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Rainy Barcelona, but good spirits in MWC itself February 22, 2010

Posted by kewroad in 2010 predictions, blogs, Broadband, Google, information technology, internet, ISP, IT, Microsoft, mobile, pr, social networks, Uncategorized, Windows 7, YouTube.
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So I’ve survived my 7th Mobile World Congress (my first rainy one, oh where was the lovely Barcelona sunshine when I needed it?) and it’s great to hear from many of the exhibitors that they had a much better Congress than last year and many talked of an emergence from the recession.

However, whilst there is some nostalgia over the heady days of the late 80s early 90s when glitz, glamour and entertainment on big ships and yachts were the order of the day, it’s good to know that those days will never come back (And by the way, how refreshing to see only a few stands resorting to scantily clad young girls for overweight middle aged business men old enough to be their fathers to drool over!)  Poor girls.

What’s perhaps good about coming out of a boom and almost bust time is that everyone is humbler, less arrogant, more keen to be ‘open’ and work together than before.  Ultimately, this has to be good for the customer.  More than any other show perhaps, there were more partnerships announced, more talk of openness and the ability to work together.

Two of the biggest pieces of news were around Microsoft and Google.  Undoubtedly there was a lot of buzz around Steve Ballmer’s press conference on Windows 7 to be released in time for the Christmas period.  His appearance emphasises the importance in this market.  Google unveiling its new mantra ‘Mobile First’ also captured the imagination of The Daily who gave it front page news.  Companies such as Google are fundamentally changing the mobile business and the established operators and equipment vendors need to understand how to work and more importantly compete with these new players.

Many at the show talked about the fact that with the explosion of mobile broadband, cloud computing and smart-phones, the technology is now fast becoming a reality for consumers to engage with brands, multimedia, social networking sites and applications.  Users can now check Facebook, watch YouTube, surf the web, download slide presentations and apps wherever they are, just by pressing a couple of buttons on their handset key pad or touchscreen.  

It’s undoubtedly an exciting time in which we live and reminds me of the PC explosion of the early 80s and the internet boom of the early 90s.

SCG

AOL Goes Out with A Twitter August 20, 2009

Posted by kewroad in internet, ISP, Twitter.
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Woke up this morning to find my AOL connection was kapput. After some DIY kit testing I realised my WLAN, DSL and claptop were AOK but the Internet was dead.  Discovering whether it was a big outage or just my personal bit of the Internet  was something of a trial. When I got online in the office, no alerts on technical support page, found  UK message boards have been culled and web chat was down for “improvements”.  Other than a cryptic message on the technical support line, I found out the scale of the problem through a quick experiment in crowdsourcing via Twitter. On a day when some media are turning cold on Twitter’s value,  I found that all that useless babble was invaluable and the  best way to find out exactly what was going on. Thank you Twitter

Ofcom on message? June 16, 2009

Posted by fundamentalz in Broadband, internet, ISP, IT, new media, Twitter.
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A recent study by Ofcom revealed that around 30% of people in the UK don’t have an internet connection at the moment. The same survey also highlights that 43% of these people would stay offline if they were offered a free computer and broadband. Main reasons for not having internet at home was a lack of interest or need. These results seem to indicate that a lot of work is still to be done to engage this group and highlight the benefits the internet can bring both to their lives and work.

According to the much awaited Digital Britain report which will be published today (lots of buzz around this on Twitter), everyone in Britain could be guaranteed broadband access by 2012 at speeds of 2Mb per second. Ofcom’s report reveals that average broadband speeds across the UK are currently around 3.6Mb. While these sorts of speeds are adequate for general browsing and online shopping, activities like downloading music, online gaming and streaming video, making the most of services like BBC iPlayer, will prove to be a challenge for most. Add to this, currently, rural connections are not good enough for even basic surfing most of the time, in some cases connection is even non-existent.

So what else needs to be done to make Britain truly digital? As with any service, maybe there is scope to target broadband offers more specifically to certain target groups, making the internet experience relevant to where you are, who you are and what you’re trying to do online.

For example with the iPhone fever taking over the globe, Nationwide Insurance recently launched a new advertising campaign promoting how customers could utilise their iPhone in the event of an accident, highlighting the various features such as GPS and camera.

Therefore a campaign showing how David Jones, 73, uses the internet to stay in touch with his family in Australia would surely be much more effective than terms such as fibre, 50Mbps and social networks.

E-Budget Days Long Past April 22, 2009

Posted by kewroad in government, internet, ISP, pr.
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budget-dayBudget Day here in the UK. Brings out the nostalgia in me for when this was the biggest day in the Internet calendar over here.

Ten years ago ISP pioneer UUNET used posting of the budget speech online as a demonstration of its bandwidth muscle.

In those dial-up, pre-ADSL days big document downloads took yonks or crashed in the process. UUNET struck a deal with the Treasury and the Beeb (I recall) to upload the full speech onto a dedicated webpage for easy downloads.  Our job was to promote the service and encourage journalists to use the web page.

All sounds very quaint today alongside Budget promises on broadband for all etc. And UUNET is now consumed within Verizon, following the collapse of  Worldcom.

Snail Mail’ll Get You! July 24, 2008

Posted by kewroad in anti-piracy, ISP, music.
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New anti-piracy initiative between UK ISPs and the music industry is supposed to have real claws. But somehow the threat of getting a good old fashioned letter in the post to re-educate you doesn’t seem to be that threatening. What’s more ISPs are falling over backwards to say what they won’t do to back up those letters with strong evidence of real wrong-doing e.g. no spying on what their customers get up to. So some deterrent?