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

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I am pleased to announce that as of today we have Redwood Telecommunications as a new member of the Timico Technology Group.  London based Redwood is a highly professional  provider of communications solutions with particular expertise in Mitel and Avaya IP telephony systems.

This is is a highly strategic acquisition for both parties. It beefs up Timico’s capabilities in the VoIP systems space and gives us a base in London. Like it or not London is where a lot of the commercial action is in this world. Redwood also has a great list of customers that includes Jimmy Choo – my daughter will be after a discount !:).

Redwood, which will continue to be run by the same management team under MD Charlie Whelpton, will benefit from gaining access to the Timico network, system and data centre assets and skills.

This is a very exciting world to be working in but you have to be one of the players. There is no point in sitting on your hands and watching the world pass by.

It is interesting though that whilst we see a lot of hype surrounding new technologies & platforms aka the current frenzy over the Facebook IPO at the end of the day¹ it is sticking to the basics that makes long term value and sense.

Warren Buffet, for example, invests mostly in areas of businesses that he sees value in rather than those that attract all the media interest. In our business, communications, we need the technology but most important is the investment in relationship with, and the attitude towards the customer. The customer is king. No customers = no business. Lots of happy customers = long term business value. Timico is in the value game.

Redwood’s philosophy fits very well with that of the rest of the group and I look forward to working with the team.

¹ when all’s said and done etc

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On my way to a series of meetings in London and sat on a train. This train ain’t going anywhere. There has been a fatality on the track at Biggleswade. Not good, especially for the deceased. Delays of at least an hour expected.

Not the end of the world for me as I have plenty of time before my first meeting. I like to get somewhere with plenty of slack in the schedule – in case of delays (QED). Also I am getting on with some work on the train. Preparing a talk for a Retail Technology Conference if you’re interested. I am presenting with my friend and customer Umar Bajwa of Murco Petroleum.

The talk is going to cover a number of things including the Timico Mobile Access Management service. This is the multitenant mobile APN service that allows mobile devices to sit within a corporate MPLS network and has much better access throughput than normal because you don’t need the packet overhead for VPN¹. Also great as a backup in case the primary broadband line goes down (Plan B).

It is getting hard to concentrate though. There’s a party of kids in the same carriage and they are getting excitable annoying.

The British Transport police are up ahead. We have some police forces as customers. They use an application of ours called hand-e-pix. When they get to a crime scene they take photos using smartphones which then get filed against the appropriate crime number and can be used as evidence. The photo is automatically GPS and time stamped. Perhaps I should mention it to the British Transport Police as we eventually get moving.

The guard on this train is very good at keeping us informed: “The train wot as struck a person is stopping us from moving” fair play to him.

a few minutes later…

The train is now moving, albeit slowly and we have just passed some men in hi viz jackets carrying flags. Funny how we live in a world filled with technology but when it comes down to it it’s the old fashioned analogue technology that prevails. Always have a Plan B.

That’ll do.

¹ notice how I slipped in a quick advertorial there – perhaps you didn’t

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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.

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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 screen specifications, handset thickness and whether it supports 1080p or not I think it is worth approaching from the perspective of what I want my handset to do for me.

I should not need any other device other than my mobile phone. When I say this I mean PC, Laptop, bedside alarm clock radio, stereo, camera, perhaps even car keys. Some of this is fairly obvious stuff. A lot of it is already happening   – smart phones are replacing low end point and shoot cameras. There is still some way to go with lenses but it will get there. Everything else should be represented by a dock of some sort. Even the tablet will just be something you can slot your Droid into (ok iPhone for the Apple zombies¹) or run off it remotely aka Apple TV or RIM Playbook (ish). High quality video is essential. We have all started to get used to High Definition TV. The phone should be no different, especially if it going to become the source of the picture. That expensive big screen TV in the living room has just become another low cost monitor.

I see no reason why I won’t be talking to my phone issuing commands. We can all do this now and it is only a matter of time and Moores Law before this technology becomes properly useful. It isn’t there yet. I should be able to talk over background noises and for the phone to recognise it when I tell it that the TV is too loud or that I want to reply to a tweet or let Anne know I’m going to be late home. Once I get the phone to obey me then surely everything else just follows – it can sort out the applications needed. None of this browsing the Marketplace.

Much of what is needed to perfect the phone of the future is in the communications infrastructure required to support it. If I have reliable fast internet access I don’t need a big hard drive to store stuff. In fact all I need is processing power and bandwidth. Everything else then falls into place. Of course I need the applications but these will all come if everything else is there. If the supercomputer of today is the laptop of 13 hears hence, when will it become the mobile phone I wonder? I’m guessing that I won’t need a supercomputer in my phone though. I don’t yet know how much bandwidth I will need but once I have understood this it should be easy enough to forecast when it will be available.

This handset is a commodity. If I lose it no tears will I shed. I will borrow one of the kids’ or nip out and get a new one. I won’t have lost any data as the data will automatically be available in the cloud. The act of changing handset is simple, quick and efficient – merely a log in and “sync”.

Battery life will never be a problem – it will be something people will read about with interest when browsing through Wikipedia sections on mobile communications history. It will come.

One interesting feature of the mobile world of the future is that handset vendors will have to change to becoming software or service companies. After all one phone will look very much like another – process or and hardware specs will be much the same. This is much the same as has been happening in the PC and PBX markets.

So there we go. I have just described the ultimate mobile phone. I’m taking early bird registrations for those of you who like to be ahead of the pack with these things – just leave a comment.

¹ I never said I was a nice guy

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Meet Stuart Clark CCNA, CCNA (security), CCNP, CCIP (service provider), JNCIA and Timico 3rd line engineer extraordinaire. Stuart is one of the tough guys that gets going when the going gets tough He is clearly camera struck in the photo but don’t let that put you off – not everybody is a media hussy

Stuart is into continuous self improvement – as you can see from the list of engineering qualifications he has started to amass. The entry level Juniper cert is his latest examination success and  just a starter for ten in the Junos world. His Cisco certs will have made it relatively easy – more a question of adjusting to how Juniper does things versus Cisco rather than a whole new world to pick up.

Congrats to Stuart for his latest exam pass and actually for being a general good bloke who shows an interest.

Question for you. Stuart didn’t start life as an engineer. His first career was totally different. A fine bottle of La Grille, Sauvignon Blanc 2010 by Franck Chatelain¹ goes to the first person who can guess what that first career was – sorry no Timico staff or family members allowed to enter this one

¹ happened to have one in my desk drawer – as you do.

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When I was a kid my dad asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I of course said I wanted to be the CTO of a fast growing ISP with prospects Dad was somewhat confused with this and told me not to be a silly boy because the internet hadn’t been invented yet and I should learn to be a doctor or a judge or pursue some similarly respectable form of employment.

Some days it feels as if dad will end up having his own way and I will end up as a judge. In the news this morning is yet another report suggesting that ISPs should put together a code of practice in respect of taking down websites that do something we aren’t supposed to like.

There is a lot of this going on. If it isn’t the movie and music industry rightsholders wanting us to block sites promoting copyright infringement it’s Nominet in cahoots with the police trying to suspend domains allegedly supporting criminal activity.  Today its a Home Affairs Committee reporting on radicalisation suggesting that ISPs need a voluntary code of practice that supports the  taking down of websites containing violent extremist material.

Glancing through the report the committee did cover the issues surrounding radicalisation and the internet with reasonable thoroughness. For example it was recognised that there were existing legal mechanisms that allowed the take down of websites if they were breaking the law.

Now hands up if you think it is a good thing to kill people because they don’t have similar religious views as your own (leave a comment)? Okaay now hands up if you think this is a bad thing – “Like”, “tweet”  or “+1″ if this is you.

Now next question how many of you think it is a good thing for you to take decisions that have up until now been thought as the role of a high court judge – ie difficult ones that have serious implications if you get it wrong.

Because the whole world has moved or is moving onto the internet laymen (OED – a category of person often comprised almost exclusively of politicians) latch on to the idea of controlling that new world and stopping people accessing bits of it. In isolation some of these desires may not seen unreasonable. In reality when you take the whole picture into consideration the sum of these “not unreasonable” parts amounts to wholesale censorship.

If we are not careful the internet will turn into a police state. I’m not scaremongering here¹. There will be some roads waves you can’t walk surf because of fear of being seen by some authority somewhere to be associating with a website or concept even that displeases someone in authority.

Keep the internet open. Keep politicians away from the internet. We don’t need internet specific laws – we just need someone to make existing ones work. Layering codes of practice on codes of practice is not the way to do it.

¹ well I might be but I voice what should be a real concern to people

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I see Virgin Media has increased its broadband pricing. This is almost certainly because people are using more and more data – especially seeing as the company has been giving its customers free bandwidth upgrades.  Although bandwidth costs come down with time these reductions are being outpaced by growth in usage. Even if people are give data bundles (or unlimited use even) ISPs will assume an average overall level of usage in their costings and if this average is on the up the prices have to rise.

It’s the same in the data centre space where demand currently outstrips supply. You would think that Moore’s Law would sort it out but the same rule applies here as for connectivity – after all if people are using more and more data then it is natural that the required server and  storage space grows in line with this.

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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.

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You are looking at a disappointed man. Wha!  How can this be?  Surely not you Tref I hear you say? Yes yes disappointed What’s up?  We have had a very light smattering of snow.

I like snow. Snow, for the most part, makes the place look pretty and means I can wrap up cosily in front of a roaring open fire at home and enjoy the real winter. I don’t do the sledging any more – it’s all very well getting a thrill from speeding down that hill but you then have to traipse all the way back to the top dragging a sledge and almost certainly a kid. I still like throwing snowballs mind you. Nothing quite like the satisfaction of catching someone in the back of the neck.

I also quite like the superiority of owning a 4×4 when it snows. Other cars are sliding all over the place or struggling to get up the slightest incline but the Jeep takes it all with total ease.

This snow is not heavy enough for any of any of that. It might well close the golf course tomorrow but that is largely because you can’t see white balls on a white background. That’s the only thing this snow is likely to disrupt this weekend and in all probability I’ll be watching the 6 Nations rugby so not playing golf anyway.

None of the above is why I’m disappointed. Snow is really good stuff for business if you are in the VoIP game. When offices have to shut down because their staff can’t make it in those businesses with the vision to use VoIP and/or SIP trunks have minimal disruption. Workers stay at home and carry on with their job using broadband and VoIP, or calls to an office that is closed are simply diverted to another that has stayed open. It all happens at the flick of switch (actually the tick of an on line box). Snow drives sales:)

Funny innit? One day I’m talking about homeworking at the height of next summer because of the Olympics and the next about the same thing in winter. I can almost see the workplace of the future where people will be talking about building physical offices for people to occasionally come in and meet their colleagues in real life. How weird will that be?

Will people be able to converse in conversations of more than 140 characters  or wthout abbrviatng evry wrd 2 fit sentnce in2 space. T? Gr8 thx. u dont look ne thing like ur avatar. uhuh.

Anyway there you go. That’s why I’m disappointed but don’t worry I’m sure I’ll cheer up soon. It’s Friday after all – yay

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