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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

Surfing the net has never looked so good

By
Beth Kay (Wolfstar)
on March 19, 2008 11:20 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bored of the same old dull ordinary computer? Is your laptop screaming out for a bit of vaa vaa voom? Do you want your technology to match your flare and style? Well here’s a quick look at some of the more exciting things you girls (or guys) can do to jazz up your computer life…

 

img_2065_asu14404 Like life in the fast lane? Well now your hardware can scream your need for speed with this ASUS Lamborghini VX1 laptop. It comes in racy yellow and will definitely get people staring when you whip this one out on the train. Despite its wacky colour, one should not turn one’s nose up at the specs with 2GB of Ram, 160 GB of hard drive and an Intel Core 2 processor. However, as with its motoring sister, Lamborghini style comes with a price… £1500 (and that’s its sale price).

 

pink-macbookIf yellow isn’t you then why not funk up your existing computer with a splash of colour using ColorWare’s customisation. Choose from a range of 35 different colours (I personally prefer the pink). And it doesn’t stop at computers. ColorWare can work their magic on music players, game consoles, smart phones and HD TV’s.

 

 

PCMousefunky5002If bling is your thing, then add some sparkle into your life and customise your laptop and accessories with Swarovski crystals. Crystal icing allows you to cover your MacBook Air with these little gems for that Paris Hilton look, or why not pimp your mouse with added crystal bling?

 

LS_sushi If you prefer the arts, then get a laptop skin from your favourite artist at Schtickers. Try a Van Gogh or Da Vinci or if you just want a funky pattern then go for leopard print or even Sushi!

 

With these handy sites you’ll be the cream of the laptop crop or maybe just look a bit crazy but I love it, boring computers are soooo last year.

 

 

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.

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:

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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