Peter Scargill

Digitial Britain - not enough for small businesses

2009-06-19T10:17:43+01:00

The government has, if you believe governments, committed itself to universal access to broadband. But what kind of broadband? Think about this - the commitment is to help us to get to the stage where we have 2Mbit/s by 2012 - not now, but in three years. Is that ADVERTISED or ACTUAL and what does this say about the government's commitment to small businesses? As a (very) recent survey by the FSB shows, most small businesses have two to four computers using the internet and more than 60 per cent of those who responded (6,000+ responses I may add) said they thought the figure should be a minimum of 8Mbits/.

Is 8Mbit/s such an impossible task? I live out on the sticks and on a headline figure of 8Mbit/s I manage to get 6Mbit/s on a daily basis. On the other hand I have a little place in Spain in the country and we have a wireless connection there - which gives a reliable 512Kbps - and I can confirm that trying to do anything serious with such speeds is like having your arms removed. One large Powerpoint download and that's my connection gone for several minutes - and as for a Microsoft update - well!!!

In our organisation we're constantly shunting large attachments all over the place and we're not untypical. You might argue that 2Mbit/s is four times faster - but if we set this as a ceiling, what will the REAL speed be like - probably a lost less and in three years’ time most of our files will be a lot bigger - and since when do people ACTUALLY get what's on the box? 2Mbit/s is too near the bone. I know business people now who are on the slower connections and they reckon trying to get any work done at certain times of the day is virtually impossible.

We live in exponential times and our data requirements are continuing to go up and up - in three years time, 2Mbit/s will be only marginally more useful than dial-up is now. Our backup requirements will go through the roof as storage expands and our data expands to fill the void. We need offline solutions and they need BANDWIDTH. Is this REALLY the best our rural friends (and some in the cities) can hope for? While the likes of Virgin plough ahead at offering broadband 10 or 20 times higher than this - when the bulk of people in city centres gain high speed over the next few years we're looking at a serious divide between the digital haves and have-nots.

Satellite alternatives are not the be-all-and-end-all while the cost of such systems seems to continue to be sky-high, meanwhile mobile coverage - at least outside of London - is pretty poor, as anyone who has taken a train from Newcastle either down to London or across country will tell you. I know it's anecdotal but I'm sure I get better coverage in France and Spain than I do here. There are times on the train when I want to take the mobile dongle and throw it out of the window.

We need an imaginative plan to bring everyone into the 21st century - and for my money - this isn't it.

A convert to Twitter

2009-05-20T11:48:14+01:00

If you’re anything like me you may be wondering, as I was, what all the fuss was when the press latched onto Twitter. After all it’s not very clever, you can only put very limited amounts of information up there and most of us aren’t pop stars.

Oh sure, I have my own Twitter feed – why not, it’s free and it fills in those moments on the train when you’re bored silly – but what use would it be for your business?

The FSB puts out regular news items on our web site and of course we offer RSS feeds. We also send out emails to a selected opt-in group of journalists... but some time ago one of our London office staff suggested we start a Tweet. After I picked myself up it didn’t take long to realise there may be something in this though I remained sceptical. So now London office regularly puts up our views on current affairs, perhaps upcoming broadcasts featuring one of our guys on TV... and you know what? – it’s taken off. We have a good number of viewers and people have come back to us to say how useful it is.

Moral of the story? Just because something looks like it’s a plaything only, doesn’t guarantee you can find a use for it if you try! Follow us at www.twitter.com/fsbpress .

Licence to snoop on businesses

2009-01-26T10:15:48+00:00

Apparently, under new laws effective from March, if you believe the press, the government will use our tax money to insist that ISPs keep track of our emails, presumably all of our spam as well. The Home Office apparently insists that the measure is vital for fighting cybercrime as well as combating terror plots. They say that the stored information does not include the contents of emails… well no, not yet. But then they also said no new taxes.

Given that government has repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to look after any kind of data never mind our private emails, I think we should all be PETRIFIED about this. Can you imagine a list of everyone you’ve contacted recently ending up on the black market on a DVD for competitors to see? Not just private, personal conversation but also sensitive business dealings?

The argument about this measure being vital for fighting crime just doesn’t add up for me – surely even the most half-witted terrorist would use temporary email addresses or instant messaging to cover their tracks, with only the dimmest actually sending an email from their regular address. Sadly, honest businesses and many individuals simply can’t go switching email addresses and providers to avoid being snooped on.

So, once again, ordinary, decent citizens and businesses are having their pockets and privacy invaded to satisfy the somewhat paranoid needs of the UK government. Oh - and if they think you’re hiding something they will be able to hack your computer without a court order – does this begin to sound like the USSR of old to you?

In so many ways we have gone FAR beyond George Orwell’s 1984.

Addicted to Email

2008-11-17T11:01:40+00:00

Having just returned from Microsoft’s Tech Ed annual event in Barcelona, Spain in which developers from all over Europe meet to see Microsoft’s latest and greatest, I returned home this year a little disappointed.

In terms of acquiring new knowledge, there was plenty for everyone this year as always, though ridiculous as it seems, I can’t shake the feeling that MS are feeling the pinch as much as the rest of us.

On the first day we were treated to a cheese sandwich and salad in a brown paper bag for lunch – a far cry from the superb buffets of yesteryear while a constant police presence outside reminded us that this is not the lowest-crime area of Europe.

What did stand out for me was Internet Explorer 8 beta 2, which at first glance isn’t that special but which for the first time actually has some decent debugging tools built in and support for “web slices” – if that doesn’t mean anything to you – I recommend a quick Google on the subject.

At a talk on the forthcoming “Windows 7” the speaker asked the audience what features they would most like to see in Windows 7. I recall plenty of responses but they were all exactly the same – “speed”.

Of course, I only got to see part of the story because I’m one of those who made the mistake of bringing my work laptop with me. I should know better by now, we’ve just re-launched our website, a massive affair requiring reworking and re-wording of thousands of pages, a process that will continue for months, so it was inevitable that there were going to be at least some extra emails, mainly from staff with suggestions for improvement and questions about changes made.... but I’d not quite counted on the quantity I received (many hundreds) and so while others were learning the delights of CRM 4.0 or digging deep into SQL 2008 I spend my first day encouraging carpal tunnel syndrome, sitting in front of the laptop answering endless emails!

Increasingly everyone wants answers NOW and once you start, it’s hard to put the laptop down until the inbox is clear. Next year, I’m leaving the computer at home!

National Identity Fraud Prevention Week

2008-10-06T11:41:24+01:00

Every Monday seems to mark the beginning of a new awareness drive and this week’s theme has particular importance to small businesses and IT - National Identity Fraud Prevention Week.

Accordingly, the FSB has joined a variety of public and private sector partners including the Metropolitan Police, Experian, Royal Mail and the Passport Service to warn consumers and businesses of the dangers of identity fraud, a crime which costs the UK economy over £1bn annually.

In a survey of over 1,000 businesses across several sectors released for the campaign today, 92% of employees confessed that the identity of staff and customers of their company could be stolen by a fraudster, 75% believe that their organisation should be doing more to prevent ID fraud while 63% believe that information could be stolen from the company’s computer system. Clearly, business has a significant role to play in helping to protect the identities of their customers and employees.

Fraud and online crime is a growing concern for small businesses. In volume terms, instances of low level crime against a business, such as criminal damage or vandalism are more frequent, however, the issue with fraud and online crime is that one event can be highly disruptive and even force a business to close.

Phishing attacks are a regular annoyance for small businesses, whether it’s a ‘special’ offer, a fake bank account in Nigeria or a scammer posing as the bank asking for your sort code and password. Businesses are becoming savvier and are now able to recognise them and press delete, but the scammers are also becoming more sophisticated.

The diversity of the small business community means that they are victim to fraud across the board from fraud via online banking, unauthorised direct debits/standing orders, the sale of eBay fake goods and scams through Skype and Paypal. A particular concern is the huge issue of theft of domain names, bought or used fraudulently by criminals and competitors. Spam emails are also sent using a legitimate business email address to seek out information from clients or simply to tarnish the reputation of the business.

The list is endless and includes fraudulent use of mailbox address and registrations at Companies House, using company name and addresses from websites to falsely recruit someone and obtain their personal details; fake Mortgage application; competitors using company names as tags through search engines to direct the customers elsewhere; impersonating companies and opening an account on eBay to sell fictional items using company name but false email address, business then gets billed...

Card-not-present fraud (when card details are fraudulently used over the phone, fax or internet) is also an increasing problem for retailers and small businesses relying on the Internet to sell products to national and international markets. Secure methods of obtaining payments such as Mastercard Securecode, Verified by Visa and PayPal are effective, but a lack of awareness means that customers can be put off when asked to register before completing the transaction, fearing a scam. Additionally, businesses are still charged for using the service, even if the transaction is fraudulent.

Taking preventative steps can help save a business such as implementing a secure Internet system and appropriately disposing of sensitive information, but this can only work if there is enough awareness of types of fraud and ways of protecting yourself.

Small businesses complain about the lack of reporting mechanisms, follow up and support available, particularly from the police, even where fraud worth thousands of pounds is involved. Businesses report that the police seem reluctant to get involved and criminals know they will get away with it. Better communication between police and businesses is necessary to catch repeat offenders:

There is clearly a role for little-known Regional Fraud Forums to reach out to small businesses and make information about prevention accessible, meanwhile Internet Service Providers must also take a more active role particularly over issuing domain names similar to existing companies and money being transferred online and perhaps banks should take more responsibility for credit card fraud rather than letting businesses bear the costs.

Of course businesses have a role to play such as using up to date anti-virus software and protecting their own, employee and customers’ personal and financial details. This week is a chance for all these organisations to work together and defeat this peril for the other 51 weeks of the year.

The perils of copyright for small business web sites

2008-09-03T14:17:26+01:00

More and more businesses are turning to the web as an added source of income or even as an alternative one. It is so easy to start your own web site now with templates, tools, and guides available through most browsers and search engines and plenty of companies willing to design it for you at a price.

But while businesses are going online to promote their property, others are using the web to protect their property. This is where many small firms are finding problems.

Businesses often rush online without an awareness of rules and restrictions governing the plethora of information at their fingertips.

One such example is the use of images online. Copying and pasting a picture of a footballer to illustrate your sports shop or a car to promote your valet service may seem innocent enough but there are serious copyright issues which many small business owners may not be aware of in their eagerness to join the world wide web. A lot of businesses may also use stock photos that come free with Windows, only to later discover that they are in fact owned by an agency.

Picture agencies are starting to get sophisticated and aggressive at chasing payments for images used on other web sites without their permission - over the last few years Getty Images and Corbis have begun to use special software to identify when images they own are uploaded onto a web site.

Once an illegally uploaded picture is spotted, businesses have been issued with stern letters from solicitors or bailiffs warning them that they have broken the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act and attaching a license agreement demanding payment, often up to £1000 an image.

One such letter reads:

“Our client has instructed us to offer you a final opportunity to settle this matter without recourse to legal proceedings. Should you disregard this offer as well, and we do not receive the requested retrospective royalty payments and signed Licence Agreement by close of business on [date] our client has instructed us to treat your use of the Unlicensed Images as an unlawful infringement of its intellectual property rights. In these circumstances, we will advise our client to commence legal proceedings against you without further recourse to you. Should we need to instigate proceedings, we will be seeking legal costs which are likely to be in the region of £5000 in addition to the unpaid licence fee plus interest.”

For a small business owner, these type of threats can cause immense alarm and stress, affecting the running of the business and often its future. Other misinformed owners may not even understand who these agencies are and could disregard this as a scam.

Of course these companies have a right to chase payment for what is essentially their intellectual property, but it is the tactics that are worrying. I have heard of agencies later negotiating discounts for small companies, but if they can afford to offer a discount then what is the point of sending out threatening letters in the first place? Are they trying to raise awareness of copyright infringement, or just trying to make a bit of extra cash on the side from naive and vulnerable businesses?

In most cases that I am aware of, businesses have removed the offending image and heard nothing more. But others may get scared at the threats and immediately pay up, saddling themselves with a big dent in their wallet before taking appropriate legal advice.

Obviously I don’t condone plagiarism, but surely there are other ways for Getty and Corbis to protect their products such as watermarking or encrypting the image to stop people from simply clicking “copy and paste” or perhaps just a gentle reminder in the post or via email making offenders aware of the laws surrounding the use of images on the internet.

While businesses should be a bit more careful, these agencies also need to be a bit more understanding and not expect everyone to be a legal expert. Many businesses have only just learned the difference between email spam and tinned spam, so awareness of copyright infringement has some way to go.
If you’re interested in this subject, the FSB’s forums have a very popular topic dedicated to the subject, see here: http://www.fsb.org.uk/discuss

Prepare to be amazed

2008-08-26T09:58:13+01:00

Some months ago I attended the most amazing demo, superficially on the subject of photos – and what we (by that I mean the world) can do with them – I think you’ll find this very interesting, mind-boggling in fact, but you’ll have to bear with me as I take it through in stages – don’t try to skip any…

Traditionally, most of the more elderly amongst us (myself included) used to go off on holiday, take pictures, take our films along to Boots, get the pictures printed, look at them and then shove them away in a draw to go mouldy.

But that’s history, today we all have digital cameras – the ones that some said “would never replace film” – well, they have, well and truly. So, many people now have digital cameras, go on holiday, and take way more pictures than ever before. Then they put them on a disk where they go, erm, mouldy. I’ve been taking pictures since the first digital cameras came out – all neatly categorised and stored in directories which no-one will ever see.

Recently I’ve noticed the way the younger generation don’t have the same security-centric view of the world that previous generations seem to have – far from it. Via the web, they want to show off who they are and what they’re doing, what they like, what their aspirations are – and so you see sites like Facebook and MySpace in regular use – and blogs coming from the least expected places.

In other words, significant numbers of ordinary folk, not techies, are putting their lives on the web - or at least the parts they want people to see. Most savvy teenagers in the UK have a presence in the likes of MySpace and put their photos up there, what they’re doing and so on. The figures - for anyone who’s been down a mine for the past five years - will take your breath away, more and more people discuss and meet on the web, but that’s not news.

For some time now, I’ve joined the party and put all of my personal photos on Flickr, well, the nice ones – the ones in focus anyway - and if anyone has any doubts as to the number of people who put their photos on Flickr instead of hiding them away, I just looked – and in one minute, try 3,000 photos have been added. That’s not a special minute – that’s every minute. That’s a lot. A quick calculation says two billion a year. Go to Flickr and key in just about anything you like and someone’s taken a photo of it. Flickr is big – but it’s not the only place online for storing photos by any means.

Here’s an example Flickr search - Eiffel Tower: 147,000 photos. Even Big Ben managed 82,000 photos.

So, you can organise your photos, tag them, organise into groups, show them off to friends if you have any – lovely - but so what? Fine if you have friends who live a long way away, but it’s not that different to printing them out and showing them off, or is it?

For some time, we’ve been able to do something called mash-ups. You take something from this site and that site – and incorporate it into your own. Embedding Google maps into a web site is commonplace and I’ve now started embedding my Flickr images into my personal web site – indeed my blogs rarely feature photos from anywhere else – and so you get all sorts of nice slideshows you might not want to develop yourself – for free.

Last year I discovered a new tool to let you take images from Flickr and just about anything else – into an intermediate block – let’s say a book with pages that turn – with your pictures in it – and put that in your web site. That’s a mash-up. Ask me about it if you’re interested.

Then along comes Microsoft Labs at the TechEd conference last November in Barcelona. These chaps been working for some time on something called Seadragon.

Stay with me – I’m making a point and it’s worth it.

So – consider Google Earth – you can zoom in and out to any part of the world and go in with incredible detail – it’s turned geography lessons upside down I’d imagine – I could not imagine not teaching a kid how to use this tool. Of course, you don’t hold data for the whole world in your PC – no, it’s pulled in from the web only as and when needed – as you zoom in from the entire world view which has very little detail, to someone’s back yard. And this is the key to the next stage.

Now consider a screen with thousands of little thumbnails of pictures, you can zoom into any one, and keep zooming. The only hit your machine is taking is the size of your screen – like Google Earth, it’s pulling in information only as it needs it – on the fly.

So, in the Seadragon demo they zoomed in through hundreds of tiny, side-by-side photos lying on the screen, into a tiny glossy car advert. But wait, in the corner of the tiny ad as they zoomed in, were some little car images taken at different angles – zoom in – they’re actually hi-res images with text - pages within pages if you like – almost ad-infinitum if need be. In another example one photo when zoomed in turned out to be the entire text of a whole book, chapter by chapter, side by side – and you just zoomed in smoothly till you got what you wanted. Think about this for your web site – instead of lots of pages – you have one page – and just keep zooming in on the bits you’re interested in. A completely different way to think of publications.

At this point the audience of hundreds were starting to smile, but just a little – hardened coders to the last, it would take more than this.

So now take Seadragon and put it together with some or even all of the images available in the world online. Fantastic, want to know all about the Eiffel Tower – thousands of photos taken at different angles and zooms and times of day - everything you could ever want on your desktop for the zooming – great but not too easy to navigate.

And none of this is really new – a different slant on microfilm – bigger, better and faster – but then, along comes Photosynth, and here I’m coming to the interesting bit.

What the guys at Microsoft have done is to make software that analyses photos and gives them scoring points for all the features, angles, corners, colours and so on and assign a set of numbers to each photo – all totally automatically of course, no human interaction – making it possible to compare one photo with another and – wait for it – yes, they can actually tell how one photo relates to another and where the photographer stood when he/she took the shot.

So – take a few pictures of your house at various angles – all the way around and fire the photos at the software and it is capable of building a “mental image” of the original shape - and you’re right – they’ve managed to put those flat photos in a virtual 3D space - in the order and orientation that they relate to each other.

To explain – imagine you built a plaster model of your house, and on each wall or corner, stick a photo you’ve taken of the real house, hold it there with a pin, and let’s say you’ve a really nice door - as someone moves up to the door in the photo of the front of the house - well, you can’t do this in a real model – but imagine moving close up to the door, and the photo changes from an image of the front of the house, to the close-up of the door. Imagine an image of the door handle – look toward the handle – image smoothly changes to that image… one could go on ad nauseum.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not really talking about a guided tour of your house. Taking a slight leap, we’re talking potentially about a guided tour OF THE WORLD -(minus boring fields and the sea of course.
That’s today, but what’s really exciting is this: Some time ago I saw a demo at a university of a very crude attempt to extract 3D imagery from photos – but this is WAY beyond that. They then briefly showed us a demo - same scenario, a church this time with about six photos. Move around the photos smoothly and you get an idea of the original church – but that was not good enough – all of a sudden the image smoothly moved around the outside of the building in full 3D. Amazingly they have demo software that figures out the original 3D image from the photos and lets you view and pan a complete, solid 3D image! All from a bunch of flat photos and no human interaction.

Move forward to a different world to the one we have today - let’s say in a few short years at most (and most of this is conjecture on my behalf).

Consider something like Microsoft Virtual Earth – consider a system that lets you zoom down to the ground in full 3D, walk around at ground level in full 3D, up alleys, into shops, to anywhere in the world that a site like Flickr has available in images in sufficient number. Not only that but the text that accompanies modern photos (metadata information) is used to tap into Wikipedia as required and extract useful notes for you.

Imagine sitting at the screen, descending to a shop in a street, going into the shop, let’s say a jewellers’ shop – and as you zoom along the shelves you spot a ring you like. Zoom in and you can see the crystal in every minute detail. Press a button and get complete information about the product – and how long it will take to get to you. Press another – credit card – and it’s yours. Within seconds the images changes on the shelf to “sold out” and everyone else looking in sees that change.

But won’t all this need horrendous graphics and power on your PC? Well, this is 3D – and the gaming industry has long since mastered this stuff. Most modern PCs can run Vista’s amazing graphics because the gaming industry drove the development of cheap graphics cards. They’ve had 3D games for a few years and are not that far off having thought-controlled navigation – headset, sensors, shutter glasses (alternating images to each eye) – and when this all works together seamlessly, which it will at some point in the near future - we’re looking at 3D virtual travel around the world in seconds.

What about adding sound to images – or simply uploading geocoded sound. Before long, most smartphones will have GPS built in – and I’m thinking cameras will too – so photos and any sound will include where they were taken and when.

But it doesn’t stop there. In 20 years time we’ll not only have photos of just about anywhere relevant – but we’ll also have photos going back 20, 30, 40 years. It’s not a big leap to then not only move through a virtual 3D landscape – but move through time for heaven’s sake. Imagine looking at, let’s say a city centre – and then smoothly pan back in time to what it looked like, say, 30 years ago - all in a matter of seconds and at the touch of a button.

But you might say - would people really spend their time wandering about in virtual worlds? And that takes me off in another direction. Look up on the web to see how many people are playing World of Warcraft, Halo 3 and any of hundreds of other massive multiplayer online games. The answer is yes, people do that. People even discover friends and get married to people they meet in these strange places, and the imagery in these worlds is fictional though the people inside are real – what happens when it is all about real places as well?

There are many potential uses for this and you can guarantee that once the fun is over and the novelty wears off that business uses for this will follow en-masse. The point being this goes beyond anything that certainly I’ve seen in science fiction – and it’s most definitely not fiction, it’s mere months away from slowly beginning to turn into a reality.

I hope I’ve somehow managed to convey the awe that those of us who attended this talk felt, not only during the talk, but importantly in the moments after we left as it all started to sink in. The first version of Photosynth is now available to the public.

Lights, camera, action, web site

2008-03-18T12:38:01+00:00

As IT chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) one of my favourite events of the year is our annual conference, mainly because I get involved in the technology of making this available to our members across the country electronically.

Several years ago I decided to video record our annual conference which this year was held at the Novatel West in London and back in the dim, distant past it was simply a case of recording a megabyte or two and pushing it onto the web site – after all, most of the members had dial-up connections so we were talking about videos the size of a pack of matches.

With guests this year including David Bellamy, Sir Trevor McDonald and General Sir Mike Jackson to name but three, the challenge was on to make the best possible experience available to members back at home. Recent surveys show that a diminishing minority now use narrowband so no excuses!

Like most large organisations we can cater for only a relatively small number of members at our conferences - several hundred out of more than 210,000 - and so for me it is important to remember those who can’t make it – especially the “grass roots activists”.

Thankfully both the technology and the broadband are now routinely up to the job and so this year we made the decision to record pretty much all of our conference and make it available on the web in 16:9 widescreen format, usually getting the video on the site within an hour or less of the event completing.

When we first started recording some years ago things were simple – with today’s demands for quality I found myself making PC video recordings several gigabytes in size before reducing down to something suitable for the web – and spending most of the day uploading to the site (broadband upload is still the main bottleneck). But at least PCs are now fast enough to make the whole experience a lot of fun.

If you’re interested in any of the above speakers or small business issues in general, take a look – the videos are here: www.fsb.org.uk/conference2008

Celebrating small business success

2007-12-05T11:00:00+00:00

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has launched British Small Business Champions 2008 (BSBC), our unique national awards scheme, aimed purely at small businesses.

Entries are invited from well-run businesses that are highly regarded by staff and customers. Businesses have to have been trading for at least five years at the time of entering and must employ no more than 50 staff.

Across the UK, six Area Champions will be chosen and these six businesses will go forward to the national final. One business will be chosen as the National Champion and scoop the top prize of £10,000.

For BSBC 2008 there are two additional categories: Young Entrepreneur and Most Promising New Business. These have been chosen as a way for the FSB to show support for the new generation of up-and-coming businesses. Entries in both will go straight to national judging.

BSBC was launched by the Federation of Small Businesses in 2002 and is now firmly established as the most prestigious and highly valued of business awards for SMEs.

For more information go to http://www.fsb.org.uk/bsbc

A tale of lost data

2007-12-04T12:20:18+00:00

When identity cards first came to the attention of the public, many of us were concerned about EVEN MORE centralised information being in the hands of our government.– and now the validity of such concerns is clear to all : 25 million records including financial details, apparently routinely transferred, unencrypted, by junior officials onto standard CDs and put in the post, unregistered, unprotected except for passwords that schoolkids could break.

It almost sounds like an April Fool’s joke, it’s that inconceivable – except that this isn’t April and it’s no joke. Data we trust our government to preserve is now, more than likely, in the hands of criminals – and what a bonanza. If the people of Britain don’t treat this disaster as a major wakeup call then heaven help us. Seems to me that the government is very good at apologising for getting it wrong but disastrous at not getting it wrong in the first place. Between this and recent revelations of the TV companies ripping us all off, one could be forgiven for wondering if we’ve lost the plot somehow.