Category: Commentary

Vodafone: Rental music is new and innovative

Al Russell, Vodafone’s head of internet and content services, said: “This generation does not want an archive of music. We offer unlimited music on a rental model – no-one has done this in the marketplace, and certainly not the iPhone. Actually, Al, what they don’t want is to pay a monthly fee for music they … Continue reading “Vodafone: Rental music is new and innovative”

Al Russell, Vodafone’s head of internet and content services, said:

“This generation does not want an archive of music. We offer unlimited music on a rental model – no-one has done this in the marketplace, and certainly not the iPhone.

Actually, Al, what they don’t want is to pay a monthly fee for music they can’t keep and don’t own. This has been proven again and again – which is why iTunes is doing well and every subscription music service out there remains in the doldrums.

Where have you been Al, if you think that subscription music models haven’t been tried before? You think Real’s Rhapsody is doing well? Or any of the Windows Media subscription services that we hear so little about?

See, thing is, Al, you don’t need to pimp music to get people using your services. Provision of content is not the job of the carrier. Stick to what you know and focus on giving us better carrier services rather than trying to compete in a market where you know nothing and can’t offer any value.

Apple may be making the music business look easy but it’s not easy – their success is a complete fluke. Microsoft fought for years with TV and music to try to get this kind of success and penetration and they failed abysmally. Same with other companies that tried to assume they were smarter than the consumer.

Are you arrogant enough to think that anyone outside of a big city would be remotely interested in streamed music to a handset?

What the hell do you know about this generation anyway?

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O2: upgrades GPRS -> EDGE nationwide

From a post on MacRumors: O2 is pleased to advise you that we are in the process of implementing new EDGE technology across the UK. This will greatly improve the data speed to 4 to 5 times faster than GPRS on 2G devices such as BlackBerry. To deliver EDGE, O2 has planned maintenance activities to … Continue reading “O2: upgrades GPRS -> EDGE nationwide”

From a post on MacRumors:

O2 is pleased to advise you that we are in the process of implementing new EDGE technology across the UK. This will greatly improve the data speed to 4 to 5 times faster than GPRS on 2G devices such as BlackBerry.

To deliver EDGE, O2 has planned maintenance activities to be carried out on parts of the GPRS network across the UK until the middle of November 2007. This will result in the loss of service to cells that are being upgraded for up to 2 hours at night during the maintenance window from 10pm to 6am.

The full list of EDGE Network upgrades is at that link. Relevant to NI:

Region Area Postcode Date
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT12 6HR 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT14 6NP 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT7 2GB 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT9 5DY 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT4 1DH 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT14 7EE 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT9 6SY 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT2 7BB 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT12 7GL 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT11 8BJ 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Malone BT9 5JH 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT3 9JS 29/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Portadown Craigavon BT63 5PE 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Antrim BT41 2LP 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT36 6UZ 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Portadown BT63 5BA 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Tommesbridge BT41 3RA 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT17 0AT 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders BELFAST BT17 0HD 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Carrickfergus BT38 9DE 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Upper Ballinderry BT28 2PQ 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Antrim BT41 4PR 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Carn Money BT36 6QD 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Milltown BT28 3SL 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Broughshane BT43 7HJ 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Ballymena BT42 3HJ 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast Int Airport BT29 4DW 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Newtonabbey BT36 7LQ 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT15 4AW 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders LISBURN BT28 2UR 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Antrim BT41 1PG 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Craigavon BT65 5AG 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Craigavon BT63 5QQ 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Craigavon BT63 5QE 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Larne BT40 2ST 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Lurgan BT67 9JD 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Dromore BT25 1PR 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Belfast BT8 7XP 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Ballyclare BT39 9BB 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Carrickfergus BT38 9DN 30/9/07
Scotland NI and Borders Sherriffs Mountain BT48 0JX 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Draperstown BT45 7ES 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Dungannon BT71 6SJ 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Londonderry BT48 7AY 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Castledawson BT45 8DU 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Moneymore BT45 7NZ 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Derry BT48 8PY 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Londonderry BT47 6JZ 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Londonderry BT47 5FX 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Londonderry BT47 3LZ 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Cookstown BT80 8HX 3/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Armagh BT60 1JD 27/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Omagh BT78 1PL 27/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Woodview BT61 9HL 27/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Enniskillen BT74 7HR 27/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Omagh BT79 7HT 27/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Omagh BT78 5LU 27/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Tandragee BT62 2EF 28/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Newcastle BT33 0LN 28/10/07
Scotland NI and Borders Kilkeel BT34 4BH 28/10/07

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Proof

I guess this is as convincing as anything of Creationism. Related posts: What are the real issues in Northern Ireland politics? Northern Ireland culture does not include Creationism Everyone thinks of changing the world, no one thinks of changing themselves 9/100 How I Find Blogging Ideas

I guess this is as convincing as anything of Creationism.

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iPhone countdown: 2 days to go

Having used an iPod touch now since Saturday, I can categorically say this is the best device I’ve ever owned. In fact, the only problem I have with the iPod touch is that it doesn’t have wireless other than WiFi. If it had even just GPRS then I’d be happy. This would have been tremendously … Continue reading “iPhone countdown: 2 days to go”

Having used an iPod touch now since Saturday, I can categorically say this is the best device I’ve ever owned.

In fact, the only problem I have with the iPod touch is that it doesn’t have wireless other than WiFi. If it had even just GPRS then I’d be happy. This would have been tremendously useful the last couple of days as I’ve been househunting. Thankfully my bank is willing to give me a large mortgage so my options for buying a house with her-indoors have been increased considerably. Finding houses has been a challenge however and being able to look up areas on Google Maps would have been killer. Luckily Maps on the hacked iPod touch does some aggressive caching and so you have some records of where you’ve looked. One thing that is depserately missing from MobileSafari is the option to “cache” web pages a bit like Mac OS X can save them as a zip or PDF. It would be very handy to have cached versions, maybe with a little date field?

Looking at the network options in Northern Ireland it seems we have good GSM coverage, fair GRPS coverage and poor EDGE coverage.

In terms of data:

Technology Max download (kbyte/s) Max Upload (kbyte/s)
GSM Data 1-2 1-2 SLOW
GPRS 8-10 3-5 Like Dialup
EDGE 20-60? 8-12? Like slow broadband

My S-E K800i allegedly has UMTS support as well as GPRS, it’s allegedly a 3G phone. Maybe….the few moments when I can get coverage. It’s like the old TVs with the indoor antennae. Hold it this way and you get 2K/s. Hold it this way and you get 30K/s. Just. Don’t. Move.

But it’s not just the download speed. I’ve browsed the web using my phone and it’s a torture of minimalist interfaces. Connecting over Bluetooth to my Macbook Pro makes a difference and at least I can find some lofty perch to set my phone on so I can get a good connection.

Considering the Cloud has opened at least 2 hotspots in the Province (one in Esporta in Holywood, the other I’ve seen is in Castlecourt in Belfast) and considering that iPhone gets the Cloud for free (or £3.99 a month for iPod touch users), it might be getting to the point where wireless is ubiquitous. Registering with FON might also help as BTOpenZone is doing a deal with FON so that every FON user gets free OpenZone access. Neat, huh?

So what’s my worry?

Well, firstly, I have an existing Orange contract. I’m not happy with it and am quickly coming to realise that the £45 contract with O2 would better suit my needs as I’m tending to consume more data than make calls. My base contract with O2 is about £23 a month but with data etc I end up paying more than £60 some months…

I’ve been debating this over the last few days with some friends and her-indoors.

You’re going to buy one. Why are we even debating this?

Matt – just tell yourself whatever lies you need to justify the purchase and move on.

Are you going to keep debating this even as the guy hands you your receipt on Friday?

So…

Yeah okay.

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It’s phone week. Google dips a toe.

Hot on the heels of the Open Social, Google has announced the Open Handset Alliance. Handset makers such as LG, HTC, Motorola and Samsung (essentially those who have had their lunch money stolen by Apple) are pledging to implement the software, based on a Linux OS. It’s also being supported by major carriers such as … Continue reading “It’s phone week. Google dips a toe.”

Hot on the heels of the Open Social, Google has announced the Open Handset Alliance. Handset makers such as LG, HTC, Motorola and Samsung (essentially those who have had their lunch money stolen by Apple) are pledging to implement the software, based on a Linux OS. It’s also being supported by major carriers such as Sprint and T-Mobile in the US, Europe’s Telefonica, and Japan’s KDDI and NTT DoCoMo (essentially another set of companies who’ve not got the iPhone for sale).

Damien had previously claimed that Google will release specs for mobiles and get someone to build them for as cheap as possible. That’s not exactly what’s happening here. Google is building an advertising platform here.

Get it: there is no gPhone.

This is the interesting bit.

… the OS will not be branded or charge users for each program. Google … will instead collect revenues from ads that appear on Android phones.

I’m not sure I’m really up for that. I already loathe software which spends half of the load time with a splash screen and the built-in software which is on my Sony Ericsson K800i is sluggish enough already and I hate the advertising splash screens it has.

They’re saying its all about making cellphones do whatever YOU want it to do. That’s a dirty marketing lie. This will be about making the cellphone give more nickels and dimes to Google. They’re saying it’s about choice, low cost, creativity, innovation. Their cast of people introducing the initiative want a phone which keeps tabs on their kids, shares a family calendar, does their taxes. Very funny.

I’ve always been a proponent of Google but this, combined with Open Social, just seems to be a rather greasy sweaty hand enclosing around areas that should be free. I mean free in terms of access all areas. Free from advertising.

The hardware manufacturers will probably be happy enough to build something but I predict this will be a Zune rather than an iPod, a ROKR rather than an iPhone. I dn’t think it’s possibly to build something with vision by handing people an SDK and saying “Go for it!” That’s not how the iPhone was built and it’s also not how Google was built.

Anyway, introducing Android:

At this point it’s an SDK. Sometime in late 2008 we might see a phone using it. Whether it will be any different to any currently shipping phones who knows. I think Google might just have invented the Myspace of Mobile Phone Operating Systems (for those who don’t get the reference: that’s a description of most Myspace pages. A hash of oddly placed components, clashing backgrounds and adverts. With a tiny smattering of content.).

Slashdot has it’s share of interesting ideas.

If you want data too, skip the GSM bugs and go for a full-feature GSM/GPRS module. It’s got all you could ask for. Just add an antenna and a battery to your board and you’re set. Add everything up and you will end up half the price of an iPhone. Best of all, it will run _Your Stuff_, and _Your Stuff_ Only.

Ahhh, yes. So you can have a cell phone that looks like one of the following:

gPhone iPhone

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iPhone countdown: 4 days to go…

Counting down the days to the iPhone launch in the UK is causing stress for some. One friend my mine was cataloguing all of the addresses and contact number for every O2 store and Carphone Warehouse store in the province with the thought that he’d be prepared to drop everything and go get one on … Continue reading “iPhone countdown: 4 days to go…”

Counting down the days to the iPhone launch in the UK is causing stress for some. One friend my mine was cataloguing all of the addresses and contact number for every O2 store and Carphone Warehouse store in the province with the thought that he’d be prepared to drop everything and go get one on launch day.

O2 expects the iPhone to be O2 UK’s biggest seller this Christmas ”by a mile”

”I played with it for two minutes and just thought, ‘oh my God, this is leagues above anything I’ve ever seen before’

– Matthew Key, O2 UK chief Executive

I’m am planning to buy one (still having to ditch Orange is a major factor). Just not yet.

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ITV: there’s this thing called the internet…

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It’s 2007, guys.

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Early Adopters

Being an early adopter is nothing to do with the quality of software and all about mindset. From 42: This fucking sucks, but serves me right for being an early adopter. Nope. You’re not an early adopter. You made mistakes. You allowed Time Machine to access your cloned backup which thereby invalidated the whole point … Continue reading “Early Adopters”

Being an early adopter is nothing to do with the quality of software and all about mindset.

From 42:

This fucking sucks, but serves me right for being an early adopter.

Nope. You’re not an early adopter. You made mistakes. You allowed Time Machine to access your cloned backup which thereby invalidated the whole point of cloning it. You made it “not a clone”. You may have removed a directory with a simple rm command but, yeah, it borked something up. The lesson here is don’t mess with things unless you’re sure AND always have a backup. I’m a bit dubious about this idea of zombie processes surviving a system restart. I mean….you what???

Being an early adopter is all about attitude. You have to be prepared for thing not working the way you assume. There’s a horde of people backing out of Leopard because their VPN doesn’t work. The truth is that we got rid of Internet Connect so the settings for a Virtual Private Network are now available in the Network pane of System Preferences and not in their own application. There’s other things that are bugbears for people and I use that term accurately.

A Bugbear is a legendary creature comparable to the bogeyman, bogey, bugaboo, hobgoblin and other creatures of folklore, all of which were historically used in some cultures to frighten disobedient children.

If you’re not sure, then hold off upgrading. Rely on your local AASP or the Genius Bar in your local Apple Store to advise you. Consider the applications you use most frequently and research whether they will break. There was a lot of FUD about Illustrator CS3 and Leopard with one local expert crowing about it (the way he’s crowed about every upgrade and indeed claims to have Mac OS 9 machines running because Mac OS X failing is inevitable). Turns out it works.

My own move to Leopard has been seamless and I’ve spent the last week helping people realise that different is not bad and in many ways can be better. They just need to unlearn some old behaviours. Beware of cottage wisdom from non-specialists. The same folk who would have forwarded the idea that zapping the PRAM and rebuilding the desktop database were the only ways to resolve issues will fill your head full of their voodoo (like one individual who invented a new six-key keyboard shortcut…)

Check your apps and when done, upgrade. Keep your backup untouched for a couple of weeks until you realise you’ve forgotten about it. Then move on.

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The Fortune 5 000 000

As you can tell I’ve been reading a lot from the 37signals blog this week. The title of this post comes from their post about Why Enterprise Software Sucks. A few years ago everything was about the Fortune 500. Even I, as a lowly network engineer, had some familiarity with it. We’d all heard most … Continue reading “The Fortune 5 000 000”

As you can tell I’ve been reading a lot from the 37signals blog this week.

The title of this post comes from their post about Why Enterprise Software Sucks.

A few years ago everything was about the Fortune 500. Even I, as a lowly network engineer, had some familiarity with it. We’d all heard most of the names for sure. The 2007 list, for example, looks like this.

  1. Wal-Mart Stores
  2. Exxon Mobil
  3. General Motors
  4. Chevron
  5. ConocoPhillips
  6. General Electric
  7. Ford Motor
  8. Citigroup
  9. Bank of America
  10. American International Group

As a small Mac-focused company, there’s very little that we can target at these immense corporations. For one thing, they are pretty much standardised on Windows. That kinda kills any development stone dead. There’s some work we can do in the enterprise space which is platform-agnostic and we probably have a leg up on many in our position.

But is this where the money is?

I don’t think so.

Landing those big deals with the big companies out there lands you in a world of competition – where you’re often competing with the staff inside the company for work (which can make co-operation very difficult).

There are literally millions of companies out there and everyone, especially small businesses aiming to start to make it big, should be aiming at the SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) sector. These companies have more limited budgets it’s true, but they are also much more in need of external expertise.

I said on a forum I run recently:

90% of small businesses don’t need to run a mail server on site. That sort of thing should be outsourced.

The other 10% are, of course, Microsoft Certified Partners….who insist on installing Exchange on a DSL line…

Outsourcing is a dirty word in many areas. It reminds me of my experiences with Compass, Nortel, CSC, IBM, Flextronics and other companies who I had dealings with. I’ve been outsourced and I’ve witnessed outsourcing and I have never found the process to be fulfilling or enjoyable. Quite the opposite. It ruined working relationships, built up hostility within teams and fostered a Can’t Do attitude in almost every case.

In these examples, it was the outsourcing of people which caused the problem. People are crazy, emotional, irrational. Of course it’s not going to be simple.

But should a mortgage advice/brokerage company run a mail server onsite? Should a design firm have any more technology onsite than the need to store their image libraries for swift access? Why does a company where everyone has a laptop feel the need to run essential services on their business broadband lines which, by the way, have ZERO assurance on uptime or bandwidth. (Yes, we’re getting dangerously into Bedouin territory here).

Outsourcing these functions in a small business where it’s not someone’s entire job makes a lot of sense. This is why, despite being a “technology” company, Infurious does not have their own dedicated mail server (sitting on a fluffy carpet in a warm dusty office). It’s why Mac-Sys, despite being a technology company, advises their customers to using hosting plans for their mail and web servers. Email is so important that you want it to be on 24×7, sitting in a cooled rack of other servers with multiply-redundant network pipes and avoid outages caused by someone kicking the cable while slouching in their chair.

There’s a lot of work involved in freeing the Fortune 5 000 000, the hosts of small businesses out there, from the legacy of blunders caused by centralising their infrastructure around legacy Exchange installations. Just my £0.02

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Would someone just buy that man a toupee?

David on the

David on the I think Microsoft would be wise to remember that trying to buy cool has a tendency of making you look even more like a dork. I guess they have to try something — anything — to improve their image to investors, entrepreneurs, future employees, and the media.

Ouch, this means it’s not just me that thinks Microsoft is making some major blunders.

But this is the problem when you’ve got higher-ups who just don’t understand cool. Microsoft never did. They were never hip and happening any further than the celebs they’d invite to their product launches, most of whom were very public Mac users. Further pinning their hopes for the future on Ray Ozzie (whose very name should inspire fear and doubt due to inflicting Lotus Notes on the world), Microsoft is definitely entering the Autumn of their time. Sure, they’re still pulling in billions in revenue, but for how long. It took them 30 years to get where they are now, it’ll probably take another 20 of them to fall.

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