Tag: cost

Categories
End User olympics

The hidden cost of the London Olympics

accoutrements needed for a trip to NewquayDrove four 18 year old girls to Derby yesterday morning. They, along with three other pals were catching the train to Newquay for a week on the lash a week of post A Levels recuperation. They deserve it.

We had originally booked them on a low cost flight from East Midlands but the operator cancelled it and a hasty change to rail was needed. The best route was Lincoln – Kings Cross – Paddington – Newquay. £65 all told in second class. I did suggest they treated themselves to first as it was still cheaper than the costs of the flights but that didn’t get universal approval.

What’s more amid the pre-Olympics hype about London transport congestion the party grew nervous about going anywhere near the capital and opted for the Derby route which was £20 more expensive but perhaps a safer bet. They had a date with a cocktail in Newquay they didn’t want to miss.

With hindsight there have been no transport problems in London, due mainly to the hype that has scared anyone not going to the Olympics away from the place. So the girls could have gone in more comfort for less money!

As a footnote, I have a big jeep. The girls had a lot of luggage. It all fitted, just, into my car. I think the parents might collectively have to review the return travel arrangements as the person lined up to pick them up next Monday night was doing so in an Alpha Romeo!

Also it’s a good job they didn’t fly. The excess baggage charges would have paid for a limo to take them all down in luxury. They even took a laptop with them!

Categories
Business ofcom Regs surveillance & privacy

#DEAct continues to cause problems as Parliamentary joint committee highlights concerns with cost sharing mechanisms

The Digital Economy Act, which you may recall was rushed through by the last government with inadequate consultation in the desperate dying days of its tenure continues to create a stir. This time the joint committee on Statutory Instruments has strongly criticised the Draft Online Infringement (Initial Obligations) (Sharing of Costs) Order 2012 which Ofcom is also currently consulting on.

The Order has been brought by the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) no doubt trying to clear the decks before they all shoot off to watch the London 2012 perform official duties at the olympics. In its report the joint committee says:

“This instrument is drawn to the special attention of the House on the grounds that it gives rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House and it may imperfectly achieve its policy objective“

Criticisms include:

  • Concern that the Order had been laid in the House whilst consultation was still ongoing and is not based on full information
  • Lack of detail from rights holders or a commitment that they would actually use the notification system to its fullest (what’s that all about? why would they go to so much effort to get a law passed to support their private business interest and then not use its powers?)
  • Insufficient evidence is provided to judge whether £20 “appeal fee” is the appropriate amount given that significant parts of the structure of the scheme and the appeal mechanism are still undecided.

The whole sad, sorry story continues.

PS thanks to ISPA for being around to constantly monitor this stuff. Someone has to read through and interpret the detailed legal blurb that comes out of Parliament.

Categories
Apps End User mobile apps

phone storage capacity – miscellaneous musings after the Diamond Jubilee weekend

I must be trying to look cool - in adversity - I was having a good time at the Diamond Jubilee street partyYou may have noticed I have a tendency to stick photos in blog posts. I like to think it adds a bit of colour, enhancing the reader’s experience 🙂 I take most of them using my Galaxy S2. I always have it with me whereas it is a pain to carry the camera around. The camera does take better pics in the main, user skill level permitting.

I always seem to have 11GBytes or so free space on my phone and never get anywhere near to filling it up. My camera uses up its battery before filling up the memory. This would probably also be the case with the phone but I husband the power levels on that device – it’s mission critical.

After the weekend I transferred 1.4GB of photos and videos to my laptop – the total space used on the laptop by vids and pics as 167GB!

storage used for photos and videos over past 11 years I could still fit all the music on my hard drive onto the phone and still leave room for photos. I have 10.5GB worth of music though I hardly ever listen to most of it (I really do need to change my play list but I like Pink Floyd, Donna Summer, Bronski Beat and Joe Jackson 🙂 .

The size of the photo and video storage space is going to grow far more quickly than that I use for music which is pretty static – it’s an age thing. The chart on the right shows the growth in storage used for video and photos on my hard drive over the past 11 years. the last column is 2012 which has 7 months to go & we haven’t hit the summer holidays yet.

I store these pics in a variety of places. The question is how much is it worth to me to store them all online. 100GB is $199 pa on Dropbox. Microsoft SkyDrive is £32 per 100Gigs. Google Cloud storage is $12 a month ($144 pa) for 100GB but you also have to pay $0.12 per GB data xfer costs (from USA and EMEA – $0.21 from APAC) to access what you have stored (uploading seems to be free).  I guess that’s ok – thats only $12 to retrieve the whole lot.

Assuming I want to store all my photos on Google that would cost me twenty bucks a month (y’all) – roughly fourteen quid. I’m a heavy user but whatever the right number is for you this is probably going to be a cost we will all have to factor into our monthly household budgets in future.

That’s all folks…