trefor.net - Page 32 of 92 - Insider comments from the world of internet communications

Boring TV & better things to do – @CamCardIntSig

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 25 January, 2014
4 Comments on Boring TV & better things to do – @CamCardIntSig

What’s the most boring TV programme you have ever watched? It was probably on a Saturday night. Seems to be traditional to have boring TV on a Saturday night. I’d say it was pretty boring most other nights too but don’t let me put ideas in your head; thoughts.

You do have to ask yourself if the your most boring TV programme was that boring why did you watch it? You could have switched off and done something useful. I’ve just scanned in a hundred or so business cards using an App called CamCard. I bought the paid version for £1.90. It’s useful.

I’m gradually working my way through a thousand or so business cards I had tossed into a desk drawer over the years. Lots of them will now be out of date, especially those of sales people. I discard the obviously incorrect ones but scan everything else in. You never know when they will come in handy. Google contacts will probably provide me with updated data on people anyway. If you suddenly start getting emails from me you will now know why. Don’t worry there will be a fully functional unsubscribe button.

I’m checking out CRM and accounting packages this coming week. I want them all to hook up with Google Contacts. They also need APIs for interfacing with other platforms – MailChimp for example and WordPress, obvs. Not that I’m expecting to be doing many mass mailers though I can envisage a weekly digest of blog posts plus a bit of unique mail only content – for the busy executive who hasn’t got the few seconds to spare in the week to scan through a short blog post.

Ve shall see.

PS there is a TV in the breakout area down the corridor from my office. During the day people sit there watching daytime TV. Some people really need a life.

More TV related stuff:

Sony 4K Ultra HD TV

TV detector vans – the truth

BBC piles pressure on ISPS with Internet TV

Donating Stem Cells (Part 1)

Post author By Peter Farmer
Post date Saturday, 25 January, 2014
4 Comments on Donating Stem Cells (Part 1)

For those expecting some deep regulatory insights, alas, they will come in due course ….. But today I am hijacking Trefor.net to talk about my experiences to date helping someone suffering from leukemia.

There’s an adult female out there somewhere, afflicted with this cancer . Alas, that’s all I am allowed to know for 2 years….. and if she wants anonymity I’ll never know any more.

This time last year I had a phone call from Anthony Nolan, the charity that runs the UK’s largest register. I signed up in a moment of philanthropy 15 years ago…… And despite near misses before, this time I was supposed to be a proper bona-fide match.

More blood was taken (all the samples are done by your local practice nurse) and I kept getting holding emails thereafter. The recipients medical team where unsure whether or not to proceed. Then, two weeks ago, all of a sudden we were go…. and in a hurry.

I’ve now had my medical – this was 3 hours of poking and prodding and X-Rays and ECGs in a special unit in University College London Hospital. All apparently seems fine but I await the result. Assuming that’s OK, a week Wednesday I shall be in to donate.

In most circumstances, it’s allegedly complication free. Simply involves 4 days of injections to get stem cells moving out of your bone marrow into your blood, and then 5 hours on a special “dialysis” machine that centrifuges your blood and separates stem cells from the rest. Sounds like a very long blood donation, though involves bigger needles and one more of them.

This is nowhere like the general anaesthetic and excavation of the pelvis prevalent when I signed up….. and easily fitting around work – the injections are administered by a nurse wherever you are that day …… Though that operation may still have to happen yet (if enough aren’t collected). And for some recipients that is the best way of doing it, medically speaking.

I’ll let you know how it goes on the day; I might even live tweet it on the hospital WiFi. In the meantime though, there’s a shortage of donors, especially from ethnic minorities. If you’re between 16-30, you can sign up with Anthony Nolan here – read it all carefully and be sure before you commit!.

If you’re over 30, or it isn’t for you (there’s no shame in that), can I encourage you to give to the Anthony Nolan here via my JustGiving site, so they can continue to do their life saving work…… tissue typing isn’t cheap, and nor is the procedure. That, and they’ll have to keep me in coffee for a day!

PS. People have said that I’m brave – I don’t consider myself that…..the brave one is the anonymous adult woman battling this disease. That said, I will be teetotal for a week or so, which is probably, for me at least, the bravest bit!

Google+ Peter Farmer

Tags Anthony Nolan, cancer, charity, donation, leukemia, stem cell

Engineer peering

LONAP AGM & my first Banksy

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 24 January, 2014
2 Comments on LONAP AGM & my first Banksy

Got together with the LONAP board yesterday to go through arrangements for next week’s AGM. It’s been another year of growth. Better not tell you any more at this stage or I’ll be spoiling it for Tuesday.

As a not for profit we try to keep overheads down and yesterday we borrowed a meeting room off Vision IPTV in the shadow of the BT tower. On the end wall of the building was a Banksy. My first one! I was thrilled.

Apparently when the council leased the building to it’s current occupiers they wanted to charge them extra because of the Banksy. That angle didn’t work. Then some time later someone else in the council decided the mural was getting a bit worn and wanted to paint over the whole lot!

That’s when Vision IPTV decided to place a clear protective screen over it.

There’s not much else to report other than the meeting was held upstairs in what appeared to be a building right out of a 60s cold war movie. I could imagine Michael Caine striding up to me, leather shoes echoing along the corridor, saying “My name is Harry Palmer”.

We all sat in the meeting room jointly editing the slide decks for the AGM in the LONAP Google Apps Drive space. Internet connectivity was provided my my EE 4G MiFi dongle. I was getting 16Mbps – perfectly adequate for 4 laptops hanging off it.

London is a bleak place in January. We finished our work and retired to a warm pub, an old favourite, The Lamb (Conference Room L) in Lambs Conduit Street, for a cheery pint and a chat about life, the universe and internet connectivity.

All work and no play makes Tref a dull boy. As you know:)

Tags Banksy

Engineer mobile apps

Use of memory on phone by Applications #connectedlife

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 23 January, 2014
No Comments on Use of memory on phone by Applications #connectedlife

Was flicking through the apps on my droid this morning in bed, as you do, and I noticed that I was running low on available RAM, again as you do. I was down to something like 16%. Blimey I thought. Wonder what’s using all that memory up?

So I looked and saw that I had 11 Applications running even though I wasn’t using most of them. Now I didn’t notice that this slowed my phone down but taking it to the extreme it could have done.

I took some screenshots to illustrate how using Apps uses memory. The Apps screenshot is an approximate simulation as I already killed the ones when I originally looked.

Stopping the Apps releases a load of memory. You can see the available memory grow from 16% to 43%.

All obvious stuff but interesting to see in action nevertheless.

Just for interest I uploaded these screenshots from my droid to Google Drive when I was at home.

In the railway station waiting room I used my Chromebook to access pixlr.com via my EE 4G MiFi to size them and convert to jpg for use in the blog. They were still in Drive at this time.

As the train moved out of the station and with diminishing cellular signal I moved the pics from Drive to the media folder on trefor.net.

This process wasn’t heavy on cellular bandwidth as I was moving stuff from one cloud to another (more on the “other” cloud in due course).

It was all a bit of a race against time knowing that the precious resource of connectivity was going to dwindle and vanish.

Now as I head through the wilderness of Lincolnshire towards Nottinghamshire, London and notional civilisation I am forced to continue editing this post locally.

I’ll only need a tiny bit of bandwidth to finally publish it, in theory, because the heavy shifting has been done.

The only other thing to note is that I’m stretching this post out a bit because the photos are fairly tall and therefore use a fair bit of real estate.

I could have shrunk them a bit but then I find it difficult to read the text don’t you? 🙂

That’s all folks. Stay safe but make your life an exciting one.

#connectedlife 🙂

agricultural End User

Should badgers get the vote and other jolly wheezes #banthecull

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 23 January, 2014
7 Comments on Should badgers get the vote and other jolly wheezes #banthecull

Should badgers get the vote? This blog post explores the motion…

When I were a lad with no cares other than the distant dark clouds of impending A Level examinations our form classroom was situated above an arch through which pupils passed at break times. Despite being supposedly the most mature class in school we used to escape the pressure of said impending exams by letting off a bit of steam (I’m sticking to that line).

Our class had a sink and we would have hours fun by filling up cups of water and pouring it on unsuspecting passers by below. This was a fairly inaccurate process because we had to guess when someone would be coming out from underneath the arch – F=mg and all that – it took time for the water to reach pupil height and more often than not we would miss.

Being a highly intelligent class we devised a process that would improve our accuracy. Someone would look out of the classroom window at the other side of the arch and start walking when a victim disappeared from view underneath. When our paceman reached the a few feet from the sink we would drop the water. We did score a few direct hits but never seemed to get into trouble for this.

Fast forwarding to the modern era

4g Engineer engineering mobile connectivity

EE 4G mobile broadband roadmap in UK #LTE-A #mobilebroadband

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 21 January, 2014
7 Comments on EE 4G mobile broadband roadmap in UK #LTE-A #mobilebroadband

4G speeds continue to grow in the UK as EE trial LTE-A 300Mbps.

Sat in an interesting talk at UKNOF27 given by Bob Sleigh of EE. You will know that EE were the first of the mobile operators to sell 4G services in the UK. Bob told us that by the end of 2013 EE 4G services have reached 66% of the UK population with 98% potentially covered by the end of 2014. This represents the fastest rollout of 4G services in any country anywhere and EE now claim that the UK has moved from a mobile backwater to one of the world’s leading implementers.

This claim of world leadership is likely to be on the back of EE’s Techcity LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) trials (November 2013) which saw maximum 4G speeds of 296Mbps. EE expect to roll out LTE-A services in 2014.

broadband Engineer internet Net

BT achieves world record for fibre transmission rates – fair play @neilmcrae

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 21 January, 2014
13 Comments on BT achieves world record for fibre transmission rates – fair play @neilmcrae

BT Tower (source Wikipedia) changes to WBC and WBMC FTTC and FTTP Cease charges

BT world record broadband speed

Had an excited Neil Mcrae come up to me this morning asking if I’d read the press release 🙂 Neil is Chief Technical Architect of BT Group. The conversation began over beer and a curry last night where Neil alluded to an important announcement the next day but declined to elaborate. Normally beer will loosen a person’s tongue but Neil doesn’t drink enough beer for this approach to work.

Next morning I had naturally forgotten all about it until prompted by the lad.

The press release, which you can read in full here, tells us that BT, in conjunction with vendor Alcatel Lucent, achieved “trial speeds of up to 1.4Tb/s with a record spectral efficiency of 5.7 bits per second per Hertz (b/s/Hz)on an existing core fiber connection. This is believed to be the fastest speed ever achieved in commercial grade hardware in a real-world environment and is equivalent to transmitting 44 uncompressed HD films in a single second.”

This press release has been picked up by online media all over the world. After all 1.4Tbps is a pretty advanced performance for a fibre connection. In fact the connection made use of multiple fibre strands running off BT’s Alcatel Lucent 400Gbps capable kit. Multiple ports were used to get the speeds.

Not many companies have this kind of kit to play with but the development of advanced performance fibre transmission networks is key for large ISPs and content providers to be able to cope with the growth in consumer demand for internet services.

This particular trial majors on the efficiencies of the technology. It uses existing “old” fibre connecting BT’s Adastral Park R&D centre with BT Tower in London. This is important because it will allow bandwidth to grow using existing fibre in the ground.

BT are quoted as saying that a 1.4Tbps is the equivalent to transmitting 44 uncompressed HD films in a single second. Now I happen to know that Neil Mcrae is a big fan of the latest and greatest TVs – he is the only person I know to own a 4K TV (in fact he has a Sony 4K Ultra HD job). It’s all becoming clear.

There must be a 3rd node on the BT network with the Alcatel Lucent kit in Neil Mcrae’s back bedroom. He is going to have a Sony 4K TV in every room. Seems obvious. 1.4Tbps is still a little overkill even with all these TVs but there is such a thing as future proofing you know. As 8K becomes available Neil will be able to upgrade his TVs without having to go to the hassle of changing his home router.

Respect:)

Meanwhile I think we can be proud that this kind of pioneering work is happening in the UK and I think Neil is right to have a smile on his face this morning. Onwards and upwards.

Tags routing, Terabit

Engineer peering

Internet connectivity powered by beer and curry #ixmanchester

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 20 January, 2014
No Comments on Internet connectivity powered by beer and curry #ixmanchester

Did you know that the internet is powered by beer and curry?

Am at the IX Manchester meeting today. IX Manchester is an Internet Peering Exchange that allows networks local to the area to connect to each other so that internet traffic destined for each other’s networks travels by the fastest path rather than having to be backhauled to London then boomeranged back up to Manchester.

Consider the scenario of you, sat in your front room. You want to check out the opening times of your local sports centre so you

End User mobile apps

Facebook intrusion continues #privacy #sms #calendar

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 20 January, 2014
3 Comments on Facebook intrusion continues #privacy #sms #calendar

Normally when a droid asks me to let an App have permission to access specific functions on the phone I just blindly accept.

This was the subject of a Twitter conversation before Christmas. Some people said they declined. We were particularly discussing Facebook which I naturally distrust.

I woke up this morning to an offer of an App upgrade from Facebook. The first thing that jumped out of the page (screen) at me was the fact that they, actually it feels as if Mark Zuckerberg himself is involved, wanted access to my sms messages.

This was a step too far even though I’m sure I must have given this permission to other Apps. No doubt Google has it.

You only have to look at the list of permissions being asked for to get suspicious.

I like the idea that I have a tool that integrates all my media and connectivity. Salesforce.com is trying to head that way for businesses. I can see how trefor.net might want to integrate with the communities hosted on various 3rd party platforms. It’s a way of getting a lot of information about the people that you interact with and for a business that is valuable.

The trouble is that I don’t trust Facebook. Facebook’s approach seems to be tell everyone everything by default and maybe rein back in from there. I feel this even though it may not be true.

I don’t have the same level of distrust of other platforms. Google I think

broken gear Engineer gadgets

External USB sound card to replace broken laptop card

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 19 January, 2014
2 Comments on External USB sound card to replace broken laptop card

Picked up this cracking little USB sound card off eBay for less than two quid, including postage and packaging. It’s for my old Dell laptop. I knocked it off the arm of the settee a year or so back. It fell on the floor and rammed the headphone socket right inside the machine. Ah well.

I’ve lived without sound since then but whilst I rarely use the Dell any it has become Mrs Davies’ machine since hers played up and it seems reasonable for her to have sound, especially for the price.

I’ve only tested it on some old vid on YouTube and it did sound tinny but that might well have been down to my choice of content rather than the actual sound quality. For two quid who is going to complain anyway.

That’s all. Two quid!!?? I’m going to plug in a set of speakers for her so that she can listen to her favourite radio programmes.

Tbh she rarely uses a laptop anymore, It’s all iPad. I’d tell you what make the USB thing is but I can’t tell from the packaging. It looks pretty generic. Made in China, fair play.

End User food and drink fun stuff

Important announcement on a Sunday morning

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 19 January, 2014
5 Comments on Important announcement on a Sunday morning

This week we procured a George Foreman grill – family sized and henceforth referred to as the GFG. £20 from Lidl but I’m sure it is also available from other good supermarket and electrical retailers. This follows on from a similar acquisition by our daughter heading back to university for the new term. Hers wasn’t family sized but that is not material to this discussion.

You need to know that the GF is perfect for cooking breakfast on a Sunday morning. Due to the non uniform -sized nature of the raw materials involved (ie the ingredients) there are however some modifications to the normal cooking instructions that you will need to make.

Mushrooms and tomatoes are thicker than bacon and egg so you can’t have the lid down. The recommended cooking times provided by the GFG, with suitable disclaimers regarding food actually being properly cooked – it is an American product, are really only valid if you have the lid down and are thus cooking on both sides simultaneously (that’s at the same time yawl). It’s not as efficient this way but sometimes concessions have to be made for the sake of the art.

An element of judgement therefore has to be applied when cooking breakfast in this way with the GFG.

You should begin by preparing all the ingredients in advance and have them ready next to the GFG on the kitchen worktop. Any form of worktop is ok. It doesn’t have to be granite. Mushrooms should have their stalks remove which is a bit of a waste but necessary for this recipe. Switch on the GFG several minutes before you need to start using it. This is a guess but one imagines that one needs to wait a while for the cooking surface to reach its optimum temperature.

When the grill is hot enough place the mushrooms face down and the tomatoes with the round sides down on the left hand side leaving a suitable space for the bacon and egg that is to follow.

Tags Breakfast

Business travel

BA Executive Club Bronze is almost within my grasp

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 18 January, 2014
6 Comments on BA Executive Club Bronze is almost within my grasp

Just flicked through my emails to find one from British Airways telling me I’m only 140 tier points away from reaching bronze status.

A frisson of excitement ran through my entire body (not just bits of it). I eagerly scanned the rest of the email. With bronze I will be able to check in at the business class desk and earn extra Avios. Wahey.

Then someone opened a curtain and in streamed the harsh reality of daylight. My current tally of tier points stands at 160. Another 140 means booking almost as many flights again as I’ve taken in the whole of the last 12 months. That’s two whole trips.

It just not gonna happen.

My imagination began to

Business google

Google Apps for business – xferring account from personal

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 17 January, 2014
4 Comments on Google Apps for business – xferring account from personal

The decision to use Google Apps for the new business has been a no brainer. The productivity tools such as document sharing are a real winner. It is also a bonus that I happened to sign up for Google Apps before they started charging so I get it free of charge, at the moment.

When I originally signed up for Google Apps I didn’t spend much time playing with the features. I couldn’t quite see what difference there was between Apps and my regular Google use – Gmail, Calendar etc. It’s only now, as a business that I’m starting to get some of it.

For example all of my Google use up until Christmas has been through what effectively is my personal account. Any trefor.net or philospoherontap.com emails have been channelled through Gmail. My personal calendar was a confused mix of the Samsung SPlanner on my SGS4 and Google Calendar via whatever my laptop was a the time. The SPlanner would feed off both Google and my work Exchange account plus whatever else I programmed in.

When it came to the new business I began to question the use of SPlanner when Google did it all for me so I dropped it.

Now that I have two Gmail accounts, one personal and one trefor.net I’ve started the process

Business mobile connectivity

Vodafone mobile outage UK

Vodafone_outage Getting reports of a country wide outage for Vodafone. You can see the number of complaints rising here (or click on the screenshot from downdetector.co.uk if that page has moved on).

Vodafone on Twitter are saying

Vodafone Help AU @VodafoneAU_Help

@samtibbits We’ve got our guys working on an outage there as we speak. You can keep up with the progress here: tinyurl.com/7gtln5p ^AA

I’m glad I’m not in the Network Operations game any more. When something like this happens the brown stuff hits the fan big time. All customer facing members of staff get it in the neck and the pressure is transmitted to the engineering teams.

If you search “Vodafone outage” on Twitter that gets you lots of reactions.

It seems that no matter how much resilience you build into a network there is always scope for something to go wrong.

PS Just checked – that Vodafone Twitter account is for Australia – could be a global outage except that the tweet is 2 days old 🙂 The mind boggles. Global DDOS attack on Vodafone? Almost certainly not but I’m going to leave it in for effect:)

Business google

email Gmail Google+

Following on from my previous comments re emailing to Google+ connections not working it now is. I’ve just sent someone an email. I already had their email address but presumably not in that Gmail Contacts list. So Gmail offered to send the email to the person’s Google+ account. Just made it quicker for me.

I’m starting to use contact details from multiple social platforms now. Earlier this afternoon sent someone an email to an address they had in their LinkedIn profile.

What’s not to like?

Ciao

bebe

Tags email, Gmail, google

chromebook Engineer media video webrtc

Bandwidth use for Google Hangouts #WebRTC

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 16 January, 2014
2 Comments on Bandwidth use for Google Hangouts #WebRTC

Was on a WebRTC conference call this morning. I was calling from the Chrome browser in my Chromebook. Volume could have been slightly louder but the quality of the call was terrific. All I did was click on a link and hey presto. I’ll tell you more about it in due course.

We chatted for over half an hour. It wasn’t video as the other participants were using standard SIP phones. We were hooked up through a WebRTC gateway in the (good ole) US of A.

One on the subjects that came up was bandwidth use of video streams when making WebRTC calls. Using a gateway minimises the amount of processing that you have to do locally and also cuts down on the internet bandwidth you need.

Google Hangouts apparently use your laptop/local device to do the video mixing and thus you need more i/o bandwidth. Google tells us that for person to person video hangout the min bandwidth required is 256kbps/512kbps (up/down) and ideally for the best experience 1Mbps/2.5Mbps).

For calls with more than 2 persons the ideal scenario changes to 900kbps/2Mbps. This means that many people living with poor quality ADSL connections will not be able to properly experience the power of Google Hangouts.

It also explains why calls at weekends (that’s when we hangout) to my daughter at Durham University are also poor quality. It has been known for four of us kids to be on the hangout – one in Durham and three in separate rooms in the house in Lincoln (me and the two lads still at home). We have 7Mbps up in our house but in Durham it is an ADSL connection shared between four in a student house.

Shame really. For the want of a few quid more on the broadband line it could be much better. Students however are always skint and conserve the cash and we should recognise that they are representative of many people in the UK.

With time everyone will be on a faster broadband connection but for the moment, and I know I’m quite likely to get noises of agreement (or maybe just the occasional assenting nod) from readers in rural areas, many still have to live with limitations of their internet connection.

Mind you I’m all right Jack:)

That’s all.

Tags google, hangout, webrtc

End User security

Intro & Password Pain by @LindseyAnnison

Post author By Lindsey Annison
Post date Wednesday, 15 January, 2014
11 Comments on Intro & Password Pain by @LindseyAnnison

I’m grateful to Tref for leaving the corporate treadmill and embarking on this new venture. Although he never appeared to hate, or even dislike, his day job as some others in the industry seem to (in fact, having seen him in situ in the Timico offices several times, he seemed to positively revel in it!), I am very much looking forward to his posts, especially about monetising this blog, and hence the new company. So, I would first like to say thanks for the chance to guest post and wish him the best of success.

I guess I’d better briefly introduce myself. I have campaigned for ubiquitous, affordable and, in particular, rural broadband since the mid 90s when I was trying to set up my Internet marketing business in the Yorkshire Dales. I met Tref because he was kind enough to allow a bunch of broadbandits to invade the top floor of Timico for a colloquium a few years ago. I am currently trying to take a break from all things broadband to write more books (I have so far published six), an internet marketing course for SMEs, and to get back to my core skillset (Internet Marketing and Web PR), and my own business which keeps being put on the backburner because of the broadband shenanigans in the UK. I’m a guest/ghost blogger on many sites, copywriter, occasional ranter, and can be found on Twitter. Usually late at night.

I thought I would begin my guest posting with a tale of woe – the Absolute Pain of Passwords. Is it just me or do others have this problem too?

I have several devices – an iOS smartphone (the iThing), an Apple tablet (iThing2), a Windows laptop, a PC (that can boot into either Ubuntu or two different versions of Windows) and a Mac Mini. That makes a total of seven separate devices. And then there are the many times I might need to use someone else’s device eg whilst travelling, when my battery is flat, cybercafe etc.

If I go to log in to, say, a social media account on one of these devices, and I cannot remember my password, then I either have to find one of the other devices that is logged into the account – which can be a pain if I am not in their location – or, and this is where the nightmare begins, hit “Forgot password”.

This action then kickstarts a chain reaction of marginal chaos.

Tags Device, lindsey annison, passwords, security

Business internet online safety piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

An evening with Julian Huppert MP – Internet Hero #fundraiser

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 15 January, 2014
4 Comments on An evening with Julian Huppert MP – Internet Hero #fundraiser

I’m not in the least bit political. If I get involved on the periphery of Parliamentary discussions and debate it is because I occasionally see MPs trying to implement legislation that doesn’t make sense in our modern internet based world. This is often because MPs have so much information thrown t them that they have to resort to keeping ideas simple so that they can get their brain around them.

Unfortunately when it comes to legislation that touches the internet, and by default touches those of us whose livelihood depends in one way or another (an increasingly large cohort of people) on the internet, the simplistic view often taken by MPs is often at odds with the practical workings of internet technologies.

We end up spending a lot of time and money fending off such legislation, more often than not pretty successfully but usually after great effort and pain. This is because it takes an age for people (MPs) who because of the practicalities of their job have to look at complex issues very simplistically.

I’m all for keeping things simple (stupid) but we also need people in our Parliament who can get their brain around the complexities associated with the internet. What to the layman is a simple network that “just works” is in reality a hugely complex ecosystem. In fact the complex issues faced by MPs often extend to non-technical considerations such as the privacy of the individual In reality it is difficult to separate the technical issues from the non technical as they feed off each other.

One of the few Members of Parliament who does understand these issues is Dr Julian Huppert, MP for Cambridge. His background is research science at Cambridge University. Julian has taken a very active participation in internet and technology related debates in the House of Commons and was one of the leading opponents of the Digital Economy Act that was (outrageously in many people’s view) rushed through in the dying days of the last Labour government.

Because of his work supporting the internet industry, last summer Julian was awarded the Internet Hero Award at the annual ISP Association Awards dinner. Since then he served on the Parliamentary Select Committee looking at the Draft Data Communications Bill (Snooper’s Charter) and was highly influential in the decision making that lead to the Bill being killed it off for this Parliament.

We need to keep MPs like Julian in the House of Commons. He is good for the internet. He understands the issues. MPs need to raise a lot of cash to pay for their election campaign. I assume the next election will be in 2015 but much will go on between now and then.

I have agreed to help Julian by organising a fundraising dinner on his behalf. He is a Liberal Democrat but this is not a party political issue. In fact this is a technology blog not a political blog.

Whatever your political beliefs, if you work in a business, or maybe it is your business, that makes its living from the internet it is in your interest to support Julian.

So this is an invitation to you to a Fundraising Dinner entitled “An Evening with Julian Huppert – Internet Hero”. This dinner, on Tuesday 25th February, is a sit down job at the National Liberal Club in Whitehall – a totally high class environment if you’ve never been.

At £300 a head this isn’t a cheap do but we have to remember that the idea is to help raise funds to get Julian re-elected. We won’t be stinting on the quality of the food and drink in any case.

You will be in the company of 49 other influential people from the internet industry so it will also be a great night for networking. We shouldn’t forget that it will also be an opportunity to share your thoughts with Julian.

Click here to find out more or drop me a line if you want to talk about it.

That’s all for now. Please help if you can.

Tags Julian Huppert

Apps broken gear Cloud End User

Breaking news – Kodak Hero 7.1 printer is broken again – error code 3527

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 15 January, 2014
1 Comment on Breaking news – Kodak Hero 7.1 printer is broken again – error code 3527

My Kodak Hero 7.1 All in one printer is broken again! Printers have always been a bit tempermental haven’t they?

I bought this one on 21st January 2012. At the time Kodak were going into administration. The printer looked a good deal so I also bought the 3 year “Instant Replacement” warrantee as a bit of a guarantee against things going tits up with the printer manufacturing.

On 5th January 2013 I took it back to PC World. The print head carriage was jammed and there was nothing I could do to fix it.

Today I’m taking the replacement back to PC World. Identical problem. Kodak’s support pages unhelpfully suggest I remove anything that might be jamming the print head otherwise to get in touch with their support (presumably not free).

It’s OK. I can take this second Kodak Hero 7.1 back to PC world and swap it for another. I quite like it’s functionality. Cloud printing etc. Bit of a nuisance having to go through the whole registration process again but hey.

I paid £129 for the original printer and £32 for the extended WHATEVER HAPPENS warranty. £129 a year for a new printer is not good. £161 for a new printer every year for three years isn’t so bad I guess.

PS before anyone says anything trefor.net is a paperless business but my family isn’t – homework etc.

Business ecommerce mobile apps

The O2 Wallet is dead, long live Zapp – mobile payment App

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 15 January, 2014
5 Comments on The O2 Wallet is dead, long live Zapp – mobile payment App

The O2 wallet is dead. It disappointed from the start. I put a tenner in to have a play and found that I couldn’t use my phone to pay for anything. It had a mobile app but all that did was provide a web interface for the phone. It wasn’t a contactless payment tool. To use it seemed just as elaborate as my normal internet banking service, so not particularly easy then.

It might have been an article on the BBC about a new contactless payment system, Zapp, that made me think of the O2 Wallet again. When the O2 Wallet was launched I thought I would be a trailblazer (I’m sure I wrote a post about it at the time but am blowed if I can find it). I would be able to use my phone to pay for things. I signed up and downloaded the android app. Good start.

I started small by sticking ten quid in my newly opened account. The tenner sat in the account for I know not how long (actually must have been 18 months because that’s how long O2 is saying the project lasted). I found it impossible to spend that cash, like I said.

I was disappointed but hey, it was an experiment that cost a tenner. Though it did occasionally drift into mind I forgot about the O2 Wallet. I pretty much wrote off the tenner.

Last night I logged in to my O2 Wallet account. The miracle was that I could remember my password. I was greeted with the message shown in the pic.

Following the instructions I withdrew my £10. Put it back into my bank account. Lost out on 18 months of current account interest at 0.75% but who cares (as he rolls another cigarette in a fifty pound note)(not really, I don’t smoke).

I noted with bemusement a message saying that the service was free at the moment but that charges would be introduced in future.

O2 will be closing my account in March. I will uninstall the app today.

The O2 Wallet is dead. May Zapp succeed where O2 did not. I hope it does. I have on occssion nipped out to the shops and left my wallet at home but I rarely forget my phone.

I hope Zapp is easy whilst remaining secure because it is the future of payment systems.

That’s all. Written in bed on my droid.

Footnote. I just uninstalled the O2 Wallet app and looked for Zapp in the play store. No sign of it!!! Hmm. Not a great start.

Tags O2 Wallet, Zapp

Engineer internet ipv6

Nest Labs – tax benefits and the internet of things? #IPv6

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 14 January, 2014
6 Comments on Nest Labs – tax benefits and the internet of things? #IPv6

Google has bought Nest Labs for $3.2Bn. Nest Labs is into smart home devices and the internet of things. This we all know because it’s splattered all over the tech pages this morning.

I’d never heard of Nest Labs. I suspect it’s a by product of living in sleepy old Lincoln, somewhere in the deepest sticks of Engerlund and not in Silicon Valley. I live with it every day and I love it.

Ok it is interesting news and it focusses the mind on the growth of the internet, the further pervasion of technology into our every day lives and yes, IPv6 even. Google knows its stuff when it comes to IPv6.

A few things particularly spring to my mind re this acquisition. One is that Nest Labs was founded with over $80m of VC money. If you want to sell your business for $3.2Bn you have to think big and place big bets. Nest Labs will have spent its cash on an expensive team of people able to deliver.

I saw somewhere recently that startup had offered a Google employee $500k to move jobs. Unfortunately that Google developer was already earning $3m! I wonder whether there is the environment in the UK for this kind of activity. It needs both investors and entrepreneurs to be fully embedded in emerging technology cultures.

Secondly if this market is going to be as big as the size of the bet suggests then it has to be the demesne of huge businesses. Global businesses. This is somewhat dispiriting. There must still be room for small entrepreneurial organisation who can make things happen quickly.

Finally one presumes that Google has a huge cash pile. You hear about it occasionally, usually when MPs whinge about the ways large multi-national corporations are able to avoid paying tax in particular countries. All perfectly legal.

A quick “Google” shows that US Corporation Tax is 40% whilst Capital Gains Tax is anything between zero and 15% or 20%. One of the investors in Nest Labs is Google Ventures, fair play. Now I’m not an accountant but might there be huge tax benefits for Google in only paying Capital Gains tax rather than Corporation Tax on the $3.2Bn? Don’t get me wrong. Nothing improper going on I’m sure. Perhaps it all comes out in the wash so to speak.

It would be interesting though if someone out there was able to drill into the taxation specifics of such a transaction. I’m sure it wouldn’t affect the Google business case for the Nest Labs acquisition but an interesting by product nevertheless?

Answers on a postcard or via the comments section.

See ya, buddy…

PS Internet of things. IPv6. Very exciting.

Tags Capital Gains, google, Nest Labs, tax, Ventures

Business ecommerce gadgets

Skimlinks – moneymaking machine #wonga #moolah #lolly

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 13 January, 2014
6 Comments on Skimlinks – moneymaking machine #wonga #moolah #lolly

A few weeks ago as a bit of an experiment I signed up with Skimlinks. Skimlinks is a means of making money via affiliate marketing on your website. Their plug in scans your site for words that they can associate with their affiliated merchants (Amazon etc) and they insert a link to a relevant product sales page on that site. I have it set on a fairly low level of intrusion as a) it was only an experiment and b) I didn’t want to annoy people with too much in the face advertising. Google can also take a dim view on this sort of stuff if it is over the top.

At the time it was before I had announced my plans to leave my previous employer and start anew. One or two of you did actually notice and made comments on Twitter. Nothing bad, Just “interesting, let us know how you get on“.

Well I am excited to announce that since signing on (looks as if it was early November) I have made a grand total of £57.34. In recognition of what is a huge rate of growth (zero to fifty seven quid = infinite rate of growth) I shall shortly be announcing the imminent flotation of this blog on the stock market.

It is worth taking a look at where this income has come from and at some of the stats so vibrantly driving the new economy.

I mentioned Amazon (etc). All the sales have in fact come through Amazon and the vast majority have been for the Google Chromecast for which I am making anything between £1.12 and £1.47 commission per sale achieved. For the unfamiliar amongst you a sale is recognised against my account by tracking the click through from trefor.net to the ultimate signing on the dotted line by the paying punter. I don’t get the money for around 60 days which are pretty generous terms in Amazon’s favour considering they will get the cash instantly because the customer will have paid by credit card.

Aside from the Chromecast there’s a fairly long list of other items bought after clicking on a link. The mix is wonderful. Wonderful because you wonder how on earth they got to this blog if they were actually looking for certain items. Click on the photo on the right for a larger view. The wonderful list includes a Breville Technique Digital Steam Iron, 2400 Watt, BRASS ALLIANCE QUINTET FROM ST. PETERSBURG (presumably a musical CD – I’d expect a fairly substantial commission if I’d managed to arrange a gig for them), Ramozz @ 5X Led Pcb Connector Cable For 5050 Led Rgb Strip and some MENS LONG COTTON SOCKS Comfy grip Size 6-11 Black 6pk (made 45 pence there – don’t laugh, it all adds up).

If you look at the statistics since the installation of Skimlinks the blog has had 62,605 visits and made £57.34 from 1,450 clicks – thats an average of 4 pence per click.

Ok so this isn’t going to pay for next summer’s holiday in Barbados, or even one in Skegness although I still have time before I need to book – will just have to accept that we might miss the January sales.

It is however interesting to see what kind of traffic you need to drive to the site in order to make money. If we assume that Barbados is going to cost ten grand – we will have to leave the kids behind, we have to be realistic about expectations – then my quick back of a google spreadsheet calc tells me we will need just under 11 million visitors between now and the end of May. This assumes Anne and I will be going at the start of the school holidays (wouldn’t want the headmaster to find out we had abandoned the kids for a couple of weeks) and recognising that it is going to take 2 months to get the cash off Skimlinks.

Half the battle in business is getting your objective setting right and making them realistically achievable. Also you do have to be sensible about these expectations. Clearly the blog isn’t going to go from the current visitor levels to around 2 – 2 1/2 million a month just like that. We must expect a ramp up. So in order to hit an average of around 2.5 million visitors a month over the next 5 months or so we probably need to be hitting a run rate of 4 1/2 million visits a month by the end of May. Ish.

There we go then.

Now this is all just a bit of fun but at the end of the day trefor.net is going to make money so what learnings can really be taken out of the Skimlinks numbers.

Well for one the blog is getting a lot of visits to the Chromecast review – 10,754 in the time period being covered here. This is almost certainly because we were one of the first to carry a review of the Chromecast in the UK – it was only available via import at the time. This has been noticeable over the years. Before FTTC (fibre broadband) was available I wrote some technical posts on it and for a long time, until the consumer ISP advertising machines got into gear, the blog ranked very highly for FTTC.

Also a search for Chromecast on this site brings up 7 results. I’d be surprised if was really that low but in any case there must clearly from Google’s perspective be some content regarding Chromecast worth ranking.

Once we are properly up and running trefor.net is going to specialise in certain aspects of the technology market. It isn’t hard to guess what the focus is going to be. It’s the kind of stuff that has been covered over the years – connectivity, hosting, mobile and so on.

The key is in generating content that will elevate the site up the rankings for specific subjects. For example a high end broadband bundle can yield up to £140 in commission for a sale achieved through an affiliate marketing click through. A few of those in a month and you can justifiably start applying for the passport and cancel the caravan booking in Skeggy.

It’s also important to understand who the blog readership is because getting the content right will also not only generate affiliate click through sales but also attract specialist advertising.

Anyway that’s enough for now. Gotta nip out for some suntan lotion – Poundland, January sales.

trefor.net is open up for guest posts so if you have anything you want to say in the technology area drop me a line and can chat about setting you up with an account.

Ciao

PS Only £7 of the Skimlinks money is so far available for collection because of the 60 days rule. I haven’t looked to see if it is there. I don’t get out of bed for less than a tenner.

Tags affiliate, sales, Skimlinks

Business online safety security spam

Gmail update – Google+ comment

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 12 January, 2014
No Comments on Gmail update – Google+ comment

Got an email yesterday from Google about a change to Gmail. Everyone probably got the same mail. Certainly the mainstream media made big news of it, in the tech sections. When you are sending an email from a gmail account you will now be offered Google+ account holders as recipients of the mail.

One site, whose name is oft misspelled, even published a post on how to change your settings to stop people from being able to contact you via Google+. This would appear to me to be a blatant sop to search engine rankings – a big part of the email I got was all about explaining exactly this so the repetition of this info seemed particularly unnecessary. Whoever gets news out first attracts the visitors so it’s dog eat dog out there in the www.

Anyway “starting this week, when you’re composing a new email, Gmail will suggest your Google+ connections as recipients, even if you haven’t exchanged email addresses yet. Your email address isn’t visible to your Google+ connections until you send them an email, and their email addresses are not visible to you until they respond.”

I’ve tried but I can’t seem to get it to work. I guess “this week” must mean “next week” or at least from Monday onwards.

If someone from outside your Google+ Circles emails you then the mail gets filtered into the “Social” tab in your inbox. In my case this means it is unlikely to get read because I never look in that tab. I don’t look in the “promotions” tab either unless I’m expecting a particular mail – eg a password reset.

The tone of the online commentary about this “feature” is in the vein of “Google trying to increase/stimulate Google+ usage” and also all about privacy.

In my mind this is a very useful feature. I want people to be able to get hold of me. The principle is no different to your telephone number. Unless you want to be ex-directory anyone can look up your number. Of course there is the concern about spam but Google has a fantastic antic-spam engine and if it turns out to be “legitimate” spam from a business then this gets filtered into the “promotions” tab as previously mentioned. You can also label a sender as being a spammer which I frequently do if the email addresses me as “Hi”.

So all in all I think this is good. Except as I mentioned it doesn’t seem to work for me! That’s all folks.

Tags Gmail, google, spam

End User fun stuff

All in all it’s just another brick in a wall

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 12 January, 2014
4 Comments on All in all it’s just another brick in a wall

There’s something very artistic about a brick wall. The one was photographed in the corridor just outside the office. There isn’t much else to say about it really. I guess there is a scenario that it used to form part of some historic industrial building. The University of Lincoln is built on an old industrial site. One of the buildings, a bar and concert venue, is called the Engine Shed which gives you a bit of a hint to the past.

Sparkhouse is an interesting place to start a business. Interesting tech startups. The guys in the room next to us are into Bitcoin. In Lincoln! It’s something you really imagine happens in darkest Silicon Valley not quaint old Roman/medieval city of Lincoln. The Lincolnite office is just downstairs.

Not done much water cooler networking as yet which is what’s supposed to happen in these innovation centres. It’ll come no doubt:) There isn’t a water cooler anyway. You just run the cold tap for a bit. This isn’t Silicon Valley you know.

Anyway here’s the photo. The one after it is of a stone wall I pass on my walk home. Part of historic Lincoln. There are lots of them about. Nice. If anyone has any other good photos of walls then please send them in so that I can share them with the readers 🙂

Gotta go. Watching the snooker. Anne is a fan.

Tags brick, Lincoln, stone, wall

End User travel

Working time

I used to drive to the office.It was a 40 minute trip and consumed a tank of diesel a week. Now I walk to work. It takes 30 minutes. I have over the last two weeks only used a half a tank of fuel.

My walk to and from work takes me past Lincoln Cathedral. It’s a beautiful building. I am very lucky.

When I drove to work I would keep an eye on the time using the clock on the dashboard. Wouldn’t make much difference as to when I arrived mind you. Totally depended on the traffic.

Now that I walk to work I can if I so choose check the time as I pass the Cathedral. There is a sundial. It isn’t particularly accurate but there again it doesn’t particularly matter what time I get to work:)

Of course the sundial doesn’t work when it is cloudy and under those (extremely rare – this is Lincoln) circumstances I can pick up the time from my phone – it gets it from somewhere in the cloud. Today I start monitoring my progress using Runkeeper. Stay tuned.

Click on the picture for a close up of the sundial.