At the 11th hour, I decided to head up to Ipswich to BT’s Heath Martlesham engineering R&D facility.
I did not have a particular desire to see what BT where up too as an organization, but Doug Richard was hosting one of his excellent School for Startups.
Now I last visited “Adastral Park” during the 1980′s. Those not familiar with this part of the world – semi-rural Suffolk, BT’s research Labs where built in the 1960′s on the site of a former RAF base.
The main building represents all that was wrong with post war architecture and the central tower is I am told reflects back to it’s RAF days give a control tower feel, but reaching up into the stars, hence the name.
Well apart from the name change in the 1980′s I cannot see what else has changed ?
The building is “shabby and dated”, the hospitality was at minimal levels, other than from the fine girls that did car park duty – out in pretty indifferent weather.
But this is the bit that would worry me as a BT shareholder – you have I’d guess over 100 budding entrepreneurs in the room along with one of the countries, if not Europe’s leading entrepreneurial educators in Doug Richard, they made no effort to do any marketing at all !
A BT chap came on a the start did the health and safety brief, informed us not to take any photographs and left! – that was it – after that zip.
Surely the thousands of engineers are working on something they could at least give us a sneak preview on?
I now understand why it’s called “Adastral Park” – somebody’s head is certainly in the clouds !
Hopefully some BT employees where in the audience, they need marketing advice as badly as startup’s do.
Roy 11th June 2010
Having acknowledged that Apple would appear to be the mobile development platform of choice at the moment, I have entered the Apple garden, and thus far have been delighted with the whole experience.
I have already built my first application and used AppMakr as an initial web based development tool, just to get up and running. Having subscribed to the Apple developer program, I now have access to the tools and ability to offer approved applications via the iTunes store.
Now the last real programming I did was on the 6510 processor, the divertive of the 6502 processor that fuelled the 1980’s home computer revolution. I am finding it really refreshing, because it’s an activity that is mentally taxing, yet free from a large degree of interference – you just simply get on, design, build and test. It’s also fun because the last code that I wrote was over 20 years ago whilst at Plymouth University, and we had nothing like the set of tools available today – I remember still writing code that would be batch tested overnight!
However I am conscious that this is only a short lived period in the evolution of the FBO Guides as my primary focus needs to be on the marketing and business development of the project, but at least I will have a grounding in the technologies that are being used, which I am sure will help in future product development.
I am really enjoying getting to grips with a new challenge, but also laying the foundations of the project, so I can go out and promote what I am working on to the business aviation community with a good understanding of how the product might evolve and what the possible is.
Roy 3rd June
Nokia 5230 running the AV8Services Application
Currently a lot of my focus is on the development of the FBO guide, and how to deliver the information to the prospective audience.
Given the very nature of the service, delivery on a mobile platform is taken as a given.
Having read this morning that the iPad has arrived, I started thinking about the mobile strategy and which platforms to deliver on.
I’ve always had a time for Apple and think that it’s healthy that alternative platforms exist. When the iPhone first came out I think it was universally regarded as “cool”. However as the other phone manufacturers have now caught up, I think Apple is over-rated and certainly overpriced.
I have discovered the iPad with mobile connectivity is going to use a non-standard SIM, what a joke ! – Does the iPad data have something magical about it ? – other than the ability to allow the mobile service providers to rip you off for the privilege of being an Apple user. I can see no technical reason, it’s purely a marketing scam.
Sorry it’s not innovative or “cool”, Apple – your doing just because you can.
My first exposure to mobile data was back in the late 90’s when I was working at Ideal Hardware, the Nokia banana made famous in the Matrix was all the rage – I wanted one and immediately set about using the 9600 baud data connectivity. Websites still where largely designed around a dial-up-audience. So I’ve seen the game evolve from day one.
Well yesterday I’ve invested in a new Nokia 5230 – OK it’s the budgetary mainstream for Nokia at the moment, but here are my four reasons for choosing Nokia over Apple
1/ It’s a phone first – At a meeting in central London the other day, the only attendees who could get a signal where those with Nokia phones. Your blackberry, iPhone or whatever is useless if it cannot communicate with the outside world.
Nokia built a lot of the mobile infrastructure and transmitters as well – it follows therefore that it should have a head start on the reception front
Round 1 – Nokia
2/ Cost of Ownership
Firstly I am with T-mobile, therefore I either need a jail break phone or to change to 02, at £50 per month for 18 months, so £900 worth of contract or £500 to purchase a phone.
Then we turn to data, I currently get unlimited (well I’ve never hit the barrier) as part of my monthly tariff, I think it added a £5 to the monthly costs. iPad option see to start around £20 per month for realistic monthly usage.
Round 2 – Nokia
3/ Extras
Lets see – Nokia’s entry level sub £100 touch phone has given me – full GPS mapping and directions for most of the known world, 10 tracks to download from the Music Store, 10GB of online accessible storage, e-mail clients and access.
Understand from my Apple friends that Apple’s policy is like a 1980’s BMW – anything you might desire is likely to be on the options list with a suitable price tag attached.
Round 3 – Nokia
4/ As a Development Platform
Now I don’t have a Mac, but to develop iPhone applications you need both an iPhone and a Mac computer and a later model intel chipset one at that.
Nokia have actually made the process of developing Apps so easy, that I already have one in the works already – due for publication in the next week or so
Round 4 – Nokia
So now back to the serious business of which platform
Market Share
Well, this is where we get to the power of marketing and brands – essentially I get the same functionality form my Nokia as my friends do from the iPhone – but Apple have taken a huge market share in the markets that matter to me in the past five years or so.
Market share for Q4 2009 is coming in at 40% for Apple in North America, v 11% for Nokia, and things are even better for Apple in Nokia’s backyard with market share at 68% and Nokia hanging in at 8%
So unless my specific aviation market feedback reflects that aviation professionals across Europe are bucking the trend, reluctantly the iPhone platform must be on the agenda and is more important than the Nokia one.
So on that note, whilst I will always champion Nokia, my head say’s it has to be Apple.
Roy 28th May 2010
A few days ago I posted a blog discussing the eye-fi card – which adds the very real prospect of being able to upload photographs in near real-time to a range of photography web hosting sites without the need for a computer, which gives rise to all sorts of journalistic or other opportunities.
It simply replaces your existing SD / SDHC card, with a WiFi enabled one, but it’s worth checking out compatibility issues on the eye fi website.
The Eye-Fi cards with hotspot abilities ( NOTE:- not all of them do) would however appear to be limited in it’s use outside North America, because most FREE hotspots in Europe that I have come across still have some form of login splash screen, and those with a subscription based service also need to be logged into, so it’s appeal is limited.
However encouraging words came from Eye Fi yesterday – here are the words from the Eye-Fi Press release:-
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 27, 2010 — Eye-Fi Inc., makers of the world’s first wireless memory card for digital cameras, today announced it will add hundreds of thousands more Wi-Fi networks to its Hotspot Access service, including a significant expansion of its international hotspots. By the end of May, Eye-Fi X2 users with an active Hotspot Access plan will be able to upload photos and videos directly from their camera to their home computer, and the Web, from commercial and open Wi-Fi networks around the world.
“Digital photography lets us capture the moments of our lives, wherever we are,” said Jef Holove, CEO of Eye-Fi. “Now we can enable our users around the world to back-up and share these memories from anywhere, whether traveling abroad or out running errands.”
The expansion is made possible through a partnership with Devicescape, a provider of Wi-Fi connectivity solutions for mobile devices. Eye-Fi X2 users with Hotspot Access will automatically benefit from the service expansion in several ways:
* Eye-Fi users with a personal hotspot subscription to a Wi-Fi hotspot provider, such as Boingo, BT Openzone, T-Mobile, SFR, Orange and Vodafone, can add their existing credentials to their Eye-Fi account to upload in these supported locations, and potentially expand their hotspot upload coverage to millions of hotspots.
* Eye-Fi users at schools and universities across the world can now add their campus Wi-Fi network credentials to their Eye-Fi account.
* Eye-Fi users will be able to automatically upload through hundreds of thousands more open hotspots because the Eye-Fi card now navigates through splash screens
“Our users want to be connected no matter where they are or what device they are on,” said David Fraser, CEO of Devicescape. “Eye-Fi has come up with a way to make virtually any camera wireless and, with our help, now those cameras can back-up and share from more places.”
Last month, Eye-Fi expanded its coverage to more than 21,000 Wi-Fi hotspots through a partnership with AT&T. Users can upload photos through any Starbucks in the U.S., in addition to Marriott Hotels, Barnes & Nobles and more.
Beginning June 1, 2010, the expanded Hotspot Access service will be available as an upgrade for $29.99 per year. As a limited time offer, the Eye-Fi Connect X2 and newly released Eye-Fi Geo X2 can be upgraded to a year of Hotspot Access service for $14.99 until May 31, 2010. The Eye-Fi Explore X2 and Eye-Fi Pro X2 cards include one year of Hotspot Access service and will benefit from the expanded footprint in May.
Eye-Fi’s entire X2 card line-up will be rolled out internationally beginning today through May in the U.K., Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland and Japan.
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If you care to visit Jessops or most of your average photographic dealers, they are still selling first generation cards at present and this press release relates to X2 cards, which I have had confirmed by Eye Fi are NOT GOING TO BE SUPPORTED with this new hotspot roll out, as the service relies on the engine and firmware of the second generation (x2) cards
So my advice – The Eye Fi card is from what I have discovered in a few days use has the makings of a GREAT product. But if you live in the UK and elsewhere in Europe and you are looking for a card with “Hotspot” access as allegedly the Eye Fi Pro Card has, do not buy anything other than the appropriate X2 card in a few weeks time, however tempting the cost might be because if you want “Hotspot” access the classic cards will be permanently limited within the UK and Europe.
This is the X2 Pro Card that I shall be getting – it’s currently (30th April) on back order with Amazon.co.uk, but the press release would indicate that it should be in stock in the next three to four weeks, or perhaps a bit sooner.
Roy 28th April 2010
Ever since I established AV8Services some 16 months ago an Internet presence has been at the forefront of my thinking when it comes our marketing activities.
The almost explosive growth of social media and the constant state of evolution requiring an interactive Web 2.0 interactive presence meant that I after careful consideration migrated the AV8Services website to WordPress over the past 48 hours.
However before making this change, I did some homework. A few weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with Paula Williams of Aviation Business Consultants, who has a comprehensive grounding in Internet marketing and she was using WordPress as the foundation for her website. Secondly I put a post on the UK business labs website.
For those of you in the SME business world, either as a start-up or established, I would 100% recommend full membership of UK business labs without hesitation. Firstly I have found it to be largely spam free – Mark and Emma tend to jump upon any blatant abuse by members quickly, but do allow responsible promotion of peoples business activities. Secondly and more valuably the advice given tends to be sound and people tend to be constructive rather than simply negative. Mark and Emma again have invested considerable time in trying to maintain a healthy ethos on the forum.
Homework done, I was ready to take the plunge, and started late Sunday evening, partly on the basis that I have a major exhibition to attend next week and wanted to attempt to get things up and running before then – the fact that you are reading this now indicates success, given that this was posted less than 48 hours later.
I had also in my surfing picked up a useful guide “Build your own WordPress site” and realised that independent hosting was the way to go, and after some searching and reading of reviews went with Evohosting, partly because of the favourable reviews, and mainly because they are UK based with UK support teams.
I am a strong believer in placing business where I can locally, however I can only vouch for Evohosting when I have real experience with them, but so far so good.
Now for the fun bit………….
Well getting started was a bit of an anti-climax – installing WordPress on my hosted space was like installing an application on your own PC – if you have ever installed an application on your PC then you can get up and running with WordPress.
Next came the search for a theme – I tried a half dozen or so in around about an hour, and found the “simple organization” theme by Arcsin very close to what I was looking for.
Once WordPress is installed, you then have a GUI to add your pages and blogs. Whilst WordPress evolved as a blogging platform, various themes and add-ons have enabled it to morph into a platform for building entire websites on.
Then it hit home, this was the real beauty of WordPress, in that it is an open-source platform governed by a GPL-license, thus rather than being limited by the resources of a number of developers, globally many thousands of developers have built a vast arsenal of extensions to enable things as diverse as direct feeds from other web platforms such as Flickr, to anti-spamming tools to keep your blogs and website safe.
This is the real power behind WordPress – combining a word processor like WYSIWIG with open source. To be honest if you have used a word processor, you can use wordpress.
The downside, well none really other than it’s now 1 am Tuesday morning and I am still tinkering with the website, because so much is possible, for example I’ve just switched the permlinks to custom to match the posting type, which is far more user friendly and logical than the default use of numbers and question marks.
And finally, give some thought to security, given that wordpress can be an insecure platform like any other when week passwords are used and no other thought is given to internet secuirty.
Roy 27th April 2010
I remember growing up in the 70’s the “I Spy” series of books which covered everything as diverse as Trees, to Aeroplanes.
I remembered them yesterday as I was picking up my eye fi card from my local Jessops.
For those not familiar with the product it effectively combines a SDHC media card with a WiFi link, so potentially enables most SDHC compatible cameras to become Internet enabled. Higher end cameras such as the Nikon D700 tend to be based around CF memory, whilst a CF to SDHC adapter can be used, eye fi themselves do not support this functionality, and forum postings would indicate that a reduced range tends to apply and other assorted issues.
Twiggy my Bengal cat was the first to make it to the ether, hence here picture associated with this blog.
The eye fi pro card enables the camera to effectively beam up the images captured to selected social media sites and also enables remote storage of the files until the “host” computer is switched back on again, when the files (RAW and jpeg) are routed back to the host computer.
How this works in the field remains to be proven, but I intend to go to the Kent 2020 show on Thursday to see if I can get a live feed from the show, if it works out the pictures will end up here.
What I am sure it will remind me is the need as a professional photographer to get it right in the Camera, as these images will not have been processed in Photoshop.
What will be even more interesting is when the next generation of cameras come onto the market with WiFi functionality built in.
I look forward to undertaking a full review down the line when I’ve had the card for a while and also perhaps found some of the commercial uses for the card such as delivering photographs back to the point of sale in event photography.
Roy 21st April 2010
By printer, I am not meaning that infernal machine that sits beside your desk and is the cash cow for HP, Canon or however, but those guys that charge you the big bucks for printing thousands of copies to those of us who need traditional marketing collateral, or want to sell books or photographs.
I spoke to one of my neighbours late last week, she and her partner where looking forward to publishing a book featuring some very fine aviation paintings.
Sadly they have just at great expense had to ditch the first print run, because the artist involved had huge problems with the colours not matching what he was expecting.
Now I have not yet fully investigated what has happened, but I am going to take an inspired guess, it’s got lost in translation somewhere in the electronic chain.
Remember back in those physics classes at school (for those of us awake), if you shine a red blue and green light on a screen when they overlap you gets near white. It’s what you are likely looking at now – your computer operates in the world of RGB. It adds them to get the spectrum of colours.
Your printer works in reverse – you start most of the time with white but need the spectrum of colours back to black – i.e the printer needs to subtract the colours back from black to give you the colour and shade you are looking for.
This means that when you normally operate software in a computer it is likely to be RGB based, but by the time it hits your printer (remember that guy who you needed to pay big bucks too) he will need to at some point convert it to a CMYK file for subsequent printing, may Adobe products for example can default to either and allow the translation to take place – but you need to check the results.
Sometimes this translation is minimal and for some non-critical work it will not throw up any issues.
PLEASE I beg you if you are doing a serious print run to discuss this mater with the parties involved, and get professional help and always insist on a proof to sign off before committing to a full print run.
Otherwise you will be visiting the recycling centre with a massive hole in your pocket.
Once you have addressed this issue, another one should be addressed by anybody who is involved in photographic reproduction and that is monitor calibration – this again is a process is designed to better match what you have on screen with what you finally end up with on the printed page. No system is perfect in this regard – however a correctly adjusted system will take you closer.
Calibration of monitors is best done with hardware solutions such as those sold by Databacolor and with solutions starting around £80 this cost is easily recovered by avoiding wasted printer runs. Lastly the printer it’s self can be calibrated and most of the high-end photographic paper vendors such as premaJet offer this.
If any of this is causing you concern, please feel free to contact me to discuss further
Roy 12th April 2010
