Between Facebook, Myspace and eBay there are a few people finding it hard to curb their enthusiasm for the Internet, especially at work.

For example see the story reported on the BBC news website yesterday (Link below).

Three were sacked and six resigned after managers at Neath Port Talbot council found some staff were spending up to two hours a day on the website.

What staggers me was this quote

Union officials have blamed bosses for “putting temptation in their way” - by allowing access to the internet.

That is just plain stupid. People need to be responsible for their own actions.

This is a real issue,  people at work get bored and the Internet is an never ending cure for it. This is something that is only going to get worse, This is web 2.0 it’s all about being social and having networks, sharing links and content and most of it has nothing to do with work.

All companies need to do is set some clear guidelines for their users and then show them they monitor usage and will take appropriate action.

I blame both sides. The council for not acting earlier to manage this and the the users for spending two hours a day surfing eBay on tax payers wages (not cool).

You would think these people worked in I.T or something <<Joke

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/7005703.stm

Microsoft have rolled up all the post Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 2 fixes into Office Service Pack 3

This single file download is a quick way to patch a newly installed Office 2003.

The file size is 118mb and can be downloaded from the link below.

Before you consider installing this service pack, there are some known issues.

See here: Known issues after you install Office 2003 service pack 3

Download Link: Microsoft Office 2003 SP3

Apple announced the availability in the UK will be from November the 9th and the carrier will be O2.

Here are my 6 reasons

6) I need Microsoft Exchange push e-mail support.

5) Yesterday Steve Jobs said they are hard at work on the next version and the version after that. This iPhone is a 1.0 product. I can wait.

4) I don’t need an iPod experience, I hook up my 5th generation video iPod to a Philips DVD player with iPod video support and have iPod video on a 7 inch portable display, the iPhone is only a 3.5 inch display. I don’t want a downgrade.

3) O2 is not my preferred carrier, I use Orange and I am very happy with the cost and data coverage of the Orange network. A Sim unlocked iPhone might be interesting.

2) Lack of 3G in the hardware is major disappointment. My last two smart phones both had 3G.

1) The total cost of ownership for the first 18 months is far too expensive. Cost of iPhone 269 Pounds then factor in 18 months at a minimum of 35 Pounds per month for the O2 Contact = Total of 899 Pounds.

Maybe I am getting old, but I can wait for the price to drop, batteries to get better, have access to more carriers and storage to increase yadda yadda.

I think the recent price drop from $599 to $399 in the states is very telling. Lets face it the majority of people who are interested in the iPhone would get one within the first month or so, then its a much slower trickle of people perhaps waiting for existing contacts to end.

We are also getting mugged in the UK over the unit price. In the States the price is $399 which is approximately 200 pounds, why then is our price 269 pounds?

I mean a company with so many rules, regulations, forms, committees, sub committees etc You know what I mean bureaucracy.

If you have to fill out a form to take a day off, you work for Dino Corp.

Well I just stumbled upon a job offering page from Automattic the people behind Wordpress and I ended up on their amazing how we work page.

Link: http://automattic.com/about/how-we-work/

All I can say is WOW. All you need to know about how teams are organised, connected and motivated. Clearly it works, small business take note.

You can read their current job offerings here: http://automattic.com/jobs/

I am so impressed with their flat management structure, congratulations Automattic.

I have two broadband enabled telephones lines. On one I have Netcentral (www.netcentral.co.uk)  and Sky’s Broadband service on the other.

I have two so if I have a problem with my Business ISP (Netcentral) I can just change an IP address and jump onto the 2nd Broadband service. In theory I should not need a backup solution but recently I was intermittently off line with Netcentral for about 4 days. I was informed I could purchase “Enhanced care” that would give me a Service Level Agreement to a fix within 20 business hours. The cost of which would be 10 pounds per month. Without enhanced care I was looking at a maximum 40 hour fix.

So given the choice of 120 pounds per year (Enhanced care) and 20 hours of downtime potentially, I decided to plumb in a 2nd Internet connection at a cost of 60 pounds per year and have a completely separate route to the Internet. This works out cheaper and has more redundancy.

Sky’s out of the box experience is very good, they use a Netgear wireless router and it contains everything you need in the box. You literally just need to plug it in, connect to it wirelessly and you are done.

So how does it compare with my existing business ISP

Download Speed

Sky:                2248 kb/s
Netcentral:    3332 kb/s

Upload Speed

Sky:                 355 kb/s
Netcentral:     351 kb/s

Ping (lower is better)

Sky:                 65ms
Netcentral:     45ms

Summary

Netcentral is faster at downloading

Sky is faster at uploading (but only just)

Netcentral’s Ping was quicker.

Cost

Sky:  5 pounds (with a 40 gig Cap) This is part of a service bundle with TV/Telephone and Broadband total cost 26 pounds per month.

Netcentral: 19.99+VAT (with a 30 gig Cap) Broadband Service only.

Conclusion 

For Sky customers you cant really complain at a 5 pounds a month Internet connection.  

The connection as you see doesn’t compare too badly with the more expensive service and for a typical home user should be fine.

I have only started using the Sky connection and it will take a couple of months to see how reliable the connection is.

I don’t think I would ever be without a business class ISP, so for me having a low cost backup gives me some redundancy as Internet communication is vital to my job.