UK is an ultra competitive market

"Communications in the UK is an ultra competitive market and that level
of competition will continue to drive continual downward pressure on
prices," says Paul Reynolds, chief exec of BT Wholesale. [via The Register]

The UK market it extremely fierce, but we’re seeing some consolidation such as C&W and Energis and I’m sure we’ll see a few more mergers yet. NTL and Telewest have been dancing around their handbags for a while now. Something has got to happen with one of the following, Thus, Colt and level3, they need something extra for them to compete in the market place.

Google plans own WiFi service: Web site

It looks like it’s only days away now before Google beta’s it’s wifi service

E-Mail Etiquette

Give someone a PC (or a mac) in your company..make (yes make)them read this…E-Mail Etiquette

Skype call forwarding

The newest beta version of internet telephony app Skype now includes call forwarding to one or more landlines.

This means power Skype users can make Skype their permanent number
which rings their home phone, mobile phone, office phone OR all three.
Skype for Windows 1.4 is still beta, but is available for download. [via lifehacker]

Skype charges you for this facility, but I’m sure it’s cheaper than an ABC would charge. I remember using the BT call forward service when I ran my small businesses so that people could dial what they thought was an office and it was me on a mobile somewhere in the UK.

I’ve to check to see if Skype has Chester numbers, they didn’t last time I checked.

Google Secure Access

If you choose to use Google Secure Access, your internet traffic will
be encrypted and sent through Google’s servers to the Internet. The
data that is received will then be encrypted and sent back through our
servers to your computer. [via lifehacker]

This is another amazing data mining product. Not only will Google now see all your searches and email but all your internet traffic. So it’ll see every site you visit and be able to read every email you send, even those not sent by gmail…wow. Privacy..what privacy.

Putin Mulling Secret Telecoms Net

The [Russian] government may spend up to $500 million to set up an entirely new
telecoms network to appease security services opposing the
privatization of state holding company Svyazinvest, business daily
Kommersant said Wednesday [via The Moscow Times]

haven’t they heard of VPN’s?

Out of Flood, IBM Was Born

you learn something new every day…

Over the next decade, Watson focused C-T-R on information processing
and in 1924 renamed it the ambitious-sounding International Business
Machines. During the boom of the late 1920s, IBM was essentially like Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) during the dot-com bubble — a young company with a sizzling stock and important new technology that hardly anyone understood.

IBM — entirely built in Watson’s image — grew like crazy through
the Depression. Watson became as famous as Gates or Steve Jobs today.
And IBM just kept growing.

The Dayton flood made that possible, though of course no one could’ve seen that at the time.

[via]

Slingbox

I was just reading that Scoble has just set up his Slingbox. This looks realy cool and if you have a PVR then it’s even cooler. Being able to either watch TV in another room or your recorded programes anywhere in the world is a pretty funky thing.

Two downsides to this; One, I very really sit in hotel rooms twiddling my thumbs, there’s allways plenty to do (eating and drinking) and secondly we’re ‘skyless’ right now..someone small has hidden the Sky card….argh!  We’ve hunted high and low and it hasn’t turned up yet..so no TV in the Evans household right now.

Google’s core busines

I just read that Google’s core business isn’t search engines, "it brokers connections between people and corporations for profit". I was wondering if the the guy’s that set it up had that in mind when they started out, If they did they had one cool business plan.

eBay buys Skype

There’s been loads of blog posts on why eBay has bought Skype, but it’s becoming clear that they’ve done it to make selling easier, they are "commodotize their complements". eBay did it with PayPal and have made a success of that, so I’m sure they’ll make a success of Skype too.

eBay is a on-line trading site and they are working to make every process in support of that core business as simple as possible. I wouldn’t say that they have made some of the supporting processes cheaper, as PayPal takes a considerable commission charge on each transaction, but it is nonetheless easier and safer.

So what next for eBay…UPS?