Just this side of sane

CES 2012: Microsoft's keynote. Speak it softly, Steve!

2012-01-10T21:41:00.000Z

Last night, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft presented what they had claimed would be their last opening keynote. The most interesting points, though, were the ones that were unsaid.

As usual, Gary Shapiro, the Eternal Leader of the Consumer Electronics Association, intrduced it. His spin on the ending of MS's annual pre-show presentation: that it was a joint decision. I have my doubts, lots of them. Reading the body language, I'd say that wasn't entirely the whole story. There was a mawkish handover to Steve Ballmer of a framed set of photographs from previous keynotes that will sit well in a restroom somewhere in Seattle, and a lot of half-hearted back-slapping displays of mutual respect.

And this is where we hear the first big hidden hint. Shapiro kept the door open for a return from Microsoft post the 2013 Show. That in itself isn't so surprising, but the way he phrased it was - referring not to Steve Ballmer, but to "The leader of Microsoft". Ballmer looked momentarily struck by that, before getting back to speed. This is worthy of interest - a power play by Shapiro, pointedly showing a loss of respect for Ballmer, an acknowledgement of information obtained behind the scenes, or just the caginess of a natural politician?

There were some notable product announcements, mostly new allegiances and step-changes. The Kinect will become available for the PC, something that was blindingly obvious ever since it was introduced for the Xbox. Both Windows 8 and Windows Phone will have voice control at their hearts, successfully demonstrated by one employee...to need a little work yet. MSFT showed off the Windows 8 "Metro" interface - interesting, but hardly new news.

What were more intriguing were the several mentions of Windows 8 on ARM (regular readers will recall I broke this story about 15 months ago) - but no demonstrations. Telling, that, no? As a number of other commentators noted, Nvidia also failed to demonstrate Windows 8's ARM port in their own keynote, which left a hole in their presentation big enough to drive an x86-powered Ford (another MS announcement) through.

Back to body language, Ballmer's was just a little ambiguous - let's be more exact; he flinched - every time he mentioned the big February milestone for Windows 8. Even the extra leap day in the month this year might not be enough, he seemed to be thinking.

And finally, the biggie, the echelon of elephants stacked pyramid-style in the corner of the proverbial room...who would be taking Microsoft's place as the leading pre-show keynote?

I'm going to shuffle to the thin end of the branch I'm teetering on, and make a prediction.

Apple.

Well yes, obviously, huh? Not quite. Apple has pointedly eschewed CES for years, preferring to present to their faithful congregations at Developer Conferences and the like. There's never been a completely believable explanation, but it has to be connected to MSFT's guaranteed pre-Show spotlight. Apple has never liked sitting in someone else's shadow, particularly that of the owner of the predominant personal computer platform.

Getting Apple to lead the Show next year would be a stunning win for the CEA - and perhaps not before time. Although Microsoft has showed some genuine innovation (in Kinect and the Metro interface), for the first time in a very long time indeed, it's been very, very late to the smartphone party, and missed the tablet shindig completely. Almost everything Microsoft's done in recent years, other than in those two products, has been in response to Apple. Apple has shown leadership in interactivity, in design, in style, in robustness, in market-breaking new concepts and products, and MS has had to watch. Microsoft's plays in the non-PC markets have mostly been, by comparison, me-toos, whilst Apple now owns the mind-share in personal consumer electronics. And it /is/ the Consumer Electronics Show, no?

And there's more. According to today's figures, MSFT's market cap is less than 2/3rds that of APPL, and the trend is not in MSFT's favour. So now, MSFT is not only no longer the CE leader, it's not even the biggest player, and that's unlikely to change soon - or at all. Microsoft still has majority ownership of the PC market, but those figures are declining too, and the PC is looking more and more dated as a product, and as an architecture. Ballmer's the Captain on a leaky, listing and sail-shredded ship, and he's desperately casting around for buckets of tar. It's hard to know whether Microsoft needs a new Captain, or a new ship.

Gary Shapiro is a consummate politician. That's how he's kept his job as the CEA's leader and figurehead for so long. In his place, there's only one phone call I'd make, to fill the hole that Microsoft leaves in the Show programme, and it terminates at 1, Infiinite Loop.

The only question in my own mind is - was that call made before or after MS departed?

Don't occupy Wall Street - occupy the patents courts!

2011-11-04T16:22:00.005Z

[From a comment thread in The Register]

For some time now, I've felt that patents have been over-used and over-priced...and heading for a big fall - not just in value, either.

They're being used not only to obtain value from invention - as was always the way - but now to stifle innovation, and - worse - also to set out deliberately to destroy companies. See Jobs' recently-published quotes on Android, and Apple's outspoken intentions towards Samsung, if you're in any doubt.

It feels like we're on the eve of a war. I think we probably are, but it will come from an unexpected direction.

In China, India and other emerging economies, patents don't hold back progress in the way they do in established economies. Sooner or later, the biggest Western governments will realise the potential consequences. At some point - and it may happen sooner than we expect - there must be moves to weaken patents.

That could come from a number of directions. The entry barrier to patent enforcement litigation could be raised by having the litigant place a large bond (say, three times the compensation/penalties sought) in court escrow, to be released to the defendant if the case fails.

Given that a lot of patents are spurious, the defendant could be granted a pre-hearing opportunity to overturn the patent by submision of proof of prior art or lack of inventive step - meaning that any litigant could be faced not only with the potential of financial disaster in failure, the risk of having their patents ruled invalid.

The actions of the court in enforcing the patent could be limited: an upper limit on claim size; a strictly limited window of opportunity to file claims (in effect, a statute of limitations on patent violations); the restriction of recourse to retrospective establishment of a court-set reasonable licence fee; the removal of any powers to ban sales of supposedly infringing items, except where the defendant has failed to pay the retrospective licence fee after a reasonable period.

One way or the other, the current patents system has to be fixed, and on a worldwide basis - and not just to protect business interests.

Otherwise the human race's dying words could well be, "We couldn't shoot down the meteorite, because the patent court grounded the weapon system."

"Human Resources" - the phrase that should have died a-birthing

2011-10-07T17:31:00.004+01:00

My inbox was assaulted today by an email from a publisher that shall remain nameless, with the subject line: "Human Resources: Managing your Most Valuable Asset".

I unsubscribed at that point. Anyone who can't see the irony in that email title isn't qualified to pronounce on it, and I wrote as much to the company, expecting it to be forwarded to the digital shredder.

Much to my surprise, the editor emailed me back. And I'll give her full credit, she was courteous, even if she did justify the use of "Human Resources" on the basis that everyone else is doing the same: argumentum ad populum, for anyone who still cares about debating rules.

It would have been churlish not to have replied, so I did. Here's what I wrote:

Hi Name Omitted, and thanks for responding.

Having been in business for over a quarter of a century, and running them for most of the last decade, I'm painfully aware that "Human Resources" is a term in common use. However, that in itself doesn't justify its use: that's just following the sheep. Buzzwords can change. Some should.

Any company that truly does value its staff and their contribution to its profits - and wants to keep both - has to do better than speak of its people in terms that reduce them to the same status as a desk fan. The word "company" means a group of people with a common purpose - and that's what distinguishes staff from "resources". You could replace every desk in a business with a different model overnight, and trading would continue unaffected. Try doing that with staff...

It's rather ironic that we as a community finally managed to bring an end to the thoroughly unsavoury practice of treating women in business as objects - only to extend the same courtesy to everyone else too!

Oh well, rant over. :) Thanks again for your response - and if I can in some small way have moved your (personal and collective) views on "HR", I'll have had a great Friday!

Best wishes,

Jon

So, am I a lone voice in a confederation of the dumb, or a dumb schmuck in the confederation of the smart?

I Told You So! (Episode 2)

2011-05-09T13:14:00.009+01:00

Way back in November, in a blog article called "ARM's Cortex-A15 CPU, and how it will change your world"", I closed with this paragraph:

So here's the real left-field question: given the power and BoM cost savings, how long now before Apple ditches Intel completely for ARM?

In a follow-up ("Desktop ARMs - and what they'll mean for Microsoft"), I expanded on those thoughts, opening with:

If Apple finds that the ARM processors out-compete Intel on price and power consumption, and at least match x86 for performance, the choice to switch is going to be a no-brainer.

And lo, it came to pass. Again.

Today, Charlie Demerjian published a very interesting article entitled "Apple dumps Intel from laptop lines" in his own blog, "Semi Accurate".

It seems as though I've been a tad prescient. That, or well-informed.

The rest of my blog article contained some other, equally dramatic, predictions. Well, let's call them "predictions" for now. One, which I've since admitted came from insider sources (in the first "I Told You So!"), was that Microsoft was porting Windows and Office to ARM. There were several more that are waiting to be proven.

Now here's another, just to keep your interest whetted. Ric Myslevski has written a well-informed article for The Register, titled "Intel's Tri-Gate gamble: It's now or never". In it, he adds a throw-away speculation near the bottom of the last page: "Intel could license the ARM architecture and start buiding its own ARM variants in its own fabs, using its 22nm Tri-Gate process. That's unlikely, but stranger things have happened."

Stranger things indeed. And I think that Rik is well and truly on the money. Intel's executives are very, very far from dumb. They are painfully aware of ARM's squeeze on their markets, both from above and below, as I'd outlined in that first blog article. Intel really has three obvious plays they could try:

1. Find a transformational technology that puts them in contention with ARM but retains x86 compatibility.. Intel's Tri-Gate announcement was clearly an attempt at this play.

2. Try to find a way to put ARM out of business, or at least weaken it. We've not seen this attempted seriously yet, and it's reasonable to wonder why that is.

3. License ARM cores for desktop use, and keep in the market by following the market..

I contemplated in the second blog post:

Here's a statement I never thought I'd make: with a stock and cash exchange, Apple. Could. Buy. Intel.

Now things start to add up.

* Apple needs a top-tier ARM supplier. Their relationship with Samsung, their current ARM fabrication partner, is reportedly getting a little rocky. Industry reports suggest that they're considering switching to Intel chip fabs.

* Intel needs an answer to the ARM squeeze on x86.

* Apple has tons of ready cash.

What it all adds up to is the possibility that Apple could invest in Intel, both commercially and financially, to license the ARM cores, and set up new fabs to make Tri-Gate ARMs, for both their iOS and MacOS products.

It would make a great deal of sense. It would also give Apple the power to put the squeeze on Microsoft. If only Apple has access to the Tri-Gate ARMs, it leaves Microsoft out in the cold - or rather, the far-too-warm - when MS start to produce the ARM versions of Windows, which will only be able to run on old-school pre-Tri-Gate hardware.

Microsoft will have to consider a very similar investment in Intel, for the same reasons, before Apple can lock them out.

Whichever way you look at it, Intel's prospects may well have brightened.

LATER NOTE (2011/05/18): it seems that one or two people may have read this blog, after all. :) Paul Otellini of Intel was put on the spot in an investors' meeting about the possibility of Intel using Tri-Gate to fab ARMs, and did his level best to dampen speculation: "The short answer is 'No'."

Mind you, if Apple came knocking, with barrow-loads of dollars in tow...? It's possible that Otellini's playing a wooing game, as his next comments could be construed as a come-on: "We have [...] an ARM architecture license. The important thing for us is to figure out how to get paid and how to be present. And we think the best way to be paid and present [...] is to build best-of-class chips."

EVEN LATER NOTE (2011/05/28): perhaps Paul Otellini wasn't reading from the hymn-sheet after all...Intel's CFO Stacy Smith appears to be a lot more positive to the idea of Tri-Gate on ARM, and specifically mentioned Apple as a possible buyer (of devices, not Intel!), according to a Reuters story this week.

Now, bear in mind that a CFO's words probably carry even more weight in the financial markets than the CTO's. After all, CTOs have been known to make some pretty daft comments - but the CFO is the person the money listens to. Smith said that an Apple deal was "Not in the works today". To the untrained observer, that's a flat denial, but it's more likely to be coded speech for, "We're not manufacturing yet, but a deal's cooking." We shall see. Keep watching this space!

Why Gov.UK funding goes to the big boys

2011-05-08T20:29:00.003+01:00

[This came up in a discussion on Facebook in a friend's Wall, when it was pointed out that a large proportion of research and business development grant cash goes to big business.]

I'm not surprised that small enterprise doesn't apply for (or doesn't get granted) funding through these routes.

Firstly, the fund-matching criteria require an appropriate amount of liquid cash, whose expenditure must be carefully accounted for. Yes, there's the option of match-finding "in kind" through staff salaries etc. (where rules permit), but even that has bear traps. One friend who applied for such funding, and used his own (unpaid) labour as the funds match, discovered to his horror that he had to pay income tax and NI on the amounts he _hadn't_ paid himself in order to trigger release on the major tranche.

Secondly, the compliance régime can mean a lot of paperwork and effort. Fine when you've plenty of experience of what the funding body requires (as large concerns do); arduous and frustrating when you don't - and it ties up limited staff availability. And if an SMB hires someone experienced to help apply for and manage the funding*, the amount of funding that actually makes it to the project itself can make the game of raising it barely worth the candle. Big business doesn't have these problems. A large enough enterprise can retain someone permanent and experienced to deal with funding, streamline the process and the funding stream, and use its plentiful staffing to cover the funding matches.

It would be soooo nice if there was genuine Governmental effort to boost entrepreneurs and new enterprise, rather than lip-service, half-hearted follow-through, and an erratic drip feed of funding that's first in the list to be cut when times are tight. The only thing that'll pull the UK out of economic doldrums is SMB enterprise. Our present Government, and those that preceded it, talks the talk - and walks away.

(* Absolutely not trying to tread on anyone's toes, BTW. It's probably better to hire a funding consultant than not get any at all.)

Sir Humphrey and the Consultation

2011-04-08T13:28:00.005+01:00

[This was inspired by the current Review of statutory duties placed on local government procedure. Anyone who's watched "Yes, Minister" should recognise the style.]

INT. CABINET OFFICE

JIM HACKER is pacing, SIR HUMPHREY placidly watching.

JIM HACKER
This is preposterous! I don't have time to
be reviewing every bit of legislation that's
ever been passed, on the off-chance it
might be inconvenient for someone!

SIR HUMPHREY
You don't have to...

JIM HACKER
I mean - how can we possibly manage an
exercise that big without inventing three
extra days in the week and abolishing sleep?

SIR HUMPHREY
You might care to...

JIM HACKER
I just can't see how...

SIR HUMPHREY
Minister!

JIM HACKER
...Mmm?

SIR HUMPHREY
It's really quite simple, Minister. Announce
a public consultation.

JIM HACKER
But that'll mean even more work!

SIR HUMPHREY
Not necessarily, Minister. It's all about
managing expectations.

JIM HACKER
Mine or yours?

SIR HUMPHREY
The public's, of course. You announce the
consultation with fanfares and speeches.
Then you summarise all the primary
legislation in a couple of spreadsheets.
I think - oh, a thousand rows or so each
ought to do it. Then you publish the
spreadsheets and announce a closing date for
comments of a week later. Or two, if you're
feeling courageous. You're not feeling
courageous, are you, Minister?

JIM HACKER
Well, I have my...
(catches himself)
No, no, of course not, Sir Humphrey!

SIR HUMPHREY
Delighted to hear it. So, by the time anyone
whose opinion is actually worth anything has
even started on the job, the consultation is
over, and you can plough ahead doing whatever
it was you were planning to do anyway.

JIM HACKER
Sir Humphrey, that is brilliant! You are an
absolute genius!

SIR HUMPHREY
Yes Minister.

Intel's ARM replacement?

2011-02-15T12:30:00.004Z

So Intel has announced their ARM-killer device: the "Medfield".

Medfield is a power-constrained dual core Atom. Although Intel hasn't said as much, it's reasonable to expect that they'll be making system-on-chip (SoC) devices using the Medfield core, particularly given recent acquisitions that enhance their silicon portfolio to include modern wireless and graphics support.

Will it be enough?

Unlike Microsoft, Intel doesn't have a great history of entering markets opened by its competitors

It's a hard one to predict. Unlike Microsoft, Intel doesn't have a great history of entering and then dominating markets opened by its competitors. In fact, it's often struggled to retain control of its own core markets. AMD, for example, has taken and retained a significant portion of Intel's market share with its lower-cost x86 processors. That's despite being a market follower, not a market leader, and hence always a generation behind its larger rival. (It's notable that AMD hasn't attempted to compete in the mobile device space, preferring to concentrate on CPUs for desktop and server products.)

ARM CPUs achieved their popularity because of three killer benefits: great processing power per watt, a really low price:performance ratio, and small physical size, all of which earned them a massive lead in the small embedded systems market.

But that's not why ARM dominated their competitors. The real reason has little to do with those benefits. ARM achieved their lofty position by moving from being a chip manufacturer to being a processor core licensor. At a stroke, they improved their cashflow, as intellectual property (IP), once created, doesn't have a lead time to manufacture, and you don't have to warehouse huge stocks of IP somewhere air-conditioned, waiting for someone to buy it: "dead money" until the customer orders them and pays the invoices. They made those difficulties, endemic to manufacture, someone else's problem.

That's why ARM survived successive boom-busts, but the real success came from the number of companies who licensed ARM cores and embedded them in their own products. It reads like a high-school register call of everyone in the embedded device space. I'm not going to list them here: go to ARM's site and read it. It's long - no less than 158 licencees and foundries - and very impressive.

Intel's biggest problem is going to be that it's going to be fighting a war on 159 fronts

Intel's biggest problem is going to be that it's going to be fighting a war on 159 fronts - including ARM, of course - if it wants to claim for itself some of ARM's market. It's going to be doing so against opponents who are well armed, well-entrenched and fanatical to their cause. It's going to be trying to make alliances with sovereign powers that are well-disposed to ARM, cynical of Intel, and little inclined to switch, unless the benefits over ARM are very, very compelling.

Intel's Atom offerings to date haven't exactly set the world alight - well, unless you count heat dissipation. Potential partners have responded to Intel's bugle with a resounding..."Meh." Those that did venture to make Atom-based products found that their netbooks, supposed to change the portable computing battlefield, instead met a "Meh" from the buying public too.

This has put Intel in a very difficult position. The Atom was specifically designed for portable computing devices, and the indifference that met netbooks has, by association, hit Atom too. Intel is scrambling now to find a niche in which Atom can play successfully, and my feeling is that Medfield is probably their last serious attempt to achieve a real share of a sector in which they've never really sat easily - and their partners, burnt in the netbook fiasco, are going to need a lot of persuading to put big money behind Atom a second time.

Intel's Atom customers have a single point of supply; a single point of failure

And let's not forget the point I made above, the biggest difference between the two companies. ARM is a licensor, with a huge number of partners all making their own devices, and a very healthy cashflow that can only be damaged if manufacturing problems hit all their licensees at the same time. Intel is a chip maker, and - as the recent $700m recall of the "Cougar Point" chipset demonstrates - its customers are very vulnerable to Intel manufacturing issues: a single point of supply (for Atom devices) means a single point of failure, whereas they can buy ARMs from almost anyone.

I have no doubt that Intel will be marketing Medfield aggressively - and maybe, just possibly, that might tip the scales. But I can't help but think that it's the wrong product, too little, too late. AMD seems doomed to be the Intel wannabe that can't win, but won't die. And now Intel tries to be the same thing to ARM.

Ironic, no?

Why Steve Jobs' absence might help Apple's health

2011-01-18T13:06:00.004Z

I'm not the kind of person who wishes ill health on anyone, even my worst enemy. I took no pleasure in the news that Steve Jobs is stepping back from Apple for the sake of his health. But I do have some hope that it might signal a new direction for a company I respect, but whose products I don't want.

Let me explain what I mean. I was at a friend's a few evenings ago. He's a big fan of Apple's kit. We were chatting, and listening to music on his Apple TV. There was a track on my mobile phone I wanted him to hear. The conversation went like this:

"Has the the Apple TV got Bluetooth?"

"No, sorry."

"OK, well, if I put my phone on your network and set it up as a UPnP audio streamer, it'll pick it up and browse it, right?"

"No, it doesn't do ordinary streaming. I can send files from the iPad, though."

"Huh. Look, the iPad has Bluetooth, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, my phone knows A2DP. You can pick up the file from there, yes?"

"iPad doesn't know A2DP."

"Well, how about I 'tooth the file to the iPad, then you can send it on to the Apple TV." (Getting desperate now; I don't like copying IP around.)

"It won't accept Bluetoothed files."

"And it can't browse my phone over wireless, using uPnP?"

"Nope."

"Right, well how about I hand you over the microSD memory card from my phone?"

"iPad doesn't support removable memory."

I played the song using my mobile's speaker.

Now, that's a couple of self-confessed alpha geeks, using every trick in their books to try to play a tune from my phone using Apple kit. What chance do mere mortals have? And every way was blocked because Apple decreed it so. It wouldn't have been difficult for Apple to have included those facilities, but they said:

Thou shalt have no streaming server support in Apple TV"
Thou shalt have no streaming server support on iProducts
Thou shalt not use Bluetooth the way God and Ericsson meant it to be, but only in the ways decreed by Us
There shall be no removable anything in our iProducts. What you've got, you've got. Be glad of it, and want no more. Or buy the next, bigger, one when it comes out.

See what I mean? Welcome to the world of jaw-droppingly expensive consumer disposables. When your battery starts losing capacity, pay a fortune to an Apple Centre to get it replaced, or buy a new device. When your battery pegs out on a long plane flight, be glad you had the use of it whilst you could. Don't expect to do anything other than what Apple decrees on its own hardware. Because you don't own the hardware really; Apple does, and Apple says what you can do with it.

Actually, I can tell Apple what it can do with it. I like being able to carry a charged spare battery on the place. I like to watch YouTube every now and then. I like being able to stream my phone's music to my Bluetooth-enabled car radio. I like to add to my device's memory when it's getting a bit full.

The annoying thing is that I want to buy Apple's stuff. I was an early adopter of the Mac Mini, and loved it. If the MacBook Air had a removable battery and a DVD burner, I'd have it. If the iPad were about half or two-thirds as expensive, and had a microSD slot, Flash support and a user-replaceable battery, my wife and I would probably have had one each by now. It's hugely frustrating to me that every time Apple comes out with a nifty new piece of kit, it doesn't meet my needs. And the decisions that dictated the specs that caused that problem arose, I believe, from Apple's Executive Office.

Jobs' illness is very unfortunate, and I genuinely hope he recovers and goes on to lead as long and healthy a life as any liver transplant patient could hope for. But I think it will be best both for his health and Apple's if he does what he promises, and stands back from the company now.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, his vision transformed the company and its products. But now I believe he's become a hindrance: a portcullis between the company and its customers, and a barrier to its growth - yes, Apple could grow faster, if its products were less encumbered by executive doctrine.

Get well, Steve. But let Junior fight his own battles now. It's time for Dad to step back.

Starting your own UK Company - it's not that scary!

2010-12-28T23:31:00.016Z

[This article is about forming Companies in the UK. Specifically, my experience covers England and Wales. To the best of my knowledge, the details are the same if forming in Scotland or Northern Ireland, but there may be differences in companies law in those countries, so please seek detailed advice if you are forming your company there.]

Whether you're launching yourself as a consultant, or starting another kind of business, the one thing you really need is a company of your own. For a lot of people, that's a big, scary idea, and they simply don't know where to start.

The good news is that it's trivially easy, and not very expensive either.

Finding a name

So what do you need? Well, the first thing is a name. You want a name that's memorable, and descriptive or suggestive of what you're selling (without limiting the future scope of the company). Being earlier in the alphabet is also useful. Don't use a dictionary word on its own: firstly, someone will already be using it, and secondly, you can't trademark/service mark dictionary words, you need to do something with it such as write it in a unique font or combine it with other words. ("Bright" isn't a trademark; "Bright Flight" is.) Be as inventive as you can.

Your best friends here are Companies House (http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/), Google and WHOIS - I use http://www.virtualnames.co.uk/whois.php when I'm not using a Linux PC. Companies House's WebCHeck (their capitalisation) service lets you look for past, present and proposed company names, and make sure you're not going to conflict with someone else's trading name. WHOIS lets you search for related domain names. You want a .com or a .co.uk (both, ideally) as a bare minimum. Ideally, you want the full set of .com, .org, .net, .co.uk, .org.uk, .info, .eu and .biz available. You may wish also to consider .gb.com, .uk.com, .gb.net and .uk.net.

My experience is that this process - coming up with a list of candidate names, removing the ones that conflict with other entities and owned trademarks - takes several days. Don't get upset if your favourite name gets eliminated, or you'll find it a depressing process!

Domain names

Before you register the company, buy the domain names. They're not expensive. Getting the full set above (apart from the ones in the "You may also wish to consider" list) will cost you only £111+VAT from VirtualNames (http://www.virtualnames.co.uk/) - a domain registrar/ISP that I strongly recommend.

Why do you want to register the domains first? Because it stops cyber-squatters, who keep eagle eyes on newly registered companies at Companies House, from getting there before you.

Once you've secured the domains, you're ready to move onto company registration.

Buying your company

Now you're ready to buy your company. I'm going to assume that you want to form a Company Limited By Shares, the "standard" kind, but I'll cover other options later.

Years ago, it cost a small fortune. You'd have to buy a pre-formed company with a stupid name from an accountant or solicitor, along with its Company Seal, then go through the faff, bother and expense of changing the name to something you preferred - usually paying the original registrant even more to help you. Alternatively, you could operate it under another name...but "Clever Ideas (trading as Dumbsmart Bridge Ltd.)" never struck me as a great look.

These days it's a lot simpler - and you don't need a Company Seal any more! You can do it all yourself, direct with Companies House, but it's a lot easier to get someone else to do it. Surprisingly, it's often cheaper, and they'll provide you with Articles of Association, Memoranda of Association and a few other extras too. The firm I've used most of all is Companies Made Simple ("CMS" for brevity), at http://www.companiesmadesimple.com/ - and I'll use their prices here, all of which are ex-VAT. Other registrars are broadly in line with CMS's pricing, or slightly highter.

CMS's cheapest registration package costs all of £16.99, with a three-hour formation time. That compares very favourably with Companies House's £50 same-day service! They throw in a Google AdWords voucher that almost pays for the cost of registration too. I'd remove the Barclay's Business Banking option; I've not been favourably impressed with their service. We'll cover banking a little later.

If you don't want (or are not allowed) to register the company at your home address, many registration agents offer a Registered Office service with mail forwarding. CMS's package including that service for a year is £49.99 (this is instead of the £16.99, not in addition), and there are some added extras included. You may also need a Company Secretary. CMS offers this for an additional £75, although they hide it well!

So, the cheapest way to register (let's assume you want the .com and .co.uk domains, and don't need more than the basic services) is going to cost you (ex-VAT):

.com	£8.50
.co.uk	£18.00
Company formation	£16.99
TOTAL:	£43.49

That's a total of £52.19 inclusive of the new 20% VAT rate - the equivalent of a couple of months' mobile phone costs, or less than a tank of petrol.

Alternatives to a Limited Company

You don't have to have a Limited Company; there are other options. One that will appeal to group consultancies, and the likes of solicitors and accountants, is the Limited Liability Partnership, or LLP. This is a kind of half-way house between a conventional Partnership and a Limited Company. Unlike a traditional Partnership, where its membership is written into its Articles, the LLP is an independent legal entity. Partners can enter and join without major upset. Whilst each partner is responsible for their own actions, and jointly liable for the LLP's, they are not responsible for each other's.

An LLP can reduce paperwork, compared with a Limited Company. LLP registration can be a lot more expensive than a Limited Company's, though: ex-VAT prices vary from £94 to £150 or more. I find this strange, as Companies House charges only £15 (or £30 for same-day service). If you are thinking of forming an LLP, I'd suggest doing so directly with Companies House, and sourcing a standard Partnership Agreement (optional, but advisable) separately.

Banking

Now you've formed your company - from now on, I'll use that to mean either Limited Company or LLP - you need to consider banking.

If you're expecting to handle significant amounts of cash, or if you're going to need a direct relationship with a named account maanger, you should probably be looking towards branch-based banking. Branch accounts are generally a little more expensive to operate. Beware of non-optional "optional" extras: Barclay's, for example, likes new companes to rent accounting software from them, and it can be a bit difficult to persuade them that you want a basic account.

If you don't have those requirements, and you're happy to deal with centralised internet-based banking, I'd recommend Santander Business Banking (http://www.santander.co.uk/business/), currently operated under their recently acquired Abbey Business marque. Almost all transactions are free "forever", provided you don't exceed a substantial turnover level (£1 million at time of writing), and you can still pay in cash amounts (up to £3000 per month) free at Santander branches. They don't charge for cheque books or paying-in books, nor for cheques issued. For a small to medium sized business, that's a pretty good deal. The one warning I'd give is that they inherited Abbey's creaky computer systems. I think they're improving, though.

[Later note (2012-01-25): they didn't, and we sacked them in favour of HSBC Business Banking. In particular, we got very, very tired of Santander not being part of the BACS Faster Payments scheme, so that our payments to other UK banks were delayed by most of a working week, and any payments over a few hundred pounds having to be confirmed as non-fraudulent before they would be passed. That kind of fraud prevention may be fine for low-net-value personal accounts, but not for business accounts, where there's an established trading pattern, and transaction accounts are routinely in the thousands. There were other problems too, including more computer problems and outages at their end. HSBC offers small businesses an initial year of fee-free banking, and then a transition to a primarily online account that has no fees for normal operation, and this is now my recommendation.]

Your web site

So you've got your domains, and your company. Now, and finally, you need a shop front: a web site and corresponding letterhead. For these you need three groups of helpers here, and often you can find them all in one place. The really good news is that at Adeptium Consulting, we can provide all of these for you, and we're not as expensive as you might think, so don't panic! More about that at the end of the article.

The first helper is a designer. You've got a company name, and that's the starting point for creating a corporate image that fits it. Now, you may think, "Why do I, just a singleton consultant, need a corporate image?" Believe me, a good logo combined with a complementary colour scheme makes a great impact, whether it's on a letterhead or a web site. If you're handy with graphical design packages and/or fonts, you might even take this part of the work yourself, but if you do, do pleasse get opinions on your ideas from both strangers and potential customers.

The second and third groups are web site designers and web site hosting providers.

For the design, you'll need to work with a company that creates good, clean web sites that can be maintained and extended by someone who's not a computer guru. After all, you may want to be writing articles yourself when you get new contract wins, without having to pay someone else to do it. That's only the starting point, though.

You're going to need two sites - one that's "live", and one that's a private prototype area not accessible by the public, which parallels the live site. The objective is to make all your changes to the prototype site, never to the live site. Once your prototype site looks good, you've proof-checked it, and you are ready to roll it out to the live site, you need an easy and secure way to make that happen. Finally, the vital bit that many new business people forget - you need backup! Backups should happen regularly, and before each live rollout. Those backups should be sent securely to a server on a different network, so that if your web server fails completely, or a hacker wipes its disk, you can get up and running in minutes, not days or weeks.

Your hosting providers must be able to provide stable, reliable and scalable site hosting. If your business takes off, you want to be able to boost the hosting facilities to manage the increasing load, without visitors ever noticing. Your site designers should be able to work with your hosting providers to set up everything for you and document how to operate your site.

Epilogue

I wrote this blog article to help other business people and pass on some of the tips and tricks I've learnt, having formed quite a few companies, and set up many clients with web hosting, but I'm going to make no apology for a bit of promotion. After all, you got all this advice for free!

One of the companies I've formed, Adeptium Consulting Ltd., can help you with every stage of starting a new company - whether it's just setting up your web service, or the whole package from helping you find a company name, through registration, to sorting out your IT. We can even provide you a portfolio (that's to say, part-time and pay-as-you-go) Technical or IT Director who can be named on your Companies House register of Directors, to advise you on your technical needs, and help you present a much more attractive proposition to prospective customers or potential investors.

Finally, I'd like to make it clear that, with the exception of Adeptium, I have no beneficial interest in any of the companies I've recommended. That is to say: at the time of writing, I don't hold shares in any of them, I don't sell products or services to any of them, and I get no benefit from the recommendations. I have been a satisfied customer of products or services provided by them, and it's solely on that basis that I make the recommendations.

Musical finds, fiends, friends and enemas

2010-12-23T12:10:00.004Z

Every now and again, I feel the urge to write something about musicians I've discovered or been pointed towards. This posting is sponsored by Spotify and the letter 'F'. Or not. Depending.

At this time of the year, the BBC publishes its list of musicians to watch for in the coming year. You'll find the current list on the Sound of 2011 mini-site. Usually, it's a pretty reliable selection of really decent talent. The 2010 list, for example, included Ellie Goulding, Marina and the Diamonds, The Drums and Owl City, all of whom were doing stuff that was fresh and good. (Marina's my favourite - she's intelligent, barking mad, and a damn good songwriter too. What more could you want?)

BBC's Sound of 2011 list is a bit of a disappointment.

The 2011 list, though, is a bit of a disappointment. I've watched all the videos, to spare you the indignity - and the only artist that got my attention was a grime MC who goes by the tag of Wretch 32. That's a pretty hefty indictment of the others, as hip-hop's not usually my bag, but this guy's good, and the production on Traktor was really slick. If his other tracks are as good, I'm getting the album. As for the other artists - sorry, but ... whatever. There was little else that wasn't derivative. Maybe I'll revisit the site in a while and have a second listen.

All of which means I have to do some actual research and find some names for you. Spotify's a great tool for finding artists you'd never heard of - just type a random word into the search box, listen to a few tracks and discover. Today, it's thrown up a strummer new to me: Paul Gilbert. Formerly of Mr. Big, and now with Racer X, he's a powerhouse guitarist who plays with accuracy and precision. For me, he's way ahead of Joe Satriani, whose work Gilbert's resembles. Much fuzzbox and overdrive, but the tunes aren't samey.

Something hip-hoppy, folky and ... Basque?

Fancy something hip-hoppy, folky, trance-y, techno-y and ... Basque? Look no further than Crystal Fighters. Mix Catalan instruments with Marina and an MC - and you've almost totally failed to grasp their range. Earlier in the year, they performed on Later with Jools: you can see the performances here.

More when I remember them.

I told you so!

2010-12-22T10:13:00.002Z

Regular readers will remember that I dropped a hot little piece of tittle-tattle about a month-and-a-half ago. In this blog posting, I happened to mention: "Will we see Windows and Office for ARM? Well, here's a bit of gossip: keep your eyes open in the next twelve months."

And, lo, it came to pass.

Today, The Register published an article that blew the secret wide open.

So was it just speculation on my part? No. What I wasn't allowed to say in that November blog piece was that I'd got the information from an authoritative source within Microsoft. In fact, I'd been sitting on the coup for about two months because I wanted to leave enough time that the source in question couldn't be traced - and it still hasn't been.

The Register's earlier article mentioning the Microsoft/ARM pact shows how much they'd been misled - or misled themselves. El Reg had speculated that the ARM licensing was to do with the next generation of XBoxen. With the advances made in recent ARM architectures, that might yet come to pass, but the real deal was the one that no-one had dared suggest: Windows and Office on ARM.

Glad to be of service.

Musings and Microsofts

2010-11-22T11:37:00.009Z

You know, some of my recent blog posts (here, here, and here, for example) probably make me look like a rabid Microsoft-hater.

But I'm not. Not any more.

Sure, I don't like their business methods, and never have. Their software products in general are heavily bloated and inexplicably resource-hungry. (MS SQL Server 2005 Express needs over 1.3GB of disk space! How can a SQL server possibly need that much disk space?) They produce a very small amount of genuinely innovative technology (Kinect), and a lot of mediocrity. They are constantly trying to shoot down Open Source, a battle they know they can never win.

There's a lot to like, or at least admire, about Microsoft

However - there's a lot to like, or at least admire, about MSFT. They have some very smart people indeed. I've worked alongside or for a number of them, in my career, and I can't think of one who didn't deserve respect. (Declaration of interest: MS tried to head-hunt me once. I took a rain check.) Microsoft are superbly good at owning and controlling a market - try to buy a PC without Windows from a major retailer, and you'll see what I mean. Their marketing is sometimes hilariously inept ("I'm a PC!" - what, you're beige inside and out? "Windows 7 - my idea!" Yeah? I bet you drive your Ferrari 430 everywhere in first gear), but it clearly works sufficiently well. Some of Microsoft's products are rather good: their keyboards and mice are largely bland, but solidly built and just keep working; their Visual Studio development environment is recognised as probably the best in the industry.

The thing is, we - all of us - need Microsoft. We need their products to set a certain performance and behaviour standard, so that its competition knows how far they have to extend to better them and distract the public eye. The haters need a bugbear they can fulminate against. The City folk need a bellwether for the health of the technology industries.

However much MSFT huffs and puffs, Open Source isn't going to blow down.

I used to hate Microsoft too, for stifling technological progress and competition, but I think their Big Bad Wolf has come up against the brick house at last, and it's called Open Source. However much MSFT huffs and puffs, that house isn't going to blow down. If it wants inside, Microsoft is going to have to put the teeth away, ask nicely, and try not to eat the occupants.

It used to be the case that big corporate and Governmental buyers would call in the Microsoft guy with the clipboard and the tick list, much as their predecessors did with IBM and their mainframe products. The adage always was, "You can't get sacked for buying [IBM, Microsoft]." But things have changed. After a ropey start, Open Source is now considered commercial-grade, enough to get the attention of the big buyers. For some time, we watched MS offer Government purchasers ludicrously low prices for Windows and MS Office licensing. You don't often see those stories now, and it's not clear why. I suspect it's because the buyers' attitudes have changed. Where once they would raise the spectre of Open Source, to force Microsoft to discount their pricing below cost, now they're just not interested in paying for MS products any more, so there's no point having the conversation.

I don't want Microsoft to fail: I want them to change their approach.

I don't want Microsoft to fail: I want them to change their approach. I can't see Windows or Office going Open Source, however much I might wish it, but I can envisage a Microsoft that is driven by its market, rather than vice-versa; a Microsoft that engages with open standards without a killer agenda; a Microsoft that collaborates, not competes. It sounds like a hippy agenda, but it's not. IBM switched to that model, and saved itself from destruction. Sun Microsystems tried, but it was too late, and didn't fit well with a business model dependent upon declining chip and system sales. I don't think MSFT can make that change with Steve Ballmer at the helm (although I hear he's handy at rearranging furniture), but I have my doubts that Ballmer will hold his tenure for much longer. Windows 7 has gone some way to recovering from the train wreck of Vista, but Open Source is hurting Microsoft, and the hurt's only going to get worse. Ballmer's combative style is looking more and more outdated in the face of the modern market.

Another thing I never thought I'd say: good luck, Microsoft.

Microsoft: Linux is at the end of its life-cycle. Oh really?

2010-11-21T18:41:00.004Z

Nikolai Pryanishnikov, president of Microsoft Russia, has reportedly claimed that Linux is at the end of its life-cycle.

I think that comes under the category of, "Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?"

There are a lot of companies that'd envy that kind of "end of life-cycle" product!

Linux works on just about every hardware platform bigger than a PIC, supports a mind-bogglingly large range of hardware, is used on everything from the smallest gadget to the world's most powerful supercomputers, and the average person in the street probably has at least five to ten times as many Linux OS licences as they have of Microsoft products. There are a lot of companies that'd envy that kind of "end of life-cycle" product!

ARM devices are squeezing Microsoft out from the bottom up, on embedded devices, and the top down: the new Cortex-A15 based chips will create Linux-friendly servers that should be hugely more power-efficient than the Intel/Microsoft combination manages - and Microsoft doesn't currently have mainline ARM products (Windows, Office) to defend its space - not yet, anyway. I blogged about the consequences earlier this month.

Pryanishnikov's comments form part of a recent FUD campaign Microsoft's been waging against Linux, and Open Source in general. (I blogged about more of it a month ago.) The campaign says more about Microsoft than Linux and Open Source Software (OSS).

The more Microsoft tries to chop off Open Source's Hydra heads, the bigger the problem they create.

The more frantically Microsoft tries to chop off Open Source's Hydra heads, the bigger the problem they create for themselves. Desperation is hard to hide; increasing desperation, even more so. The solution for MS, of course, is to accept Open Source, concede that MS doesn't have answers in a number of OSS's key markets, and probably never will now, and change the business model to work with OSS, rather than paying lip-service in public, and waving knives behind the scenes. I don't think Microsoft has the ability to make that change, though. It would involve admitting that revenues have peaked, which wouldn't please Wall Street one bit - but better restructure now than face a collapse later, which is where MSFT is heading without some creative thinking that has to happen now.

Ironically, conditions in both customer and stock markets could well mean that MS is closer to end-cycle than its competition.

Aww, a cute baby business-person!

2010-11-17T11:13:00.005Z

What should you use for your forum "avatar" picture? Should you use your photo, a caricature, even a picture of you as a baby?

The more I think about them, the more I realise that the answers are completely different depending on whether they apply to business-to-business (B2B) sites like LinkedIn, or to informal social media sites (Facebook, etc.). I'll answer for B2B.

Linda Lee-Potter used a masthead photo from the 1960s. I always thought that a bit tragic.

It's not uncommon for photos to be a few years old, but it's daft to present one that's not clearly and recognisably you, now. For decades, the late Linda Lee-Potter, columnist for the Daily Mail, used a masthead photo from the 1960s, judging by the hair and the style. I always thought that was a bit tragic. B2B social media like LinkedIn can lead to personal meetings. Particularly for a businessperson, a really out-of-date photo can lead to an instantly negative reaction when the reader then meets them in person - which may carry over to their attitude to doing business with them

You want the in-person relationship with your counterpart to carry over naturally from your online discussions, you don't want to be jarred by meeting what appears to be your correspondent's Dad¹! So, if you're planning to use a headshot, keep it recent and honest.

I don't see a problem with caricatures, provided they're recognisable - a good caricature is quite a neat way of presenting the "personal brand" with a bit of self-deprecating humour, particularly if the subject's a bit camera-shy. Whether it's appropriate depends largely on the writer's business sector. I guess the risk is that the cartoon eventually takes over as the "brand". When it becomes clearly out-of-date, replacing it with a new one means the "brand"'s starting again from scratch, as it'll be some while before the new picture's known, recognised and accepted by those who knew the old one. Photos don't have quite the same problem. Update them every few years, and the "brand" carries over to the new one seamlessly.

There's humour too in a photo of one's self as a child - I've a good friend who does this. It's perhaps not a great idea for a "brand", but fine for non-business networking or media-related sites. On the other hand, I don't think it's appropriate to use a family photo with kids as there are some inherent risks no parent should feel comfortable about. Even a picture with one's spouse is probably not a great idea on a B2B site, unless the spouse is a business partner too. Leaving aside personal risks, publishing a new picture of just the blogger alone could imply marriage (and therefore business) problems to canny readers.

I'm not convinced by the idea of using a non-personal picture/avatar of some sort on specifically B2B sites - it suggests that the person's hiding behind it, which raises the question - why? If they're going to be posting to forums on a B2B site, presumably they want to do business at some point. Being unwilling to admit to their appearance carries a host of negative connotations, and no positive ones, and makes first meetings awkward. There's a big exception to this: look for elephants later on in this post!

Photos are insidious. They create expectations in our minds.

I don't think there's a huge investment of readers' interest initially, but photos are insidious. They create subconscious relationships, associations and expectations in our minds. Not surprising when you realise how much of the human brain is devoted to sensing, recording and analysing images - nor that the first image the newborn brain learns to process accurately is their mother's face. We see faces everywhere, even where they're not. Readers will combine the picture with the person's online persona to form an expectation; it's how we're wired. And that means that the choice of picture is crucial.

However - there is an elephant in this room.

Unfortunately, if a businesswoman is attractive-looking, and publishes her photo, she will be likely to get unwanted attention from the knuckle-dragging² contingent on the one hand, and short shrift from the Old Skool types on the other. Things are improving year on year, but however much the more enlightened males (and females) might abhor it, it still happens. Deflecting those issues by using an image that's not strictly a portrait - perhaps a company logo - or not using one at all, might suit her purposes better. It's all down to what works best for the individual. Martha Lane-Fox, Carly Fiorina and so on have used their images as her calling cards, and done terrifically well out of it, so there's no general rule.

Blimey, I'm sounding like an image consultant. Next stop, square red-framed glasses (*shudder*).

¹ Particularly if they're female.
² The Urban Dictionary defines "knuckle-dragger" as a racial epithet - which is not what I'd meant at all. I was referring to about the second image in the famous Ascent of Man image - an unreconstructed male of primordial mindset.

Desktop ARMs - and what they'll mean for Microsoft

2010-11-13T22:19:00.013Z

[Background: the blog post I wrote on ARM's new Cortex-A15 MPCore processor core.]

If Apple finds that the ARM processors out-compete Intel on price and power consumption, and at least match x86 for performance, the choice to switch is going to be a no-brainer.

Apple has enough cash to buy every person in the world a McDonald's burger and fries.

Would Apple risk a legal challenge to any preferred-supplier lock-in agreement with Intel? Let's put it this way: at the time of writing, INTC market cap: $120bn, up 7.5% year-on-year and generally flat; AAPL market cap: $280bn, up 48% y-o-y and climbing consistently. Apple has around $26bn sitting around in the bank. That's an astonishing amount of cash. To put in context, that's enough to buy every man, woman and child in the world a burger and fries from McDonald's, and have change left over. Here's a statement I never thought I'd make: with a stock and cash exchange, Apple. Could. Buy. Intel.

Except Apple's got too much sense. If Apple switches to ARM for its MacOS products, Intel's stock will tank - while Apple's will go ballistic. And there's nothing Intel could afford to do about it, because Apple would buy them then, at the bottom of the market, just to shut them up and send their lawyers packing.

Will we see Windows and Office for ARM? Well, here's a bit of gossip: keep your eyes open in the next twelve months.

Microsoft knows that unless it raises its game, it'll be the meat in an iPad and Android sandwich.

Microsoft is not blind to ARM's incursion into desktop-grade computing, by way of Android and iOS tablets. With ARM's announcement of its Cortex-A15 MPCore architecture, Microsoft knows that unless it raises its game and is prepared to abandon positions entrenched for a quarter of a century, it's going to be the thin layer of meat in an iPad and Android sandwich, because for the first time since ... well, since the very emergence of the industry, corporate computing's got sexy.

And beige bricks aren't.

Once it's feasible to run MS products natively under MacOS's Boot Camp on an ARM, it'll complete Apple's business case for an ARM MacOS port, and the dominos start falling.

Let's look at the consequences if MS doesn't follow through on its internal projects. Documents To Go is already available for both iOS and Android. With the potential to take MS's market away from them, DataViz would be insane not to consolidate, add Open/LibreOffice support, and evolve their mobile application into a fully featured corporate-grade tool. QuickOffice is also available for both platforms, but to my mind isn't quite up there with DtG quite yet.

The fate of LibreOffice (as OpenOffice.org now is - daft name, but there you go) will be interesting. Based on C++, it's not in a great position to convert to ObjectiveC (iOS) or Java (Android). Of course, there is a development route for C++ into Android, via the Native Development Kit, but compared with the Java environment it's like pulling teeth, and it doesn't play nicely with Dalvik for now. LibreOffice may find itself the second layer of meat in that sandwich unless its developers can at least port to Android - ObjectiveC is probably too big an ask for now.

But anyone who's been around in the industry knows that Microsoft, whilst often slow to spot emerging markets, will adapt its products, marketing and spin to shut out competitors before they can cause too much damage. Microsoft is more vulnerable now than at any time in the past two decades, but it's still got teeth. It may yet be able to use them.

ARM's Cortex-A15 CPU, and how it will change your world

2010-11-12T10:56:00.007Z

[From a discussion on LinkedIn (registration may be required to read it).]

Steve Liebson wrote a recent article on the ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processor, launched at the ARM Technology Conference in Santa Clara on the 10th November 2010. It's a very interesting read.

ARM is closing in on the Big Iron server market, Intel's traditional home ground, with a processor capable of 2.5GHz operation, eight or even 16 cores per chip, and some smart interconnects and support to make them fly. It's an open secret that Amazon, Google and other intensely server-critical firms are keeping a watching brief, as the A15 promises remarkable improvements on their power consumption and heat dissipation problems. It's hard to believe that VMWare, Citrix¹ and other cloud infrastructure providers don't have at least tentative roadmaps for rolling out their Type 1 hypervisor products to the A15.

What few people seem to be picking up upon, though, is how the A15 could change the corporate desktop market too.

Of course, it all depends upon the power figures, which, as Steve notes, ARM isn't yet publishing, but try this for size...

Put a dual-core 2.5GHz Cortex-A15 in a tablet and load Android 3. Make a desktop drop-in charge/kbd/mouse cradle for it - maybe inductive charging and Bluetooth inputs so it's contactless. Now you've a tool that will act as a touchscreen PC on your desk, or grab it from the cradle and bring it to meetings as a note-taking tablet. You've got the performance of an Apple desktop or mid-range PC product when you need it, and it should run a lot cooler than a laptop.

It's been a fair while coming but if the industry gets the right ideas, this could well be the processor that killed the PC and (with Android) stood up to Apple on its own ground.

So here's the real left-field question: given the power and BoM cost savings, how long now before Apple ditches Intel completely for ARM?

¹ Since writing this article, the author has provided paid consultancy to Citrix. The comments made above are solely the author's own, were not made in the light of any "inside information" obtained from Citrix or its current or former staff, and have not been updated since the start of that consultancy, other than to add this footnote. Oh, and this footnote was added entirely from the author's free will - as a declaration of interests, not because of any lawyerly intervention or contractual obligation.

The East London Tech City: what will happen after the 2012 Olympics?

2010-11-11T00:12:00.000Z

There was some interesting editorial on the "East London Tech City" on page 50 of Tuesday 9th November's London Evening Standard. (You can read it at standard.co.uk for up to 28 days: select e-Edition; free registration required.)

There appears to be an expectation that, despite the apparent technology bias suggested by the name, the majority of businesses resident there will be focused upon solutions for the financial sector, rather than pure technology per se.

It's going to be a fascinating thing to watch. Normally, I'd suppose that that would have to be the overwhelming business sector, since the costs of renting relatively central London property for a company would be way beyond the pockets of any but the firms most benefiting from rich City clients. However, I can imagine a certain amount of desperation on behalf of the land owners to get units occupied however they can, as soon as the athletes move out. It may change the rules of the game, at least for a while.

Could East London be the next M4 Corridor? It's not impossible. But the difficulty of commuting into the area from affordable suburbs might just restrict its potential. In the end, it might just be the haunt for City-related businesses anyway - after all, even in a property slump, few others' employees can afford Docklands warehouse-conversion flats.

On Microsoft's "OpenOffice Perspectives" video

2010-10-18T20:13:00.006+01:00

[Based on a comment in a LinkedIn discussion.]

Microsoft recently published a video entitled "A Few Perspectives on OpenOffice.org"¹

Publishing the video is a clear sign of weakness and worry on MS's part.

Let's compare. Microsoft is a NASDAQ-quoted corporation with about 90,000 employees, and a market capitalisation of around $223bn on annual revenues of about $62.5bn.

OpenOffice.org is a small business unit of Oracle (formerly Sun Microsystems), producing a standards-based free office suite.

Why would MSFT even bother to acknowledge OpenOffice.org? There are only two possibilities that come to mind:

1. MSFT doesn't like Oracle, so it wants to damage them as much as possible. Well, that's plausible;
2. MSFT's very seriously worried about its free-as-in-beer competition, and it's hurting.

Even if the true reason's 1., going to that much bother to try to rubbish OO.o makes it look to the world like 2. I suspect it's a mixture of both. More and more businesses are seeing the sense in not licensing N thousand copies of MS Office if they can have a free competitor that works well and can usually read MSO documents that don't contain too many macros.

But that video can only be considered a desperate rear-guard action. Let's face it, any business with the market penetration of MSFT can scare up a few customers who tried the opposition's product and came back into the fold - it would be shocking if it couldn't.

Publishing the video is a clear sign of weakness and worry on MS's part. Ironically, it probably helps the Open Source community more than it hinders it. After all, it's a backhanded validation of the OO.o suite of programs - and how much revenue does OpenOffice.org stand to lose?

¹ Follow this link, and you ought to see "A Few Perspectives on OpenOffice.org" as the only option. MS appears to invalidate direct links, so you have to use the search function to get to it. You'll probably need SilverLight or MoonLight installed too.

Black Country Communion

2010-09-20T11:55:00.008+01:00

It's not often I feel the urge to write a review of a single song.

Planet Rock sent me an email today, promoting their showcase this evening for Black Country Communion's self-titled début album.

Not surprisingly, I immediately Googled for the band's web site. Promising - Jason Bonham, Joe Bonamassa, Glenn Hughes (all of whom I'd heard of and respected), and Derek Sherinian, a name new to me. With that kind of line-up, it should be a no-lose.

From that site, I hopped across to their MySpace page. That page only had one song - One Last Soul - to show for itself. A little sparse for an album release; I'd expect snippets from most or all of the tracks. Enough, already: let's hear it!

What an utter disappointment.

A track that white-bread parents would be comfortable for their 11-y-o son to own

"One Last Soul" has been produced to within a gnat's firkin of its life. The song itself is a monument to early 1980s Big Hair Rock, American style. Aerosmith, Europe, Def Leppard all spring to mind, not Led Zeppelin, nor more recent rockers. The track has nothing to say to me at all. It reminds me of all the AOR albums that came out in my student days - albums I never wanted to pay money to own, and gifts I would probably have passed on to more appreciative friends. There's no rock honesty here - just a track that white-bread parents would be comfortable for their 11-year-old son to own.

If this is the best that Black Country Communion can come up with - and given that it was the only promotional track on their MySpace page, we must assume so - then they ought to pull the big wigs off their balding scalps and retire to spend more time with their royalties. Sorry, but there it is. I don't need a banal track so over-polished I can see my razor stubble in it.

[Later addition]
Some time after I wrote this, I ended up on Black Country Communion's YouTube page. There were other tracks here. "Mistreated", a live performance evidently videoed by a fan (given the poor quality of both picture and sound); and "The Great Divide", filmed in the recording studio and overdubbed with the final mix.

A lot of fake emoting over dressed-up arpeggios

Mistreated is an improvement upon One Last Soul, but not by much, and The Great Divide is probably the best track of them all. Not that that's a great recommendation; more like damnation by faint praise. Both tracks involve a lot of fake emoting over what are essentially dressed-up arpeggios. Can some of rock's leading lights not manage better than this? I thought better of Planet Rock, too. Still, since they got an exclusive live performance, I suppose they were duty-bound to set their critical faculties to one side and use it to their best advantage.

[Even later addition!]
All is revealed! I hadn't been on the Planet Rock website for a while, so I hadn't realised that Joe Bonamassa is actually an occasional presenter at Planet Rock! Even if it is for just one show a month, at an inconvenient time slot: last Saturday in the month at 6pm. I wonder which was the chicken, and which the egg: did he take the gig to get BCC promoted through Planet Rock, or did his pre-existing presenter slot mean Planet Rock was honour-bound to do the launch show?

Actually, in all fairness I suspect it was a lot simpler than that, and less cynical: he probably gave them the launch party on a plate, and they said, "Ta very much, we like exclusives!"

Airport TV shows

2010-09-04T16:21:00.008+01:00

You know, when there's a reality police show presented by some testosterone-boosted tooth-enhanced ex-Sheriff type, it starts with a load of legal boilerplate along the lines of "We're not showing this to entertain you (heaven forfend!), it's to educate you on what goes wrong when you break the law and run away from the cops afterwards."

But funnily enough, airport shows don't. The endless capacity of would-be passengers to admit the fault of anyone but themselves never ceases to amaze me. They probably watch the programmes at home, and jeer at the arrogant jerks who think that every rule will bend in the face of a loud enough complaint - then they arrive at Gatport Airwick (I might have got that wrong) and turn into just the same kind of clueless bozo they so despised last night.

So I thought, why not have some boilerplate for airport shows instead? Here's mine. Imagine the opening titles, and Sheriff Teeth (Ret'd) intoning this over them:

1. If you arrive at check-in after it's closed, it's closed, regardless of how inconvenient it is for you. The pilot has uplifted fuel for the calculated takeoff weight. The hold luggage is on its way, or already loaded. Every minute you spend harranguing staff and demanding to shout at superiors reduces your chance of getting a free ticket change. Oh, and the airport staff can't issue a refund. Get over it, and accept a later flight, or give up and go home. You choose.

2. If you roll up to check-in having chased ten beers with half a bottle of Smirnoff, don't expect to be accepted onto your flight. If you get rescheduled to a much later flight, and decide to drown your sorrows in the bar with something a bit more alcoholic than espresso, don't be surprised if you get refused later, too. Permanently. Just lie down, point your feet at your destination, and light your breath. You'll stand a better chance of getting there.

3. Don't expect an airline to accept your bus pass as a valid identity document. Nor your driving licence, nor the passport that's been through the washing machine, the tumble drier, and finally had its photo page steam-ironed.

4. You are not your sister, nor your brother, nor your cousin, not your deceased granny. The picture on that passport doesn't even look the same species as you, much less the same gender, and it expired years ago, as did its former holder. Under precisely which circumstances did you expect the check-in staff to accept it?

5. The hold luggage limits are stated, clearly, on the website through which you booked your tickets. There isn't an airline in the world that will accept your 120kg travel trunk, so undo the straps and tell your big sister to climb out. And no, you can't take her on board as cabin luggage.

Now travel safely, folks!

Friday 13th, three days late

2010-08-17T11:02:00.002+01:00

Business as usual on Monday. Well, for the first ten seconds.

I couldn't log into my Linux PC. Which was a bit of an issue, because without it I wasn't going to get a lot of work done. A bit of exploring showed that it couldn't see the authentication server. So I try to log into the PC using a "local" user ID instead (one whose details are stored on the machine, not the auth server). No joy - it was still trying to check the auth server, and the login times out before it gets a reply. Actually, as it turned out, the heat death of the Universe would have happened before it got a reply.

Time to dive into what I jokingly call the machine room to check out the auth server. It's running, but won't respond to keyboard or mouse, and the screen is blank. Hmmm. Nothing for it but a hard reboot. Guess what? It's not booting. Take the cover off, and try again. The hard drive sounds like a miniature jack-hammer; looks like the heads are just ramming their end-stop. The auth server (a recycled older PC) is officially toast. And I don't have a drop-in replacement, not to hand.

It's time to go back to my Linux box, and reboot it into single-user mode (which means I can get into the command line without logging in). Set it up as a temporary auth server, in addition to the hundred-and-one other server tasks it's acquired. Reboot it back into a full running state, and log in.

Joy! I can log in now.

The joy is short-lived, however. I need to install PDFEdit, and I roll in a few security updates too. A quarter-way through, the download stalls.

I try to restart the download several times; no luck.

I reboot the Linux box. No difference.

I restart the local network switch. No difference; I can ping other machines on the same switch, but can't see beyond it.

I restart the powerline modem that feeds the switch. No difference; can't even ping the edge router that feeds the whole network.

I restart the powerline modem connected to the edge router, the other end of the connection. No difference. A laptop that connects to the edge router through WiFi seems OK, so we haven't lost the router.

I restart the edge router, just on the off-chance. Hah! I can see out again! Well, for a moment. About 3MB into the updates download on my Linux box, it stalls again.

There's only one thing left to do, and that's replace the powerline modems. They're both Advent units (PC World own brand; yes, I know, I should know better). I happen to have a couple of Devolo models knocking around and pre-configured, so I swap out the Advents for the Devolos.

It works! It was about time something did - I was beginning to lose the will to live.

This time, the updates and PDFEdit download and install without a glitch.

And then I discover that PDFEdit - the installation of which was the whole point of the exercise - can't even do something as simple as move an item from one point on the page to another.

Definitely One Of Those Days.

Accented characters on your UK keyboard under Windows XP

2010-07-13T12:57:00.005+01:00

It's bothered me for ages that it is simply not possible to type most accented characters (other than acute accents) on a standard UK keyboard, under Windows XP. There were very available: basically, if you press and hold AltGr whilst pressing a,e,i,o or u, you'll get the acute-accent versions of those characters. And that's it.

OK, I'm clearly slow on the uptake, because there is a way, it's just that Microsoft hides it rather well. Here's how to do it.

Firstly, go into your Control Panel and select "Regional and Language Options". (You thought it would be "Keyboard", didn't you? So did I.)
Click on the "Languages" tab. Under "Text services and input languages", click on the "Details..." button. (Told you it wasn't obvious!)
In the box centre-left, you'll see "English (United Kingdom)", and the keyboard option for that will be "United Kingdom". Click on "Keyboard" and click the "Add..." button to the right.
That should pop up a new dialog box entitled, "Add Input Language". The "Input language" option selected should be "English (United Kingdom)". Everything else apart from the "Keyboard layout/IME" checkbox should be greyed-out. Click in that checkbox. That should wake up the keyboard layout drop-down.
Click on the drop-down and select "United Kingdom Extended". Now click OK. That should put "United Kingdom Extended" into your "Installed services" list.
"OK" your way out of the other dialogs, until you're back to normal service.]
In your taskbar, usually at the bottom of your screen, you should see "UK" followed by a keyboard symbol. Click on the keyboard symbol. That should offer you a choice of "United Kingdom" and "United Kingdom Extended". Select the extended one.

That's the heavy lifting done. Now, when you want to type an accented character, it's easy. You can still get the acute-accented characters as before. But now you can have the other accents too. To understand how to generate the accents, you need to understand how "dead keys" work. A dead key is a key that doesn't show anything when pressed, but modifies the next key you press. Here is a list of the new dead keys that the UK Extended keyboard introduces. Where it says "AltGR + (some key)" it means "Press and hold AltGr whilst pressing (some key), then release both":

Dead key	Means	Affects
AltGr+apostrophe (')	Acute accent	a e i o u w y A E I O U W Y
AltGr+2	Umlaut / diaresis ('"' looks a little like an umlaut)	a e i o u w y A E I O U W Y
AltGr+6	Circumflex (see '^' above '6')	a e i o u w y A E I O U W Y
Backquote (`)	Grave accent	a e i o u w y A E I O U W Y
AltGr+#	Tilde	a n o A N O

Note that if you want to type a backquote on its own, you press the space-bar afterwards. In addition to these, if you want to type a Spanish/Portuguese cedilla-c, you type AltGr-c or AltGr-C depending on whether you want lower-case or upper-case. These are the only accented characters you can type using the United Kingdom Extended keyboard. If you want access to more, use a US-layout keyboard, and select the "United States International" option in the same way as above. To get a feel for how US International layout works, go to http://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/goglobal/keyboards/kbdusx.htm - hover your cursor over the grave (`) and acute (') dead keys, and the AltGr key, to see which characters can be generated.

The one-page CV?

2010-07-09T17:43:00.001+01:00

[From a comment on this post.]

I've been on both sides of this divide, having interviewed probably several hundred candidates in my time. I wish it had been fewer, but in many companies the CV filtration isn't done by people with skill types similar to the candidate.

Let's kick off with the thread subject: one-page CVs.

No. Well, a qualified no.

I want to see a front page that summarises the skill sets and levels - qualifications too, if the candidate's only had a short career so far - followed by 2-3 pages that go into more detail.

That first page tells me whether it's worth reading the others. It should be a set of facts, uncluttered, and unencumbered by fancy styling. Use one font, consistently. If it's hard on the eye, I've another ten in the pile that are more readable, plus evidence that you don't understand customer requirements, or don't care.

On the other hand, I don't want a Victorian novel, either. I've been programming since '75, in the industry since '85, worked with many companies, and my CV runs to four uncluttered pages. I've only recently expanded it from three. If you've written ten pages of florid prose (the current record is 14, from someone with eight years on the job), I don't want to know.

Remember you're dealing with several humans and a computer. The humans are reading your epistle; the computer is trying to scrape it for keywords. Keep everyone happy, and you're in the group that's in with a chance of interview.

Good luck.

Linux - a breakthrough technology?

2010-07-03T22:35:00.002+01:00

(From a posting at LinkedIn)

I'm interested to see all the folks who've nominated Linux as their breakthrough technology. The thing is, Linux isn't a breakthrough technology, and never has been. When it was first written, it was already outmoded. It was designed only for a limited range of Intel PC hardware. It had a monolithic kernel that had to be recompiled any time you needed to change the options. The code was OKish, but not particularly smart, and there was nothing there that advanced the science of operating system design - in fact, quite the opposite. It was a college project.

What it had in its favour was one thing only: it was free, devised as a free alternative to Andy Tannenbaum's Minix.

And "free" is the breakthrough technology here. Even this wasn't unique. Richard Stallman, with his GNU project, started in the early 1980s, pioneered development and licensing of software that was completely free to use and modify. With Stallman's GNU toolkit welded to the Linux kernel, there was at last a usable, _free_ operating system, with source code for all to see. That's where I came in, at kernel version 0.12. The whole thing was amazingly robust and non-buggy, even at such an early stage.

In the subsequent development - essentially a full redesign - of the Linux kernel, it acquired platforms as diverse as the Acorn Archimedes and big IBM mainframe iron. It gained the ability to load and unload device drivers dynamically, whilst running, meaning that kernel recompiles became unnecessary. Its very freeness lended it to exploratory projects that led to new products, making it the cause celebre of the embedded systems world. And because it was licensed under the GNU Public Licence, modifications became integrated into the mainline kernel. Despite all that, there's still not all that much in Linux that's leading-edge, other than some funky filesystems.

So if you're tempted to nominate Linux as the technology that changed everything, think again. The leading edge technologies that changed your life were twofold. The first was called Richard Stallman, a man who wanted to change the world, and make software free, with source code visible to all. The second, made at his behest, a technology created by a lawyer: the Gnu Public Licence.

A man and a contract. Who knew?

The First Conservative Budget for more than a decade

2010-06-22T15:10:00.001+01:00

I'm still "running the numbers", but at the moment it seems like it's the first time I've ever known a Conservative budget that wasn't completely ideology-driven, and actually did more than a dismissive hand-wave at those on lower incomes.

Harriet Harman's points (Merseyside worst hit, wealthy Cheshire least; substantial job losses to come) were well made, though.

Where I felt it was weak was in support of small businesses -- well, I would, wouldn't I?

In the current economic position, Big Business is more part of the problem than the solution. It acts as a brake on economic development. Equally, since the Tories are looking towards big Civil Service job cuts, there's going to be a fallback in tax receipts and an increase in unemployment. What will boost us out of the doldrums will be small business growth -- the only economic sector that can show genuine growth despite overall recession or stagnation ... provided that that growth isn't stifled by onerous taxation or bureaucracy. I didn't see much in the Budget speech that made a difference there, one way or the other. I'd hoped for more but, given the pre-Election manifesti of the Tories and LDs, I wasn't holding my breath.

Still, not as bad as I'd feared, nor as skewed to topping-up already full pockets. The full public services cutback plans will be the pivot around which the economic recovery will move. It remains to be seen in which direction it turns.

Phone tariffs, and bizarre ways to get them

2010-06-15T15:23:00.001+01:00

I just had an interesting chat with Carphone Warehouse's Loyalty Team. The upshot of it is...a SIM-only tariff that costs me (well, LookBox) £5 per month, for which I get unlimited internet use¹, 600 call minutes and a never-going to-need number of texts each month. Oh, and 80% off call costs when I'm roaming abroad, which is often.

There's got to be a catch, right?

Yep. It's a cashback deal. £35/month up front, and you've got to send back your 6^th, 12^th and 18^th bill in order to get each of the £180 cashbacks. "Guaranteed" cashback, though, so if you miss your "slot", you can still claim it later.

I said, "Hang on - you already know my billing details, right? You already have my bills - you ought to, you send them to me! So what's that all about?"

"It's just what you have to do to claim the cashback."

I asked, "What happens if I can't find the bill?"

Now it gets really daft.

"That's OK. Give us a call, we'll print out another copy of the bill, and post it to you. Then you can send it to us to claim the cashback."

"Couldn't I just ask you to print out the bill and send it direct to the cashback department for me?"

"Sorry, it's just what you have to do to claim the cashback."

<*Wibble*!>

¹ The usual "Fair Use Policy" (i.e. to be fair, please don't use it!) applies, of course.

Diane Birch is channelling Sandi Thom!

2010-04-27T22:17:00.001+01:00

I just heard Diane Birch on Later with Jools Holland.

She just sounds SO like Sandi Thom! Now let me say that that's no bad thing. I love Sandi's music and lyrics. But now I've got to buy another artist, dammit!

Shouty marketing

2010-04-27T21:21:00.002+01:00

I really can't stand shouty marketing material. I unsubscribed from one online magazine when I got an email that took that to the ludicrous limit.

Here's what I wrote to them:

Dear Mike and Webmaster,

SORRY, but I REALLY can't STAND emails that insist on SHOUTING RANDOM words. It's a VERY ANNOYING way of writing, and DOESN'T SPEAK WELL of the journalism STANDARDS of the magazine it REPRESENTS.

Most PEOPLE wouldn't let YOU KNOW why they UNSUBSCRIBED, but I THOUGHT I'd give you that COURTESY.

All the best,

Jon

US Airways Free WiFi? No, not really.

2010-03-02T11:09:00.011Z

I'm a pretty heads-up kind of guy.

Let me rephrase that. I'm pretty much a heads-up kind of guy. (I never claimed to be pretty!) Every computer I own or control has virus protection, firewalling (usually customised), intruder detection, and a whole bunch of other stuff I'm not going to discuss. So it takes a lot to put one past me.

Someone did.

This January, after the Consumer Electronics Show 2010 in Vegas, I was coming back via LAX. (That's Los Angeles International Airport, to anyone who still flies by boat.) I'm in the bloody-awful Air New Zealand lounge, which Virgin Atlantic has the misfortune to share. So I'm looking around for WiFi, and I spot "US Airways Free WiFi" on the list. Sounds good to me. LAX is a US Airways hub, and I've just flown from Vegas on a US Airways flight, so I'm entitled, right? I connect. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work, so I disconnect, and try one or two others. Eventually, I find one that does seem to work, check my email, and shut down the laptop.

Wind forward a month or so.

I'm at home, on the same laptop, when the router goes down. I power-cycle the router, and sit on the "Wireless Network Connections"¹ dialog, waiting for the network to come up again. And I see: "US Airways Free WiFi". Not in leafy Cambridgeshire, surely?

So, I've been "had". The apparent network I connected to at LAX was in fact an ad-hoc (computer-to-computer) network, not an access point. In my defence, if I'd not been exhausted from four days of exhibiting at the biggest trade show on Earth (and the inevitable evening entertainments), the subsequent teardown, and travel, I'd have spotted the "ad-hoc" symbol in the networks list, and avoided it like a leper. But that's exactly how hackers do these things. Travellers are weary mortals, and easy prey.

Ever since that airport incident, my own laptop had been broadcasting "US Airways Free WiFi" to everyone else, encouraging them to connect with me, and start broadcasting it for themselves. It's like sneezing in a crowded room.

What was lost? Nothing, as it happens. If I'd had any shared folders advertised, the peer to which I'd connected could have raided them, but for good and sound reasons I didn't have network shares enabled.

The fix is very simple, and I recommend it to anyone else who travels with their laptop. It assumes you're using Windows' own WiFi configuration tools: if you're using a vendor-supplied tool instead, you'll have to work it out for yourself.

The vast majority of computer users have never needed to use an ad-hoc network, so the sensible thing to do, since it's a vector for attack, is to disable ad-hoc networking completely until uncured ham flaps past the window, and you decide you do need to use it. Ad-hoc networking, that is; not the ham. Ahem.

Here's how you do it on Windows XP¹. I don't use Vista (in fact, I upgrade² all Vista machines under my control to XP), and haven't yet needed to buy a Windows 7 machine, so if you're using any other Windows, you'll have to adapt these instructions to your own operating system.

From the Start menu, select Control Panel, and choose "Network Connections" from the list.
Right-click on "Wireless Network Connection", and select "View Available Wireless Networks".
In the left panel in the pop-up window that follows, click on "Change advanced settings". You'll get a list of all sorts of stuff you don't care about.
Select the "Wireless Networks" tab at the top of the window.
Near the bottom of the page that's now show, there's an "Advanced" button. Click it.
There's a list of three options shown. Select "Access point (intrastructure) networks only". If the "Automatically connect to non-preferred networks" box is checked, uncheck that one too. Then OK your way out of the dialog, and close everything else.

You're now protected, at last. With that one, simple change, you've prevented hackers using your machine to propagate this meme, and you've prevented anyone from viewing your shared folders. Now, why couldn't Microsoft have done that by default?

¹ Yes, Windows. I know, I'm a Linux guy by preference, but I do use Windows. (And then spend most of my time in Linux sessions in VirtualBox, or over SSH-hardened connections to Linux boxes, of course.)

² When I install another OS version, and it goes faster, uses less resources, is more compatible with past programs, works with more hardware, has less bugs and dies less often, that's an upgrade, right?

Copy of a complaint to the BBC about proposed closure of 6Music

2010-03-01T15:54:00.001Z

I gather from a variety of news sources that plans are under consideration at the BBC to close 6music. I believe that this would be a profoundly retrograde step.

6music is the only national radio station to address its specific audience: those who wish to listen to an eclectic range of music from the 1960s to the present day. Even Planet Rock, the nearest comparison, has a more limited range of music styles and dates.

6music's quality of production is second to none, and its presenter line-up is stellar.

The _only_ reason why 6music has low figures is that it is only available on DAB.

Let's draw a comparison.

If BBC Radio 3 was a digital-only station, its listening figures would be dire. Even though R3 is on all formats, and 6Music only on digital, R3's listening hours are only three times those of 6Music.

The unavoidable conclusion is that if 6Music were on analogue as well, its figures would leave R3 in its dust.

And yet 6Music is apparently under threat, and R3 carries on regardless.

6Music has an excellent, high-value audience demographic, comprising individuals with broad musical tastes that are unsatisfied by any other radio station. From a personal perspective, R1 is too oriented to playlisted low-grade pop, frequently repeated, R2 is too staid and uninteresting, and the BBC offers me no other music programming (except for 6Music) that I'm interested to hear. I do listen to Radio 4. If 6Music were on FM analogue, I'd be listening to that in the car rather than R4, much of the time.

6Music is a superb asset that the BBC should nurture and exploit, not discard as it if were an inconvenience.If its closure is still under discussion, please do the sensible thing, and find a better, easier target. Even after the firestorm over GCap's attempted closure of Planet Rock, I do not believe you have the slightest idea of just how big a hole you would be digging for yourselves. Stop before you see kangaroos; that's my advice.

Jon Green

The iCan'tPhone

2010-01-28T14:39:00.003Z

So the speculation ends.

Steve Jobs has delivered us of an iPhone that can't phone, or a keyboardless laptop that can't multitask. Remarkable, since even Apple's Lisa, in 1983, could.

The Apple fanboi press predictably drooled over the prospect of a device that can't do email and web browsing at the same time, can't do USB unless it's in its Dock, and can't dock unless it's in the (less useful) portrait mode. Oh, and its screen resolution - 1024x768 - makes it even less impressive than the cheapest netbooks.

It's light, though, and it's got a fruit on the front. What more could you want?

[Ecademy] Community : Ecademy - making sales, or advancing business?

2010-01-25T23:59:00.001Z

[This is one of the blog posts I posted at Ecademy. I am reposting them here as I probably won't be in Ecademy much longer.]

[Date posted to Ecademy: 09-Oct-2008. Original URL: http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=113882.]

Reading Nikki's recent blog, "I'm on Ecademy to make money, and so are you..." gave me pause for thought. [Later note: Nikki seems to have left Ecademy, so the links no longer work.]

Many Ecademists are here to promote their B2B enterprises - services, usually. It's a perfect playground for marketing and promotions people: in using Ecademy to sell their skills, they're demonstrating them. Job done!

I get worried, though, about Nikki's view of an Ecademy where everyone's here to make sales.

I have a vision of a circle of people in suits, each selling to the one in front, who's selling to the one in front of them, ... A bit like a sales version of MC Escher's "Ascending and Descending".

Clearly, that can't work, or involvement in Ecademy's a zero sum, and there are as many losers as winners. We all want to be winners, right?

As far as I can tell, and the Powers will doubtless be along shortly to set me right if I'm wrong, Ecademy was always about networking, more than direct selling.

The way it has to work is if we're primarily working towards promoting our businesses - and, more importantly, each other's businesses by referral - to non-Ecademists, with sales to Ecademists a secondary objective. That's how the zero sum gets broken. Coincidentally, it's also how networking works best!

As I've said elsewhere, I'm here mainly to get access to the right people, in the right places, to advance LookBox's success. Right now, I'm looking for a part-time (portfolio) CFO, and people to help with business development into Developing World educational projects, particularly Indian Subcontinent and China . In all cases, people who themselves have the right contacts to make things happen.

It's possible that, in the process of finding these people, I manage to jump a step and make direct contact with potential purchasers of our products and services. If that happens, I'll be delighted of course - but it's an aspiration, not an expectation.

Either way, with the right contacts made, we stand fair to make excellent sales ... just not in the direct model.

The quid pro quo for all of this - apart from the membership subscription, of course - is to be a connector, someone who enables connections, rather than simply exploiting them.

How many of the intensely sales-oriented individuals who blogspam are primarily connectors? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that in networking meetings, the most pushy self-promoters have been the least likely to say, "I can't help you with that, but [name] over there can, and I know a couple of others who aren't here who might be useful too. Give me a card, and I'll get you set up." And they've had a lot fewer around them than the connectors, the hubs of the room, as Mike Segall pointed out in a recent seminar at a business conference in Birmingham.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's wrong to promote one's business to Ecademists. For some, particularly the marketing and bizdev people, that makes perfect sense.

But I'm mindful that there's a lot more sales opportunity out there than in here.

If we're all to advance our businesses, doesn't it make sense to most of us to change the emphasis from "How much money have I made out of Ecademy"? to "How much money have I helped Ecademists make?"

[Update: please also check out Fraser Hay's blog - same sentiment, different angle.]

[Ecademy] Community: Autoconnect meets guanxi - a different perspective

2010-01-25T23:55:00.001Z

[This is one of the blog posts I posted at Ecademy. I am reposting them here as I probably won't be in Ecademy much longer.]

[Date posted to Ecademy: 14-Jan-2010. Original URL: http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=142626.]

By now, anyone on Ecademy who hasn't been living under a rock has become aware of autoconnect. It's a feature that's being introduced experimentally, allowing its subscribers to make random connexions amongst the Ecademy community. If you've received a request recently that said:

(name) Was sending invitations to join their network on Ecademy, discovered you were already here and requests that you add them as a contact.

...that was an autoconnect request. If you've received one, you've probably received lots. Brace yourself; it's going to get worse yet.

This is scattergun networking. If you fire enough cartridges at enough trees, chances are you'll hit a bird eventually.

Let's draw a contrast.

I'd like to introduce you, if you haven't already heard of it, to the Chinese concept of guanxi (關係 or 关系 ). Pronounced "GWEN-shee" (approximately), it describes your value, as expressed by the quality of the network of people upon whom you can draw.

Guanxi networking is often misunderstood in the West to be similar to the kind of business networking with which Westerners are familiar. In fact, a guanxi relationship is more personal. It must be maintained actively, or it will wither, and it's not as casual as Western network relationships. Properly managed, a guanxi network connection is for life.

The heart of guanxi is exchanges of favours. If I want to connect with a certain person, I will find out who I know has guanxi with them, and then I'll use my guanxi with that connector in order to make the connexion. Sometimes, there's a whole chain of connexions, and often you end up making further guanxi relationships as you work down the chain to complete the connexion.

Equally, it's expected that if a guanxi friend needs help, you assist without complaint.

When I joined Ecademy, the ethos seemed to me to be similar to guanxi. A business community that was oriented towards mutual help, and long-term personal relationships. In fact, the Blackstar concept seemed about as near to guanxi as I've ever seen in Occidental networking.

Contrast this to autoconnect. Networking by robots - about as far from personal networking as it's possible to get. I've commented here and expanded here about how autoconnect requests are functionally identical to spam. And like spam, there's presently no way of opting out. You get the requests whether or not you want them.

It's also about as far from guanxi, and personal networking, as it gets. Maybe a valuable - guanxi - relationship can arise from autoconnect, but the vast majority of autoconnects won't yield any benefit.

Let's consider that for a moment. You gain thousands of contacts - or, at least, try to - but only a small handful work out. You've put several thousand people to inconvenience for a marginal benefit for a tiny proportion.

The business model is depressingly familiar. "Spamford" Wallace would be proud.

Today's music tips

2009-12-28T01:30:00.004Z

Greetings, gentle readers.

I've just found two groups I really like.

First, thanks to BBC News Online's coverage of the UK music pundits' poll, I finally got the message about Animal Collective. Really cool psychedelic-indie-trance-rock-sampling-oh-whatever. Just take a listen and work it out for yourselves, geez, make me do all the work, why don't you?

Secondly, having gone to Animal Collective's MySpace page and added them as fiends - sorry, friends - MySpace suggests some guy called HJ, out of a group called Nemesea, from Holland. This guy is nuts. In successive tracks, house/trance that morphs into something like an Evanescence number, then superbly executed lounge jazz (a skit on "Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)"), followed by classic Ibiza house, and finally sublime fast rock that suggests what would happen if Steve Hackett fronted Metallica and riffed on Latin monastic choral music. HJ's guitar work is superb, absolutely top-drawer, and he's got such a broad reach in styles that I'm in awe.

[Later note] I did get the Nemesea back catalogue. I won't say I was disappointed, but it was very much an Evanescence clone, nothing really to get as excited about as HJ's own work.

Off to the vet's...

2009-12-11T12:59:00.001Z

Well, that's it. I've been "fixed", like some dog or cat. Two kids, and that's the lot. That's OK, two kids are quite enough!

Such a quick procedure too; about 20 minutes later, it's a plastic cup of water (didn't fancy the aspartamine-laced blackcurrant squash), a plate of biscuits and a feeling of, "Was that it?"

In today's news...

2009-12-07T11:13:00.008Z

1. From Ananova (http://www.ananova.com/News/story/sm_3591742.html:

A council has spent thousands of pounds on a scheme to teach the over-50s how to wear their slippers safely.

The Warwickshire County Council service allows 'older people' to bring in their old slippers and replace them with a new pair, to cut the risk of falling over.

For a fee of £5, participants receive a fitting session, a new pair of the Velcro fastening slippers, and advice on how to wear them, reports the Daily Telegraph.

In other news, South Cambridgeshire District Council are due to introduce "Breathing safely" seminars.

2: (Many sources) Contestants on I'm A Celebrity... catch, kill, cook and eat a rat.

And this is a story...how? If I was being starved by the producers, I'd have done the same thing. It's supposed to be - if you can believe it - a survival situation. That's the premise. So you treat it as a survival situation. Best of all, it was a world-renowned chef (Gino D'Acampo) doing the killing and cooking! Blimey, even I would eat rat he'd cooked - and, seafood aside, I don't eat meat!

The really daft thing is that contestants are eating invertebrates every day, for entertainment, and apparently it would even be acceptable to kill and eat crocodiles, "but it depends very much on the way they are killed and processed for human consumption," according to the Australian RSPCA. So you're only allowed to kill animals that aren't cute and fluffy. Future contestants please note.

And finally...

3: Go Go Hamster toy Mr Squiggles is safe, Cepia insists (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8398586.stm)

NO IT'S NOT!

Two minutes after its wrappings are rent from its trembling, terrified body, it will be mauled and abused by hordes of unrestrained and brutal youngsters bent on trauma and suffering! If it could speak, it would be crying for Gino D'Acampo to give it a merciful end.

Somehow, I suspect it's a Slow News Day.

What's with the weird blog title? Are you mad, or something?

2009-11-25T23:39:00.000Z

No, not remotely. At least, that's what the crows tell me.

I've no idea what came over me, when I was hunting around for a title. All the ones I really wanted had gone long since, so it was time to find something more quirky. Anyway, I had a chat with the crows, and they suggested...well, you get the picture.

So, "Just this side of sane."

But which side is this side?

HP printers, XP, a laptop, and 100% CPU!

2009-11-25T21:00:00.001Z

Let's talk about the symptoms first. You're using your PC (in my case, always a laptop), running Windows XP, and the CPU fan speeds up...and up...and up...and stays like that, screaming at top speed.

Usually, you expect that the fan will run down again when the processor's finished an unusually tough job, like some poxy website's unnecessary Flash animation. But no. Not this time.

When you come to hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to run the Task Mangler, sorry--Manager, you find that SVCHOST.EXE is maxing out one CPU.

Sound familiar?

I'm betting you're set up to use an HP printer, and that printer has a network port (whether or not you use it). Right? Thought so. Read on.

The cause is actually HP's network printer drivers, in particular a service called "HP Network Device Support".

If you want to know the in-depth technical reasons for the problem, "zairon", in an excellent blog post drills down to the individual lines of assembler code containing the bug. It's a salutory lesson in how to look foolish in front of your customers.

The solution is delightfully simple.

First, hold down the Windows key on your keyboard, using it like a SHIFT key, and press the R key, then let go of both. You should get a "Run" dialog popping up. (If you don't have a Windows key, click on Start, then the "Run..." entry at the bottom-right of the pop-up.)

Type "services.msc" into the box, and hit ENTER. You should now get the Services application popping up.

Now scroll down the list until you find an entry named "HP Network Devices Support". Double-click on the name, and it should bring up a dialog describing that service.

Before you do anything else, hit the Stop button in that dialog. Aaaaand...relax.

Now find the "Startup type" drop-down list.

What you do now depends on how you connect to the printer. Either way, hit the "Stop" button now

If you only use it through USB, or if the printer uses a static (unchanging) IP address, rather than being given one dynamically using DHCP, you can select "Disabled". Then hit the "Stop" button in the dialog, and listen to the fan spin down.

If the printer uses a dynamic IP address (DCHP), select "Manual" instead. Then hit the "Stop" button. If the printer changes its IP address, you may have to start the service briefly, so that it can be rediscovered. Or beat up your sysadmin until s/he gives the printer the static IP address it's always longed for and deserved.

I find it astonishing and (vicariously) embarrassing that HP can leave this bug festering in its drivers for several years, despite many, many users reporting it. I know they have--enough of them have blogged enough about it, and their problems getting HP to understand it, that HP has no excuse!

Anyway, if this helps to add a little more momentum behind the movement to get HP to fix the bloody drivers, or saves one other person the same troubles, so much the better.

Technology World 09

2009-11-25T15:30:00.001Z

What a refreshing change!

A trade show in which just about every person we talked to had relevance to us, where there were no "liggers", refreshments and biscuits were free to both exhibitors and delegates, and there was enough traffic to keep us very busy for the two days of the expo. Even the car parking was free!

Full marks to the UK Trade and Investment people for a superbly-well-organised event. Well done, people!

Pasta dough recipe

2009-11-25T14:06:00.001Z

[Adapted from a posting to the cam.misc newsgroup]

PASTA DOUGH

Ingredients:

One whole medium egg, or two yolks, per 100gm flour.
Um, that's it.

Use Tipo '00' (zero-zero) flour for this, just don't bother with anything else! You can often get it from supermarkets, and always (in Cambridge) from the Limoncello deli on Mill Road; probably also the Continental Stores on Cherry Hinton Road., assuming they're still going (I haven't looked for ages).

You'll need a scraper of some kind, something like a flexible food spatula. Get it now, whilst you're still clean! Oh, and wash hands now; this is going to get messy.

Break the eggs into a mixing jug, and mix lightly with a fork until they're reasonably even.

Sift the flour onto a clean work surface, ideally cold marble. Form it into a nice Mount Vesuvius shape. Make a well in the middle of the flour, and drop the eggs into it. Don't let them break out and spill onto the surface!

USING ONE HAND ONLY!, with the tips of your fingers, start to work the rest of the flour into the eggs. Keep the spatula to (your other) hand. You'll be using it for scraping gooey bits from your mixing hand back into the mixture.

Once you've got a solid ball of dough, you can use both hands to knead it. A word of advice: ignore suggestions you might see elsewhere, and don't add extra flour to the board whilst kneading! You'll just dry out the dough. Any stickiness should disappear as you work the dough, and the ball of dough will pick up any bits it sheds.

If the dough gets too dry, and starts to fracture at the edges whilst you're kneading it, you can add a little cold water, literally drop by drop, until it's back to a smooth consistency. Knead it until the dough is silky and elastic, stretching nicely.

Wrap it in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for 20-30 minutes to rest. Longer, if you've time.

When it's rested, give it a little more kneading, to check whether you need to adjust the moisture. It's then ready for use.

Using it with a pasta machine

Don't put the whole dough ball through at once. Cut and roll into smaller balls, and use them one at a time. Apart from making the pressed lengths more manageable, you will often find that you made too much dough anyway once you've run it through the machine a few times, so you can rewrap the remaining dough and put it back in the fridge for another meal.

Set the machine to the widest setting, and keep running the pasta through the machine, one notch tighter each time, until you've got it to the thickness you need. Don't be tempted to skip stages here, as you won't get such good results. It takes as long as it takes!

When you're on the widest settings, don't be worried that your sheet doesn't quite reach the edges at first. It will, a notch or three later.

When you're putting it through the pasta machine, use the minimum possible dusting of extra flour to avoid sticking as the sheet folds, otherwise it will get too dry and fracture. Ideally, feed the sheet onto your work surface without folding too much. Cover with a slightly damp teatowel whenever you're not actually working the sheet, to avoid drying.

Fresh pasta made this way really needs only a few tens of seconds to cook if it's thin; maybe 2 minutes at most if it's thicker. Add a little more time if you've made ravioli and the filling has to be cooked through, of course. Ideally, pre-cook fillngs where possible, so they only have to be warmed through.

Want to run XP programs in Windows 7? Only got the Home Edition?

2009-11-12T11:26:00.001Z

[Adapted from a Usenet post]

If you still have an XP (full, not upgrade) copy handy, there's a possible get-out. It's a one-time faff but, after you've done it, you'll be able to do more or less anything you ever could under XP.

Go to virtualbox.org, and download VirtualBox. Install and run it.

Now install your XP under VirtualBox as a new "virtual machine". You'll need XP's CD key, of course.

When you've finished installing XP, and you have it running, you have to install VirtualBox's drivers into it. With the XP session still running, select the Devices menu from the outer window, and click on "Install Guest Additions...". Follow the prompts that ensue.

When it's all completed, shut down the XP session as if you were powering off the XP's computer.

In VirtualBox, select the XP session, and click on "Shared Folders". Share your home directory with the XP session. (c:\Documents And Settings\[your user name]\)

Now you have an XP installed and running under Windows 7 that you can use for any non-Win7-compatible software.

Start up the XP session again, install your XP programs into it, and tell the programs to use the files in your (now shared) home directory - and you're away!

The best bit of all - when you have finished with XP for now, just close the XP main window, select "Save the machine state", and next time you start up XP again under VirtualBox, it'll pick up exactly where you were before, as if you'd never left.

Apple, Mac OS X, and why they're missing a trick

2009-11-04T00:55:00.000Z

[Adapted from a comment on an article at The Inquirer.]

Wnat I don't understand about Apple right now is that they don't seem to understand what a cash cow they have in their barn.

If Apple released Mac OS X for general PC devices, they'd at a stroke make massive inroads into Windows.

At the same time, sales of Apple hardware would drop, sure, but not all that much. The current crowd of Mac-heads would remain loyally buying Apple kit, but they'd be joined by a whole new group of both home users and business people desperate to get away from MS's stranglehold. It's even possible, maybe even likely, that a new côterie of Mac OS users would drive an increased demand for Apple kit.

And the best thing of all, from Apple's viewpoint, is that it costs practically nothing to press and ship DVDs. Unlike hardware sales, which need a constant and VERY expensive design, development and production pipeline, OS sales are almost entirely margin, and don't have all the WEEE/green/certification problems that hang off electronics manufacture. Trust me, I've been there. I'm still there!

I just want to see the AAPL share ticker when they finally see the light. There's never been a better time for Apple to liberalise and liberate their OS assets, but they've got to move NOW, whilst Microsoft is still weakened from the Vista débacle.