Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Monday 5 November 2007, 10:48 AM
Countdown to the iPhone
Expect lots of iPhone inanity this week, in the run-up to Friday's UK launch. Just to round up the bits and pieces flying around so far:
1) O2 has hired an extra 1,400 customer services staff to cope with the expected demand for Apple's bundle of joy.
2) The firmware that will come on the UK iPhone at launch will not allow the device to be hacked or cracked. It may still however be smacked or whacked.
3) O2 seems to have seen sense regarding its miserly interpretation of the term "unlimited use of mobile data services" (200MB/month) in regard to the Jesusphone. Astonishingly, this may now actually mean unlimited use of mobile data services. Rejoice.
Thursday 1 November 2007, 11:27 AM
Electronic Jihad? Maybe not...
Rumours have been a-circulating that al-Qaeda - whatever that is - is planning a "cyber jihad" attack on the West using, yep, Electronic Jihad Version 2.0 (the first one must have been too buggy).
Techworld is quoting several rather sceptical security experts who seem to think the scare - disseminated via an "online military intelligence magazine" called DEBKAfile - is, erm, dubious.
Electronic Jihad appears to be a collaborative effort based on a similar distributed computing model to SETI@home, except less benign. Of course, the first problem that springs to mind is that terrorism, when it really occurs, tends to be the work of a small band of clued-in people, rather than thousands of sympathisers happy to have a program called "Electronic Jihad" purring away on their desktops.
But hey, what do I know?
Wednesday 31 October 2007, 2:52 PM
Orange does the business
Orange is to open up a business-customers-only store on Oxford Street, in the centre of London, tomorrow. Sadly there won't be a fanfare-laden cutting of ribbon, so there's not much point in us wandering over there with a camera, but there you go. If you're a business customer, and you fancy signing up with Orange's dedicated sales team, you know where to head.
If, for some inexplicable reason, you aren't based in London, you can hold thumbs for the other two such stores due to open (somewhere else, we assume, but heaven knows where) later this year.
But why is Orange kicking off its dedicated business store scheme smackdab in the consumer hell of Oxford Street? Apparently, "the City of Westminster had more VAT registered small businesses (0-9 employees) than anywhere else in the UK".
Wednesday 31 October 2007, 9:56 AM
BT's Wi-Fi voucher strangeness
BT has announced a new roaming voucher for its business traveller customers, based largely on a tie-in with the soon-to-go-live iBahn network of hotel hotspots.
It may offer relatively cheap surfing minutes (especially when compared with data roaming charges over the 3G networks) but I have to confess I find it roughly as straightforward as a John Prescott speech. You pay a fixed voucher price, although that differs based on whether you're travelling to the US (£28) or Europe (£40). Both vouchers give you 500 minutes, but the US one has to be used up within 7 days of first log-in, while the European one gives you 2 weeks to play around.
If you don't use up all your minutes, you get to use them back in the UK or on another trip - although there's no indication of whether you could use minutes bought for your recent trip to Berlin if you're subsequently jetting off to Dallas.
And all this is the result of a deal with one Wi-Fi aggregator, covering international hotel chains that span both Europe and the US. According to BT Openzone general manager Chris Bruce, "the international travel voucher makes business travel simple, convenient and hassle-free". I'm not quite sure all of that rings true.
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