Microsoft Partner Network and SBSC

I’m blogging on this a couple of weeks after the event because I’ll be honest I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about this

At WPC a couple of weeks ago it was announced an overhaul to the partner programme is on the way

There is a great explanation of it on the UK SBSC blog here

I’m sure the programme definitely needs a kick in the butt. As Microsoft’s and our own businesses evolve, the way we work together evolves too so a revamp will be good

Specifically for people who are currently SBSC certified there are some big changes too

The Small Business Specialist Community designation will be reassigned to a new competency called Small Business Solutions.  Key enhancements include providing additional entry points to target other types of partner communities such as Web VARs.  With that, the new competency will retain many of the same requirements and benefits that partners are familiar with today – and partners should continue to enrol in the Small Business Specialist Community designation to maintain program status and benefits.

Ok so Microsoft want to be able to get different types of IT businesses involved in small business? That’s cool

However, my initial reaction was one of disappointment though as I’ve always seen SBSC and competencies as two distinctly separate things.

I’ve always felt it was a separate group within the partner programme. In the same way that registered partners and certified partners are separate groups.

It’s something that differentiates us when we go talk to clients. When talking to a client an MCTS certification (for example) and a competency are pretty synonymous for them. The MCTS applies to the individual and the competency applies to the business and helps outline capabilities

So reading the rest of the post from the UK SBSC post the next bit caught my eye

Can I still use my logo?

Continue to use the logos you have today. You’ll be able to use Microsoft Partner Network logos after October 2010, after you have met the requirements. Existing logos will be retired six months after the new logo system is available

Initially I didn’t think this was a big deal. The “blue badge” would get an overhaul too to reflect the new programme but when i read Steve Wright’s (UK PAL extraordinaire) two posts I changed my view on this

This is his first post with his initial reaction – like me a little concerned about losing a key differentiator

MS partner program evolves – is it goodbye to the SBSC community?

In his second post Steve talks about how he discussed his concerns during his first PAL meeting

First PAL meeting

This is the stand out part for me. (I’ve highlighted a specific sentence for emphasis)

The impression I got was that Microsoft are looking to simplify the partner program and have therefore decided to create various new competencies and that includes bringing the SBSC designation into that framework. The concern over the disappearance of the “blue badge” was raised and it seemed to come as a surprise to Birger that it would cause concern for partners. I do get the impression that in some countries the SBSC designation has not taken off in the community sense like it has in the UK. Birger talked about the possibility of incorporating some kind of SBSC logo in to the new Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) and would take that information back to Redmond.

Surprised it would cause concern?

Does the fact we have a pet name for the logo (“blue badge”) not indicate that it’s quite a big deal to us?

Susan Bradley also sums it up really well here

WHAT IS BLUE AND WHITE AND…?

You have got to be kidding.  You guys taking a page out of "shoot ourselves in the foot" AICPA again?  You have a brand.  One that people are proud of, and you are going to throw it away?  Before you rolled this out did you even talk to anyone?  Run it by anyone in the SBSC?  You have a Partner Lead group, did you get their feedback?

It’s a brand and a logo that people have stuck on shirts and cars.  Don’t throw it away without listening to your partner network.

Quite

We’re one of those companies that are proud of our SBSC certification and the logo is a big part of that. I’ve got a blue badge sticker on my laptop, it’s on our van, it’s on the door to our office, it’s on our website, it’s on every single piece of paper we produce, it’s in our email signatures, I even had some stickers printed once upon a time

We’ve also just had some brochures and leaflets printed and the blue badge actually features more than our own logo!

I originally wasn’t going to post about this as I thought Steve and Susan said everything that needed to be said and I wouldn’t be adding anything extra, but I guess I just need to be another voice that says I quite like our little part of the partner programme. I understand that things need to change and we need to change with it but it feels like all the work that has gone into building SBSC as a brand is about to disappear

I’m also wondering what it means in the long term for SBSC as a whole. The new programme will come into effect over the next twelve months which is roughly how long the PAL role runs for.

What does it mean for Steve Wright, Andy Trish and the rest of the worldwide PALs?

Do Microsoft need partner feedback for a competency?

There aren’t PALs for the “Advanced Infrastructure Solutions competency” or the “Licensing Solutions competency” are they?

Did they not speak to the PALs about this?

I don’t think the community will disappear overnight as groups like AMITPRO would continue but the SBSC certification is great focal point for that and it’s something we all rally around

At the end of Steve’s post he said that he’ll be putting concerns over to Emily Lambert at his first regional PAL meeting so it’ll be good to hear more details what the plans are going forward

PC PRO – SMB Feature – What happened?

I’ve been sitting on this one for a few weeks as PC Pro magazine articles don’t appear on the site straight away (which i can understand)

First let me start off my saying I’ve previously been a massive fan of PC Pro magazine. My interest in the magazine has waned in recently years for a few reasons but that’s probably worth a blog post all of it’s own. That said I do still still pick it up from time to time

This months PC Pro kicked off a feature that talks about IT in small businesses. Obviously this caught my eye and I’ll be honest. I was shocked at how badly researched the article seems. I understand this is the first part in series but I don’t think it’s gotten off to the best start

Keeping it really simple the article says that you have a couple of choices

Cloud apps in combination with some open source software (think Google apps & Open Office with maybe Kerio MailServer) or an on-premise Microsoft solution with the Office suite (read the article this is vastly simplified)

So far so good – the Cloud / Open Source argument is a whole other kettle of fish so I’ll just focus on the Microsoft solution

What irked me was that the article talks about the on premise solution meaning Exchange 2003 (in preference to 2007!) with the possibility of adding SharePoint

If this article is about SMBs and you’re going to mention Microsoft solutions why not actually look at the small business solutions Microsoft offer?

If you read this blog on a regular basis you know that for me that means

Small Business Server

Then depending on the size of the business your dealing you can also take into account

Essential Business Server

Windows Server 2008 Foundation

Windows Home Server (It’s not specifically a small business product but fits well for micro-businesses)

The article then goes on to talk about a few things I’d like to highlight

Firstly, it talks about using Exchange in combination with mobile devices and indicates you’ll need to use IMAP, touting the iPhone as an example

For example, many employees will have smartphones capable of picking up email via IMAP. Careful setup allows them to do so in a secure, encrypted way. The iPhone, for example, can pull email from various accounts

What about ActiveSync? The iPhone supports that you know? As do Nokia’s E & N series devices (which are aimed at business) and tons of other devices – and that’s without mentioning Windows Mobile

It then says

If you make the move to ES2007, then it’s possible to use this to manage the phones too – remote lockdown and wipe both become possible

Exchange 2003 has been able to do remote wipe and device security since service pack 2 was released. Obviously Exchange 2007 makes improvements but that doesn’t mean Exchange 2003 doesn’t do it at all!

Staying with Exchange

A key issue with ES2003 is to ensure you’re getting the most from it. For example, many companies limit the user inbox size in an attempt to keep below the 16GB limit of the original ES2003 release. However, this limit has been raised in recent SP versions, and you should be allowing more online storage of company information if possible.

Why mention the 16GB limit? If your going to deploy Exchange 2003 you will be installing service pack 2 as support for service pack 1 expired on 08/01/2008. This means you have no reason not to make use of the 75GB extended limit

As far as can see the article is aimed at the small business owner, and while this statement makes sense

You can never have too much security, but SMBs are often very surprised at how much they can do with what they already have. This is especially true if you’re running Exchange Server 2003 with recent Windows clients. A thorough understanding of Group Policy can totally transform the network computing experience, and bring peace and calm to an otherwise chaotic network. Making sure that My Documents, and its brothers and sisters, all point to network shares means that irreplaceable documents dumped on the desktop will actually be backed up properly.

What has Exchange Server got to do with group policy? Group Policy is an Active Directory feature?

Also SBS 2003 and SBS 2008 have management consoles that make it possible for an interested business owner to look after the server themselves. There is even a simple wizard to configure the My Documents folder to redirect to the server without having to go anywhere near any group policy settings

I’m presuming this means SharePoint

If money is available then you can’t beat Microsoft Office 2007 for bells and whistles, but only if you back it up with Microsoft’s server-side collaboration software. This is a whole different level of investment, and one worth doing if finances allow.

Windows SharePoint Services is still free whether you’re using Small Business Server or “vanilla” Windows Server so what level of investment being referred to? Depending on your level of skill then customising SharePoint could require investment but as a software purchase? If you went with SBS it all gets configured it all for you

Also by completely missing out Small Business Server (and Essential Business Server) you are missing out one killer feature that enterprise has pay extra for

Remote Web Workplace

Complete access to your email, SharePoint site and remote control of your office PC all from a single, easy to use web site. The 2003 version was great and the 2008 version is even better!

In addition to the technology Microsoft can offer a small business they also have group of their partners who specifically work with small business

Small Business Specialists – we’ve even got a funky blue badge (for now!)

We’re also a community so when I say we I’m not just talking about my company. We form partnerships with other Small Business Specialists to make sure we can cover everything our clients need

Our day-to-day operations are geared towards working with small business owners and getting the right technology for their business. We’ll even be their IT department if they want meaning their staff can get on with the jobs they are actually paid to do. We’re also flexible enough to lend a helping hand if they do want to do it themselves

Finally this baffles me

Don’t leave 2003 until all of it has been properly virtualised into either VMware or Hyper-V, or an equivalent of choice. The future world is a virtualised one, and moving to a new OS version running directly on the hardware is the wrong answer to the wrong question.

Yes the future is virtual, even in small businesses (we’ve got an expert for that too!). But using virtualisation as a reason for not moving to the latest OS version makes no sense in my opinion. If you want to stay on the previous generation of OS fine. But do it because it makes sense for your business not because you don’t think the current generation isn’t up to being virtualised (which i don’t agree with either but again that could be a post on it’s own)

Obviously it’s really easy for me to be critical. However, the article does make some other good points

The paragraph on the first page titled “First Steps” is excellent (I’m not going to reproduce it – go read it! – the whole of the first page is actually good reading)

Then it takes a cautious approach to the running of a small business purely on Cloud Apps. It doesn’t say you should avoid it completely but also doesn’t jump on the “everything should run in the cloud” mindset that a lot of the media seems to have nowadays. Hosted solutions are ideally suited for some businesses and not others in my opinion so choose the solution that fits.

There is also a good piece on backups that starts with this

It’s astonishing how many companies get backup wrong. There are three things to consider here. First, there’s backup and restore for recent data. Then there’s disaster recovery to bring back servers from the dead. Finally, there’s the role of archiving for long-term storage.

In summary I’m disappointed that this has come out of PC Pro and I had to read the article a couple of times to get my head around it.

As always I’d love to hear your opinion as I know I don’t always have the answers

My new toy – Samsung NC110

If you follow me on Twitter (or Facebook) you’ll have seen this

Where can i get a netbook TODAY? Curry’s, Comet & PC World not being much help

I’ll spare you the story of me impatiently trying to find something at a local store instead of doing the sensible thing and buying online but I came home with a brand new Samsung NC110

The NC110 is a slightly newer version of the popular NC10 with the only real difference being longer battery life (up to 9.5 hours according to Samsung!) and an improved touchpad

The vital statistics

10.1” screen

Intel Atom Processor (1.6Ghz)

1GB RAM

1.26KG

Windows XP Home

Webcam, 3x USB ports, Card reader

Wireless, Bluetooth, LAN port

The thing that drew to the Samsung was the keyboard. The product blerb says it’s 93% the size of a full keyboard but it’s as useable as a regular laptop keyboard

I wanted a netbook for keeping connected out and about. I’ve been in several situations recently where it would have been great to have a laptop with me but hauling my regular laptop around wasn’t really an option. This is so small I can put it in a bag and carry around with me. Also with the extra long battery life I can safely go out and not need to worry about carrying power cables as well

It took a little while to get used to browsing on the smaller screen but it’s nothing to complain about

I’ll be looking to put Windows 7 onto it over the next few weeks (trying to decide if I should wait for the RTM!) as going back to XP always feels weird now (in the same way going back to Windows 98 machine was weird after Windows 2000 appeared)

I asked Bryony to take some pictures while I unboxed it (in the kitchen of all places…i was being very impatient!) as all geeks love a good unboxing ceremony!

How small is the box compared to Bryony’s Nokia?!

All very neatly packed

Box contents

Battery, power cable, sleeve, restore discs, documentation and NC110!

There it is!

Thanks for indulging me

A really good Samsung fan site can be found at www.sammynetbook.com which also has it’s own forums which I’ll be leaning on for tips and tricks I’m sure

Card Fraud

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you’ll have seen me make the following update

just found out our company credit card has been scammed for 17k..thanks a lot scumbags!

We didn’t even know it had happened. The credit card company called over the weekend and the police paid a visit to my business partner to go over the details. They wouldn’t say much but it looks like the card was used online. Since it’s a credit card we are protected against fraud so we’re not liable for the money. It’s still money that someone has lost (i.e the card company!)

This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced card fraud

What frustrates me is that the chip and pin system was brought into effect in 2006 at great expense but it only solves part of the problem

If you order something over the phone or on a website you have to hand over

Name on the card

Card Number

Expiry Date

Card security code (CSC)

That is enough information for anyone to use that credit card – they don’t even need to physically have it in their possession

The telephone transaction is the biggest cause for concern in my opinion as your trusting the person your speaking with to put the card details in their system and not write them down for their own use

So what’s the solution?

That I don’t know. The only thing i can think of is if the credit card itself could generate a one-time password (a-la RSA SecurID or AuthAnvil Tokens)

It would mean you’d physically have to be in possession of the card – though that still wouldn’t help if you had your card stolen

We’ll be more wary of who we’re giving our card details to going forward but in all honesty I don’t think we did anything wrong here

Humax PVR Restarting

I got home from the office a few days ago to be informed by my eldest daughter

“Dad, the telly is broke”

The Humax PVR-9150T we have replaced an Argos re-badged box which we had no end of problems with

Apart from the fact it’s a bit loud and you can’t turn the subtitles on and off after you’ve paused live TV I’ve been pretty happy with it. Even if we do have 100GB worth of CBeebies!

The problem was that the box would start up, a message would flash on screen (something about loading or scanning, but too fast for me to read) and the picture would finally appear. After a few minutes the box would restart and go through the whole thing again

With the last PVR we had any problems were generally resolved by returning it to factory defaults though it was massive pain as we’d lose all our recordings

The fix turned out to be pretty simple

I unplugged the aerial and switched the box on. It come on this time but didn’t restart and the message I saw earlier was no-where to be found

On a hunch I went into the channel list and deleted ALL the channels and restarted the box again

It started up again quite happily and once I rescanned for channels it’s been fine ever since

I can only speculate that there was a problem with the data the box had for one of the channels

PC Rising from the dead

I haven’t used my PC at home since before my holiday so it’s been a few weeks now since I last fired it up

Bryony went out to visit a friend so I thought I’d get a bit of work done so squeezed myself into my broom cupboard office (that’s literally what it is!) and switched it on

I logged in as usual and started opening applications

Suddenly the whole thing went off and on the screen I got a “no signal” message

I looked down and the lights were still on so I turned it off and restarted

The lights all came back on and I heard the hard disk spinning up but then it stopped and the PC just sat there. Nothing on screen and all I could hear were the fans going round. No POST beeps, nothing

Since I’d heard the hard disks spin up and then stop I decided to start there so unplugged them but no joy

I tried a couple of restarts and eventually it came up

On screen I had the following message

Warning!!! The previous performance of overclocking is failed and the system is restored to the defaults setting

Press any key expect DEL to enter setup

Overclocking?? The only thing I’ve every changed in the BIOS setup on this system was to enable virtualisation extensions on the processer (so i could run Hyper-V!)

I pressed the space bar and was then presented with a message asking me if I wanted to keep the settings or revert to defaults. I decided to keep the settings and take a look once it entered setup

I started to browse around the BIOS settings. The setup program allows you to create a backup so I thought the best course of action would be to do the backup then switch to defaults.

This wasn’t happening though as just as i changed to the backup options the whole thing locked up

I turned it off and back on again and I was back to square one – nothing on screen, lights and fans but nothing else

A tried a couple of restarts again to see if i could get the same message as earlier but no luck

I was very suspicious of the motherboard by now so started taking components out to ensure I got the same problem.

All that I had left in was the CPU and I still wasn’t even getting POST beeps

I put it all back together and still had the same problem

I was about to give up for the night when I did one last reboot and it came on!

The same error message I saw earlier was on screen so this time I chose to switch to defaults and it  only went and booted!

I got into Windows and did a couple of reboots with no problems

It’s Sunday morning now and it came on fine this morning. I’m typing this blog post on it!

A little investigation found lots of instances of the error I saw but all sorts of “solutions” offered

I’ll be taking a backup today as I’m still not entirely confident this is the end of it

As is always the way I’m just passed the warranty period!

EasyJet Speedy Boarding Madness

As I mentioned in my last post I wasn’t impressed with the way EasyJet board their flights

EasyJey don’t allocate seats. They let everyone choose seats as they get onto the airplane

Their boarding procedure works in groups in this order

Group SB: Passengers who have purchased Speedy Boarding/Speedy Boarding Plus

Group SA: Passengers requiring special assistance and families (maximum 2 adults) where at least one child is aged 5 years or under.

Group A: (reserved for passengers who have checked in online, and the first 30 people who check in at the airport)

Group B: (Everyone else)

On paper this looks like a good idea

People who pay more get on first and get to pick the “best seats”

People with children or wheelchairs are kept separate

Online check-in gets a priority which I see as a nice incentive (and it’s less people the check-in staff to deal with) but in practise is of little use on main holiday as you can only use it if you only have hand luggage

Everyone else just has to queue and pick from what is left

My experience went like this

When we knew which gate to go to we made our way over. Luckily we were waiting quite close to the gate so started the short walk. We then noticed a large family rushing to get to the front of the queue

Once we made it to the gate we were quite near to the front. I figured about 25 groups in front of us and I looked behind to see the queue starting to stretch through the airport

The flight was slightly delayed so people were getting hot and bothered. Especially when staff appeared near the gate but the gate remained closed (presumably they were waiting for the all clear from the plane)

Finally one of the members of staff came forward and asked for the Speedy Boarding group

She wasn’t letting people on but checking passports against boarding passes to save time when the gate actually opened which seemed like a nice gesture but the problem was the queue

The speedy boarding passengers started to come forward but the people who already had a place in the queue didn’t want to move. There was also only one lady checking tickets so everyone surged toward her thinking they were boarding so wanted to be seen first

She gave up and escaped and there was then some mumbled announcement which only came once and I never heard it properly

Since Bryony I had a 3 year old and 5 month old, hand luggage and a pushchair we started to move forward but stepped out of the surge as I was worried about losing Alice. We’d taken Evie out of the pushchair as she’d started to get upset during the wait.

The queue now lost all shape and when they finally started to board the Speedy Boarding group our place near the front had disappeared. Again the other boarding groups didn’t want to move so there was a lot of pushing and shoving as people tried to get on and I actually saw one group who weren’t in the Speedy Boarding group (the large family I mentioned earlier) trying to get through at the same time so they’d be at the front of the queue for the second boarding group!

Eventually I interrupted one of people trying to push past my wife (she was holding a baby! and they still pushed!) and he looked me straight in the eye with a look of contempt and said

“Are you a Speedy Boarder??”

It would have been really easy to be rude at this point and get into an argument but I replied with a simple

“Yes, yes we are”

Which seemed to take him by surprise and he stopped and let Bryony though

We managed to squeeze through only to see people rushing down the boarding ramp. While Speedy Boarders get on ahead of everyone else it’s still very much first come first serve on the plane. We were trying to fold up the pushchair in the middle of all this and no-one really cared about the fact we had two small children with us

While this happened Alice did actually get separated from us. I managed to grab her before she went onto the plane on her own. The door down the steps and onto the tarmac was slightly ajar but thankfully I managed to keep her away from that

Under other circumstances there was potential for the kids safety to be under threat. When Alice got pulled away from us she could very easily have been trampled and during the all the pushing and shoved in the queue Evie could have been hurt by arms, elbows or hand luggage on people’s shoulders or worse if Bryony had been pushed over.

I also have no idea what Bryony would have done if she’d stayed on her own as originally planned. She wouldn’t have heard the mumbled announcement and wouldn’t have heard the lady at the front trying to check tickets (though in my opinion airports, train stations and bus stations make very poor arrangements for the deaf anyway)

So what could have made it better?

Some ideas…

1) Organisation – Before announcing the gate put up some “posts & ropes” to clearly indicate where each boarding group should queue. The main problem I think started as there was one long queue of mixed boarding groups – However this wouldn’t stop people rushing down the boarding ramp

2) Clearer information – the lady who tried to save time by checking tickets either;

Shouldn’t have done it,

Made everyone aware of what was happening

and / or asked everyone to stay where they were in the queue and she could have walked along checking them as she passed

The token mumbled tannoy announcement was a waste of time too. It ideally would have come before she called people forward

3) Allocated seats – nobody rushes for a seat that is already theirs

4) Limited Speedy Boarding numbers – there seemed to be quite a few people in the first boarding group which is possibly why they were rushing down the boarding ramp. What if everyone on the plane paid for Speedy Boarding? Where is the benefit then?

I think allocated seats would have been the answer myself but EasyJet seem to see it as a benefit to choose your own seat

I don’t quite agree with this as there are only one to two “good seats” on a plane and the rest are all the same after that. The odds of getting the exact seat you want are quite slim. As we had Evie and Alice we ideally would have liked something with a little more legroom (especially as Bryony is breast feeding) but as soon as the pushing and shoving started I realised we had now chance of this. As we got on the place we thought about asking the people in the front seats if they’d let us sit there but I thought if they’d fought and pushed to be in a position to get those seats they wouldn’t give it up for a baby!

My theory was proved correct when almost everyone was sat down. The cabin crew announced that there was a mother with two children. They must have been at the back and were unable to find seats for them to sit together. The crew announced safety regulations meant they couldn’t sit apart and if there were any adults that could sit apart or if a couple were taking up two seats in a three seat row could they give up their seats. We couldn’t take off until this was sorted but they had to ask three times!

It would also mean they wouldn’t be able to charge for Speedy Boarding

A did a couple of searches and found similar experiences to my own – which sound even worse when there is a bus involved. Everyone bussed out at the same time but Speedy Boarders allowed out first. Madness (two from the Times website here and here – they are both worth a read)

When i was reading the in-flight magazine I spotted an email address that welcomes customer feedback so I’ll be sending a link to this post

There is a also a twitter account (@easyJetCare) so I’d be interested to hear any comments they have

I’ll definitely be thinking twice about using EasyJet in the future

Back in the UK

I briefly mentioned in my last post I was off for a holiday

I got back yesterday, a few days later than originally planned

We went to Puerto Rico in Gran Canaria and had a great time

Halfway through the holiday we noticed our youngest daughter Evie, had a couple of spots on her body. Having already been through chickenpox with our other daughter Alice, we took her straight to the doctors

They confirmed what we thought and promptly cancelled our flight back (which should have been on the Saturday)

After various discussions with the insurance company their original plan was to fly myself and Alice back and leave Bryony and Evie there. I pleaded exceptional circumstances as Bryony’s deafness means she can’t understand English speaking Spanish people (it’s the accents and it’s sometimes hard enough for me!) and they kindly agreed to let us all stay.

What originally sounds like a free extended holiday isn’t quite what it seems. Evie obviously couldn’t be in contact with anyone who hadn’t already had chicken pox (mainly children) so she was effectively confined to the hotel room. No swimming pool, beach, taxis, buses, etc, etc. We also were only expecting to stay for a week so had only taken enough clothes, money, etc to last that amount of time

Once we finally got the all clear on the Wednesday we got flights back to Gatwick (instead of Birmingham where we originally flew from) and were then driven back home. Our flight landed just after midnight and we opened our front door around 4:30am

I popped into the office yesterday afternoon and today is my first full day back. I’ve got a lot to catch up on!

We had a great holiday and tried not to let it ruin things but at the end we were just hanging around and all wanted to come home. My geek cold turkey was in full effect since my mobile phone was the only bit of tech I took with me and I’m dreading my next bill!

Never one to miss an opportunity though I made several observations while I was away that I may be able to apply to the business!

You can stop reading now if you were just interested about my holiday

Sales

Qualifying your prospects is important.

I saw lots of guys trying to get people into their restaurants and the most common opening line was

“Hello, have you had breakfast (lunch/dinner) yet?”

They then didn’t waste any more time on people who had eaten

Obviously they didn’t give up that easily so the next line usually was to ask if they were thirsty!

Pestering people will just piss them off

I don’t like to name and shame (much!) but this is a classic example.

On our first day we walked into the village and were immediately stopped by someone promising us free event tickets, drinks, etc, etc as long as we had a look at their facilities. He told us the idea was that we’d take a look and if we liked when if came back next we’d book with them.

It was quite a hard sell but I declined explaining it was just our first day.

We were stopped several times other people doing the same thing and on one day we walked from our hotel to the beach and were stopped nine times and they really don’t take no for an answer. It’s hard to be polite after a while

The company they were representing was Anfi (I’m not linking to them!)  and we were told by our holiday rep it’s a timeshare thing. The guys actually stopping people claim it isn’t which they are technically correct on. The website says it’s “membership”

Why is ‘Vacation Membership’ different to ‘Timeshare’?

Genuine timeshare is a potentially fantastic concept because it offers flexibility and affordability. However, Vacation Membership goes beyond this by filling in the gaps, expanding on the overall concept, and setting new standards you deserve and that only Anfi can achieve. Vacation Membership is what, in an ideal world, timeshare should have been.

That’s still time share in my book but even if it’s not the constant pressing just got on my nerves in the end and even if they were giving away free money I wouldn’t listen to them

If you are lucky enough to have a captive market you can charge what you like

Once you have checked into the airport and moved into the departure longue you HAVE to buy from their shops. Obviously their are security aspects to this but is it really an excuse to pick a prices out of the air?

I paid for 3 soft drinks, and 3 sandwiches and it cost £20. I wouldn’t mind if the food was high quality but it really wasn’t.

Service Delivery

Our insurance company fell down pretty hard in this area. While I agree they fulfilled their obligations to us the way they did it wasn’t great from our perspective.

Communicate

Several times I called and was told someone would call back. That’s fine as long as you actually do it. There were lots of times we were waiting for news that never came and I had to chase it down.

We were scheduled to check out of the hotel on Saturday morning yet when we were eating dinner on Friday night I had no idea if the insurance company had arranged for us to stay in the same hotel or if we needed to go elsewhere.

Empower your staff with good systems

The insurance company obviously run a 24 hour operation in case of emergencies so I understand that I’m unlikely to be able to speak to the same person every time. If this is the case you need to give them the tools that anyone deal with issues. I called lots of times and had to wait while our file was hunted down. It was obviously a paper file sitting on the desk of whoever had it last!

Communicate better!

It was arranged that a car would pick us up from Gatwick airport and take us home. I made it clear we’d need a car seat for Evie as she’s only five months old. Our car seat was several hundred miles away in my parents car as they were originally picking us up from Birmingham

When the driver arrived he had a booster cushion and a child booster seat. Evie can’t even sit up on her own yet so how was she expected to sit in a booster seat for the three hour trip back? Legally in a private hire vehicle she could sit unrestrained – on Bryony’s lap, but from a parents perspective we didn’t want that. Especially when it could have been easily communicated to the hire company

Go the extra mile

The places went to eat got our repeat business when they went that extra mile. In one place Alice got a free ice cream as encouragement to eat her main meal. A lot of the staff were extra friendly and helpful and made a fuss of the kids. All these people got our repeat business

Our hotel came under this too. The staff were great with us even after news broke of Evie’s chickenpox. I lost count of the amount of times someone asked me

“Is the baby ok?”

If I ever go back to Puerto Rico I’d more than likely use the same hotel

The insurance company did get some plus points too. They could have been insistent and made myself and Alice fly back so I was very appreciative of that. They also paid extra for EasyJet’s “speedy boarding” on our flight back which brings me onto our next point

Being organised is key to a smooth running operation

Our boarding experience was what can only be described as shambolic and at one point I actually worried for my children’s safety. I’ll post about this separately though as I think it deserves a post all of it’s own but at this point in time if i need to fly anywhere EasyJet won’t be the first name on my list

I’ll stop there as I’ve wittered on long enough

I’ve enjoyed my time off but I did miss my tech, though it did give me lots of time to reflect on where I am from a personal and professional perspective and I’m looking forward to the weeks ahead

UK TV Licensing

I was going to post about this a while back didn’t think it was that interesting but I haven’t posted for a while and I’m having a well deserved break next week so what better way to sign off than with a rant

If your not from the UK you may not know that in order for us to use a TV and receive broadcasts we need a TV License. The money from the license goes to the BBC who use it provide their range of services

Previously the rules were simple. If you had a TV and used it to watch programmes you needed a license

Nowadays there a lots of ways in which in you can consume TV programming via satellite, mobile phone, and over the Internet

The rules are still simple but the wording has changed

Do I need a TV Licence?

You will need a TV Licence if you watch or record TV programmes as they are being shown on TV. It doesn’t matter what channel you are watching, what device you are using (for example TV, computer or laptop, mobile phone or any other device) or how you are receiving them (for example via terrestrial, satellite, cable, the Internet or any other method).

Technology such as BBC’s own BBC iPlayer   has made people ask the question “do i still need a TV license?”

The answer is still actually pretty simple as the quote above states

If you are watching a program online that is being broadcast at the same time as on TV

This means you’re well within your rights to use BBC iPlayer to watch programmes shown last week and not need a license

This does raise some interesting questions though.

If i have a TV license and watch TV on my laptop and then go around to a friends house who doesn’t have a license. What is the situation there?

I couldn’t find anything on the TV licensing website about this. I’ve been told by one or two people that your own license would cover you until you plugged the laptop in. This sounds a bit odd in my opinion. Plug what in? Do you mean power? An Internet connection? What if i’m using wireless and a long life battery?

So why am I interested in this?

We had a letter come to the office several months ago telling us we had been watching live TV online and if we persisted we’d need to buy a TV license for the business

As far as I’m aware we’re not sitting around watching TV but did our best to make everyone aware

We had another letter this week saying the same thing so we called them

They wouldn’t tell us how they knew we were watching TV (which i still maintain we’re not) and i can’t see ISPs giving up their log information to be honest without upfront legal proof/warrant (which is a whole chicken and egg situation!)

We were told that they would stop sending the letters but they may send an officer round to confirm we don’t need a license

How are they going to check exactly?

As i said above i can legitimately use services such as BBC iPlayer without a TV license

It then also raises the question of control as a business

Using various control mechanisms we can stop users doing lots of things but how do you control something such as the BBC news site which shows both live news broadcasts as well as old clips?

We can use technology to block specific IPs, domain names, even specific content such as flash video but can how we tell the difference between live content and old content?

Is it fair to just ban any site that has anything to do with BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, etc, etc when a large chunk of the content is fine?

As always opinions welcome!

Other links

http://www.televisionlicence.info/

Do I need a TV Licence if I only watch programmes online?

Will I need a TV Licence to watch programmes on BBC iPlayer?

There are a LOT of sites out there with information and opinions on the TV license!

Keep an eye out for : ServerFault.com

I spotted on Mark Wilson’s blog this morning the news that StackOverFlow.com is about to get a sibling – ServerFault.com

The first thing you may be asking is “what is StackOverFlow.com”

It’s a Q&A site specifically for programmers. Imagine Experts Exchange (without the paid for memberships or annoying ads) crossed with Digg, crossed with a wiki, crossed with a forum

The idea is that you can ask a question and wait for answers..then as other people read the answers they can mark certain answer to be better than others – the idea is you’ll get the better answers at the top

Registered users then gain points to build up an online reputation. The more points you gain the more you can do on the site (better explained here)

However, if like me your more of an IT Pro than a developer it’s not all that useful. I can’t answer any questions and don’t have any questions to ask!

ServerFault will change that. It’s the same format as StackOverFlow but aimed at people like me

The best explanation is from the stackoverflow blog

Server Fault is for system administrators and IT professionals, people who manage or maintain computers in a professional capacity. If you are in charge of …

• servers
• networks
• many desktop PCs (other than your own)

… then you’re in the right place to ask your question! Well, as long as the question is about your servers, your networks, or your desktops, anyway.

It’s in private beta at the moment with a public beta expected in the next couple of weeks. I imagine this will get a full launch pretty soon as underneath it’s the same code as StackOverFlow so they are not exactly re-inventing the wheel

StackOverFlow is the brain child of Jeff Attwood and Joel Spolsky (who both have cool blogs!) – keep up the good work guys!