…and to my wife; I leave my Facebook password

Come on, admit it! Have you ever thought about leaving internet passwords in your will? Have your family, wife, husband, kids got any idea as to how to get into your online bank or Facebook account?

In a new survey by Goldsmiths at the University of London states, only one in 10 people in the UK now leave thier “Digital Indentity” in their will.

A “Digital Indentity” is the electronic representation of a real-world entity. The term is usually taken to mean “the online equivalent of an individual human being”  However a broader definition also assigns digital identities to organizations, companies and even individual electronic devices.

Come Hell or High Water

Quote: “The Age” www.theage.co.au

“Australians are among more than 15,000 tourists trapped on holiday islands after storms and floods hit southern Thailand, killing 21 people and destroying villages. Victims were either swept away by the rising waters, or buried in mudslides as the unseasonably wet weather deluged the homes and businesses of around a million people in what should be one of the hottest months of the year.”

Alas not a too unusual quote. Thailand’s worst floods in half a century have killed nearly 400 people since mid-July [Quote from Reuters] Thailand’s capital; Bangkok, a  city of 12 million people is on heightened alert because of threats on two fronts — a seasonal high tide this weekend that is expected to coincide with the arrival of a mass of water from the flood-stricken central plains.

This time, this tragedy, this disaster has effects rippling out around the globe and will affect us all. Many industries now rely on output  from Thailand and, not surprisingly thecountries output has all-but ceased. The worlds electronic industry relies heavily on Thailand’s output.

• Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook says he is “virtually certain there will be an overall industry shortage of disk drives.” Cook warns that Apple’s Mac
  lines will be most affected.
• Seagate Technology PLC, (Hard Drives), says its factories in Thailand have been operational, but it may have difficulty making
• hard drives because of constraints in getting parts.
• Western Digital Corp, (Hard Drives) says flooding damage to its Thailand locations will have a significant impact on its operations and its ability to meet customer demand the rest of the year.
• Emulex Corp. (Data Storage) says a subcontracted manufacturing facility has suspended operations due to flooding.
• Fabrinet, (parts for optical, electro-mechanical and electronic manufacturing companies), says it expects its plants to remain closed through the rest of the quarter.
• Emcore Corp, (semiconductor-based components), says flooding penetrated a contractor’s production facility over the weekend, submerging some equipment and it’s ramping up production in China and other areas.

In an update recently, Toshiba said that water is two meters high on the site and the surrounding area, and more than one meter deep in the buildings at its hard disk facility. The company started alternative production at other factories, but said “the production volume will be limited by available capacity”.

It seems that Hard Drive supplies have been very hard hit, it’s said shipments in the fourth quarter will decline to 125 million units, down 27.7 percent from 173 million in the third quarter. The result in this significant shortage of HDDs is going to mean only one thing, an increase in price of about 10 percent compared to third quarter prices.

The HDD plants affected by the flooding make devices designed for mobile computers, but disruption to notebook shipments in 2011 is not expected, as the PC industry appears to have sufficient stockpiles to last through the fourth quarter. With HDD production disruptions expected to last at least six months, the shortage could impact notebook PC production in the first quarter of 2012.

The floods in Thailand may also cost Western Digital its top position in the HDD market. In the quarter to July 1, Western Digital shipped about 54 million hard drives from its facilities in Thailand and Malaysia, with about 60 percent coming from its sites in Thailand.Given the direct impact of the disaster on its operations, Western Digital is likely to lose its status as the world’s largest shipper of HDDs, with its rank expected to fall to third in the fourth quarter.

The floods will also have ongoing effects on the Thai camera manufacturing operations of Sony, Nikon and Canon.  The supply issues are anticipated to  mean a drop in overall camera shipments in the fourth quarter and possibly in the first quarter of 2012. Sony said last month that it was forced to postpone the launch of its new “NEX-7″ high-end portable digital camera and cut production of another because a factory in Thailand was affected by the flooding.

With floodwaters edging closer to the door-ways of Bangkok, the political and human costs of the country’s worst floods in over five decades are fast becoming evident. Over here in the west we all could do well to cast an eye towards Thailand and help in any way we can. This Asian disaster is our disaster too. Thailand’s economy supports all our economies and the high water hell they are suffering now, could become our economic hell very soon.

Our thoughts are with the people of Thailand

Third-World Internet Country

 China overtaking US for fast internet access as Africa gets left behind - 300 million people in the world have high-speed lines but the gap is growing. (Richard Wray, communications editor The Guardian, Thursday 14 June 2007)

UK is at risk of being left behind (Think Broadband – June 2010)
The UK is at risk of being left behind if it doesn’t rapidly increase its fibre broadband rollout according the Fiber-to-the-Home Council. The UK has only 5,000 homes connected to directly with fibre connections to the home, rising to 2.5 million in Europe, whilst the Far East steams ahead with 38 million connections.
The Next Generation of high speed internet access is likely to come from Fibre Broadband that could deliver broadband speeds of around 100Mb!

BT Press Release Today!
BT today announced two thirds of UK premises will have access to fibre broadband by the end of 2014, one year ahead of its original target of 2015. To help achieve this, BT will recruit a further 520 engineers to assist with the deployment, most of whom will be ex-armed forces.

BT is bringing forward approximately £300 million of investment over the next few years to fund the accelerated roll-out. These funds form part of BT’s total investment of £2.5 billion in commercial fibre broadband.

The acceleration will help the government achieve its ambition of having the best super-fast broadband network in Europe by 2015. The widespread availability of super-fast broadband is expected to help stimulate the UK economy, drive regional growth and please many communities who are keen to experience the benefits of the technology.

Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport said: “Superfast broadband is essential for achieving sustainable growth and it is vital that homes and businesses have access to it as soon as possible.

Fibre Broadband is slowly gaining momentum with the realisation that the UK is going to need this as the next step for high speed Internet access so as not to fall behind other countries.
Fibre Broadband uses Fibre Optic cable to deliver data and is able to deliver it faster and also much more of it than can be done with the existing copper wires currently in use.
Fibre Broadband is the next step in the evolution of broadband and high speed Internet and looks to be the only real way to be able to comfortably cope with users demands. As faster speeds become available people are needing far transferring far more data.
According to a report from the FCC, a single twisted copper pair can deal with 6 phone calls compared to a single fibre pair that can cope with 2.5 million phone calls!

Will we ever be able to keep net speeds up to what the world wants and says it needs? Last year the Telegraph said: Record number of young people leaving countryside due to slow internet speeds. Village life is in danger of dying out as a record number of young people desert the countryside because of a lack of modern services like faster internet speeds, the Government’s rural tsar has warned.

In-Cumbria.com quote: “COMPANIES are not moving to rural Cumbria because of a lack of basic infrastructure.
The claim was made by Douglas Chalmers at one of the last agricultural shows of the year.
Mr Chalmers is director of the Country, Land and Business Association.”

With the UK’s ever increasing demands of the net, for business as well as for personal use and BT only promising us two-thirds fibre coverage and only by 2014  will the UK become a “Third-world internet country” in the mean-time?

If you think you need more speed from your internet connection – give us a call! sales@alchemysys.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

ADSL and SDSL issues

Not for the first time – BT have  had major ADSL and SDSL issues lately. The circuit is now cleared, it was caused by a routing issue within the BT Wholesale network which affected multiple ISP’s. We suggest affected clients conduct a quick router reboot of any circuits which have not come back up. If the circuit still doesn’t come back up please report it to your support desk.

Alchemy highly recommend back-up circuits for all customer’s where uptime is important. These cost from as little as £6.00 per month. Alternatively Ethernet circuits are designed for customers whose internet access is critical for their business as they are highly reliable, either being delivered over Fibre or over multiple copper pairs and have a comprehensive 99.93% SLA and market leading SLG’s. EFM Ethernet costs from £160.00 per month with a free connection offer currently running until the end of this month.

Contact sales@alchemysys.co.uk

iOS 5

Apple’s newest operating system update to the iPhone, the iPad and the iPod Touch, called iOS 5, is available to download from today!

Have they?
Among the nearly 200 new features to iOS5 are some pretty big ones – such as the reworked notifications system. It was widely agreed that the iPhone and its extended family handled notifications very poorly. An example might be that should say a text arrive whilst you were playing a game then the text would interrupt everything and place a message in the middle of the screen. Alerts that arrived when your device was inactive caused a different problem: unlock the screen without thinking and the notifications would disappear, leaving you wondering which app required your attention. None of these are earth-shatterring problems but upset the user exoerience

Gone is the ‘Notification Centre’ concept and in comes an idea Android users will be very familiar with; ie the swipe down from the top of your screen. You’ll see all of the notifications that require your attention and more than that, extras such as Weather reports, stock prices, and the like can be held in there.

More toys include the ability to ‘unlock’ a notification itself and go straight to the relevant app and the very smart way that notifications roll in at the top of the screen while you’re doing something else are all very sharp, very crisp!

Should you wish; the notification Centre can be customised to show a scrolling ‘ticker’ style presentation of say your share prices, the local weather and, or notifications from the phone, email, text messages, even your Facebook, and Twitter messages Previews of messages and e-mails are shown, and the notification can be acted upon by tapping it.

Camera and Photos
Is the iphone camera in iOS5 ahead of the game or just catching-up with Android phones such as the Galaxt SII? Two things which will make it way easier to take a picture on your iPhone in iOS 5 are the hardware shutter and lock-screen camera access. The hardware button is actually the volume-up button! Features include Android familiar functions such as pinch-to-zoom, single-tap focus, exposure locks and grid overlay. In the Photos app, you can perform edits like cropping, auto-enhance or red-eye removal, and create your own albums – time will tell!

PC Free and Wi-Fi Sync
You can now setup and manage your device completely from the device itself under iOS 5. 

Safari
New to Safari are actual tabs on the iPad, which make browsing much easier, and Reading List/Reader view

Mail and Calendar
HTML-formatted composition makes its way to Mail in iOS 5, as does message flagging and mailbox folder management.

iCloud
A huge part of iOS 5 is iCloud. iCloud replaces MobileMe and provides free syncing of email, contacts, calendars and more for all iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion users. Later, iCloud will also provide the ground work for iTunes Match, Apple’s cloud music service.

Apple’s new iPhone may have stolen the show today, but iOS 5 is great even for Apple device owners who aren’t planning a hardware upgrade anytime soon.

Feedback so far

Downloading today means that jo-public hasn’t had time enough to say. I did find this on the net from Steve Kovach. Steve Kovach is editor of SAI: Tools at Business Insider. He writes reviews and advice for gadgets, apps, and consumer tech and he spent a week with the beta version of iOS 5 on his iPhone 4.

“Bottom line: I still think it’s awesome. And still the best mobile OS around by a longshot. But that doesn’t mean it’s without flaws. Apple neglected to announce several features we were hoping forsuch as voice control and better multitasking.”

Click here for more from Steve

Tell us your experiences!