Category: UC

Unified Communications

Broadband Life: No Business Like Snow Business

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 3 February, 2012
No Comments on Broadband Life: No Business Like Snow Business

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.

Tags homeworking, snow, voip

Business ofcom online safety Regs voip

Sat in an ITSPA council meeting discussing strategy.

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 1 February, 2012
1 Comment on Sat in an ITSPA council meeting discussing strategy.

Many of you will perhaps not have heard of the Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association. It is one of hundreds of industry trade associations serving their stakeholders in the UK. ITSPA was formed about 6 years ago at the “dawn of the hosted VoIP industry in this country”.

In its early days ITSPA was involved in the formation of codes of practice – working with Ofcom to define how an internet telephony provider should behave/operate. Things then went quiet for a while though the organisation has top notch networking events where executives get the opportunities to meet other people in the game to catch up on issues (and gossip).

Over the past 12 months industry affecting issues have started to come out of the woodwork.

Tags ITSPA

Business mobile connectivity net neutrality ofcom voip

@EdVaizey reschedules #NetNeutrality Roundtable and ITSPA publishes detailed evidence on Mobile Network Operator bad practice

A Ministerial Roundtable on Net Neutrality had been scheduled for 24^th January (ie yesterday) with Internet Minister Ed Vaizey and the major fixed and mobile operators due to attend. EV is expecting industry to produce a voluntary code of practice in respect of Net Neutrality. In the run up to the meeting and following individual discussions with some of the intended participants the Minister has apparently been unhappy with progress. The Round Table has been postponed until 28^th March to allow time for further industry discussion.

Net Neutrality is a very emotional subject. By and large in my view it is something that has been creating more noise than the issue has perhaps merited but I can understand people’s concerns. The issue of transparency is in particular an important one

Tags mobile connectivity, net neutrality, voip

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

Business Cloud competitions datacentre video

Video games killed the art of conversation – spot the game megaprize competition #TimicoDC

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 19 January, 2012
5 Comments on Video games killed the art of conversation – spot the game megaprize competition #TimicoDC

We had a hugely successful data centre opening event at Timico yesterday – 210 customers, prospective customers and business partners came along and, if I say so myself, had a great time (and were impressed 🙂 ). More on this as soon as I’ve assembled the photos etc – I’m on the move at the moment.

In the meantime I have a little prize competition for you. At the back of the lecture theatre (conf room, call it what you will – it had more than 200 odd people in it), just for fun, we had a range of “antique” video games, consoles and computers on show.

There’s a bottle of champagne¹ and a mug for the first person to correctly identify all the different systems shown in the video below (Timico staff not eligible here as they will have been able to view the kit yesterday). Note no apologies for the title of the post. It is partly true and the internet is now doing its best to finish the job.

¹ I saved it specially from yesterday’s celebrations 🙂

Tags console, datacentre, game, Timico, video

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 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

Engineer mobile connectivity security social networking

McAfee quarterly threats report Q3 – a worthwhile read

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 22 December, 2011
2 Comments on McAfee quarterly threats report Q3 – a worthwhile read

Tinterweb is a wonderful place full of great things that can change our lives. Of course we all know it is also full of pitfalls, dangers, threats, hazards, risks, problems, exposure, troubles and perils ¹.

I have just discovered the McAfee quarterly “Threats Report” . If you haven’t read it you need to rectify the situation. It is an amazing compendium of the threats to which we are exposed when we reach out into the land of the hypertext transfer protocol.

For the convenience of the busy reader I have selected some extracts for your delight.

In Q2 the Android mobile operating system became the most “popular” platform for new malware.
By Q3 Android has become the exclusive platform for all new mobile malware.

Look out that your phone doesn’t start texting premium rate numbers or broadcasting your personal data or even, as is the case with Android/NickiSpy.A and Android/GoldenEagle.A, start recording your telephone conversations. Don’t give any banking information over the phone will you. The malware stays on your phone for an extended period of time to make sure it catches the right phone conversation!

I’m not a worrier but I have started to think more about protecting myself and my family when communicating. There are some security solutions on the market and I will give them a go over the next few weeks and report back.

The McAfee report has tons of interesting stuff in it – Botnet growth by region, Social Media threats, new “bad reputation” URLs per day (hits 40,000 some days!!!). There are currently over a quarter of a million Active Malicious URLs. The report even tells you the going rate for Crimeware tools – $1,500 for Linux exploit tool LinuQ (with private exploit) – if you are unfamiliar with this don’t ask – it’s a need to know job and I don’t know.

I encourage you to read the report to which I link again here.

¹ My thanks to Roget’s Thesaurus for this contribution

Tags McAfee, Q3, quarterly, report, threat

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

Cloud Engineer Regs social networking

The impact of digital technologies on the mind – House of Lords style

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 12 December, 2011
2 Comments on The impact of digital technologies on the mind – House of Lords style

Over my toast this morning I was flicking through last week’s Hansard, as you do. Yaaawn I hear you say. Come now say I. Buried deep in this mountain of sleep inducing text can be found valuable nuggets of information worthy of dissemination to the wider audience. I am here to serve.

On 5th December the House of Lords held a short debate, introduced by Baroness Greenfield, on the impact of digital technologies on the mind. Beginning with the factoid that a recent survey in the USA found that over half of teenagers aged 13 to 17 spend more than 30 hours a week, outside school, using computers and other web-connected devices the Baroness asked three questions:

Tags Baroness Greenfield, Digital, House of Lords, impact, technology

Engineer Net video

Latest Hollywood blockbuster – assembly of video wall at new Timico NOC

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 29 November, 2011
7 Comments on Latest Hollywood blockbuster – assembly of video wall at new Timico NOC

Here it is, the one you have all been waiting for. After a lengthier than usual shoot and an intensive post-shoot production period (correct me if I have my movie industry technical jargon slightly wrong) at last at online movie theatres near your desk/settee/mobile device I am pleased to announce the global launch of The Timico Videowall – The Movie”.

None of this “launch in the USA followed by a phased release in other markets” this movie is instantly available to everyone on the planet. Bring your own ice creams, beer and popcorn ¹. Link here for those who don’t do flash.

¹ Small print. The makers of this movie cannot accept responsibility for accidents happening whilst watching. In particular, for North American readers, any perceived inducement to indulge in high fat, high salt foodstuffs or beverages containing alcohol is purely for artistic effect. Readers are encouraged to consult a qualified medical practitioner before blindly following the advice. Readers under the legal age for any of these activities according to the laws of their country of residence should refrain from participating. As far as we are aware this movie contains no foul language, violence or scenes of nudity that may cause offence to those of a more sensitive disposition. No advertisements are carried on this blog but it’s author cannot be held responsible for any attempt to sell you anything whilst watching the video on YouTube. Having said that if anyone wants to send money out of appreciation of the high quality production values associated with this oeuvre please contact me – details here. This movie was made without a grant from anyone and was funded entirely by private investment. Enjoy!

broadband Business internet media video

Netflix UK Launch Planned for 9th January, 2012 – Another Injection of Broadband Internet Growth

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 21 November, 2011
2 Comments on Netflix UK Launch Planned for 9th January, 2012 – Another Injection of Broadband Internet Growth

2012 is expected to be a big year for growth in broadband Internet use in the UK. We have the Olympics, para Olympics, the Queens Diamond Jubilee, Wimbledon and the West Indies, Aussies and South Africa over on cricket tour (if I was them I’d be avoiding this country next summer but hey…). Oh and let’s not forget the European football championships from 8th June til 1st July. England qualified I believe?! 🙂

There is more sport but by far the biggest Internet traffic news item for 2012 is that Netflix is coming to the UK. For the uninitiated, Netflix is a movie screening service in the USA that accounts for something like a quarter of all Internet traffic in that country.

At LINX75 today the launch was a particular subject of discussion

Tags FTTC, Internet service, Netflix, UK

Business gaming internet Net ofcom social networking UC voip

The Demographics of Communications

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 4 November, 2011
2 Comments on The Demographics of Communications

It’s a bit of a dank dismal day here in the shires and I have the office aircon on “heat”. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind this weather – it reminds me of my childhood and in particular of wet Sunday afternoons spent watching the black and white cowboy film on BBC2, maybe playing a game of Monopoly and then the excitement of Songs of Praise with Harry Secombe after tea. The highlight of the day was the comedy on Radio 4 at 6.30 or 7pm.

I’m not sure why I’ve “gone nostalgic” all of a sudden especially when those Sunday afternoons were really boring and often used to lead to rows amongst us kids.

These days our kids still argue despite having an incredible range of things to do on a Sunday. After the F1 there’s the XBox and, well more Xbox. Then there’s the Xbox!

Reality is that other than the Simpsons the kids only watch TV when one of their parents decides

Tags FTTC, internet, TV

Business video voip voip hardware

I have seen the light, opened the door and been let in by ProTalk

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 31 October, 2011
5 Comments on I have seen the light, opened the door and been let in by ProTalk

I love it when our engineers come up to me and say “want to see something interesting?”. Today one of our top VoIP engineers showed me the ProTalk IP (SIP) antivandal door entry unit. This is a rock solid door entry system controlled by SIP video phone.

Pressing the button initiates a sip call to the number / call group of your choice, sets up a video call upon being answered and allows the operator to open the door remotely by keying in a prearranged number. The system will in theory work with any SIP video phone – we have tested it with the SNOM 8xx series and a number of soft clients.

It should even work on mobile SIP clients – any SIP phone that can generate a DTMF tone. At Timico it is being tested as part of the security for the new data centre but it is easy to imagine it being used in many application areas.

I could even envisage using it at home – kids forget their key and you not in the house? They push the button and you answer on your smart phone and let them in.

ProTalk is a product of ProVu communications in Huddersfield. They are good lads and worth taking a look at.

Isn’t technology marvelous!

Tags Door, entry, ProTalk, ProVu, SIP, system

Business events social networking

trefor.net xmas tweetup 2011

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 10 October, 2011
1 Comment on trefor.net xmas tweetup 2011

The premier internet industry Christmas tweetup is back bigger and better than ever.

Last year we were in the Platform Bar of the Betjeman Arms. In 2011 we are staying with a railway station theme but are moving inside to the Booking Office Bar of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. This is a seriously cool watering hole and a far more sensible use of the space than the selling of train tickets.

This is no ordinary tweetup. Dress code is in keeping with the 5 star hotel surroundings and the drinks are sophisticated. If past performance is anything to go by the trefor.net tweetup is the party to be at this Christmas.

Try your hand at a cocktail mixed by Nick Strangeway – Master Mixologist. The former World Mixologist of the Year as voted for by experts at Tales of the Cocktail industry event & famous for his work with leading establishments Hix and Hawksmoor, Nick is London’s leading cocktail expert.

The 2012 tweetup is sponsored by a set of extremely generous friends including Timico, Newnet, Powernet, RTP Solutions, Sangoma, Fortinet, Provu , BT and Genband.

If you haven’t been the Booking Office Bar is situated just across the platform from last year’s bash. The St Pancras Renaissance Hotel was voted the Number One Hotel in the UK in The Sunday Times Magazine’s 2011 Top 100 Hotels in the World.

I look forward to catching up with you on the night. Numbers are limited so click here to sign up. You will need the password @trefbash to register. Hope you can make it. The date is Thursday 8th December from 5pm onwards. Get there early.

photos courtesy of St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.

Tags Booking Office Bar, St Pancras Renaissance, tweetup, xmas

Business voip

SIP Trunks go mainstream

I went to my first VoIP meeting in (as far as I can remember) the summer of 1999. It was a pulver.com “Executive Retreat” located at the ETSI HQ in Sophia-Antipolis near Cannes in the South of France. It’s a tough life but someone has to live it.

Since then we have been through a couple of recessions and a long hard climb for VoIP technology to become accepted. I knew the day would come but VoIP is now so mainstream that businesses think nothing of installing “VoIP only” voice solutions with no legacy ISDN or analogue lines as backup.

They are doing this because of two things:

Tags Guide, migrating, SIP Trunks, voip

End User Regs social networking

We must take care not to destroy the civil liberties we value when considering a response to the riots

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 11 August, 2011
No Comments on We must take care not to destroy the civil liberties we value when considering a response to the riots

We live, always, in interesting times. The global finance system is in crisis, again. There have been riots on the streets, again, with courts working through the night to process the cases of criminals caught breaking, stealing, committing acts of arson, violence, disturbing the peace, assault and grievous bodily harm.

It is natural to react strongly against this and I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone particularly busting a gut to defend the perpetrators. A petition has been started asking that anyone found involved in these illegal activities be deprived of their benefits.

Social media seems to have played a part in the organisation of these riots as does BlackBerry Messenger and the Prime Minister in his speech to the commons today said:

“Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

This is great in principle but of course not as easy to implement. Also how do we know in advance that they are plotting violence? Do we monitor everybody’s social networks one on the off chance that someone is plotting to do wrong?

For what the PM is asking for there is a parallel in the world of mobile communications. During times of emergency the cellular network can be switched off for everyone except the Emergency Services. This is down to the need to keep the low call carrying capacity network open for priority communications rather than a desire to stop miscreants using the service.

The situation is slightly different as regards social networking and we have to take great care that we don’t overreact. Twitter, for example, was being used to channel help just as much as BBM may have been used to coordinate the riots. Moreover the fact that these people are communicating using social media tools is likely to be a means to actually tracking them down and arresting them. People have already started being reported for telling friends on Facebook what they have been up to.

There are other parallels concerning internet technologies and the desire of government to control them – website blocking and filtering for example. Where do you draw the line and who decides when a website should be blocked? It has to be a judge. The same applies when considering situations of social unrest as we have just been seeing.

On balance I suggest that we must take great care when considering the application of control over social networks that the PM is calling for.

Note that at the time of writing the HM Government e-petition site has crashed and you get the following message:

Tags BBM, riots, social media, Twitter

End User social networking

Hanging out with the boys on Google+ @ruskin147 @Billt @jeffjarvis

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 4 July, 2011
2 Comments on Hanging out with the boys on Google+ @ruskin147 @Billt @jeffjarvis

Tried a couple of impromptu hangouts on Google+ over the weekend. The first was one hosted by BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones and was prompted by one of his tweets.

This, my first hangout, was seriously easy to join. Because it was my first I had to download a Chrome plug-in but this happened in the time it took me to move from the noisy TV room to the quiet serenity of the conservatory, a place far more suited to a video conference.

The photo shows the hangout with RC-J (@ruskin147), @billt and @jeffjarvis. The only difficulty was deciding who would be the next person to talk as all 4 of use are fairly verbose individuals but this seemed to happen easily enough.

I attempted another hangout with @superglaze later using my mobile phone but the google+ plug-in for Android is either understandably not as complete as the website or not yet as easy to navigate.

Google+ is an attempt to steal Facebook thunder. It is late to the game and although it is still very much early days I can already see ways where it would be far more useful to me than Facebook.

Firstly it is easily accessible from gmail, which I always have open on one of my screens. Also it isn’t difficult to see Webex style collaboration being added to the functionality in future. I can already share documents in Google Docs and have side conversations using Instant Messaging.

I have also disabled email notifications for most of my social media activity to cut down on clutter but Google+ notifications appear discretely on my gmail screen which is far more acceptable.

It’s a no brainer for personal use and certainly out competes Skype for the small business. I’m not yet sure whether it would fit with control and compliance requirements for larger businesses although Google Docs has some high profile advocates such as the Daily Telegraph Group.

Seeing as I was there I took a bit more of a look round my Google Docs account. I can now rent 20GB of cloud storage a year for $35. I have never considered doing it before but actually may change my mind. I would probably want more than 20GB but as a backup to my external hard drive for family photos sounds like a reasonable cost.

Although it is early days for this new platform I get the feeling in my waters that Google+ will become the Facebook for grown ups. I seldom use Facebook now (ok, ok I know I’m not really a grown up) other than for keeping in touch with the kids.

Facebook has announced that it will be making a big announcement on Wednesday – apparently around offering an embedded Skype service. Microsoft owns Skype and a chunk of Facebook. It doesn’t take a big leap of the imagination to see Microsoft buying the rest of Facebook (v expensive mind) as part of its hitherto not so successful march into the cloud. It would also give Microsoft a better chance of succeeding in the mobile space as integration with a Facebook based online platform would give it more of an equivalence to Google and could potentially drive far more consumers to using Windows Phone 7 on Nokia – whenever that comes out.

This is about big business with very big bets on the table. Exciting times and for most of us whilst we aren’t the ones placing all the bets it is easy to feel part of the game because all this technology touches us. I certainly feel as if I am catching the wave.

Tags @Billt, @jeffjarvis, @ruskin147, @superglaze, google, hangout

End User social networking

Is #Google+ going to be the answer to my social media management problems?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 29 June, 2011
2 Comments on Is #Google+ going to be the answer to my social media management problems?

The Twitter stream started up this morning with a favoured few people talking about their initial reactions to Google+. This is the new Facebook competitor from Google. I am not on the Google+ trials. There is a modicum of envy in this post but not too much.

I want to play with Google+ as a new toy. Something that will allow me to drop into conversation “Oh haven’t you got it yet? I’ll see if I can get you an invite” 🙂

However there is also an element of trepidation. “Oh no not another social networking platform”.

Clearly Google wants a competitor to Facebook that will stop any erosion of marketing money away from its own coffers. Not so far back it tried Google Wave, the new email experience. As I recall it was meant to be a step in the Facebook direction. That product was far too clunky and I dropped it very quickly. I don’t know anyone that uses it now.

The initial comments from the cognoscenti (ie those give trial accounts) seem favourable but notwithstanding this I truly hope that it will be easy to populate a friends list. I spent a long time tracking down old friends on Facebook and the idea of having to rebuild the list on a new platform seems daunting to the point of not wanting to do it. Somehow though I can’t see Facebook just letting Google extract a whole data set in order to make it easier for them to compete.

My networked life is now partitioned thus:

Twitter is my main means of communication – to the extent that my next batch of business cards will only read “@tref”. It’s all anyone should need to find me.
Facebook is constrained to people I actually know and in truth I now only use it to keep in touch with my kids
LinkedIn – I have changed my views on LinkedIn. This site has evolved and I can see that it could be quite a useful business tool. I don’t use it much and in fact I don’t see why a super platform that allowed me to have a single list of friends but enables me to partition them into work and play should not be possible. Might Google+ be this? Don’t know yet but it would get around the need to have too many sites to manage.

Otherwise the other communications methods available to me are Microsoft Exchange email for work and gmail for trefor.net (play!?”). My phone integrates both these platforms including contacts. It can also do the same for Facebook and LinkedIn. I already find multiple address book entries an issue though. Using a single social networking platform would get around this.

So there you go. I want Google+ to be Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all in one giving me a single platform to manage everything including my emails.

Who thinks this is what Google+ is going to be? I guess we will find out soon enough. You can put a request to be a trialist here.

Tags Facebook, google, LinkedIn, Twitter

End User social networking surveillance & privacy

My personal guidelines for following people on Twitter

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 28 June, 2011
5 Comments on My personal guidelines for following people on Twitter

I have been using Twitter for over three years now. Although there seems to be a huge industry and ecosystem building up around the platform I view it all simply as

an alternative to a newspaper (I often hear news first on Twitter) and
a social networking tool – basically what it says on the tin.

Whilst there is no real science as to how I go about using Twitter I have surprised myself and evolved a few rules of thumb to help manage my timeline.

By and large I only follow people, not businesses – usually characterised by “we are having an offer on left handed widgets this week” or similar. This is not a hard rule because there are some businesses there that I take an interest in – competitors and suppliers typically. It might also be a business local to where I live. Sometimes these factors outweigh the fact that their tweets might not be that interesting.

I also typically don’t follow people who are clearly trying to sell me something; “marketing experts”, “financial services experts” or people offering “advice to business”. Usually the timelines of these twitter accounts have one way selling advice/messages. I have sometimes taken a gamble here and found that I made a mistake (eg timeline gets filled with advice, often repeats) and subsequently unfollowed that person. Usually they unfollow me back very soon after. This isn’t a personal thing.

Basically I feel it is a two way street. Normal people that I can have normal conversations with are ok. So if someone follows me who is a “normal person” I follow them back after taking a look at their tweets. I often come across people I follow through specific hashtags (eg #deappg, #deact or #digitalbritain). Birds of a feather and all that.

I sometimes follow people who then don’t follow me back. This is ok – I have taken to following people who’s judgement / comments I am interested in. I don’t look for reciprocity though it is nice if they do follow back.

I tend not to follow celebrities. Usually they have enough followers anyway and are unlikely to be particularly interested in engaging with me.

I recently started to look to see who was unfollowing me, largely to try and understand whether I was annoying people (I’m a great believer in live and let live – life is too short to go round being an irritant). The vast majority are the businesses and “experts” who I haven’t followed back recently – a result really. No harm done.

Sometimes normal people unfollow me. This does make you think a bit but actually in real life you don’t make friends with everyone you know – some people just don’t gell. It’s normal and it must be said that not everyone can cope with the stream of drivel that sometimes comes out of @tref. My Twitter stream is just an extension of my personality – like it or lump it.

It’s a simple philosophy. I am here to engage and to learn and to have fun and occasionally to promote my blog posts and my business. That’s all folks.

Tags followers, hashtag, Twitter

End User social networking

Man flings bling in farewell to 4sq – renounces location based networking

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 27 June, 2011
9 Comments on Man flings bling in farewell to 4sq – renounces location based networking

I, Trefor Davies, being of sound mind and disposition, hereby declare that I have deleted the Foursquare app from my Samsung Galaxy S2 and intend to take no further active role with said location based social media platform.

This act, performed arguably whilst I was on a roll – ranking 4th amongst my contemporaries and rising in the 4sq table, is done to save my sanity and that of my children and to free up a significant portion of my weekend, recently dedicated to “checking in” at every location I thought I could get away with without being blamed for “rapid fire checkins”.

There are a number of reasons for this highly public (visible to everyone on the planet with an internet connection) position statement.

Firstly I found myself stopping the car outside places just in order to be able to check in. This even extended to taking detours to places that I had not previously checked in to in order to get bonus points for new locations.
Secondly I found myself more and more regularly checking in to places only to find messages telling me I was lying (your phone doesn’t think it is anywhere near said place). This happened a few times over the weekend including Sunday afternoon when I was sat in the snug of The Strugglers pub on Westgate in Lincoln (I am mayor of The Strugglers – not as difficult a feat as it might sound as you only need to have visited somewhere twice to achieve this status). My efforts to “play” were being undermined by the unreliability of either the 4sq platform or its relationship with the mobile networks.
Thirdly my kids were starting to get annoyed & were playing the neglectful parent card, the little rascals.

I started the 4sq journey to see where it would take me. My conclusion is that it is too oriented in favour of the venue. There is nothing , beyond the dubious kudos of being mayor, provided in return for checking in. I see some venues offering a free desert, or half price coffee etc for the mayor. Achieving mayoral status in many places means going there every day – the competition is the daily commuter stopping at a coffee shop to pick up his or her caffeine fix. It is not for the faint hearted.

As the market mature and (if) usage increases this may change but for me for now it ain’t working.

So days out with the kids are now restored to being days out with the kids. I am returning my mayoral trappings (ie bling) and reveal that the following places are up for grabs:

Lincoln Rugby Club, Lincoln Cathedral (probably the hardest one to let go – what a catch), The Bailgate Methodist Church (check-ins whilst picking up from scouts), Whisby Nature Reserve, The Morning Star, Fenella Beach, Peel Breakwater, The Grove (all 3 done whilst on holiday in the Isle of Man), The Strugglers, Newark Beacon, Timico, Super Hand Car Wash, Activities Away and The Eastgate Tennis Club.

I was on the verge of a few more mayorships after last weekend but someone else can have them too. Farewell Foursquare, farewell.

Tags 4sq, Foursquare

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