and they have a smaller inshore craft that takes 3 men that is used to rescue unwary swimmers floating out to sea on lilos etc.

I am glad we are able to help them even if our £6k is a relatively small part of the £150 million a year the RNLI needs to keep going.

A lot of people retire to the Skegness area. As I get older I’d like to ask a small favour of you. Keep whispering in my ear “Spain, France, Southern Italy” – anywhere that is warmer than Skeggy in February 🙂

That’s if for me now. I’m off for half term and won’t be online except perhaps for the occasional tweet. Have a good break if you are off too and if not keep that nose to the grindstone and one day you too might earn a trip to Skeggy¹ – it’s bracing, apparently.

¹Perhaps I need to organise a trefor.net day out there in the summer 🙂

PS – the good points? The RNLI

End User online safety

Louis Vuitton sells handbags but follow that link at your peril

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 7 February, 2012
3 Comments on Louis Vuitton sells handbags but follow that link at your peril

Louis Vuitton sells handbags. He also features very prominently in the comment spam caught by good old Akismet on this blog. I haven’t clicked on any of the links offered – domain names such as “limpidity” seem to be selling Louis’ stuff online – soft and flexible handbags for soft and gullible people perhaps?

I took a straw poll in the office and the first person I asked, Director of Account Management Andrew North said his wife owned two Luis Vuitton handbags. Blimey, I’d better not tell Anne although Tesco carrier bags are more in her line:)

So then I Googled Louis Vuitton and found 199,000,000 results – blimey again, I searched for Trefor Davies and only got 408,000. Must be a lot of Trefor Davieses out there – it is a common name. I wonder how many of us there actually are? Not as many as there are Louis Vuittons perhaps – I imagine the fashionably types around town went through a phase of naming their kids after him – the ultimate one upmanship. Pushed around no doubt in a LV pram and when small left on a sideboard at A-List parties to sleep in a matching handbag (are they called handbags these days?).

Imagine going to a posh nursery school just around the corner from Harrods and being one of several Louis Vuittons! In my day it was Dave or Andy or Llywelyn if you lived in Wales.

Anyway when I started this post I didn’t know where it would take me and I still don’t. Perhaps something relating to Safer Internet Day 2012? It didn’t happen. You will have to Google it (30,900,000 results) or follow that link to find out more.

I wonder how many of the Google results for LV are actually spamming pages? I will probably never find out.

That’s all folks – back to writing the Timico ITSPA Awards entry.

Tags internet safety, Louis Vuitton

End User phones

the ultimate mobile phone – early bird registration now open

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 7 February, 2012
1 Comment on the ultimate mobile phone – early bird registration now open

We have started to see speculation surrounding the timing and specifications of the Samsung Galaxy SIII. If truth be told such speculations start soon after the release of any new generation of handset whoever the manufacturer is. Such is the interest.

Although for the life of me I can’t understand why people get caught up in this hype I can understand why websites might want to fuel the speculative flames – loads of advertising dosh to be raked in. Note I have refrained from the slightest involvement in such lowbrow activity.

The hype has made me think about mobile handset technology in general. Rather than drill in to the nitty gritty of

Tags smartphone, ultimate

Apps broadband Cloud End User

A Home Packed with Technology

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 3 February, 2012
5 Comments on A Home Packed with Technology

I have decided, and I haven’t told my wife this, that my house needs to be a case study for the connected home. The technological home of the future. The question is what does this connected home look like?

I have Cat 5 cabling downstairs a switch, wifi and shortly I will have FTTC. This is all very well but other than working from home occasionally and accessing the internet what am I going to do with it all.

I would welcome suggestions for services or technology that will be of use in the home that I should be testing.

Thanks in advance

That’s all folks.

Tags connected, FTTC, home, technology

End User olympics

If You Haven’t Got an Olympics Ticket I’d Think Twice about Going Anywhere Near London in August #LOCOG

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 2 February, 2012
No Comments on If You Haven’t Got an Olympics Ticket I’d Think Twice about Going Anywhere Near London in August #LOCOG

Could the London2012 Olympics be the new Y2K? I suspect not. Y2K came and went and we all looked back and wondered what all the fuss was about.

I have just had an email from Transport for London telling me that for large chunks of the day I can expect to have to wait longer than 30 minutes to board some tube trains. I regularly come in to Kings Cross in the morning and the underground is sometimes so busy on a normal commuting day that they shut off access to the platforms because there are already too many people down there.

If TfL is talking over 30 minutes wait the queues just to get through the door will be enormous. This is bad enough if you have tickets for an event and need to get there but is also a bit of a shame if you don’t and were just hoping to hang around the city soaking up the atmosphere. It might not prove to me as much fun as you had anticipated.

TfL has clearly gone to a lot of effort modelling the passenger traffic scenarios over the period of the games. Check out their interactive tube map here. It’s a bit like the BBC’s own predictions for iPlayer traffic. The annoying bit is that the BBC, along with all ISPs in the UK I’m sure, will have additional capacity in place to cope with the increased traffic levels.

It looks to me as if TfL has just come up with this interactive map and told everyone they would be better off walking. I suppose that is planning of some sort! If you ask a London Cab driver what their plans are for the games many will tell you they are going to see how it goes for a day or two but think they will probably end up taking the time off and going on holiday which will compound the problem.

If employers in London haven’t yet put contingencies in place to facilitate homeworking for all their staff over this period then now is clearly the time to get their act together¹.

PS London is also often “full” on a regular weekday. ie there are no available hotel rooms. I’d take a tent if I were you.

¹ Timico specialises in supporting homeworkers and provides thousands of broadband connections for businesses for this very purpose – mail me at [email protected] if you want to know more.

Tags congestion, LOCOG, Olympics, TfL

End User fun stuff

What’s in a name?

Despite on occasion being known to criticise the UK government for policy matters relating to the internet I am not a particularly political person. I have had a go at both (New) Labour and the current coalition.

The one thing I can’t fault them on, whatever their political hue, is the names of the politicians involved. Here we are talking David (Dave), David, George, Nick and looking back a bit, Tony and Gordon. at Timico the leadership team comprises a Tim, Chris, Neil, Jonathan, Steve, Andrew, Luke, Sandra, Geoff, Calum and Tref – a good spread from around the British Isles.

What I just can’t understand is how on earth anyone could consider being run by someone with a name like Mitt or Newt. I can ascribe Barack to being a cultural/language thing – a bit like a bloke called Nicola running France. Angela in Germany seems positively normal!

Perhaps the Americans have done some market research and picked the “most electable name”. I fully expect to see a Giraffe or an Aardvark running for the US Senate in future – the only possible reason in my mind that the UK media would want to report such an event.

The only possible excuse I can think of is that they needed to find candidate names with available domain names but I haven’t done any research to validate this theory. Any original submissions on this proposition could well be published in full.

Call me boring…

Tags Barack, Dave, Mitt, Newt, Tref

End User social networking

Simple guide to being a real person who someone might want to engage with on Twitter

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 23 January, 2012
5 Comments on Simple guide to being a real person who someone might want to engage with on Twitter

For me one of life’s little disappointments is to see that I have lots of new Twitter “followers” only to find that they aren’t worth following back. Sounds a little high and mighty?

My approach to life is that I am only here the once so I might as well make the most of it. Because of that I treat all waking hours as potentially time to be doing work but because I enjoy what I do I don’t necessarily consider it to be a chore. In addition I try to make my workplace a fun place to be.

Also I have a major vested interest in the success of the business I work for because I am a shareholder. It is in my interest to be on the case more often than not and I am not therefore a someone who switches off when I leave the office.
I use Twitter a lot – for much of my waking day. The platform suits my natural gregariousness and it gets used for a mix of purposes that reflects my approach to life – that is a mix of work and play.

On it I tweet:

work stuff – usually blog posts on trefor.net but also links to online articles that I think relevant to the business, industry or things I cover on the blog
non work stuff – usually creative writing posted on www.philosopherontap.com – latest post here 🙂
and inanities that perhaps reflect my personality and which people can either gel or identify with or chose to ignore/unfollow – it’s a free world and a reflection of what happens in real life and not just online.

It is always exciting to get new followers on Twitter. At the time of writing I have 1,777 followers. However I only follow 1,058 people back. So what do I (quite reasonably) hear you say?

The point is that it is such a source of disappointment to see that you have new followers but not to think it is worth following them back. I’m a fairly easy going bloke so why don’t I follow these people?

To some extent this is because, just like in real life, you wouldn’t “be friends” with everybody you meet. The criteria for making this decision are however somewhat wider when applied to Twitter.

Whilst I do use Twitter to sell as part of the mix described above I don’t want a constant stream of sales pitches. In fact any sales pitch has to be so soft as to be almost not discernible (feel free to knock me down at this point if you think this cynically doesn’t reflect my own tweets).

Of my last 40 followers I only follow 18 of them back. The ones I don’t follow have profiles that suggests they can help me with things. These include:

finding a mortgage
finding a job
finding a franchise to run
making a fast buck
helping me market my business
etc etc etc

Drilling into the tweets of these followers they are invariably one way broadcasts offering advice, thanking new followers for the follow, selling left handed widgets (for example) or simply retweeting “interesting” stuff posted by others.

If someone wants to be followed back they need to be seen to be someone interesting or engaging enough to chat with in a pub or coffee shop. In fact one of the wonders of the Twitter world is that if you have already chatted with someone on Twitter then when you meet them in real life they seem to be very easy to get on with – you already have many things in common to talk about.

Sometimes “real people” don’t get followed back. Often their profile has no information on the person and not much in the way of tweets at all giving me no help with deciding whether to follow them. Also if someone looks implausibly attractive (I get suspicious – no offence intended girls) or as in one recent case, only tweets in Chinese, then they probably won’t get followed.

Although there are some journalists and news accounts I follow but who don’t follow me back I don’t usually follow people for long if they don’t follow back. It isn’t a personal thing. It’s just that I feel social networking isn’t a one way medium.

In the same way many of the accounts that follow me but don’t get followed back unfollow me after a week or two. Quite satisfying really. These are often accounts that simply seem collect followers because they presumably feel this is the right way to build influence. You have to question this when you see people who follow 70,000 people and have 70,000 followers in return. Who is going to notice anything in that stream? Also I often wonder how on earth do some people go about finding me on Twitter! Businesses advice in the Minneapolis area? No thanks.

The rules aren’t hard and fast. I often follow local businesses even if they are “just selling”. It seems reasonable to support your local businesses online in the same way as you might buy stuff from local high street shops. I also follow some businesses in my industry for competitive information purposes.

This has been a longer than usual post and many may not have stuck with it to this point. I understand:)

I will finish the rambling though with the observation/fact that I get many cold calls and unsolicited emails from people wanting to engage (sell). Most of them get filtered out because otherwise I would spend my whole day listening to pitches.

If you want to make it past the gatekeeper the best way is to first develop a non work relationship on Twitter. A subsequent work related approach via email is then less likely to be ignored because of course we will already know each other. Twitter isn’t a medium for selling but it is great for warming up the contact.

To help facilitate this my business card nowadays contains only my Twitter username (@tref) and no email or phone contact details. All the contact info you need is in any case findable online.

I have just realised Twitter is short for Tref’s witterings. Better go.

That’s all folks 🙂

Tags Twitter

charitable End User social networking

world record attempt – the results are in #comment24

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 11 January, 2012
5 Comments on world record attempt – the results are in #comment24

We had a good go at it guys. When I first discussed the world record attempt for “most comments on an online news post” with the Guinness World Records® people there was no record in place. We came in at 5,455 comments in 24 hours.

Unfortunately in the meantime a Japanese pop star – don’t ask me his name, I was too distraught to register it¹ – has come in with 56,800 on his fan website. Apparently a quarter of all his registered fans left a comment. That’s life folks.

However we should not be dismayed. We should rejoice. First of all we raised just over £6k for the RNLI. The RNLI needs £150million a year to keep going. That’s a lot of two pences rolling down that lifeboat donation box and every little helps.

Secondly I contacted Charles Arthur, Tech Editor of the Guardian who after digging around a bit discovered that the most comments ever on a Guardian news post was 4,789. The Guardian is reputed to have a monthly unique readership of 50 million people globally so the fact that we beat their number for most comments is huge news. NOTW phone hacking not unsurprisingly seems to be the subject that generally attracts most people to comment at the Guardian.

Perhaps I’ll change the subject next time to something more inflammatory. I think we will have another go – next year maybe. There was huge enthusiasm amongst everyone who participated. The main feedback from GWR, apart from the fact that they enjoyed following the attempt was that it appears that this sort of record is generally best suited to celebs with huge followings. A bit obvious but perhaps we can prove that wrong someday:)

Still to do: tech post & look at the “most inspiring comments”. As regard the latter if anyone has any they would like to highlight let me know – leave a comment on this post linking to their favourite comment.

That’s all folks.

PS world record attempt blog post here

¹ tbh it’s ‘cause I couldn’t understand it & didn’t want to look stupid asking for the name again 🙂

Tags blog, comments, Guardian, Guinness, Records, World, 世界記録のコメント

charitable Cloud datacentre End User social networking surveillance & privacy

The social media summary of the world record attempt

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 10 January, 2012
No Comments on The social media summary of the world record attempt

The world record attempt started at 6am on Thursday 5^th Feb and ended at 6am the following day. There are three stories to tell here. The first is the charity fundraising aspect that was covered on Friday.

Second is the social media story. This was an event largely promoted using the #comment24 hashtag on twitter but the story was also posted on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. The effort also caught the imagination of a good number of friendly journalists as the list of names in the table of top referrers for 5^th Jan illustrates.

	referring site	# visits	pages/visit	time on site
1	t.co (Twitter)	2,012	2.73	00:04:08
2	facebook.com	903	4.44	00:04:56
3	gizmodo.co.uk	310	2.38	00:02:19
4	thinkbroadband.com	291	4.38	00:04:36
5	forums.moneysavingexpert.com	265	3.24	00:02:58
6	m.facebook.com	240	2.2	00:01:53
7	guardian.co.uk	233	3.07	00:03:50
8	thenextweb.com	221	2.83	00:02:47
9	telegraph.co.uk	207	3.6	00:04:47
10	hootsuite.com	67	2.88	00:04:10
11	community.plus.net	63	2.84	00:02:43
12	plus.url.google.com	59	4.05	00:05:45
13	linkedin.com	57	4.84	00:07:03
14	thelincolnite.co.uk	51	2.25	00:02:07
15	celticquicknews.co.uk	50	1.36	00:00:23

In all according to Google Analytics there were 162 referring sites over the 5^th and 6^th January. A Google search for

Tags analysis, charity, fundraising, media, record, social, Twitter, World

Cloud End User media social networking

The evolution of TV – Sky and Zeebox

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 9 January, 2012
1 Comment on The evolution of TV – Sky and Zeebox

I note that Sky has taken a 10% stake in Zeebox, a service that integrates TV watching with social media presence. This is the future. In fact this, to my wife’s annoyance is also the here and now.

How often do you see the twitter stream fill up with comments about a TV programme that is on at the time? It is usually stuff like Xfactor or The Apprentice, neither of which I can stomach. Yesterday it was the Manchester City v Manchester United FA Cup tie.

This is a pretty astute investment by Sky who scrapped their monthly Sky Magazine in print format last autumn despite it being profitable and one of the highest circulation monthly mags in the UK. Zeebox will add to Sky’s already powerful interactive online presence with Sky+, an interactive planner on iPhone/iPad app and SkyGO their app to watch TV on the move.

My wife may not like it but it is also the way forward in every aspect of life. She already shops online. It won’t be long before she is coordinating shopping trips using Twitter, Facebook or some other as yet unheard of facility. We have to embrace the new technology and the new way of living.

The size of the Sky investment has not been disclosed but my bet is it will be great for both parties and shows that there is still plenty of opportunity for the canny entrepreneur to make things happen even in this economic climate.

More TV related stuff:

Sony 4K Ultra HD TV

TV detector vans – the truth

Boring TV & better things to do.

Tags Sky, Zeebox

charitable End User

The morning after the week before #comment24

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 6 January, 2012
7 Comments on The morning after the week before #comment24

The world record attempt finished at 6am this morning. Phew. We didn’t get the 100,000 comments we were after. According to the screenshot I took at 6am it was 5,455 though there are potentially a few “non-qualifying” comments in there that I will have to check.

final comment numbers - snapshot at 6.08 am

At this point in time I don’t know whether we will be accorded a world record for this one. There is no existing record to break and the 100k was an arbitrary target set by the Guinness World Records® organisation as one considered appropriate based on a different record category concerning Facebook comments. I will report back on this one over the next few days as the info comes in.

More importantly the current tally of funds raised is £5,809.50. This comprises 110 donations made online via just giving (includes a very generous £1k from zeninternet – thanks boys) and also includes £2,360 worth of pledges made to me offline that I know we are good for (£2k is from Timico & £250 from ipcortex – both great contributions) .

The total funds raised is yet to be firmed up as money is still coming in and

charitable End User

World record attempt for most comments on an online news item in 24 hours has started. #comment24 #RNLI

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 5 January, 2012
5,595 Comments on World record attempt for most comments on an online news item in 24 hours has started. #comment24 #RNLI

At 6am Greenwich Mean Time (that’s in the the UK) an attempt at the world record for the most comments on an online news item in 24 hours began (ie this blog post). According to Guinness World Records® we need around 100k unique comments. That’s just over 1 comment a second! With your help we think we can whoop that.

This is also charity fund raiser for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) the UK. The level of funds raised is not associated with the number of comments and it doesn’t cost to leave a comment but if you want you can make donation by clicking on the big green “DONATE NOW!” button in the sidebar – the bigger the donation the better.

When you leave a comment you have the option to tweet it – please do so if you can as this will help to spread the word using the #comment24 hashtag.

To comply with the rules the comments must be at least 10 characters, a minimum of two words and not comprise solely of punctuation marks. Basically comments have to make sense. Happy commenting & let’s see if we can raise some cash for the RNLI.

Postscript – conclusion here

charitable Cloud End User

promo interview with BBC for Thursday 5th Jan world record attempt #comment24

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 2 January, 2012
8 Comments on promo interview with BBC for Thursday 5th Jan world record attempt #comment24

More world record stuff. Keep the sponsorship coming in by the way. It’s starting to build momentum.

Tags #comment24, BBC, record, World

charitable End User

calling all sponsors – help a good cause and be associated with a fun event #comment24

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 31 December, 2011
26 Comments on calling all sponsors – help a good cause and be associated with a fun event #comment24

Many of you will already have heard of the world record we are going for on Thursday 5th Jan. This is for the most comments on an online news story in 24 hours.

Timico is sponsoring the first 2,000 comments. Yesterday Rob Pickering of ipcortex (great company) came up with £1 for each of the next 250 comments – totally unprompted and keen to support the cause (RNLI). Thanks Rob.

Now we are looking for more donors. Donating is easy – you can use the JustGiving page or hit the big green “DONATE NOW!” button in the sidebar. Leave your twitter username if you can – here or on the JustGiving site.

Note that the number of comments made is not actually associated with the amount of cash raised. In other words we don’t have to have the same number of comments as pounds and vice versa.

If you are a corporate sponsor and would prefer to send a cheque or do a bank transfer you can email me or call me – number is here.

This event is going to get some serious media coverage and sponsors will get very positive global PR out of it. As the world record is going to be formally submitted to Guinness World Records ® there is also the possibility of being associated with a long lasting record online. The value to sponsors could continue long after the event is over.

I will publish a list of major donors but in the meantime the Twitter list of sponsors here. (needs updating)

Tags #comment24, RNLI

End User fun stuff

wistful retrospectives and bold predictions?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 30 December, 2011
No Comments on wistful retrospectives and bold predictions?

I suspect that at this stage of the holidays I normally write a review of progress over the last 12 months (with appropriately satisfied noises) and put my mind to the next year.

Well this year all I have to say about 2011 is that it was another great one – they all are. No doubt there were ups and downs but hey, you have to get on with it.

So what sagatious pearls might I have to impart in making predictions for 2012? I am not a wise man. I can only say this:

“There will be a lot of change in 2012 and how you feel at the end of the year will depend on how you managed that change.”

Whether this is in business or in your personal life it is no different. New things will come your way. Try them out. Throw them away if they don’t suit but don’t sit on the fence muttering that things ain’t what they used to be. That fence is groaning under the weight and one of these days it is going to collapse. If you’re sat on it you can wave goodbye as you go down.

For various reasons we live in exciting times. This is probably the most exciting period of technology change I have known in a short life that has (and I am constantly amazed by this) seen the invention of the mobile phone, the personal computer, the internet, oh and penicillin¹ . The excitement may stem from the pace of change but believe you me that pace is accelerating.

So in 2012 embrace the change and make it work in your favour. Work hard, play hard but most of all don’t sit on that fence.

See ya next year.

PS sorry if the title was somewhat misleading -I’ve obviously been reading the tabloids to much recently

¹ only joking – not that old 🙂

Tags 2012, predictions

charitable Cloud End User social networking

The story behind the world record attempt #comment24

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 29 December, 2011
22 Comments on The story behind the world record attempt #comment24

This attempt at a Guinness World Records® Record all started back in November when I took a customer out to dinner to celebrate a bit of business. The customer mentioned that he read trefor.net and, to cut a long story short, I said that Timico would donate £1 to his favourite charity for every comment left by one of the staff from his company. I capped this at £100 – it was just a bit of fun. His favourite charity is the RNLI.

A glass or three of wine followed and we decided, as you do, that we would go for a world record. Considering this I upped the ante to 1,000 comments from his employees (£1 each) and said Timico would double up if we got a world record out of it. The record, whatever it was, seemed eminently doable. This customer has thousands of employees globally with many of them being industry analysts and commentators with large twitter followings.

I was sure that we could have a good time with this important customer and raise some funds for charity at the same time.

I woke up the next day thinking hmm what have I committed to

Tags Guinness, most comments, news, Records, World

Cloud End User fun stuff

2 days til Santa comes yay

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 23 December, 2011
3 Comments on 2 days til Santa comes yay

This is undoubtedly one of my favourite times of the year. When you are a believer like me the run up to Christmas Eve is very exciting. I start going to bed early and being a good boy so that there can be no question in Santa’s mind that he should be making that important stop in Lincoln.

The mince pie, carrot and brandy get put out before I go to bed and it always amazes me how Santa can get down what must still be a red hot chimney after that fire has been going all evening. The next day he and the reindeer have always scoffed the lot. Every year, without fail.

The run up to the big days is always busy and this year has been no exception. This week has been a particularly good one with a trip to see Paul McCartney at the last night of his tour in the Liverpool Echo Arena.

We also had the annual Timico management bash, this time at Stapleford Park.

Stapleford, if you have never been, is a stunningly luxurious country house hotel in Leicestershire – former seat of some duke or other and surrounded by Capability Brown landscapes.

You know what it’s like, champagne, cocktails, port, brandy, that kind of stuff. We’d do it more often if it was up to me.

We were lucky enough to be entertained by top international harpist Eleanor Turner who lives locally. Brilliant stuff though the team needs to stick to managing a business because carol singing accompanied by a harp is not their strong point.

The pic on the right is of me wowing Eleanor with my witty and erudite after dinner conversation.

It’s been another great year in business and on the blog. In fact it’s been a great year all round. To all friends out there have a wonderful Christmas break and I look forward to engaging with you anew in a slightly toned down January – life can’t keep going at the same pace when you get to my age you know!

I will be working between Christmas and New year – data centres to launch, world records to smash etc – so keep your eye open for news. Your help is required. 🙂

Tags Christmas, Eleanor Turner, harpist, Lincoln, stapleford park, Timico, Waitrose

End User fun stuff

Rook’s off

I recall a Two Ronnies Rook Restaurant sketch on TV from when I was a lad. The only thing on the menu was rook and even that was off.

Today we popped over to the caff at the Beacon Centre in Newark for a quick bite. The lady serving there, Denise, is a lovely person – always has a smile on her face. Today felt a little like the Two Ronnies sketch as they were running down stocks for the Christmas shutdown.

I started off ordering a cheese end onion sandwich (my needs are simple). No cheese left sorry. “The soup was good” shouted someone. Sorry soup’s finished. I then went through a list of possibilities until I ended up with a ham sandwich. Whilst it was being prepared I said “with butter please”. Sorry no butter left. Ok mayo then. No mayo either:) I settled for pickle.

It’s a good caff and they bake their own bread which is of outstanding quality. Happy Christmas to Denise, Sharon and all the staff. They deserve the break.

End User mobile connectivity

Liverpool Echo Arena mobile capacity #paulmccartney and the French

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 21 December, 2011
3 Comments on Liverpool Echo Arena mobile capacity #paulmccartney and the French

Went to the last gig of Paul McCartney’s world tour at the Liverpool Echo Arena last night. Ten thousand fifty somethings with the occasional grandchild thrown in for the experience. Old Macca is going strong though at around 70 years old doesn’t quite hit all the high notes with the same strength as he might once have done.

Not complaining. It happens to us all and the die hard fans in the audience didn’t really care. On a boringly technical note what surprised me was the high quality mobile data reception inside the Arena. My mails and tweets were coming in as normal. The signal varied between HSPDA and 3G according to my Samsung Galaxy S2.

I recently met with one of O2’s tech team to discuss stadium communications technology. This followed on from

Tags capacity, Liverpool Echo Arena, mobile connectivity, Paul McCartney

charitable Cloud End User social networking

World record attempt – Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours #comment24

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 19 December, 2011
10 Comments on World record attempt – Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours #comment24

To get 2012 off to a racing start we will be having a bit of fun on trefor.net and aiming for a world record for “Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours”

This is a genuine Guinness World Records category in which the current record stands at 100,000. That’s just over one comment a second. Should be easy huh? 🙂

The attempt begins at 6am GMT on Thursday 5th January 2012 and ends 24 hours later. It would be nice to think that we could smash the existing record by a country mile. Someone mentioned 1million comments – why not?

Between now and then the blog is moving to a high availability, high performance platform, details of which will be made available in a blog post on Tuesday 3rd January.

In the meantime there is much spreading of the word to do to make this a great success. You will be kept up to speed with any relevant news regarding the world record either on the blog, Twitter (#comment24), Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn (actually all of the above).

We will also be letting you know in advance the type of content that will be in the post for the record attempt so that you can get your thinking hats on in advance for your own comment.

It would be great if you could spread the word on this by “liking”,” Linking”, “sharing” “tweeting” or just telling your friends by good old fashioned “word of mouth”.

Trefor.net also has a page on Facebook where you can find out more and a Facebook event here.

Hope you can help 🙂

Tref

Tags #comment24, 24 hours, attempt, comments, most, news, online, record, story, World

broadband Cloud End User

What Will the Broadband Speed Needs of 2023 Be?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 19 December, 2011
17 Comments on What Will the Broadband Speed Needs of 2023 Be?

Some time ago I wrote that the laptop of today is the SuperComputer of 12 years ago. The SuperComputing community is constantly pushing forth the boundaries. Of course these computers need to talk to each other – that data has to go somewhere.

Because of this that research community is also having to push the envelope on data connectivity speeds and a team from Caltech and the University of Victoria has just demonstrated 186Gbps data transfer over a 100Gig connection (the sum of data speeds – both directions obviously).

OK this is all good stuff but so what you say? Well just like the SuperComputer of today is the laptop of 12 years hence there will come a time when 100Gigs is going to be mainstream for home and business connectivity. There is no point in hitting me with arguments suggesting otherwise. You are wrong 🙂

I don’t know what these data rates are going to be used for but used they will be. I am going to bookmark this day in 2023 to write a blog post reviewing progress towards this goal. By that time my laptop will be able to do 10.51 petaFLOPS (the current fasted SuperComputer is The K computer – it consists of 88,000 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs, and spans 864 server racks).

This is why I occasionally mention that really the only sensible long term investment for broadband speed infrastructure is fibre because in 12 years time I will need something that can handle the output of all those petaFLOPS. Who can argue with that?

Tags 186Gbps, Caltech, SuperComputer, Victoria

Apps End User google

email “like” buttons

I have just decided that someone needs to invent the email “like” button. When someone sends you an email saying, for example, “that was a great blog post Tref” it is a real waste of everyone’s time and effort to reply saying “thanks very much”.

Really what we need is a means of communicating back a thumbs up or a like without the original sender having to open the email just to read the word “thanks”.

Simple.

End User fun stuff

Now you see it now you don’t

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 15 November, 2011
No Comments on Now you see it now you don’t

It’s dark out (hence the somewhat cryptic title) and I can see the lights on in other buildings in the business park. In fact I can see lights pretty much all the way on my drive home. That’s 18 miles through Lincolnshire countryside. There is something not right about that.

I quite like the dark nights though even if they do make you think it is going home time around 4pm and then you find out there is an hour and a half still to go.

The dark nights make the living room seem nice and cosy, especially with a fire lit in the grate which I might do tonight. Who needs central heating?!

Tonight I’m picking a couple of the kids up from orchestra rehearsals on my way home. It makes me feel good

Fish finger sandwich – a must when the wife is a way.