Christmas is different this year

With Christmas on our doorstep once again, it's time to spend time with friends and family, enjoying a well earned break and some festive traditions. This year, some of those traditions have changed.

All the good stuff is still there for us to enjoy. It's the only (Christian) period of the year where every house is festooned with decorations, a tree, lights, and a feeling of cheeriness. nearly every meal is indulgent, nearly every drink is mulled.

In years gone by, these delights, and the enjoyment of the season was offset somewhat by the unpleasant side of Christmas. The crowded shopping centres, the battleground of supermarkets and the sheer effort of getting ready for the big event.

"Having a list... checking it twice" was not the job of Santa anymore, but of diligent parents with a family to buy presents for, and at least a few crucial meals to plan. Did you buy gardening gloves from Waitrose for Granny last year, or the year before? How old is niece number 2 now, and is she a fairy princess or a climbing trees type of niece? 

But in today's world of Amazon Prime... or even eBay Free&Fast... much of the drudgery of Christmas shopping has been consigned to memories of yesteryear. 

Making good use of Google sheets, sync'd across all my devices, I was able to keep track of the 30+ presents that needed buying, and with mobile apps for Amazon and eBay, plus mobile-optimised webshops becoming the norm, every spare moment was an opportunity to work through the list, and get everything ordered. Always for next day delivery, and as such, so much easier to track.

Working out what to buy was made much easier through Whatsapp messages with each of my children. Even Granny has got the hang of emailing links to present ideas on the web. In fact my family shares ideas throughout the year, mostly through whatsapp links - which are often discussed around the dinner table afterwards. And to my surprise, a lot of the messages are more along the lines of "This would be so cool for Grandad", rather than "I want this for Christmas".

I've also retained my self-appointed title as savviest shopper. For every present a price comparison is a few clicks away. Finding a great present, and being sure you've paid the best price, without cris-crossing a shopping mall over and over is delightfully satisfying.

Unlike fresh fruit or groceries, present buying is perfectly suited to the online experience. In grocery shopping, some control of quality and quantity is handed over to the store ... think choosing a ripe avocado, or receiving a mini shampoo bottle because you didn't notice it was 50ml not 500ml. At Christmas, present buying is a breeze. Assuming you stick to trusted brands, getting the right product is not dependent on whoever is picking that product at the warehouse. In fact, the process is mostly automated. Taking humans out of the loop is a very good thing.

This year, in particular, I've been somewhat housebound on account of a recent hip replacement and a doctor-enforced 6 week break from driving. But has that ruined my run-up to Christmas? Not a jot. In fact, it's given me the ideal opportunity to test-run a 100% online Christmas. And it's been a breeze.

As long as Ocado arrive on 23rd December, as promised, and as long as they haven't run out of parsnips, my Christmas is in a perfect state of readiness. In fact, it was that way by December 4th. Since then I've merely been seeing even cooler presents, and replacing them on my list.

It's a rosy picture but not without some downsides. The boot of my car, and also my conscience, is full of Amazon cardboard and packing paper. Amazon seems incapable of delivering more than one product per unnecessarily large box. I ordered three wall calendars, 30x30x1cm. Each of them arrived in an A3-sized 15 cm deep box, filled with packing paper. The sustainable forests that produced that cardboard, wept.

I'm also worried about the last mile distribution. I'm on first name terms with a variety of delivery drivers. Most of whom have been kind enough to mention how well I'm doing, having started to receive deliveries whilst propped up on crutches, to now being crutchless. But all of them were driving diesel vans, mostly old ones, often leaving them running whilst dropping the parcel. I imagine the current push for cleaner air in and around London is being set back considerably by this.

In years to come, I'm hoping that big data analytics can be put to task to optimise these delivery runs, whilst electric vehicles eventually replace the oil-burners. Hey, even drone deliveries might make a dent, if they become safe and cost effective.

So, small quibbles aside, I'm looking forward to a mostly stress-free holiday period having got ready for it with the least wasted effort, the most efficient e-commerce, and all well within budget. That all makes for a very merry Christmas.

Will the £1BN spent on G.Fast get us back to "TV which actually works" ?

Slightly behind the curve on this story, as a result of getting a hip replacement a week or so ago. And that will be a critical point to remember as I rant my way through the next 300 or so words.

After coming down from my lovely morphine-induced high I left hospital with a shiny new hip and a bagful of painkillers. Like many men, my pain threshold is rather low and, as such, I was in a foul mood for a little over a week.

Things that contributed to my foul mood:

- BT TV not working 
- BT Broadband not working
- BT Home Hubs not working

... and when I say not working, I don't mean not working at all. What I mean is that these services work fine most of the time. In fact I'm quite happy with my suburban FTTC service at around 36 MBPS. 

But what got me so riled up, whilst spending 14 hours a-day confined to the sofa was the internet news telling me that we'll soon have gigabit internet through G.Fast, whilst simultaneously experiencing a fibre broadband service that randomly stops working.

TV used to work. You turned it on, and unless there was a howling gale, it worked. All the time, with no drama. No troubleshooting, no settings, no routers and no wi-fi. 

Now we have a vastly superior delivery mechanism for glorious streamed HD content, which occasionally just stops, you know, for a minute or two. That, to me, seems a backwards step. It's a good job the emergency services don't rely on broadband, or 4G for that matter. Oh, wait... they do.

If the government wants to invest £1BN in something, it should invest at least a little of that in a proper Ofcom group to assess the reliability of the current BB & FBB end-user service that customers of BT and its competitors are actually offering.

In the same way the EE wants to shift focus from population coverage to geographical coverage. I'd like Ofcom to switch from speed and coverage measures, to "does it work all the time" measures.

Everytime you see a message saying "connection lost", "download failed" or "not connected to the internet". That is clear evidence that your provider has dropped the ball. Count up those occasions, for everyone in the country, and Ofcom would have a decent idea of how reliable each service provider is.

Come on Ofcom, I know its important to tinker with BT to find the best ideological division of its groups, but what we consumers care most about is whether what we've been sold, and what we're paying for actually works. Not some of the time, all of the time.

And when I'm still on the maximum allowable dosage of codeine & paracetamol, I care about this A LOT!

My Telco is doing WHAT with my data ?

Telecom companies have some of the richest, deepest data sets of all industries. Because the business model involves contracting customers to monthly plans or providing pre-pay SIMs which people rarely change, the Telcos understand their customer better than almost all other industries.

You might buy a car once every two or three years, or take a holiday a couple of times per year. That gives the automotive and travel industries a little data about what you like, and what you might buy next time. But Telcos have access to a constant stream of data from your smartphone, set-top TV box and internet connection. 

The only industry that gets close to the level of data that Telcos have is Retail. The supermarket loyalty card has revolutionised the retail experience. Anyone who has had a book of vouchers through the post from Tesco, and been delighted that there are special offers on exactly the products they buy frequently, has been touched by this new data-driven approach.

Telcos are in a race to offer 'quad-play'. That is home phone, mobile, broadband and TV... bundled together from one supplier. In UK you can choose from BT, TalkTalk, Virgin or Vodafone. And it's not just the extra revenue they will get from you from each service that interest them, it's your data that is the gold mine they are prospecting for.

So what data do Telcos have on you? Well, the answer is a little disturbing. If you take all four services from, say, BT. Then BT can extract and store your data from each of their systems. Those systems contain records of your calls, your TV viewing habits, your location and your internet activity levels. With a little extra effort, they can extract details of: everything you've watched, live and on-demand; whether you watched the ads or skipped them; what you google and which websites you visit; where you travel frequently and which route you take.

If that wasn't creepy enough, they can pull data together from each of these systems and identify a profile based on other people's behaviour to understand even more about you. The observations that they can make are sometimes based on probability, but the accuracy of the profiling is enough for the Telco to make better decisions on how to keep you as a customer and sell you more services.

Here's a very short list of some of the things they know about you, or could derive from multiple data sets.

Sounds a little scary... right? Well, it's not as bad as it seems. For one thing, the Telco companies are not terribly interested in you. As long as you pay them your monthly fee or top-up regularly, that's their main concern. They might try to sell you some related products like more TV channels, cloud storage or phone insurance. They'll use the data for that. But most of the value in your data is in selling it to other companies.

Just in the TV data which Telcos have access to, there is a revolution underway. TV viewing ratings used to be collected by panels of viewers with special equipment. In UK the BARB panel was around 5,000 households. All the TV ratings were extrapolated from this small group of panelists. Now, every TV box can record every program watched, every button press, every play/pause/record action. All this data is sent back to the Telco in real-time. This gives highly accurate real-time data to share with advertisers, to share with production companies, and to add to all the telephone, mobile and internet data the Telco holds.

The system works so well that leading TV providers are able to insert targeted adverts into your live program feed, which specifically target you as an individual. They know it's you watching, and not your wife or your kids, because the way that you use the remote control buttons is as unique as your fingerprint.

Telcos have a system called DPI (Deep Packet Inspection), which allows them to look inside the IP packets which make up all internet traffic. DPI data shows exactly which web pages you've visited along with time-stamps, details of cookies, usernames (not passwords), and purchases. 

So combining this with your viewing behaviour, the Telco can tell a TV advertiser exactly whether their TV advert directly resulted in a visit to their site and a purchase. It's the most information an advertiser has ever had about the effectiveness of their advertising channels. And for that, they pay handsomely. Even basic personal data is worth a few pence per customer in the multi-billion pound data brokerage business. If that customer is in a high earning job, or high spending period of life, that value rockets to around £1. Multiplied by the millions of customers that Telcos have, this represents a tidy earner for the Telcos. And that is yesterday's model. Today's real-time model changes the game. 

In India, an insurance company is working with a Telco to give away free life insurance. In a market where only 3% of the population has life cover, there is a huge opportunity. The life insurance company has seen that it can get detailed lifestyle data from the Telco that it previously couldn't find. In poor communities, families don't have regular income, bank accounts, credit cards or even loyalty cards. But they all have a mobile phone. The mobile phone is the only way to get information about this sector of the population. 

Of course, the insurance company is betting on a proportion of those taking the free basic life cover to upgrade to a paid life cover. With the mobile phone derived customer data, the insurance company can make accurate cost/benefit analysis on each application for paid cover. Previously the risk was too great and the cost of cover too high. Now, the risk is calculable and the cost can be tailored to the individual.

Telcos are, in general, sensitive to the power they have with all this data. There is often strong governance about what data can be used within the Telco and what can be shared outside the Telco. As the intelligent systems being deployed by Telcos start to use these data sets, your experience with the Telco should improve. They won't post you as much junk mail, or spam you with as many irrelevant offers. They will be able to fix network or device problems before you're even aware of the problem, and they should be able to tailor your service to your needs at a competitive price.

But if that doesn't settle your nerves, there is European legislation coming in 2018, which will allow you to ask any company to delete all the data that it holds about you. Simply and quickly, you will be able to revoke their access to your data. When UK leaves the EU, it's anticipated that we will have similar legislation too.

And if you are very worried about what your data says about you, then I'd advise you to clean up your act. The data reflects your reality. If your reality is such that your data is, at best - embarrassing, and at worse - incriminating, then you only have yourself, and your data, to blame.

The search for Smarts part 2

Since my original post 'The search for Smarts', my Garmin Fenix2 came back to life. 

The achilles heel of Garmin's chosen charging technology is the contacts on the rear of the watch. With occasional muddy/sweaty use virtually guaranteed, the contacts can misbehave. Without being visibly 'dirty', the contacts can pick up some kind of oxidation, which doesn't allow the watch to charge through the charging clip. That results in a dead watch which you think is fully charged.

To fix the problem simply requires a wipe of the contacts with an abrasive fabric, wet-dry paper or the serrated edge of a coin, and the watch will happily recharge.

So, that's what happened and my Fenix2 is back to normal and my search for a new smart watch is on hold again.

In the intervening period a report was released about the state of the smart watch market in 2016. Despite the impressive marketing budgets behind many smart watch offerings, the market has declined by 51% year-on-year for the quarter. The figures were heavily driven by Apple and Garmin.

Q3 2015 was the first full quarter that the Apple Watch Series 1 was commercially available, and it took almost 70% market share in that quarter. The Apple Watch Series 2 was only available in 2 weeks of this quarter, so it's too early to say whether the 72% decline in Apple Watch sales will be offset. 

Garmin is the run-away winner in the segment, shipping 5x more watches in the quarter than in that quarter in 2015. The sport-specific smart watch market which Garmin dominates is a play-ground of micro-niches which Garmin understands and has tailored their bewildering array of watches towards. Whatever kind of athlete you are in your free time, Garmin has a watch for you. The Apple Watch, however, is a one-size fits all offering. (ok, two-sizes, but you get my point). Your Apple Watch doesn't mark you out as a triathlete, an ultra-runner, a gym-goer or a mountain climber. The Garmin on your wrist leaves no-one in any doubt which sporting preference you have.

And here's the key point in the decline of the smart watch market. Your watch is a functional accessory. It isn't your means of communication, your window on social media, your media player or your entertainment whilst commuting. It sits on your wrist as an overt display of your life-style preferences. There is a reason why people chose to wear a Rolex or a Casio, and that reason is 'difference'. The non-smart watch market is well established, with a huge range of options at both ends of the price scale. Are you a Gold Rolex or a Patek Philippe kind of guy? Are you a Casio CA53W or a Casio F91W guy? Up until mid 2015, nobody was an Apple Watch guy. And now, most people who wanted to be an Apple Watch guy already are. Everyone else is not-an-Apple-Watch-guy.

I would love to see Apple and their smartphone competitors continue to develop the rather impressive technology in smart watches over the coming years. They need to do more to tempt people away from the simplicity of a Casio, or the prestige of a luxury watch. 

I'm an CA53W guy, in case you were wondering. 

For or against the pay-wall

The Telegraph's online news site was my go-to as a counterpoint to the near ubiquity of the BBC here in UK. I was perfectly happy with The Telegraph, and would put up with attention grabbing adverts, advertorials, promotional features, because the news I wanted to read was free.

Today, The Telegraph online news service introduced a 'Premium' service, asking £2 per week for access to this 'Premium content'. At first glance, it seems that anyone with an opinion, or with a sense of humour, or even simple story telling chops has been put behind this pay-wall.

Flat news is important, and can be glanced over to keep abreast of happenings. For those subjects about which I feel a deeper level of interest, I want to know what other people think, I want to be entertained, and I want to have my views challenged. All of this, on The Telegraph, is now behind the pay-wall.

I should mention that the adverts, advertorials and promotional features are still there. 

I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox, an inferior browser with a quirky attitude to hyperlinks, purely in an attempt to remove the epidemic of almost full-screen automatically placed ads. I was fed up of scrolling multiple times to get to the meat of the articles in pages full of inappropriate, repetitive, invasive ads.

The Telegraph's paid-for apps for phone and tablet also never appealed to me. Perhaps because most of the content was available for free through the online web service. They are marginally more appealing now, but only because the online experience is now unpleasant.

Sure, I could spend £2 a week to 'unlock' Premium content, or I could go the whole-hog and drop £6 a week on Premium with Digital - and have the same content nicely arranged, with no ads in a swish app. But here's the problem...

I don't want to pay now for something I used to get for free. I'm looking at a Telegraph news page where nearly half of the articles (and 90% of the ones worth reading) are locked. As a non-suscriber, I don't want to be shown everything that I can't have, as a constant reminder that my purse-strings are pulled too tightly. I want to have what Telegraph provided for me for years, for free. If they're not going to do that, I'll go elsewhere. I'm sorry, Graham Norton and Simon Heffer aren't enough to keep me loyal. 

What I'll do instead is go to the trouble of configuring Google News with my interests, dig deeper into BBC News, and cherry pick from Huffpost, The Guardian, and more specialist press - all of which are free-to-me.

So sorry Mr Chris Evans (Editor not DJ)... you've lost me, possibly forever. If too many others fail to immediately re-value their Telegraph news feed - by £104 per year, the Telegraph will have created a bigger problem than falling newsprint customers. They'll rapidly fade into online obscurity.

Rely on google for travel planning at your peril

Today's mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get from Ascot to Paris... without drama.

"I accept", I thought to myself, and immediately jumped onto Google to devise a plan.

Google says it'll be between 25 and 45 minutes drive from Ascot to Slough station, at that time of day. Arrive in time for the 17.10 express to Paddington. Five stops on the underground, and glide into St Pancras International with 45 minutes to spare before the 19.01 Eurostar to Paris.

You've got to love the Open Data concept making all this timetabling information available. I do also love Google maps for tracking every journey unobtrusively and delivering by far the best 'Sat Nav' I've ever used.

Confident of a solid plan i left the house on the dot of 16.20, leaving time for the Legoland traffic, parking, paying and getting to the platform. Leaving plenty of time for the express 18 minutes to Paddington giving 45 minutes before the Eurostar was due to leave. So far, so good.

Cue the crackly voice over the tannoy.. "We regret to inform passengers that the 17.10 to Paddington has been cancelled".

Oh crap.

"Passengers wishing to travel to Paddington, please go to platform 5 for the stopping service leaving at 17.14." A stopping service that takes 38 mins, NOT 18 mins.

Ok google, what do you have to say for yourself? Lulling me into a false sense of security, assuming UK trains run when they should.

Don't panic reader, my 2012 New Year resolution comes up trumps again. That year I decided to be everywhere 15 minutes early - on top of any contingency needed. That one resolution has single-handedly reduced my daily stress ten fold.

So, with the 24 minute train delay, minus my 15 mins, I arrived at St Pancras 6 minutes before the check-in closed.

Now, here's a suggestion, Google. We all mostly understand probability. Why not take the published reliability figures for every train service and overlay a UK-rail-delay-modifier?

"The likelihood of this train running on time is 87%. Your arrival is expected at 18.15, but you may arrive 24 minutes later. You can save 24 minutes and take the risk, or have a 99.5% chance of arriving by 19.39."

For casual beers-with-friends arrangements, I'll take the risk. For a connection to Eurostar, a customer meeting, or a West End show, I'll play it safe.

The data is there to be used. The algorithm is trivial. So, come on Google... we're relying on you now!

And I shouldn't have worried. The 19.01 Eurostar was delayed anyway. Of course.

Tesla's level 5 autonomous driving and why I nearly fell over

Self-driving cars again, huh? So much noise on that channel, and here is Tesla knocking out news that isn't news. All the new Teslas will be equipped for level 5 autonomous driving. They're at level 3 right now, where a human has to sit behind the wheel and be able to take over at any time. Level 5, however, is 'no human needed'.

Of course, the level 5 isn't yet activated, because that's not allowed yet. But it'll soon be painfully obvious that cars are better than people at driving, and the legislation will adapt

Yep, before long you won't need to drive. You could read a book, take a nap or even not bother going and let your car do the work.

Two and a half days waiting for your kids?

And thats when I nearly fell over. I was on my way to collect my middle child from an after school club when it hit me. With this new Tesla, I could just send the car. Hold the phone!

The lives of those of us fortunate enough to be burdened with one or more progeny are blighted by the need to ferry young ones hither and thither, as we attempt to enrich their out of school learning. Football practise, music lessons, school trips arriving back late, play dates... you get my drift.

But here's a Tesla that could do that for you. Send the car, stay on the sofa, and enjoy a restful evening. Hey! Why not just give the kid the Tesla app and let him send for the car when he needs it.

The Tesla is a better, safer, less impatient, more focused driver than I am anyway, so why take the risk of driving myself. If Granny wants to pop over and Grandad doesn't want to drive her, send her the Tesla. She can even tune it to Classic FM if she wants.

I want level 5 and I want it now.

But wait. Aren't those trips in the car some of the only times you get to chat with your kid one to one? Those precious 15 min therapy sessions, locked in a moving car with no blaring screens and no headphones in ears? The delighted retelling of a successful sporting conquest, the sharing of angst and frustration from a particularly bad day, the reminiscing back to past times when an 'oldie' (from 2011) comes on the radio.

I hope that Tesla and their self-driving-car  competition don't rob us of our last precious moments of shared parental time before the kids themselves have learnt to drive, or learnt to Uber, or learnt to do whatever it is they have to, to get around in the next decade.

In the meantime, I'm going to relish these pick-ups just that little bit more.