July 2nd, 2009
We have been longstanding customers of Nildram broadband, and recently upgraded one of our lines to the latest generation of high upload speed line offering upto 16mb down / 2.5mb up using annex m. Anyone considering this service may be interested in these results:
EXISTING NETGEAR DG834 v4 ROUTER (allegedly not annex m compatible but still works fine with 5.01.09 firmware):
connection speed 14.64 mb down / 1.17mb up
3 x speedtest.net results:
1) 10.61 / 0.62
2) 10.80 / 0.65
3) 11.24 / 0.73
NEW THOMSON ROUTER FROM NILDRAM:
connection speed 14.34 down / 1.14 up
3 x speedtest.net results:
1) 9.85 / 0.7
2) 8.59 / 0.55
3) 10.45 / 0.72
As you can see the new router Nildram claim that we need is slightly slower, but in any case is nowhere near the 16.00 / 2.5 claimed for the new service. I wish I did the same test before they “upgraded” the line, but from memory it was about 8mb down / 0.5 up - certainly not a lot different.
Conclusion: - dont buy a new modem if you want this service, as its not worth it.
Posted in Open Source | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
June 21st, 2009
I love this image from Peter Renton’s Blog, originally the “How to Be Happy in Business” Venn diagram by Bud Caddell (available for distribution under Creative Commons License 2.0).
It just sums up what you need to do in small businesses to be successful and happy.
Posted in business | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
May 23rd, 2009
I am a huge fan of the firefox update scanner as previously blogged, in that it saves me a lot of time (and hurts when its not there!). Recently I’ve discovered that you can backup and restore or transfer the websites you are monitoring with ease in a remarkably simple way that I coudnt find anywhere on the web.
All your websites being scanned are stored in your bookmarks, so if you backup all your bookmarks using the bookmark manager in firefox, it will save them all. you can then import them onto the new machine (in my case my new netbook) once you have installed the plugin on the new machine. And hey presto, you are monitoring the same websites on the new machine. If you really want mobility, email the exported bookmarks file to your web email account, and you can install it on any machine anywhere at any time that has firefox.
Posted in Open Source, business | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
May 23rd, 2009
We recently recruited a dedicated website designer to develop our websites, and he has done a cracking job with our main user website www.selfadhesivelabels.com .
www.selfadhesivelabels.com
The site has improved navigation, aesthetics, images, content and overall is a lot cleaner than our previous site, and we are really pleased with it. There has been a lot of clever work involved in this site, but as this is an open forum and I know our competitors watch this blog, I cannt cover them here! However, if any customers have comments on it, please feel free to leave your feedback below.
Posted in Labels, business | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
May 23rd, 2009
dell mini 9 running ubuntu netbook remix
I have recently taken delivery of a Dell Mini 9 that came preinstalled with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. I’ve upgraded the operating system to the latest Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook remix to make it boot faster and so its consistent with my laptop. Pictured above is it with the charger and the bag I also bought from Dell.
Overall I’m really pleased with it, it small, light, the battery lasts for hours (like 4 hours+) and ideal as a netbook. The downside is the keyboard can be difficult to type on as the keys are just so close together and I must have fat fingers!
It boots in 42 seconds from cold, and come out of suspend by opening the lid in 5 seconds flat (I kid you not). I have connected it as a 3G modem over bluetooth to my Nokia E90 by using the hack previoulsy published for my laptop so I can use it on wifi and 3G anywhere where there is a signal.
And it was only £199 inc vat - a bargain. I would recommend this as a really goog value netbook solution, and as always with Ubuntu, it just works.
Posted in Open Source | 1 Comment » Posted By Adrian
May 14th, 2009
I was contacted by the publishers of this new book recently and offered a copy for review of a new book written to support users of Trixbox such as us. Well I’ve read through it, and this is my opinion.
I have never really gone looking for a book such as this, as in most circumstances when we need support I look on google or call our IT support company. In this respect I dont know what the competition is for a Trixbox support book, but I get the impression that this is a ‘first’.
Overall, I really liked the book, as it uses plain language that a non sys admin can understand to explain what Trixbox is, what it isnt , and how to install, configure and trouble shoot it. There are simple explanation of lots of functions that I have learnt about the hard way in here, and having read the book, I wish that I had done so before configuring it myself, as it would have saved lots of time, probably about 10 hours of iterative learning. In this respect, for £28 its very good value. When you put this in the context of the cost of a traditional small business phone system at £5K-£20K - its amazing value as trixbox is of course free and open source.
There are some problems that you just wont solve by using this book and non experienced sys admin. The major IP network range problem we had that nearly destroyed our migration is not even mentioned in the book .
So, my advice is to buy this book to learn if Trixbox is for you, or if you want to learn how to configure a working system. Its not going to solve all your installation problems like that mentoned above or instaling ISDN cards, but its a start. It will be a very useful reference for us moving forward - I’m now off to try the direct fax to PDF feature I didnt even know existed now that I’ve read the book!
Its available from here.
Disclosure: I’ve been given a free copy of the book to review and keep, but am under no other pressure or commercial interest in respect of this book.
Tags: trixbox
Posted in Open Source | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
May 3rd, 2009
Gor anyone that didnt know about this new development, there is a great post on the new Microsoft Office SP2 supporting open document formats here.
Posted in Open Source | 1 Comment » Posted By Adrian
April 27th, 2009
Netbooks have become increasingly poplar over the past year, and it has become apparent over the past few weeks that having a ‘pool’ one would be very useful for the business for a few reasons:
- Rich (our IT manager) can take it when he is away from home in case he needs remote access ‘in case of emergency’
- I can use it when travelling on business and holiday to work more efficiently than I can do on my Nokia e90, particularly on the train.
- My co-diretor can use it when overseas or on client visits.
My criteria are:
- it must be a small and light netbook type device
- it must have 3g support, as in many places there just isnt wifi
- it must run ubuntu, preferably the ubuntu UNR version designed for netbooks
I’ve really struggled to fit this brief, as there sem to be so few netbooks with 3g. The Acer Aspire One A110-A 3G seems possible, but it does not ship with ubuntu and seems quote dear. There is a Asus Eee PC 3.5g modem listed on its website, but I cannt see anywhere to buy it.
The idea of a small, SSD drive netbook device just for mobile use is quite attractive, but it must come with 3g to make it viable for me. Can anybody recommend such a device?
Posted in Open Source | 6 Comments » Posted By Adrian
April 24th, 2009
When you visit the supermarket or liquor store you will see thousands of different product labels. But hone in on just one product and you will notice every label for that product is identical. Well of course it is, you are probably thinking, because the product is the same. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Take Jones Soda (http://www.jonessoda.com/), the American soft drink maker, for example. If you see Jones Soda on the shelf in a retail store you will see many different labels on the same product. Jones Soda has made custom labels a part of their brand. They encourage their customers to upload wacky photos and they use these photos on their bottles. They use digital label printing to print different photos on their labels so each six-pack will have a different looking label. Since this program launched back in 1996 they have received over one million customer photos for use on their bottles.
St. Francis Winery in California (http://www.stfrancisred.com/) has taken a slightly different approach but is still leveraging variable data label printing. Their “RED” wine comes with 12 different background designs on their wine labels, so when a customer orders a case of wine they will see a different label on every bottle. And on the shelf in the liquor store customers will also see the different labels.
With digital printing technology it is very easy to make every label different. But there are so few companies taking advantage of this. Yet. In the two examples above these companies have made their unique labels an integral part of their brand. Of course, it is important to keep some components of your label the same so you can have a somewhat consistent look but having a part of your product label be variable can really differentiate your product from the competition.
Let’s take an example to illustrate this point. Say you sell premium coffee sourced from Brazil. You could feature beautiful photos of Brazil on your coffee bag labels. Stock photography is so inexpensive these days you could buy photos on places like istockphoto.com for just a few dollars each. You could then position your coffee as the company that has the beautiful photos of Brazil and make this part of your promotion for the brand.
In a few years time this kind of branding will be common place. But there is a window of opportunity right now that allows companies to stand out from their competition by leveraging the power of variable data labels. It is becoming more difficult for companies to do something really different that can attract the attention of consumers. Take advantage of the digital printing technology in this window of opportunity and do something different with your product labels.
Peter Renton is the founder of Lightning Labels, an all-digital label printer based in Denver, Colorado. He writes regularly about the label industry on their company blog at http://blog.lightninglabels.com.
Posted in Labels | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
April 24th, 2009
Last night, whilst I was asleep, I set my laptop to download and upgrade by laptop from 8.10 to 9.04 on my Compaq nx6125 laptop. It just worked. You can find out more about the new release here. After 20 mins of use, I cannt see a lot of big new features as most of the work on this release appears to be at the kernel level with faster load times and more support for wireless / 3G cards. Its nice to have the latest Open Office 3.0 release and Firefox 3.0.9 though.
It is just quite amazing that the community has provides such good software for “free”, and I an very pleased to use and advocate it. Thank you to the community for your work in relation to this latest release.
Posted in Open Source | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
April 16th, 2009
Yesterday Peter Renton from Lightning Labels in the USA has agreed to do a guest post here. One of the labelling industry’s most popular bloggers, Peter is well known for his excellent blog focussing on labelling issues and design. Watch this space!
Posted in Labels | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
April 16th, 2009
PRESS RELEASE
11 April 2009
Cannock, Staffordshire, UK
Mercian Labels Ltd reaches 40 year anniversary
Short run labelling specialists Mercian Labels Ltd are celebrating after reaching their 40th anniversary. Opened on 11 April 1969, the company has grown from strength to strength as is now the UK market leader in short run labelling and breaking new ground with its innovative Label LockTM range of secutiy seals.
Managing Director Dr Adrian Steele said “It is very pleasing for all the team here to reach this milestone. In an economic downturn there are inevitably difficulties for many companies, but I am proud of the continuing growth in demand for our products that has enabled us to reach our 40th anniversary.”
The Mercian Labels Group is experiencing rapid domestic and export growth with the success of Label Lock, launched last year as a flagship brand of the Security Labels International division, and continued expansion of Mercian Labels, the UK market leader in fast-response short run labelling.
- - - ENDS - - -
- - - CONTACT - -
Mercian Labels Ltd
Watling Street
Cannock
WS11 0BD
UK
+44 (0)1543 431 070
Contact: Dr Adrian Steele
sales@mercianlabels.com
http://www.www.mercianlabels.com/
Posted in Labels, press releases | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
April 12th, 2009
I love my nokia E90, its the best business communication tool I have ever seen. The restriction is often rendering full content websites over 3G, on a small screen and with a small processor. I have a selection of favorite mobile websites that are specific to small screen devices, but I’d like to know more. Any suggestions, or do you know of any other lists?
- news.bbc.co.uk/text_only.stm
- www.thetimes.mobi
- m.ft.com/uk/
- www.telegraph.co.uk/mobile
- m.guardian.co.uk
Its a shame that there are not more travel related sites, motorway trafffic updates etc, but I’d like to hear of any more to add to the list please.
Posted in business | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
April 12th, 2009
This article on the BBC today got me thinking - what will microsot sell when the world becomes more focussed on browsers than operating systems? Already I actually already spend 95%+ of my time on my laptop in Firefox (Zimbra, Toodledo, our MIS and other websites), and as long as the operating system supports this, I’m pretty happy.
Maybe Ive missed the point, but is Microsoft’s Midori a downloadable operating environment? What a world it would be if every client machine just booted up into a browser only, and you downloaded your “desktop” and “user space” over the web, meaning your online world was remotely stored whereever you go. A sort of remote desktop world for everybody by default, where all the processing was server side and there was an immense “cloud” of “thin terminals”.
Time to up my medication…
Posted in Open Source | No Comments » Posted By Adrian
April 3rd, 2009
A story by Matt Asay prompted me to look up this graph from statcounter.com
and according to this story, Firefox (v3) is now the most widely used browser in Europe, surpassing IE (v7). Thats a fantastic achievement for the community who built, develop and maintain Firefox. Its my browser of choice by far, its superb, and I’m really pleased to see it get the adoption it deserves.
Tags: firefox
Posted in Open Source | No Comments » Posted By Adrian