Categories
broadband End User internet net neutrality

My Bandwidth is Precious (GET OFF IT!) — or — Autoplay Angst

Bandwidth usage of streaming video from in page ads uses up data bundle for those people with low data caps on their service – such as satellite based broadband Oh joy. I keep falling over sites that autoplay videos, and some — I’m looking at you, Facebook — do not appear to have a simple option to […]

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Apps End User Mobile mobile apps phones UC video voip

A Chatty Kory

Who among the teeming throng hasn’t at some point or another had the thought, “Instant Messaging sure is a marvelous thing…no idea what I’d do without it…but really, by this point shouldn’t I be able to seamlessly carry on an IM conversation via Yahoo! Messenger with a contact using Google Talk? Or AOL AIM? Skype? […]

Categories
agricultural End User Weekend

Fire, fire – woodstore, the sequel

Last week we reported the building of a terrific new woodstore as an amenity for the Davies household in Lincoln. Check out the amazing video here. Well not all the wood is going to be allowed into the wood store. The smaller branches and rotting bits of old furniture ain’t gonna make it. Nosiree Bob1. […]

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End User fun stuff Weekend

Wood store finished – live coverage of the woodpile at the bottom of the garden

Le wood store est fini, as they say in Cannes. It’s the sort of thing they drop into dinner table conversation at A List get-togethers on the Riviera. It’s a while since I’ve been. What with not owning a villa in the South of France and all. In Cannes they would be talking about the […]

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End User fun stuff

Lincoln 10K – The Bad Run

Thursday Morning The radio program I present, Lincoln A to Z, is formulated by 52 randomly selected grids from the Lincoln A to Z map. We have a basic structure, but the tone and timbre of each program is guided by the contents of the grid. Out of the 30 programs we’ve made so far, […]

Categories
Engineer internet Net peering

Peering policies #peeringweek

You’ve read so far in Peering Week about the many hundreds of thousands of connections that join together the 30,000 or so networks on the Internet. Some of these connections are negotiated in minutes by specialist engineers who work for these networks at one of the many peering events that happen throughout the year. The […]

trefor.net events

Upcoming trefor.net events – workshops, dinners and themed weeks Check out the trefor.net events calendar to see what’s coming up. These events and themed weeks include opportunities to take part by contributing guest posts, coming along to an event or sponsoring an event. Themed weeks are online events but often coincide with physical meetups, usually […]

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fun stuff peering

Tomo entertains in Leeds Town Hall #peeringweek

Tomova Yoshida from JPNAP is a globe trotting musician cum IXP engineer. He entertained us all in Helsinki with impromptu Beatles renditions on the grand piano at the 23rd Euro-IX Forum social night. At the 24th Forum he stepped up a gear. OK he accompanied the Euro-IX drunks choir on the piano. But he did […]

Categories
broadband datacentre Engineer engineering internet Net peering

Why Does Scotland Need a Broadband Internet Exchange? #peeringweek

Almost a year ago exactly, an ambition I’ve had for a very long time came true.  It’s not a personal ambition (not exactly on my bucket list), but it’s an ambition I wanted the local Scottish Internet and broadband community to achieve. After years of failed attempts, talking amongst ourselves in the community and generally […]

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Engineer internet peering

@jodam talks 400GbE at 24th Euro-IX Forum in Leeds via Skype from China #peeringweek

Interesting talk on 400GbE  at 24th Euro-IX Forum in Leeds by Dell’s Chief Ethernet Evangelist John D’Ambrosia – 400GbE is currently up for discussion at IEEE meeting in China. John was actually speaking from China using Skype. It was remarkable quality video – no synch problems and showed up perfectly clearly on a large screen. 這是所有鄉親 […]

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eleanor cross End User

Eleanor Cross statue project – choosing the stone with artist Alan Ward #lincolneleanor

Choosing the stone for the new Eleanor Cross for Lincoln project at the CDS quarry in Metheringham Heath. Last week we covered the launch event for the new Eleanor Cross project for Lincoln. It’s been quite a wait to get the right piece of rock to start carving the statue. The quarry is only digging […]

Categories
Business gadgets voip voip hardware

Android DECT VoIP phone from Gigaset and the all new R630 waterproof handset

Android DECT VoIP phone by Gigaset is impressive piece of kit Probably spent more time on the Gigaset stand than any other. Party because I kept bumping into people I know there and partly because they had a couple of great products being demo’d. The first video is a demo of an Android DECT VoIP […]

Categories
Business UC voip

Report from Connected Business show

Went along with Dan Winfield of Voxhub to Connected Business – the show formerly known as UC Expo. UC is so yesterday isn’t it? Trouble is all they have done is change the name. The content was much the same as ever. Things don’t move particularly quickly in the connected business game (there were a […]

Categories
End User webrtc

uber cool WebRTC app – appear.in

Sat in the lobby of the Hilton Metropole yesterday waiting for UC Exec Dinner special guest Alan Johnston when I hear a voice from afar. “Hey Tref wot you doing here?”. It was Nominet’s Ray Bellis up on the balcony. He popped down and we chewed the fat for a while. Explaining why I was […]

Categories
eleanor cross End User

New Eleanor Cross for Lincoln – a project of national significance

New Eleanor Cross for Lincoln – a project of national significance with exclusive coverage at the weekends on trefor.net. Eleanor of Castile, wife of King Edward I of England died in 1290 in Harby in Nottinghamshire. Her body was taken to the Gibertine Priory at St Catherines in Lincoln where it was embalmed and the viscera […]

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End User fun stuff

1st daffs of year out on St David’s Day & bandwidth drivers in cafes

It’s St David’s Day and I am pleased to announce that the first daffodils of the year are out in the garden. Loads more threatening to bloom but not quite there yet. It’s also a fine day so we may see more before day is out. This morning, it being a nice day and having […]

Categories
End User phones

Samsung Galaxy S5 feature list examined

They are getting excited, the easily excitable. Supposedly the Samsung Galaxy S5 is being launched tonight at MWC2014 (see previous post for acronym explanation).  The Telegraph 1 is calling it one of the most anticipated phone launches of the year and goes on to fuel the rumour mill with a description of expected features. The Telegraph […]

Categories
agricultural End User

Lumberjack weekend special & trailer maintenance tips

This weekend sees a lumberjack special on trefor.net. All internet and no sawing doesn’t light the fire. Costs five or six quid for a net of logs from the local garage. We could get a ton delivered for around £80 though have only ever done it once. Kept meaning to order more. Cousin Steffan has […]

Categories
broadband End User mobile connectivity Net

Call Me a Cynic, but…300Mbps on a Mobile?

Lindsey Annison shares thoughts triggered by an eye-opening pre-Mobile World Summit mobile broadband announcement. Just spotted a pre-announcement for the Mobile World Summit starting Monday in Barcelona. It was on a Spanish TV channel (24h) and said “Surfing the Net at 300Mbps on a mobile is no longer science fiction.” (But in Spanish, obv). 300Mbps on […]

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Business social networking

What’s up doc? I’ve never used WhatsApp

It’s confession time.  I’ve never used WhatsApp. Now they’ve been bought by Facebook I probably never will. I have occasionally used Skype. Since Skype was bought by Microsoft it’s probably the kiss of death for the service anyway. Probably a long, slow, lingering death1.

Categories
Engineer media

Snowflakes, snowdrops and YouTube streaming formats – signs of spring in deepest winter

Worked from home yesterday. Weather was pants. Didn’t really matter. I lit a nice coal fire and sat in the front room doing stuff. Here’s a vid of the snow falling in my back garden. It didn’t stick. The noise is water falling off the tree above the conservatory roof. This morning I went for […]

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End User social networking

Snapchat – get down wiv da kids

Kid 2 introduced me to Snapchat. Must have been two summers ago when she was about to set off for uni. Other than very occasionally looking at her chats I ignored it. For one thing it doesn’t keep the photos/videos once sent. I like to keep the photos/vids. I’m a nostalgic. Recently I saw an […]

Categories
End User wearable

Eyes in the back of my head – Google Glass mk2

Google Glass mk2 to have rear facing camera? I went to a jazz gig last night, in a church. One of the kids plays in an award winning big band and it was the first show of the 2014 season. Being in a church we were all sat in rows on pews and it being […]

Categories
4g Engineer engineering mobile connectivity

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 […]

Categories
chromebook Engineer media video webrtc

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 […]

Categories
Business google

New business bank accounts for startups and problem with Google Apps for Business domain

Went to open a business bank account yesterday. It’s not opened yet. There are hoops to jump through, despite the fact that I have been with the same bank since I was a kid. In fact the business bank manager was able to do nothing apart from record the details of the new business. Approval […]

Categories
Business UC voip

CTO lunches

Headed to London again for my last CTO lunch of the season. Today I have Stephanie Watson, CEO of MZA Associates as my guest speaker. Steph is a great girl and one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Unified Communications market. For those unaware of the nature of my CTO lunches we have a […]

Categories
Cloud End User media video

BBC iPlayer growth – tablets shifting our viewing habits

Richard Cooper runs the BBC’s online platforms. He was guest speaker at the ISPA Conference last week and his subject was naturally iPlayer which with 245 million requests in September has enjoyed 23% year on year growth. I took pics of some of his slides – this first one shows the increase in requests. The […]

Categories
Business mobile connectivity ofcom Regs

Orange avoids banana skin – Ts & Cs changed to allow VoIP

EE subsidiary Orange appears to have avoided a slippery situation by amending its terms and condition for mobile internet use The pic below is a screenshot of a YouTube video ad published by EE on July 31st 2013 to push Orange PAYG mobile. It majors on the fact that you get “a shed load of […]

Categories
End User gadgets media Weekend

Sony 4KUltra HD TV KD-55X9005A and XBox1 Console sales

Continuing with the weekend posts I swung by PC World and Currys. Looking for a speaker system to add a bit of richness of experience to the Chromecast we installed last week. PC World hardly has anything – they are moving back to their computing roots. Currys is where it is at for this kind […]