Emmens.Biz - Comments on our business

A free-for-all in domain names?

2011-07-05T17:23:00.000+01:00

One of the biggest shake-ups in naming of internet sites has been approved by the relevant global authority, ICANN. They have opened up the top level domain (TLD) names to virtually anything. (See www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13835997 for the relevant news article.) Now, there are 22 current TLDs - these are the likes of .com, .net, .gov, .org and so on. These are not to be confused with

Campaign for Real Daylight

2011-04-11T14:43:00.000+01:00

There have been the usual arguments associated with the onset of BST about whether we should move to Central European Time in order to take advantage of even longer evenings before sunset, and the usual counter arguments about loss of morning daylight in winter. Now I think these discussions miss the point by some margin. The centre of the day - the mid-point of daylight hours, when the sun is

Cookie ban takes the biscuit

2011-03-09T10:57:00.001Z

Most small businesses don't yet realise it, and even quite a few large ones, but there is an EU Directive that will affect the majority of commercial websites. As of 25th May this year, it will become illegal for a website to set a cookie on a visitor's computer without their explicit prior consent. Cookies, for those who aren't technical, are small text files which a website stores on your

When is Democracy a bad thing?

2011-02-18T13:45:00.000Z

It's a momentous time for Democracy. In Tunisia and Egypt, the population is clamouring for a genuine say in how the country is run. In the UK, we have to decide which is more democratic: first past the post, or the alternative vote. In the west, it is almost unthinkable not to have a form of democracy for public representation. But would you apply democracy everywhere? Take business, for

A blog is not just for Christmas

2010-10-23T21:16:00.000+01:00

Blogging for business is a serious business. Once you start, you quickly establish a pattern in the minds of your customers which you break at your peril. If you set out to produce say a monthly blog, or indeed a customer newsletter, then your customers will come to expect the next one next month. Think of your blog/newsletter as a magazine. If it doesn't appear - even if the customer doesn't

The power of words

2010-07-14T15:43:00.001+01:00

One of the things I have inherited from my father, apart from a large nose and a distressing ability to walk past friends and loved ones in the street without noticing them, is a love of words. My father wrote English textbooks for schools, and waged a fierce campaign throughout my youth to try to mould me into a person who uses language sensitively. Eventually he got me to deny the split

We should go to work on climate change

2010-03-15T10:39:00.000Z

Like many others, I am concerned to the point of alarm by the scientists’ warnings about our planet, and worried about the lack of international accord and serious commitment to act. So I try to heed the advice to save energy at home. I turn off unwanted lights and look at where I can install low energy bulbs. I am uncomfortable when I fail to turn off the video recorder and TV, leaving them on

Decline and Fall

2010-03-02T14:12:00.003Z

There is a natural cycle of dominance on this planet. The great geological ages have come and gone, the climate moves from ice age to global warming, the dinosaurs gave way to the mammals and ultimately to humankind. Much the same happens to human activities. Within the last 100 years we have seen the position of dominant superpower pass from the Britain of Victoria to the United States, and now

Can contract recruitment agencies raise their game?

2010-02-08T08:41:00.000Z

The relationship between contractors, such as Interim Managers, and the agencies who undertake to find candidates for interim roles for their clients is frequently a fraught one. The agency is paid by the client and has the dominant position in the commercial relationship with the interim - therefore their focus tends to be firmly on the client. The interim is their means of earning commission,

Are operators converging billing systems?

2009-11-06T14:19:00.000Z

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about convergent billing, where I argued that there was not yet a real case in terms of customer features for convergence of prepaid and postpaid billing infrastructure (see emmens-biz.blogspot.com/2009/08/prepaidpostpaid-convergence-is-it-worth.html ). Whilst I still doubt there are sufficiently sexy consumer products to be developed around payment convergence to

Programme Management and Roy Keane

2009-09-30T12:26:00.000+01:00

I have a confession to make: I am an Ipswich Town supporter. I know, don't mock, I suffer enough as it is. I have watched over the past five months after Jim Magilton was sacked for only taking Ipswich to 10th in the Championship, and Roy Keane brought in with a great fanfare as the man to put an end to Ipswich's "underperforming" and win promotion to the Premiership. He immediately professed

Crystal balls

2009-09-17T14:55:00.003+01:00

It’s always fun to speculate about the future. History is of course littered with men who made predictions which were ever so slightly wide of the mark: my favourite is the prediction of Thomas J Watson, IBM president in about 1950 who opined: “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” To be fair to him, that was probably true of the computers of the day, but even so it was a

Why is Customer Care so hard?

2009-09-02T12:44:00.004+01:00

Network operators and service providers are uniquely positioned amongst all industry sectors, in that they have the data that describes exactly how all their customers use their services, through call and data records. Every single time a customer uses the network, there is a record logging this.All this data is painstakingly collected so that bills can be produced. And what else is done with it?

Whither WiMAX?

2009-08-26T14:58:00.002+01:00

There are strongly divided opinions about WiMAX. Its supporters have a vision of a world where many devices are wireless mobile enabled, so that for example a camera can take a picture and have it automatically and immediately uploaded to the photographer’s own picture archive on a server somewhere, gaming devices can use mobility and geography as part of the game, a phone can make a freed VoIP

What's in a name?

2009-08-20T18:16:00.003+01:00