February 2008 Archives

Hi from Beth Kay - The best of channel 4, on demand!

By
Beth Kay (Wolfstar)
on February 29, 2008 4:30 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

4od Hi, my name is Beth and I work alongside Chris and Sebastian who you have already heard from. This is my first of many posts to come and hopefully you'll enjoy reading them. So...

Growing more and more frustrated with the snowy reception on my television, it was my flatmate that first introduced me to 4oD, channel 4’s online service allowing you to watch what you want when you want. I was already using my laptop to watch DVDs, and with the picture quality being so high I was excited to learn that I could soon be enjoying some of my favourite TV programmes at the same standard.

Although the website promised fast and easy installation, I found it quite slow. This may vary depending on an individual’s broadband connection. At first I was disappointed because the programmes stalled and skipped. I later realised that downloading (to watch at another time) rather than streaming (watch now) prevented this. I now enjoy channel 4 programmes uninterrupted, with the option of pausing or rewinding etc. I originally downloaded 4oD to keep up to date with shows that I was already a fan of, but it has also introduced me to other new programmes.

My flat mates and I have very different schedules, and internet services such as 4oD mean that we can still watch programmes that we enjoy together. It leaves the question, how much were people missing out on before services like this were available?

Ministry of Sound stepping up internet activity

By
Seb Mysko (Wolfstar)
on February 29, 2008 4:18 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've recently subscribed to the Ministry of Sound (MOS) blog, and whilst the content from its authors is quality, I'd love to see some more forms of media use. Also, considering the size of the brand - there doesn't seem to be too much dialogue occurring with readers... all I can think is that it isn't attracting its target audience and maybe it should be looking to add elements of its .com site to the blog.

I decided to take it upon myself to conduct some minor research with my colleagues and peers as to what is wanted from a blog.The questions went along the lines of:

  1. What do you read?
  2. Why do you read?
  3. Where do do you read?

Based on my findings there seems to be a common logic:

1) People enjoy/read blogs that are relevant to topics or interests which they are already involved in.... kind of obvious.

2) People read blogs because they are readily available. The internet is a catalyst for consuming information. Whilst many still enjoy the feel of a newspaper or magazine, there is obviously a timely logistics process involving writing, editing, printing and distribution - a far cry from three clicks....lazy as it is...

The other point is people enjoy online media consumption because it comes in different formats, audio, visual... even virtual...etc etc

3) Mobility is now key! People are spending more time in the office, on trains, planes and airport departure lounges than ever before. From status updates on Facebook at your Friday local - to emailing a colleague whilst supping your morning caffeine-hit at Heathrow Airport - it's all about anytime - any place.

With these points in mind, it would be awesome to see a brand as sexy as MOS maybe push the blog boundaries a little more... Joachim Garraud's got some decent ideas.

It's official Skype is taking over the internet - 100bn minutes already recorded

By
Chris Norton (Wolfstar)
on February 29, 2008 9:34 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have read quite a few articles this week reporting that Skype has now hit the SkypeDLPicstaggering 100 billion million mark for its voice and video call service and to be honest I am not surprised.

At Wolfstar we are encouraged to use Skype on a daily basis by our boss as it's a fantastic free service and it works really well with a good internet connection.

We use it in the office for a number of different things including sending instant messages and hyperlinks to each other as it's much quicker than standard email.

It's also really useful if one of the team are on the train as communication can be intermittent, so we can just send a quick message to someone's mobile or laptop.

It also means I can talk to my little boy and wife at lunchtime via my laptop (HP Pavillion DV9000) and face-to-face for absolutely nothing.

We were recently sent a couple of Skype mobile phones to test. I really like its styling but if you're interested in hearing more about them you can check out our review on those here.

Skype has revealed that the 100 billion mark is equal to one minute of talk time for every man, woman and child that has ever walked the earth.

It's true to say that Skype is a bit of an internet monster but it was only launched in 2003 and was bought by the popular online auctioneer eBay in 2005 for a whopping £1.3bn.

skype1According to Web User: "Skype now has 276 million registered users worldwide. Thirty million users joined the service in the last 3 months of 2007."

Villu Arak, writing on Skype's blog, adds: "This figure is so mind-numbingly large that it's nigh impossible to wrap my head around it. (Even if attempted, the exercise would likely result in a headache of cosmic proportions that no amount of pickle juice can possibly cure.)"

If you want to read about the features Skype has you can do so here or if you want to download it from here.

Government to work with BPI and ISPs to softly clamp down on illegal downloads

By
Seb Mysko (Wolfstar)
on February 28, 2008 4:07 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bonjour! My name is Sebastian Mysko, I work with Chris at Wolfstar, and will be offering comment on the Enlightening Broadband Blog.

This morning I caught up on my podcasts and came across an interesting debate on the Guardian's Tech Weekly. Since the pre-millennium days of Napster, online filesharing has certainly been on a journey through the legal world.  It seems that once and for all the government is demanding an agreed solution before April 2009, or legislation will be created to combat the issue. With the help of a new government voluntary strategy, it's now up to ISPs and the music industry to work together. Nick Langman, director general of ISPA believes: "the strategy is a way of dealing with infringing copyright that is legal, workable and economically sustainable."

So for anyone who has been taking advantage of freebie online downloads, listen up - this is what's being proposed:

THREE STRIKES AND YOU'RE OUT!

1) You will receive a letter making you aware of the fact your account is "being abused".

2) Should you continue to play with fire... you will receive another letter warning you that your account will be suspended if you carry on.

3) YOU'RE OUT! Account cancelled - terminated - FINITO!

So at least for the meantime, the choice is yours - proceed with caution is my advice. Stop being lazy, and research the hundreds of good quality FREE podcasts and MySpace bands that are available - and start paying the few for your music downloads and put something back into the industry.

The South Park team have got a different, but slightly amusing view:

BBC iPlayer starting to take the Internet by storm

By
Chris Norton (Wolfstar)
on February 28, 2008 11:14 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi my name is Chris Norton and I work for Wolfstar and I will be writing regularly for Enlightening Broadband. I will be covering many things related to the internet which interest me and which I hope will also interest you too.

Mark Sweney from The Guardian this week wrote an interesting article reporting that internet traffic for ITV's broadband TV service had slowed over the last couple of months. This could be due to its rival the BBC's iPlayer's huge growth after the BBC invested in a hefty marketing campaign to encourage us (Web users) to get using it.

bbc-iplayer-1-home-page.jpgITV's internet video traffic apparently peaked back in November which was mainly due to its most popular shows such as X-Factor being published on it. However, since then web traffic has dropped off a cliff.

On the flip side the BBC's iPlayer service recorded a whopping 11m programmes which were  streamed/downloaded in January 2008.

I have just checked it out and currently the three most popular shows are: Ashes to Ashes (Episode 3), Torchwood (Dead Man Walking) and Dawn (Gets Naked).

With the BBC iPlayer and your broadband connection you can:

  1. Find programmes you want to catch up on or watch again from the past seven days and watch them on the website through a method known as streaming.
  2. Download and store them on your computer for up to 30 days if you have a Windows PC.
  3. Play back high quality programmes on your computer as often as you like during the time that the programme is available

I think that one of the reasons that the iPlayer has been such a phenomenon is down to the fact that every BBC radio station has been plugging it massively over the last few months and bbc.co.uk is already used by a huge number of dedicated internet users - including me. It is also a great service which seems to provide good quality content. I don't think I will be using it that regularly though as I currently use a Sharp TUR160HA Digital TV recorder to watch my television programmes - its changed the way I watch telly to be honest. I commented on it recently on my own blog.

However, if you are going to give it a whirl you can find out how you can use the iPlayer with your broadband connection by reading here.

Welcome to Enlightening Broadband

By
Dave Richards
on February 27, 2008 5:28 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi there, and welcome to our first post on the new Enlightening Broadband blog. We have started this blog for several reasons but most importantly we have created it to share our enthusiasm on all things related to the internet.

We also wanted to create an open forum of discussion on broadband and the best ways to use it.

At EFH Broadband we know we haven't always done the best job of helping or advising our customers as quickly and efficiently as we would have liked and for that we are sorry. We are learning from our mistakes and have listened to the much needed feedback and taken stock and decided to focus on improving our service(s) right across the board. We started in December by bringing our customer support back from India to the UK. Whether it's your bank or your utility company we all know that one of the biggest causes of frustration and anger is being stuck on a phoneline waiting to speak to someone in an offshore call centre.

However, this blog is not going to be a technical support resource. If you are a customer of ours looking for technical support what we do offer is:

Phone lines answered by a real person in the UK
That real person will be knowledgeable and helpful
That person will take ownership of your call until it is resolved
To contact our technical support team call 0808 156 4776 or email support@efhbroadband.com and they should be able to help you with your enquiry quickly and efficiently, however please always remember we do not always have the information to hand as we all have suppliers to deal with!

Part of our inspiration for starting this blog was Dell and its Dell Hell experience, which eventually resulted in great initiatives such as the Direct2Dell and DellIdeaStorm blogs. Blogger Jeff Jarvis's blog, focusing on Dell's poor customer service, resulted in a storm of negative blog and forum conversation. After initially burying its head in the sand Dell eventually decided to re-engage with its customers, including starting their own blog. Jarvis concludes now that: "Dell reached out to bloggers; they blogged; they found ways to listen to and follow the advice of their customers. They joined the conversation. That's all we asked."

This is exactly what we want to do with you - we want to both engage and listen to our customers. Our challenge is to continually think through how we can develop our products that balance service with functionality and of course price.  We are going to use your feedback in an attempt to deliver a good balance.  The good news is that we know what we need to do as you have been telling us regularly what you think. Our main priority is therefore to get better at resolving problems for you our customers. 

One final point is that if you want to comment on Enlightening Broadband and join in the conversation then please take a moment to read our house rules.

Finally, I would like to welcome you to our initial editorial team which is made up myself as chief technical officer, Shelley Garbutt-Wilson our sales and marketing director. You'll also be seeing lots of posts by people from Wolfstar, our external consultancy who've helped us to put this blog together. They will be posting under their own names, so it will be totally transparent. The Wolfstar team will include Stuart Bruce, Chris Norton, Sebastian Mysko and Beth Kay.

Thanks for listening, now let the conversation begin.

Dave Richards

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