What happened to Open Advantage and the National Open Centre?

Posted by Adrian on Sep 30, 2008 in business, Open Source | 2 comments Can anyone tell me what happened to the National Open Centre, and Open Advantage as well while I’m at it?  I thought the former took over the latter role when funding ceased, but the former’s website is down now.  Is any publically funded body in the UK solely promoting open source any more?
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setting up a free business phone system using trixbox

Posted by Adrian on Sep 30, 2008 in Open Source | 0 comments The last big task in our complete migration to open source has been moving our phone system from swyx to Trixbox, the free and open source package containing linux, astrix, free pbx and lots of other packages to make a it stand alone scalelable phone system.  We involved Senokian from early days to get it working, as like a lot of these things, linux without a good sys admin can be a lonely...
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Digital printing event – Xeikon 3300 launch

Posted by Adrian on Sep 30, 2008 in Open Source | 1 comment As a specialist in short run labels for UK SMEs, we do a lot of digital labelling at Mercian Labels and are firmly committed to the Xeikon digitial process as it give us the best results for our customers. Punch Graphix have launched the new Xeikon 3300 and 3000 digital label printers, and last week we attended its first open day at the manufacturing site in Lier, Belgium to meet other Xeikon...
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Labellock is taking off

Posted by Adrian on Sep 30, 2008 in business, Security Labels | 0 comments We have been getting lots of interest in our new Labellock range of security labels from customers and distributors across the world.  Its taken a lot of R&D to get this product range to market, and its great to see the product being shipped out of the door. We’ve invested heavily in the business in the last year, and its great to see the product being shipped across the workd for...
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network attached storage

Posted by Adrian on Sep 30, 2008 in Open Source | 4 comments We have had a long standing probelm with data storage in our business, as we generate or manage a huge number of graphic design files.  With the final stages of our migration coming together, we decided to move all our files to a dedicated network attached storage device (running on embedded linux of course!). We picked a Buffalo Terastation Live 1TB device on the recommendation of Senokian,...
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New UK labels event being planned

Posted by Adrian on Sep 30, 2008 in Labels | 0 comments Readers of this blog who are involved in the UK labels industry may be interested to know that there is a new UK based and focussed event being planned for UK label companies.  With the dominance of LabelExpo in Brussells every 2 years, there has not been a UK event of any significance for years.  Through the BSRLA I’ve been approached to support this event, which the BSRLA is doing. ...
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the best advice I got today was “ship your waste to China”

Posted by Adrian on Sep 16, 2008 in Labels | 1 comment Today I’ve been at the Recycling and Waste Management show at the NEC in Birmingham on my continual quest to find a waste management solution for our stripping waste at Mercian Labels.  The disposal of this type of waste is the largest waste disposal problem we have as an industry (apart from silicon liner, which is already well addressed for volume users). I went looking for 1 of 3...
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phorm is approved -what a pity

Posted by Adrian on Sep 16, 2008 in business | 0 comments For anyone in the UK who values their privacy, Phorm is bad news.  Its just such a bad idea for users, the reputation of those companies taking part, and the regulators who approve it.  If my ISP Nildram subscribes to it, they will loose my business for sure. Nuff’...
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how to install ubuntu 8.04 when it hangs off the CD using the noapic command

Posted by Adrian on Sep 11, 2008 in Open Source | 0 comments I have spent some time this afternoon working out why ubuntu 8.04 wont install on a brand new pc I bought today from Ginger6 , as it hung and reported MP-BIOS bug 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC Kernel Panic – not syncing: IO-APIC + timer doesn’t work! Try using the ‘no-apic’ kernel parameter I dont really understand why this happens, but the solution was to press f6...
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Presentation on “back to basics” with online business models

Posted by Adrian on Sep 7, 2008 in business | 2 comments This is a great fun presentation on how to run a profitable software business in the SME market. Its 30 minutes long, and really puts into the perspective the importance of the SME business model.  Not everybody can be the next facebook, but there is good, enjoyable business to be had out there in smaller...
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google chrome – not for me

Posted by Adrian on Sep 7, 2008 in Open Source | 0 comments At Mercian Labels we  do a lot of online marketing, and the new google browser “Chrome” looked of interest to me, as aI wanted to form an opinion as to whether or not it will take off and be as popular as IE or Firefox. However useful and incredibly successful google is, sometimes they appear to overstep the mark. Read this review of Chrome’s security features and decide...
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Whinge about ebuyer.com – 0871 numbers to return faulty goods?

Posted by Adrian on Sep 2, 2008 in business | 2 comments I rarely complain about companies on this blog, but this one just takes the biscuit.  I ordered 2 TVs from Ebuyer.com last week, only to find out that the remotes were faulty and not working.  I completed their returns system online, only to be told that to return that faulty goods I had to call a premium 0871 number, (and be placed on hold in a queue!) to speak to a call centre to get the...
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