Broadband: March 2008 Archives

Online gaming is creating widows across the world

By
Shelley Wilson
on March 31, 2008 12:13 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

I found myself amused the other day when I was considering writing this post for our blog, as I decided to do some research to see if there were any others out there who have a member of their family so wrapped up in online gaming that they feel like a "widow" and I came across this on Wikipedia. It reads as follows:

"A gamer widow is a term for those who have a relationship with a gamer (one who plays video games, be it on a console or on the computer) who pays more attention to the game than to their partner. It is similar in concept to the football widow."

I found this amusing because it didn't even cross my mind that there was an entire network of people out there feeling just like me!

Well, I am a gaming widow mother! My 17 year old son Luke is an online gamer (funny I feel like I am in a self-help group!) and I hardly ever see him. However, I hear him, oh yes, for all you parents out there who have children who play computer games you will know what I mean!

Sometimes I wish he was playing some loud obtrusive music at 100 decibels instead of shouting at the top of his voice into his headset "fire in the hole", "sniper to the left" and "behind you", sound familiar? Yes? Well then you probably know that is a game called counter-strike and if you have heard your child shouting these terms randomly and continuously every evening you may feel the same as me?

What ever happened to playing out on your bike? Or going to the local youth club? Or playing cards or monopoly with the family?

Oh god I'm getting old aren't I? Well anyway, old or not, my son knows what he wants and how he wants it when it comes to online gaming - his clan is dedicated to their clan matches and competitions. They are always trying to improve, ping times, latency, lagging, registration speeds etc and optimising everything to get the best possible game.

So as the sales director of EFH Broadband I decided to take my son's experience and design a product specifically aimed at gamers to give them a quality of service which prioritises their traffic above everything else and give them reduced hops etc, we hope to launch this product very shortly so gamers everywhere watch out for it, with your help we will make this the best product in the market for you!

If you wish to share your experience or thoughts about this or provide feedback on how you would like to see this service working please feel free to leave your comments about what services are most important to you.

All the very best until the next time!

Shelley

Hello and look out for Battlefield Heroes

By
Stuart Bruce (Wolfstar)
on March 27, 2008 6:18 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Battlefield Heroes cut scene I've been somewhat tardy in creating my first post on the Enlightening Broadband blog, mainly because the rest of the team have been doing such a good job in publishing some interesting stories.

One subject that they haven't touched on much yet is the potential for online gaming if you've got a good broadband connection. If you've never played an online multiplayer game then you might be loath to shell out to buy both a game and the ongoing subscription. That's where the rise of free-to-play online multiplayer games is to be welcomed.

There's a great preview in this month's PC Gamer of Battlefield Heroes, which is due out in June. Battlefield Heroes is a kind of cartoon conflict where your character is modelled like a plastic toy soldier. It sounds great fun and is well worth checking out when it launches.

Limewire 'extracts the juice' by launching new internet music store

By
Chris Norton (Wolfstar)
on March 19, 2008 10:04 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Limewire the popular peer-to-peer music sharing platform, which is used by millions of people across the planet, has launched a new online music store.

The store will feature tracks available from just 50p each with a range of independent (random) artists. Limewire is well-known as the platform which allows its users to share free music, maybe this is its first move towards becoming a proper legal entity.limewire squeezes its profits

According to the guys from Tech Digest;  "Around half-a-million MP3 files, encoded at a reasonably decent 256Kbps, are available, and users of the LimeWire application will soon see links to buy tracks as well as download free music as they usually do."

You will be able to pay on a per-track basis or for the more devoted music lover (up to 75 tracks a month) there will be three levels of monthly subscription allowing a set number of tracks to be downloaded, at a reduced track cost.

The LimeWire store is being kept separate from the LimeWire sharing application for now anyway

I think quite a few people in the music industry will be watching this one closely to see if its dedicated users will actually start paying for tracks rather than getting them for free.

Of course the real question is how is it going to stop its tracks from its paying site becoming free on its non-paying platform?

All you need is love - The Beatles back catalogue finally available on the internet

By
Chris Norton (Wolfstar)
on March 10, 2008 10:04 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am hoping to cover music quite regularly on this blog because I love it - so here is my very first music post. The day is finally here - err almost anyway. Apparently the Beatles back catalogue is going to be placed on iTunes for people to legally download very soon.

I think this is a great idea although I am actually pretty surprised that it's never happened before. My dad loved the Beatles, I love the Beatles and I think my little boy will probably love the Beatles, because they are a timeless band that made fantastic music. beatles

The funny thing about this story is when the Beatles stuff does actually all go up onto iTunes - it could mean that the band end up securing all of the top ten spots in the official charts and maybe even more. This is because downloaded music is now included in the official figures and I am guessing quite a few people will want the band on their iPod's this summer.

Although the date is not set in stone just yet, Sir Paul is expected to sanction the release of the back catalogue which is expected to generate around £300 million for him, Ringo and the families of the other two late Beatles. I am sure Michael Jackson also has a share in their long back catalogue somewhere along the line - so Michael will probably celebrating this new deal too.

A post on Tech Digest states: "Availability has previously been held up by legal disputes with their record label EMI and Apple Corps and indeed Apple Computers. But with those now out of the way, it looks inevitable. Indeed, bookmakers have now tipped Yesterday to be the Beatles' next number single with Labrokes offering odds of 3/1 for it to top the charts."

Hello from Shelley Wilson and EFH Broadband

By
Shelley Wilson
on March 7, 2008 10:12 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi I'm Shelley Wilson the sales director at 186k Limited, and one of my key brands here is EFH broadband, which as you probably already know, focuses mainly on you - the home user. Over the past twelve months we have spent a huge amount of time focusing on improving and enhancing the experience of our customers. In fact recently, we decided to listen to our customers some more and move all of our customer service team from India back to the UK. leeds city centre.jpg

I have been working in the internet industry for around 10 years now and have worked as a director for the past seven years and although it is extremely hard work - I really enjoy it. The team here are all great to work with and I enjoy working in Leeds as I was born here and the city is very much up-and-coming.

Our company has been growing well and so have the account teams. We have recently strengthened them with the additions of Sophie Mitchell-Kirk, Julie Allen and Michael Keen. These new team members are all from the local area (Leeds) and hiring them is hopefully a genuine sign of our commitment to growing roles here in the UK.

To be honest, social media and blogs are quite new to me and I haven't really been active in any of them before, but having taken the advice of our digital marketing agency, and a number of other valued sources, we believe it is the perfect way to engage with you (our customers) and get some useful and constructive feedback.

I am personally very excited about this blog, as up until now the only feedback we received was from either forums or when a customer sent in feedback directly. This blog and social media newsroom (which is due to open shortly) are our new ways of communicating and sharing knowledge with you in an open and honest environment. However, it is new to us too so we ask for your patience and understanding as we work our way through this learning curve as I am sure we will make the odd mistake or two.

As you can imagine at EFH we have many skills and expertise that we would like to share with you and we hope you will view us as a trusted adviser who will always give you an honest opinion and not hide behind any jargon. Our team have a lot of knowledge about the industry, technology in general, online gaming, hosting and website design, 3G etc and pretty much everything you would expect around technology and the delivery of it.

We are not precious about the topics we write about in this blog as long as they are relevant to the internet, so if there is a specific topic that you would like us to write about please feel free to send us some details and we will do our best to cover it and offer you our opinion or advice.

Over the next three months you will see further improvements to our customer support, website, product range and speeds and quality of service. For instance, did you know that EFH are now one of the very few ISP's that offer a free customer support number in the UK? So when you call in for support you are not charged, it is a free phone call. We also offer free installation or migration with no contractual commitment. I hope this goes some way to showing that we are now confident we are moving in the right direction with our service.

Well I think that's it, I have managed to write my first ever blog post. I will no doubt be back soon with more news updates from inside EFH but until then I hope you continue to enjoy reading our team blog.

Broadband – revolutionising the world of reading

By
Beth Kay (Wolfstar)
on March 4, 2008 2:58 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

bed Since I was a child I have enjoyed snuggling up in my bed, opening my book to the latest chapter and wondering off into a world far far away from my own. Flicking through the pages, folding over the edges to remind me where I am is all part of the reading experience, but is broadband is set to change all this? Harper Collins have put Neil Gaiman's American Gods novel online for people to read for free.

Whilst this seems like a good idea in theory, and probable would be if it was downloadable, the online book only allows people to read it whilst at the computer. I can’t imagine many people wanting to stare at their computer screens at their desks when they could be snug under the covers. The publisher seems to be missing a trick here, as online books would be a great idea if the user could download the content and print it off.

For the moment I think I’ll stick to my world under the covers but I would be very interested to see how publishers develop this idea further.

Internet search engine Yahoo adds new 'Buzz' feature

By
Chris Norton (Wolfstar)
on March 3, 2008 1:37 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is an interesting story about Yahoo I noticed this morning. Internet users can now vote for their favourite type of news content on Yahoo, similar to the social book marking tool Digg.

We use Digg and Delicious all the time as they are a great way to share content. In fact we have recently done that with some of EFH's news coverage recently.

Yahoo has added the new functionality to its site so that users can highlight the most popular news stories and blog posts from anywhere on the internet. The popularity is solely based on user votes and their search patterns.yahoo 

I have just had a look around myself and the top three searches were:

  1. American Idol
  2. Victoria Beckham
  3. Craziest tax deductions

All of this makes me feel most of the traffic is actually from the US. However, I still think it could be interesting to see what people are currently reading and searching for at the moment wherever they are based. I would expect Google to launch a similar service soon.

The new Yahoo Buzz extension actually counts the 'BuzzScore' for news stories, videos, pictures and blog posts. The story/content with the most votes is then considered for placement on Yahoo.

Yahoo vice president Tapan Bhat comments:"Yahoo Buzz builds on the recent success of the home page of Yahoo, and improves consumers' favourite online starting point by combining popular stories with the wisdom of real people to determine what is most engaging and relevant."

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