personal – Terence Eden’s Blog

Ter[ence|ry]

@edent — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 12:34:32 +0000

My name is confusing. I don't mean that people constantly misspell it, but that no-one seems to know what I'm called. Let me explain.

British parents have this weird habit of giving their children long formal names which are routinely shortened to a diminutive version. Alfred becomes Alf, Barbara becomes Babs, Christopher becomes Chris - all the way down to the Ts where Terence becomes Terry.

And so, for most of my childhood, I was Terry⁰ to all who knew me.

There was a brief dalliance in my teenage years where I went by Tezza. A name I have no regrets about using but, sadly, appear to have grown out of.

So I was Terry until I entered the workforce. An overzealous IT admin ignored my "preferred name" on a new-joiners' form and, in a fit of bureaucratic inflexibility, renamed me "Terence". To my surprise, I liked it. It was my nom de guerre.

"Terence" had KPIs and EOY targets. "Terry" got to play games and drink beer.

While "Terence" sat in meetings, nodded sagely, and tried to make wise interjections - "Terry" pissed about, danced like an idiot, and said silly things on stage.

Over the years, as was inevitable, my two personalities merged. I said sillier things at work and tried a quarterly review of our OKRs with my wife¹.

I was Terry to friends and Terence to work colleagues. Like a fool, I crossed the streams and became friends with my colleagues. So some knew me as Terry and some as Terence. Confusion reigned.

Last year, I stopped working. I wondered what that would do to my identity. Who am I when I can't answer the question "What do you do for a living?"? But, so it seems, my identity is more fragile than I realised. When people ask my name, I don't really know how to respond.

WHO AM I?

Personal Brand is (sadly) a Whole Thing™. Although I'm not planning an imminent return to the workforce, I want to keep things consistent online². That's all staying as "Terence" or @edent.

So I've slowly been re-introducing myself as Terry in social spaces. Some people take to it, some find it disturbingly over-familiar, some people still call me Trevor.

Hi! I'm Terry. Who are you?

Except, of course, when I'd been naughty and my parents summoned me by using my full formal name including middle names. ↩︎
I was put on a Performance Improvement Plan. Which was fair. ↩︎
I completely sympathise with people who get married and don't want to take their spouse's name lest it sever all association with their hard-won professional achievements. ↩︎

An adult gap year?

@edent — Sun, 19 May 2024 11:34:58 +0000

I've got about another 10 months left at my current job and after that... I don't know what I'll do. I've already moved down to 4 days a week in an effort to glide down to FIRE. Do I really want to go back up to 5 days? Could I find somewhere that would be happy with me doing 3 days? Can I be arsed to constantly hustle for ad-hoc client work?

Can't I just stop?

What would happen if I took a gap year? A sabbatical? A full year of not working?

I'm lucky enough to have enough savings for this venture. I've got me a wife who could also do with taking a break from her career.

So could we...?

The obvious downside is a year without earning any money.

The next issue is returning to work. "Can you explain this absence on your CV?" Oh, yeah, I just decided to quit for a bit. I'm not sure how attractive that is to future employers.

And the final issue is... to do what? Backpacking round India? Gardening? Eating our bodyweight in cheese?

I'm pretty sure this is what I want to do. Take a year or so out. Recharge. Reconfigure. So the next few months are going to be planning on what that looks like.

If you've ever taken a voluntary mid-career break, I'd love to hear what you did and how you planned it.

Introducing Open Ideas

@edent — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 11:34:03 +0000

As previously mentioned, I quit my job. So now I'm no longer working for The Man. Instead, I am working for a man. Specifically: me⁰.

I've launched Open Ideas Ltd. It's a bespoke computing consultancy focused on open technologies. Here's a brief run-down of what I offer:

Open Source
- Want to understand open source licencing? Confused about your options? Worried about getting it right? I am here to help.
Open Standards
- Interested in getting involved with Standards Development Organisations? I have the experience you need.
Open Data
- Ready to publish open data? Getting started with an open API? Let me help you craft a brilliant developer experience.
Cyber Security
- How do you audit your open source supply chain? What are the limits of coding in the open? I can advise you on how to solve these problems.
Tech Policy
- Writing tech policy or guidance? Need a subject matter expert? I will give you a helping hand to craft effective policy papers.

I'm lucky enough to have a few clients already - a large corporate, a charity, an art project, and a non-profit. But, if you need some help becoming a little more open, you can book a meeting with me or drop me an email.

Well, technically me & Liz. My partner in life is also my partner in business. ↩︎

MSc Managed

@edent — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 11:34:00 +0000

This is the final post in my MSc journey.

Last month, in an academic congregation at Northumbria University, I was formally awarded a Master of Science Digital and Technology Specialist (Data & Analytics) with Distinction.

Look! Actual proof!

Thanks to Mike, my Father-in-Law, for ripping that stream.

As my research was about "Exploring the visualisation of hierarchical cybersecurity data within the Metaverse", I thought it only fitting that I had a formal photo taken wearing the damned headset.

Don't worry, I also got a couple of sensible photos for my parents and in-laws.

Right! What's next?

What's the best thing you've ever won in a competition?

@edent — Tue, 16 May 2023 11:34:30 +0000

When I was... Oooh... 8 or 9 I entered a "count the number of spots on the giraffe" competition one summer holiday. Apparently I was the only child who noticed that there was a spot on the tail, so I won a YEAR'S SUPPLY of Cadbury's Curly Wurlys.

Nothing I've ever won since has lived up to that childish feeling of absolute glee I got from seeing a HUGE box of chocolate which was MINE! ALL MINE! It was only mildly tempered by the fact that year's supply was a measly 52 bars.

My intention was to live like a king and eat nothing but chocolate for the foreseeable future.

Of course, that didn't last long. My mum made me share them with my little brother (did he count the spots? No. But that argument fell on deaf ears.).

I also had to give some to my school friends (something about socialism meaning we had to share our good fortune with others).

My dad ate some (allegedly for quality control purposes).

In the end, I think I was left with around ten. Less than a dozen chocolate bars. I'd started with millions and now only had a handful.

After eating the third one in a row I felt sick, and my stash remained uneaten throughout the summer.

There's a lesson in there somewhere…

Happy Birthday @Summerbeth!

@edent — Thu, 28 May 2020 07:08:36 +0000

I started dating Liz - my now wife - one cold January back at university. We were young and disgustingly in love. This was it - 💕true love💕! And then, right in our honeymoon phase, she left to Australia for the summer holidays.

We both wailed and made overly dramatic speeches about how we'd stay true to each other. And we'd write every day! And nothing would tear us apart!

Those eleven weeks sssuuuuuccccckkkkkeeeeddddd! Skype hadn't been invented, and long distance calls were prohibitively expensive to us students. Timezones made IM chatting difficult. Emails and the odd letter made things just about bearable. But there was a profound sense that we needed to be in each other's arms. When she eventually came back - we vowed never to be apart for so long again.

Today is Liz's birthday. And, by happy coincidence, we've been locked up together for eleven weeks and one day. We've slain the dragon! I don't think we've ever spent so much time permanently in each other's company.

There's no one I'd rather be confined with. She's a sparkling wit, tough under pressure, a fierce defender of her opinions, and really good at video games.

Sure, we've bickered a bit in lockdown - who hasn't? - but she always knows the way to my heart.

Her taste in alcohol has improved remarkably since those early days

See! Classy!

She's a glamorous adventurer:

She's obsessed with Zelda:

And, best of all, she was daft enough to marry me!

Happy birthday, my love!

My first visit to a hairdresser in a decade

@edent — Tue, 24 Dec 2019 10:27:55 +0000

Way back in 1999, I moved to Canada for a year. Ottawa got down to -30℃ - so I grew my hair to prevent my ears snapping off in the cold. And then I kept growing it.

Very occasionally I'd go to a barber for a trim, but I hated the experience. I'm not good with strangers touching me, I don't like making small talk, and I resented paying for a needless expense. So I stopped going. Fun fact - nothing bad happened.

As I hit a significant birthday recently, I decided to let the "wisdom" of the crowds play with my fate.

I asked for suggestions of London salons to go through - and was equally bewildered and terrified. The majority of websites were achingly hip (I am not). They had opaque pricing structures. They were full of insider-terminology, almost deliberately designed to keep out new customers.

So I threw myself on the mercy of the wonderful Ann Kempster to recommend me a salon and hold my hand as I went. Which is how I found myself in the consulting chair at Not Another Salon.

I'd decided on a colour, and the lovely stylist brought be a big book of hair(!) to look through. The only problem was, they all looked the bloody same! I've no idea if I wanted a 4, or a 6, or with more bright tones. I don't know what highlights are, or whether I want bleaching. Should I use Innolux, or something else? I basically threw myself on their mercy and said "you're the expert - you tell me!"

I've never felt more out of place in my life. I don't often feel stupid - but I repeatedly had to say "I don't understand the question, sorry. What do you mean by 'product'?"

Oh well, it'll be done over Xmas. If I hate it, I can always shave it off... I paid the deposit (TWO HUNDRED POUNDS! FOR HAIR DYE!!!) and came back the next week.

I settled down, confirmed all the options I'd chosen, and tried to relax.

It was excruciating and I hated every minute of it.

Don't get me wrong, the staff were lovely and professional. They were friendly and happy to answer all my inane questions. They weren't pushy or trying to upsell me anything. But there was no getting around the fact that strangers were touching my hair and stroking my scalp!

The Not Another Salon team were so friendly, and I was heartened by this message on their website

We operate a strict no judgement policy and our clients are from every walk of life.

They also offer a silent haircut if you don't want to make small-talk. I'm not quite that anti-social, but was happy to read my eBook while PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW LATHERED CHEMICALS ON MY HEAD!

It only burned a little. And, again, I got extremely confused by the questions. Including: "How would you like me to blow dry your hair?" "Errr... With a drier...? I'm so sorry, I don't understand what you mean!" "Oh! Straight or wavy?" "Straight. Wait... I usually have it in a ponytail. Is that what I mean?"

*sigh* I'm not very good at this!

But, after a couple of hours, I was all done! Having read up beforehand, I knew that a tip is customary. Luckily the credit-card machine gave me the option of some pre-calculated amounts - hurrah for avoiding social awkwardness!

And I stepped out into the moonlight a new man. Well... the same man with purpley-red hair!

So, huge thanks to the gang at Not Another Salon for everything. I'm really happy with the colour and will see how I get on with it. Despite the team there being so lovely, I just can't see myself going back.

Partly, I think, it's because I never see my hair. I don't ever look in a mirror. Being faced with my... err... face for a couple of hours was particularly unnerving. It's kinda fun having coloured hair, but I don't seem to get anything out of it.

Perhaps if they can invent a robot which can dye hair...

Today was very mixed emotionally

@edent — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 23:46:24 +0000

This is a necropost. Originally written in 2017 on a defunct social network and now resurrected. I had been working for GDS for 6 months and was beginning to brush up against the HR bureaucracy.

Today was very mixed emotionally.

I had to do more Line Management Stuff - which I loath. Being trapped in a room with other managers picking over other people, their performance, their ability. I don't want that sort of power over someone else. I sure as hell don't want to spend half my day judging people I've never met and packing them into neat boxes.

I like the guy I manage - but I will feel nothing but relief once he has a permanent manager.

I know I'm a selfish person, but I'm just not interested enough in other people to make a good manager. It needs someone who both cares and has the skills to manage. Neither of these things are part of me and I get incredibly frustrated and upset when I have to apply myself to something I'm no good at (and have no desire to get better at).

And then tonight was just delightful! An evening soirée talking technology with a diverse (ish) bunch of industry experts in the Vogue boardroom⁰. People listened to my expertise, challenged my assumptions, laughed at my jokes, and shared why they were going to take over the world.

Some fine vegetarian food (with bespoke wine pairings) certainly helped - but it was the spirit and creativity of people on the cusp of driving technological and societal change which inspired me.

There is so much good in the world - more than enough to conquer all the misery and hate. But it is mostly untapped potential. While we trap people in the busy-work of filling in forms, harness their labour in repetitive drudgery, waste their minds on vapid schemes to profit from others' naïveté - we can't free them to be the best that they want to be.

Interesting days ahead.

2026 addition: Although I distinctly remember this being described as a "Chatham House" / off-the-record event, Wired wrote it up with attribution. ↩︎

Don't redact FOI answers with a marker pen

@edent — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 15:07:14 +0000

(Disclaimer - I currently work for GDS, although I don't work on FOI. This is an opinion piece and doesn't represent the views on any of my employers - past, present, or future.)

The Irish government recently complied with a Freedom of Information Act request from journalists at RTÉ.

The journalists wanted copies of messages sent via a WhatsApp group. The Irish government complied and sent out several pages of documents. Let's take a look at three of the core mistakes that they made.

Marker Pens

The redaction process appears to be drawing over the offending words with a marker pen.

When the ink is insufficiently dark, as in this example, we can clearly make out the word which is being deleted.

Even when the ink is quite thick, we can digitally enhance the picture to clearly see some letters.

We only need a few letters to discover even more information.

Fixed Width Fonts

The font that this blog is written in uses a proportional font. The letter M is physically wider than the letter I.

The FOI response uses a monospace font - where every letter is the same length.

This allows us to accurately count how long a word is.

This is particularly useful in working out who is speaking - for example ALICE will take up more horizontal space than BOB.

Even using proportional fonts is not a guarantee that information will stay hidden - but there's no doubt monospace makes information recovery easier.

Coverage

As you can see at the top of the page, not all the letters have been covered.

We can make a good guess that any vertical line is likely to be one of the letters IJKLbdhlt.

Each of those letters has a unique layout in a monospaced font.

Using our knowledge of the font, the partial exposure, and how the English language is composed, we can make a reasonable guess at what some of the words are.

Our knowledge of English-language idioms may allow us to guess the next set of letters.

Thoughts

This post isn't intended to convince people to be more closed - but rather to encourage more openness.

These sort of physical redactions offer little protection against the determined reader. It's the digital equivalent putting your door on the latch rather than locking it.

We've known for over a decade that it is possible to recover information from improperly redacted documents.

Scanned documents are difficult for researchers to use. Equally, delivering an FOI response in a non-accessible format is likely to be a breach of the rights of disabled citizens.

The correct response, in my personal opinion, is to take a digital copy of the records to be released and replace every instance of sensitive information with [REDACTED] or [23 WORDS REDACTED]. That way there can no possibility of accidentally revealing information. Of course, if you leave "track changes" on - the data may still be there.

Using ineffective techniques raises the the risk of unwanted information leakage.

Donald Trump's Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card

@edent — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 12:00:28 +0000

I don't often venture into American politics.

It is hard to know whether Trump is a master strategist - as Dilbert seems to think - or merely a chaos monkey. But, somehow, he seems to have stumbled on genius tactic.

Trump has repeatedly called for Clinton to be thrown in jail. This has provoked a howl of rage from the liberal media elite. In a civilised democracy the victor simply doesn't imprison their opponents.

Trump is promising to direct the state to imprison his political opponents. I can’t overstate how scary this is. Max Fisher - 9 Oct 2016

This presents us with a quandary. It is no secret that Trump faces a trial in December, it is also possible that his admission of sexual assault may cause further legal problems. As his past is dug up and more malcontents come forward, he could become the first modern presidential candidate to face conviction and imprisonment.

And there's the problem. While US Presidents don't have immunity from prosecution, what happens if Trump loses?

After a such a fraught campaign, where he has squared up to special interests, the media, the government, and the President herself - any prosecution of Trump looks politically motivated!

With the great and the good screaming about the damage it would do to democracy to have President Trump prosecute Clinton, to have President Clinton prosecute Trump looks like rank hypocrisy.

I don't know what powers President Clinton would have to delay or dismiss any prosecution of Trump. But I do know that Presidents have the power to enact pardons.

As President, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the people of the United States whose servant I am. As a man, my first consideration is to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience.
My conscience tells me clearly and certainly that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed. My conscience tells me that only I, as President, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book. My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquillity but to use every means that I have to insure it.
President Ford's pardon of Nixon

Given the deep polarisation in American society, what better way to show grace than to pardon Trump? Clinton gets to show magnanimity and help heal her country - and Trump gets to waltz away.

Is that why he is running? Has he found a sure-fire way to ensure that his past can't catch up with him?

Perhaps Clinton does deserve to be in jail. Perhaps they both do. But the spectacle of either being thrown in jail cheapens the appearance of democracy.

2013 - What a year!

@edent — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 09:00:04 +0000

Being a review of 2013, from my FourSquare check-in and blogging perspective :-)

The year started off cold and snowy in Woking. I was busy teaching a Code Club in the local library.

For our anniversary, Liz and I went on holiday to Las Vegas.

The jetlag was unfortunately crippling, and the Beatles' Love show was cancelled 5 minute in - which was very upsetting.

That said, we had front row seats to ~~Rebo and Zooty~~ Penn and Teller,

Saw Ray Kurzweil speak,

And flew over Vegas in a helichopter and landed in the Grand Canyon.

If that wasn't enough for one holiday - we then went on a Road Trip through the Mojave desert and pitched up at our friends' house for a week in San Diego.

Highlight was definably getting splashed by Shamu. I don't think Liz and I have ever been so drenched!

At the zoo, I caught this wonderful moment with the bees and rhinos. Probably the best photo I've ever taken.

The rest of February and most of March were pretty dull - livened up thanks to LibraryCamp

I gave a talk on Breaking OverDrive DRM on ePubs and how it wasn't the end of the world for libraries.

We also got to see The Book of Mormon, thanks to some last minute tickets from Dr Sue Black.

March also saw me discover and report a security bug about Samsung's Android phones.

I had started a martial art - Pil Sung Do - and I received my first grading:

I blogged about the latest Doctor Who episode, and how to get your WiFi network to look like the alien language. I published the blog post within a few hours of the episode airing - as of today, it's had 67 thousand hits! There are a lot of Doctor Who fans in the world :-)

In May I gave a very well received talk at OpenTech about Bribing MPs.

I also released a very silly tumblr which got a lot of attention - I Don't Want Your Fucking App dot tumblr dot com - which catalogued in sweary fashion all those websites who try to palm you off onto their crappy app.

June saw our first wedding of the season - Helen and Andrew got hitched

I jetted off to Dublin to speak at the OMA Conference.

BarCamp Brighton was my first big event with The Lab. Thanks to the organisational skills of Nic and Kevin, it was remarkably stress free. Liz gave a smashing presentation about video games.

I was a last minute stand in for Chris Atherton at the Learning Skills Conference. With my colleague Ruth, we quickly put together a very well received talk about mobile UK.

Next up, a flight to Glasgow! The Lab team was teaching computer science to school children - great fun, and a really interesting learning experience for us.

After much faffing about, I released my first Chinese Language website - http://莎士比亚.org/

I also told 22,000 people how to Opt-Out of Klout.

In July, my blog reached the One Million hits landmark.

By July, Liz had got a job at Oxford University! Cue a frantic few months of house-hunting and preparing to move.

But, before moving, we had to fly off to New York City!

Why? To watch our mate,s Greg and Jamie, get married! Yay! I love me a good wedding.

Of course, we had some amazing veggie food and beers.

And we couldn't visit upstate New York without getting soaked at Niagara Falls.

Finally, we went back to Strawberry Fields where I had asked her to marry me all those year ago.

As August started, I began constructing a 3D printer at work.

The RepRapPro would slowly take over my life for the next few months at work as we exhibited it all over the company and at Campus Party.

As our friends Mike and Nikki got married, we found out that the house we wanted was ours :-)

And that weekend we moved house to Oxford!

The next few months were mostly taken up with fixing the house, painting, decorating, wiring, and all the general chores which go with a new property.

I also released a "best selling" book. Which was nice.

I got to return to UEA - where Liz and I met - to deliver a lecture about mobile computing to MSc students.

We got solar panels installed which have been doing pretty well.

To cap the year off, I decided to grow a beard.

Dashing, eh?

So - that was my 2013 - how was yours?

Opt Out of Klout - Now!

@edent — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 07:52:37 +0000

Sites like Klout and Kred are perfect examples of social media frippery. A vaguely plausible "score" that you can use to justify your "investment" in tweeting all day long. When they're used as a silly little badge, or an informal competition with friends, they're a (mostly) harmless way of gamification.

Of continual annoyance is the complete lack of transparency these services show. How is your score calculated? Is anyone manipulating it? What can you do to improve it?

Still, it doesn't matter, it's only a silly number, eh? No one takes it seriously, right?

Wrong. Yammer, the internal social network of choice for most businesses, have announced they're going to team up with Klout so managers can see employees' scores.

What was once just a daft badge is now something to be bought up at your annual performance review. Want that promotion? You'd better hope that spending all day getting retweeted by celebrities helps your "influencer" score.

No.

It's time to withdraw our consent from these leeches who take our data, run it through an obfuscated process, and then attempt to sell it back to us.

It's time to stop being held open to blackmail. How long before they start offering a paid for service to help you improve your score?

It's time to refuse to be placed in an artificial competition where the rules are unknown and the results arbitrary.

Here's how you opt out of Klout.

Visit klout.com/corp/optout
Ignore their self-serving hogwash and scroll to the bottom of the page.
Verify your identity with Twitter.
Fill in a very short form telling them to go to hell.
Hit "Submit".

Get on with your life and be happy. A number on a screen doesn't control your destiny; you do.

4G Thoughts

@edent — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 07:30:44 +0000

As part of the Parliament and Internet Conference, there was a panel discussion about 4G networks.

These are my notes on the session. I've applied the Chatham House Rule - mostly because I can't remember who said what, rather than any backroom skulduggery. Any errors are mine and mine alone.

Neither Vodafone nor EE have signed up to the Network Neutrality pledge. O2 have.

(Disclaimer, I work for Telefonica, these thoughts are my own.) The Open Internet Code of Practice is the Government’s non-regulatory approach to net neutrality.

It basically says that ISPs will not discriminate between services, and if they do they can't call their product "Internet Access". It's all fairly sensible but O2 is the only mobile ISP who have signed up. This means the vast majority of 4G providers could start to block or degrade services which they think don't fit their business model.

Indeed, EE say they don't ban VoIP but want the right to filter such OTT services.

Ed Vaizey's form of "free market" capitalism states that because we have such good competition in the UK, people will be free to switch to other services which don't break the net. This conveniently ignores the fact that customers are tied in to 18 month long contracts (24 months if they want EE's 4G) and so are not able to easily switch.

Net Neutrality also offers some other interesting questions. VoIP and TVoIP have vastly different needs when it comes to latency - is it acceptable to prioritise a constant VoIP stream? Yes - assuming all streams of a similar nature are treated equally.

Of course, if those services are encrypted it could be very hard to tell which services are which.

Finally, emergency service calls are prioritised on the radio access and given network priority. Is that discrimination? Yes - but broadly acceptable in a net neutrality context.

Speed of Rollout

The 4G rollout is expected to be quick - much quicker than the 3G deployment. This is due to a number of factors.

The auction has been brought forward.
With EE having a head start, other operators will have to compete rapidly.
Spectrum is expected to be much cheaper than the 3G bands. This means there will be more money for masts and networking kit.
Mast sharing and relaxed planning permission should make setting up the network much more efficient.

Transco

There is only one electricity grid. One water network. One set of gas pipes. Yet different companies can sell different services at different prices across them. This idea is known as "Transco".

In the UK we effectively have only two mobile networks. EE (T-Mobile and Orange - who share with Three) is one, Vodafone/O2 is the other (they share masts, not spectrum and network kit).

All the major providers have outsourced the running of their network to NSN or Ericsson (an idiotic idea, but there we are).

Each company has to bid billions for new spectrum and spend millions on new masts and networking kit. Wouldn't it be more sensible if there were a national mobile network with O2, Vodafone, EE etc just acting as MVNOs? Each could buy wholesale access (and still run their own customer databases etc) at a vastly reduced cost and the public should benefit from improved coverage.

There seemed to be a lot of sympathy in the room for this idea. Apparently the Netherlands is investigating "National Roaming" which would allow your phone to roam on to a competitor network if you didn't have any signal.

One other point of interest - Ofcom apparantly want to see a non mobile operator in the 4G space. Perhaps someone selling wholesale or M2M access.

Speed

There are serious worries around real world speeds - as noted by EE claiming only 12Mbps downlink speed. Given the hype around the speeds is not likely to be met by real-world experience, this could deter customers.

The mobile industry may also be overselling capacity. ADSL suffers from insufficient backhaul - domestic ISPs bank on users only using the internet in short burst so don't buy enough connectivity. If we're all streaming movies all the time - speeds will suffer.

Price

Will customers pay?

There has been much derision over EE's pricing as being far too high and restrictive. Considering how long it took to build up a 3G customer base, can the industry attract customers to 4G when the coverage is patchy, phones are expensive, and battery life is worse? If they do - can they convince them to pay a premium for it?

Consider domestic ISPs. Pipex offered dial-up internet access for 50p a day back in 1996. Today, 16 years later, that £15 per month will get you "superfast" 24Mbps Internet access.

Technology brings prices down - even if they blip up temporarily. No doubt when other players enter the 4G market, prices will tumble.

Finally...

What will people do with 4G? Most people expect "The same, but faster". Can we find new services, or are we stuck with better speed, lower latency?

That's not a bad thing to be stuck with, but I wonder what the "killer app" will be that makes people want a 4G phone in their pocket... We all thought that 3G's killer app would be video calling. How wrong we were!

Fairwell InMobi - Hello Telefónica!

@edent — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 15:30:13 +0000

Sixteen months ago, I climbed a rattly staircase behind a restaurant to a fairly typical "start-up loft". My first taste of InMobi. I was enthralled! I've spent the last year driving the developer relationship process in the company, watching as we've grown from 15 people in a small room to 70 people in swanky London offices on the Strand.

InMobi has sent me all over the world - South Africa, San Francisco, Romania, Barcelona, Bangalore, Cologne, and Bath!

It has been an amazing adventure, working with some incredibly talented people. I've been challenged and stretched, I've presented in front of hundreds of people, launched the first RCS-e enabled adverts, started up blogs, wikis, and forums, and - most importantly - helped developers make money from their apps.

It's been a very busy year-and-a-bit! So now it's time for a change! Come August, I'll be beavering away in O2's The Lab. I've been consistently impressed with the way Telefónica has been innovating - and the presentations from their geeks at events have been phenomenal.

I'll be working on new and interesting products which take advantage of Telefónica's network. No, I can't help you if your iPhone is broken.

No doubt it will be strange moving from a start-up to a behemoth. And it will be odd driving round the M25 rather than suffering South West Trains every day. But I'm looking forward to a brand new set of challenges, meeting new colleagues, working with old friends, and a chance to get my hands dirty!

As ever, this blog remains personal - but please adjust your bias filters appropriately.

What Super Bowl Sunday Means To Me

@edent — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 07:58:53 +0000

This could be the most important email I ever sent...

Subject: Come One! Come All!
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 13:27:51 -0000
Yes, this Sunday our charming colonial cousins will be playing the American Football Superbowl!!!!!!!
If you're anything like me you can contain your excitement at the thought of watching a bunch of Yanks try to play rugby while dressed up like nancy boys... but come anyway - there's gonna be beer and nachos... LOTS of beer... MANY nachos...
So, yeah, Sunday 28 Jan our place some time in the evening. Come or we'll cross you off our Christmas Card list. Ooooh - aren't you scared?
Terry & Stoive
RSVP!

To explain... I was at university and sharing a house with my mate, Stoive. I can't say that either of us really liked American Football, but it seemed like a good excuse for a party. We invited everyone we knew. Specifically - single girls. More specifically, one single girl.

As it turned out, we never got to see SuperBowl XXXV. It was shown only on Pay-per-view. Our cable provider (NTL, I think) had a delightfully British attitude to making money. We rang them on the Sunday morning, only to be told "Sorry, you can't order pay-per-view at the weekends. The staff only work week-days." I'm told that customer service hasn't much improved in the land of cable.

So our "Superbowl" party became just another student party. The beer quickly ran out only to be replaced by honey vodka and Goldschläger. With the TV off, we were forced - horror of horror - into conversations.

I don't really know how I wrangled it, but I ended up sat next to the girl I had invited. She was talking, I was talking. But we weren't talking to each other. I was trying to work up the courage to talk to her. Stoive was cautioning me against eating too much spicy salsa; "Not if you want to get lucky tonight, mate!"

There was a brief lull in the conversations. I turned to her, about to say something which in my head sounded urbane when...

She kissed me.

She. Kissed. Me.

She kissed me.

She kissed me.

Nope. No matter how many permutations I try, I still don't understand it. I know it happened - I'm still slightly at a loss to explain it.

One thing I do know is that, seven years later, she kissed me again. And we've still never watched a Super Bowl.

We are the champions!

@edent — Sat, 12 Jun 2004 13:45:50 +0000

I love attending pub quizes - it's the trivia geek inside me. There's nothing quite like putting your mind to the task of solving odd riddles, remembering the exact date of an event, or working out who did what. All good, clean, wholesome fun! Apart from the foul stench of tobacco - the sooner they ban smoking in pubs the sooner I'll be in to spend my money. Who wants to come home smelling like an ashtray after a night out? It's bad enough that most pubs have the jukeboxes on so loud you can't hear yourself think and the price of a drink is triple what you'd pay in a shop, but the stink of smoke is just awful.

Anyway, we went to a pub quiz in a local school. Nice little affair - reasonable questions, fish and chip supper (or veggie burger if you're a filthy hippy like me) and reasonably priced drinks. What was really nice was that we won the quiz by a fairly convincing margin. What was amazing was that in one round we scored a big fat zero!

Because it was set in a school the quiz masters set a round where they amalgamated the faces of 3 teachers and teams had to say who they were, for example the eyes and nose of Mrs Smith, the mouth and chin of Mr Brown and the hair of Miss Jones. As we were the only team not to have any kids in the school we had no idea who any of these people were! Luckily the quiz masters had done such a good job of merging the faces that very few teams managed to guess over 50%.

The prize? A tiny trophy, a nice bottle of red wine and a box of chocs. And a glowing sense of pride at having the biggest collective brain in the room.

We then toddled off, consumed said prizes and watched the pilot episode of Knight Rider (a present I got a few years back and hadn't got round to watching). How the show got made on the basis of that pilot is a mystery to me. It was so cheesey it stank the place out. Mind you as a kid I used to watch it whenever it was on. Much like the A-Team. I can't remember which one of the A-Team I wanted to be - but I desperatly wanted to get lockin a room full of junk and break out in a home-made tank.

Right, TiVo is nearly full and the dishwasher won't load itself. sigh if only a Roombah was as cheap here as they are in the states.

(Imported from my old blog)

Moving house

@edent — Sun, 30 May 2004 06:11:33 +0000

Thanks to a team of good friends - moving house isn't nearly as stressfull as I thought it would be. Although not having any curtains means that a dawn waking is inevitable.

(Imported from my old blog)