In July of this year I blogged about an announcement that 20 million euro would be allocated to job creation for ex-Dell workers (and other people who have recently become un-employed) in the Limerick region. As I was looking to raise funding to kick-start the Greenhouse Incubator I discussed this funding with a few ministers. What I wanted to know is if a relatively small amount of this funding could be made available to the Greenhouse incubator. I had been working on getting the Greenhouse off the ground since January this year and had everything arranged bar the funding. I had a large office (rent-free) I had mentors, sponsors, service provider, a knowledge network, atop-class board of advisors etc. All I needed was just a little bit of funding to pay for the operational costs and I would be able to create 15-20 jobs within the first 6 months with a forecasted net job creation of 100-ish jobs every 12 months.
I was disgusted to hear that ALL this money would be allocated to FAS and would only be spent on public sector “job creation” projects. This is simply unacceptable as FAS has been proven over the last year to be corrupt & incompetent. It is simply unacceptable that in a period in which the public sector has been proven again & again to be either unable to perform its task or is staffed by a large number of civil servants who only interested in serving themselves.
At the time I blogged about it, spoke once or twice on the radio on the topic but I also emailed a number of ministers as well as Vladimir Spidla, the EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities. A few of the ministers replied letting me know that there wasn’t really anything they could do for me however what disgusted me most is that I received a so-called “read confirmation” from Vladimir Spidla’s office but NEVER RECEIVED A REPLY!! So not only does the Irish government not give a damn about actually being credible and trying to solve the employment crisis, the EU commissioner in charge of allocating a large chunk of this funding also does not think he needs to at least have someone in his office reply to a valid query. This puts the whole Lisbon Treaty in perspective also.
We are now 4 months on from my original blogpost and what has been done in the public sector regarding job creation? Nada, nothing, zilch, niks, niets! There have been meeting after meeting of taskforces, committees & working groups and enough discussion has taken place that if words were water the plains of the Irish MidWest would have been flooded from Portloaise right up to Ennis…But has all this created a single job or stimulated a single unemployed person to start their own business venture? NOT A SINGLE ONE!
We are in a situation where brilliant entrepreneurs can’t even get help in raising 20k to go a Superstar event in the US to promote & kick-off their new venture. We live in a country where the best thing in start-up support is entrepreneurs themselves chipping in 50 euro each into a fund for new ventures. We live in a country where the only support I can get for organising a series of 5 Business Camps comes from the private sector and individuals (and is barely enough to cover the costs). We live in a country were the government is time after time proven to be unwilling to find any meaningful solutions for the current economic crisis.
We need to make clear to the people running this country that efficiency is not measured in money spent or money saved. Efficiency is measured by result. If we let this 20 million be gobbled up by FAS (with the predictable negligible results) the government will parade it around the halls off the Dail as a great effort because they “invested 20 million euro in job creation”…
We need to demand that at least half of this funding is spent on private sector run projects or we might as well take all this money and use it to stoke the hearths in our houses while the dwindling light of the Irish economy slowly but surely fizzles out…
I bought a Buffalo WLI-UC-GN usb device on Ebay a few months ago. It had to come from Hong-Kong as the device was not available. It arrived 10 days later and had been sitting on a corner of my desk ever since.
yesterday I had to set up a desktop pc in a bedroom and needed a wifi client device to connect the pc to my home network. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to try the WLI-UC-GN. The first thing that I noticed was that the device was absolutely tiny. It’s about twice the size of my thumbnail.
Software installation was fairly straightforward, after I downloaded the English language installer (the Japanese language version was a bit too hard for me). After I plugged the device into the front USB-port on the desktop the little blue light on the front started blinking and after a few mouse clicks I was connected to my wireless network.
So far nothing special right? Right. Now the really special features of the WLI-UC-GN come to light. This tiny device is not only a wifi client adapter, it’s also a fully featured wifi router! This means that it will not only connect to a wifi network but that it will also repeat the wifi signal but unless a conventional wifi repeater it has a fully configurable (software) router.
So you can plug it in a laptop (or even a pda, smartphone or other portable device with an USB port) and create a local wifi network! On top of that the WLI-UC-GN is a “Wireless-N” adapter allowing connection speeds up to 200Mbps. I’ve tested the device and performance has been flawless so far. The connectivity between a client and the WLI-UC-GN is stable & blindingly fast. Connectivity to the rest of the network is also more than acceptable in spite the desktop being placed in a area with high signal interference. The router function now also means that I can get a much better wireless connection with any other device in that area as I can route traffic via the WLI-UC-GN instead of connecting to the main wifi network directly.
So how much does this wonder device costs? An amazing 20 euro (29 USD) ex. postage! There are several listed on Ebay right now.
There was a lot off outrage back in October 2007 when it emerged that Eircom was leaving it’s customers home networks open to being hacked. As most others ISP’s Eircom had been supplying their broadband customers with a wifi enabled router as standard when they subscribed to their service. The fact that the wireless signal emitting from these routers can be picked up outside the customer’s home creates a possible security risk and would require that access would be made secure. Eircom however not only failed to inform it’s customers of this risk it also made two critical mistake when “securing” access at the time of installation;
It used WEP encryption. WEP encryption has been proven flawed as far back as 2003 and can now be decrypted within minutes.
They WEP-key used was based on the serial number of the router. No real problem except that the serial number was part of the broadcast SSID (the name of the network). This can be read by any wifi enabled device. So it was fairly simple to add 1 + 1 and come up with the WEP key.
As a result of all the negative publicity Eircom sent out a press release “making people aware” of this issue and in 2008 (!) they put a notice up on their website stating that for the previous 4 years they have been providing and installing inadequately secured routers and that they were now switching to WPA encryption. However the wording of the statement was misleading. It stated that: “This vulnerability makes it possible for a person with an advanced working knowledge of encryption and coding techniques to illegally access an eircom customer’s wireless internet connection”.
This statement purposely ignores the fact that there were software tools widely publicised & available for download that would decipher the WEP code in seconds allowing anyone with the ability to read and press a key to connect to what was estimated as 250.000 unsecured routers. Someone with “advanced working knowledge of encryption and coding techniques” would not have needed this flaw to gain access. They would have used Airsnort, KisMac or a range of other software tools available for years that would allow you to extract any WEP key in seconds. And they then quite likely might have used something like MetaSploit to do some real damage rather than just use your broadband without your permission. But I digress….
The point is that by the end of 2007 there were circa 250.00 of these routers in peoples homes and business premises. As Eircom was responsible for the supply of these you would have expected that they would have gone to some length to rectify this situation. Well it turns out they didn’t. I found out this week via Bernie Goldbach’s blog that there is actually an iphone app being sold through the iTunes store that will allow you to easily extract the WEP key for these networks and subsequently connect. It is also being covered elsewhere.
Now, while I am not a legal professional, I can see several issues here:
There are over 250.000 wifi routers with an easily disabled encryption spread over Ireland allowing a 3rd party to connect and potentially download/upload illegal content, send spam or run a botnet.
If any of this illegal activity is detected it will be easily traceable to the Eircom customers broadband connection.
There is no real applicable legislation in this area at the moment. Some legal professionals would say that it is up to the prosecution to proof that there wasn’t anybody else using the broadband connection. However this could be used as an excuse similar to the “one armed man” in the movie “The Fugitive”. Proof of your innocence would be an unknown 3rd party that will most likely be impossible to trace or even to gather proof of its existence.
Should people be held responsible for deeds or actions resulting out of them not (or not adequately) securing their wireless networks?
What is the applicable legislation for accessing someones network without their explicit permission? Surely it would be seen as trespass or “use of a 3rd parties assets or resources without their permission”?
Furthermore is it legal to sell an application that basically makes “hacking” someone network a one-click operation? Are lockpicking “guns” illegal to sell? If they are surely the sale of “deSSID” should be illegal also?
However in all honesty I have to admit that most of the above questions have been asked over & over again across the globe for as long as I have been working with wifi (since 1999 in case anyone is interested). However the most glaring offense here is Eircoms’ fault in providing mis-configured routers and their negligence in correcting this fault.
I’m considering renaming one of my projects. It’s an online directory for wifi hotspot locations.
The idea is simple; people can submit locations but also add reviews & pictures of the locations and service. The aim is to offer a user created, searchable, directory of wifi hotspots which not only lists the location but will also give you details on the wifi service (SSID, free/paid, quality) and the venue (is the coffee good, when it is busy/quiet, is the staff friendly etc.). All off this is off course searchable to the -nth degree.
I had started to use a domain I had registered some time ago but lately I haven’t been to happy with it so while I am working on a redesign of the site I’ve also decided to change the name/domain. Now there are off course two ways to do this; I could come up with a name myself and hope I am making the right choice or I could go down the popular route of crowdsourcing a name.
So I’ve chosen to crowdsource the name and am inviting everyone to come up with a suggestion. To make it interesting I will come up with a nice price (to be determined) for the chosen name.
So, if you have an idea for a name please leave your suggestion as a comment to this post or email it.
Note: By submitting a suggestion you agree to relinquish any rights to it (i.e. don’t come looking for money off me because I chose your suggestion).
The recent launch by Imagine Telecom of their Wimax service in Ireland and all the following discussions on the fact that the service wasn’t available yet, the lack of pricing & package information as well as the misguided marketing campaign prompted me to write a blogpost about by experiences with Wimax.
I have been working with wireless data technologies since 1999 and by 2005 I was what one might have called an “expert” in the field of wifi. In the 1-2 years up to that time I had also started to looking at a new emerging technology called WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) going through a development & ratification process with the IEEE’s 802.16 working group. In short WiMax is a wireless data protocol that operates on basically any frequency below 66 GHz. It is used to create a wireless data network over long(er) ranges than for instance WiFi and at a higher data rate.One of the common misconceptions is that Wimax can do both; provide a very high data rate at long distances. Claims of a 70 Mbit/s over 50km are still common in the press. Nothing is further from the truth. WiMax can do one or the other; at short distances (up to 2-3 miles) speeds will be more likely in the range of 5-7 Mbit/s. At longer ranges the data throughput will decrease the further one gets away from the base-station/mast/cell-tower. Data rates at 50 km would be in the range of kilobits and as good as useless. Another issue to consider is that we’re talking about 2-way radiowave communication here which means that the client device (your WiMax CPE) will have the “power” to transmit a signal back to the nearest mast/cell-tower. An additional point to consider is that the available spectrum on a base-station will have to be shared with all other users; this means that the available spectrum per users will decrease in significantly in areas with a high population density. This will most likely result in a lower bandwidth per user.
All this aside Wimax still offers some great advantages over its predecessors (such as wifi). The available bandwidth & range is much higher than with preceding protocols and in addition it is a NLOS (Non-Line Of Sight) service. This means that it is not necessary for the base-station and the subscriber unit to have a direct line of sight (be able to “see” each other). Objects such as buildings, hills & trees will no longer be the obstacle that they were. There will off course be a certain level of signal degradation but the coverage area of a WiMax base-station, or more precisely the number of possible subscribers within that area will be much higher. I won’t go into detail on the two Wimax standards (802.16d & 802.16e) for fixed or mobile WiMax as this would have me digress form the point of my article even further.
Anyway, by the middle of 2005 I had read up a fair bit on Wimax and saw that the was potential but also that there was a lot of hype surrounding this up-and-coming technology. I frequently discussed it with other people in my profession and entered in discussions in newsgroups (I wasn’t blogging yet and there was no twitter then) I also discussed it with manufacturers of wifi hardware who were testing or exploring WiMax. Still it came as somewhat of a surprise when, in August 2005, I was approached by a group of US based investors and asked if I was interested in heading a venture to establish a pan-European WiMax provider. We did a lot of talking back and forth and I eventually agreed to do the groundwork for this venture with a possible CEO position down the line. I established a company office in Ireland and went about exploring the market, immersing myself in the technology, developing potential partnerships, writing the business-plan, drafting financial forecasts, operational plans etc. etc. What became clear to me was that there were two viable business models:
A WiMax provider with our own infrastructure but where we would concentrate on providing backhaul services for other operators & alongside providing services (SaaS) across our network.
Become a type of “virtual operator” by buying capacity on existing WiMax networks owned by other operators and providing services over this network
As you notice neither of these would incorporate providing “just” broadband connectivity. That choice was deliberate simply because research had shown that this wasn’t where the real revenue was made. The market was simply so competitive and margins that low that it would be extremely difficult (or require very large investment) to successfully enter as a new provider. Another issue that made me reluctant to go down the route of building our own network was the cost of a license to use the needed spectrum.
But the real difference was in how we planned to market it. No big “traditional media” campaign. Instead I had planned several key actions:
Do not launch a service/product until it is actually available and a customer can sign up and be connected within 48 hours.
Create an online “buzz” prior to a launch by creating a clear online presence and actively engaging with people via the social media channels.
Engage with a number of “tech pioneers” and allow them to test the service and provide honest feedback. Listen to this feedback and adjust service if/when needed.
There were several other points and this is only a fraction of the overall plan but it is significant in regards to the rest of my blogpost. When I had completed all the groundwork for this venture it expired that there just wasn’t the investment power required to carry this out successfully (I indicated 100mln+ requirement at the time). So the project, and the SEC listed company, were put on the back-burner. Incidentally if there are any investors out there looking for a “WiMax operator in the box” (ready to go, SEC listed & prepped to go to the market) feel free to contact me.
Anyway, I moved on into my next venture, Airappz providing a location-based advertising service based around wifi hotspots ( both in Ireland & abroad). However I kept my finger on the pulse of Wimax. So I wasn’t surprised when in May this year I was introduced to someone working with Imagine Telecom who were planning to launch a Wimax service in Ireland. Basically he wanted to discuss WiMax with me and more specifically how to market the service. We had a few chats and I suggested they’d consider some of the points made above. Shortly afterwards they sent out a press release announcing a partnership with Intel whereby Intel was investing 100mln (remember the figure I mentioned earlier?) in Imagine Telecom in order to fund a nationwide Wimax rollout. A detail to note here is that Imagine Telecom bought Irish Broadband from NTR in 2008 for +/-47mln. IBB was using Alvarion Breezemax technology which was a pre-wimax service. So they were building on this existing network and upgrading & expanding it. While I was in the planning stages for the US owned company we had also had very preliminary discussions with IBB at the end of 2007 exploring the option of purchasing the company, so it all spins back into itself somehow. We didn’t go ahead because we didn’t agree with the valuation put on it by NTR and in the end it turned out we were right.
After Imagine’s press release nothing much seemed to happen until early October when they had a big product launch. There was a big dog & pony show in Dublin followed by a big media campaign. What? Yes, a big m-e-d-i-a campaign. Big newspaper ads and huge billboards telling you to Google the term “wimax” to find out more. Which was pretty damn dumb as until only a few days ago Imagine didn’t even rank in the top 10 search results for “wimax”. During the launch all kinds of predictably hyped claims were made. Luckily we had someone tweeting these statements so they are recorded for future reference. You can check them here & here. The biggest lie was that they claimed to: “obtained enough spectrum to deliver future Wimax speeds of 40, 60, 100mbs“, that’s very significant as the IEEE’s 802.16 specification indicates a maximum speed of 70Mbs. So, if you were impressed by the big launch could you sign up for the service? No you couldn’t as no price & package information was available until this weekend more than 3 weeks after the big launch. This delay which I assume was intentional lead to a lot of speculation and more importantly negative comments on Twitter, Boards.ie and other online networks. Didn’t anyone in Imagine or their PR company realise that if you create a big expectation followed by a silence that people will start to talk & speculate?! When you create customer expectation it is essential that you can live up to that expectation, right there and then.
Now don’t get me wrong; I think that the arrival of a Wimax operator in Ireland is a significant step forward towards quality & affordable broadband. The packages that Imagine are offering on their website look very good and extremely well priced. Coverage seems to be mostly limited to the larger urban centres which is to be expected and you can see the existing IBB infrastructure as these are all the green markers on the map. I for one would certainly sign up if I lived or worked in their coverage area. Another great plus is that for an extra 5 euro p/m you get a Wimax dongle for broadband access on the go. I see that eating into the current 3G market share. I do wonder though if they use 802.16d or 802.16e for their mobile access as this will make a huge difference in being able to use it “on the move” i.e. in a moving vehicle and crossing over between base-stations.
I’ve noticed a lot of discussions about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) lately. It’s is the skill of working the content of a website and the inbound & outbound links in such a way that your site receives a top-ranking in the relevant search results. There are some really smart SEO experts out there you will get your site to the top listing in relation to certain keywords.
However I have certain questions in regards to all this. If the top 5 results of my search are there because of smart SEO and *not* because they : 1) have a really good product/service 2) are excellent in the way they do business or 3) lots of people are mentioning them online, then how relevant does it make these results? If they have a crap product & terrible customers service but spends lots of money on good & relevant SEO they will still end up at the top search results. So what do the top search results mean then?
Personally I think the 2-3 lines of text below the title of each search result says a lot more. I normally scan these bits of text in my search results for relevancy to my query. This means that more often than not it will be result 5 or 7 or even 12 that I might click on rather than 1, 2 or 3. As for Google Adwords; I can’t remember the last time I looked at those or if I ever clicked on an ad.
The relevancy becomes even greater if & when you move away from Google as a lot of SEO specialists will use the “price” of a Google keyword as an indicator of it’s relevancy and will adjust their SEO-work accordingly. Other search methods and engines might give rather different results. There are certain search engines that are specific to a particular line of work or research. Getting a good listing on these will solely depend on real reputation and not on “worked” relevance. My personal favorite search engine is Copernic. Copernic has pulled up relevant results for me that no other search engine (incl. Google) has ever found for me. The best one was my grandfathers name in a scanned newspaper page from 1903. No other search engine has ever been able to find this page.
So how important is SEO? That’s up to you to decide. In my opinion it is a prefereable to ensure a good reputation (as in being a reliable business with a good product or service) and getting lots of positive online feedback clearly mentioning your product or your business name. Twitter, Facebook & blogs are ideally suited for generating this type of feedback. I would be more inclined to buy a product that got lots of positive mention on social networking sites than one that (solely) got a consistent no.1 ranking in Google. But that’s just me….
I’ve been looking into Android powered devices a lot more lately and have discovered some really cool & interesting apps but the one that really got me interested was Google Maps *FREE* turn by turn navigation. Not only does it provide map based navigation but because the device is constantly connected it uses voice powered Google searches to find your destination. Cool or what? Another great feature for those suffering from “map blindness” is that it will display your route using Google Streetview. You will see an actual representation of your route & destination.
There is a whole host more of really cool things but have a look at the below video to see then all.
While any fatality is in principle regrettable there is a need to put the H1N1 fatality figures in perspective. The mainstream press is happily feeding the fear by splashing every H1N1 death all over their front page but there is very little information being publicised comparing the mortality rate to other fatal diseases. The graph below provides the necessary perspective.
More often than not Powerpoint presentations will put even the worst insomniac to sleep. However once in a while you come across one thta grabs you by the scruff off the neck and makes you pay attention. The presentation below is one off those. Enjoy…
With all the hype around the iPhone & Android phone one could almost forget that Windows Mobile is also a significant player in that market. I came across a video today that shows a walk-through for the latest version (6.5) running on a HTC Diamond II. It is interesting to see the many changes. A lot of features come out of the iphone book but boy they have made the GUI look pig-ugly! There are a few new features that look really interesting:
“my phone”: this lets you synch everything on your phone “into the cloud”. You can then access & manage it in any web browser.
The Browser: The phone sport a full desktop version of IE displaying web content in the same way as on your desktop. You can also select to view a mobile compatible version if you want to.
“tag”: Tag is an app that lets you scan barcode type tags in public spaces (billboards, magazines etc.) and will pull up relevant web content. Great for advertising & marketing campaigns.
