My reaction to this type of ‘journalism’ is fairly scathing. My measured response is that the example in the video is neither a fair test since the unsuspecting suspect was given no guidance at all on what to expect, nor is it exactly a statistical sample. There was not even a baseline of sitting other equally ‘ordinary’ user in front of Windows XP, 7, OS X, Android, iOS etc.

The accusation, of course, is that Windows 8 isn’t intuitive and that it’s different to the previous version. As they say on the other side of the pond “Well, Duh!”.

Of course it’s different – that’s the point, it now includes touch elements and a new interface.

Of course it isn’t intuitive – no man machine interface is.

The first few times I used OS X I had no clue what was going on; it’s completely non-intuitive until you know how it’s supposed to work. Pinch to zoom? Mouse driven interface – how I laughed at people the first time they used one.

These interactions are generally great when you are shown, but have no relation to how things work in the physical world. Even real world devices are learned rather than intuitive – we turn things clockwise (screw drivers, can openers, door handles) because we have been shown and learned, not because it’s obvious.

I love Windows 7, but the first time I used it I had to learn what the subtle changes were compared to Vista, XP, NT, 95, 3.1 and DOS. When I laid my hands on Windows 8 I was initially confused; it’s like every other OS: the paradigms and models of interaction need to be exposed first. But once you understand them the physicality of the interaction is lovely. When I showed Windows 8 to my teenage daughter she had it cracked in about 3 minutes – much faster than I did. Whatever that tells us…

I do have reservations about Windows 8 on the desktop. Obviously the touch elements are largely irrelevant. It’s not clear what role the Metro interface plays as desktop use patterns are different to mobile device ones. Desktop devices are left powered up most of the day, usually with several applications always open. In this case one rarely passes through Metro and the absence of the Windows Start menu is a shock. However if I ignore my Start Button preconditioning (and I remember how heavily that was criticised when it was introduced) and simply treat Metro as a really big and powerful Start Menu then it’s not so bad. I wouldn’t leave it open any more than I would leave the current Start Menu open, but as an application launcher it’s pretty good. I prefer the Windows Key>type approach for combined search and launch, but I’m a power user. I expect the nice big tiles, with colour coding, size, placement and imagers cues, to be easier for ordinary users to look through than the Start Button menu. It’s not that Windows 8 is bad, it seems to be at least as good as Windows 7, but the improvement is not compelling so far.

On a slate the experience is different again. In fact it’s pretty good and when they have more Metro apps I can see me mostly using Metro and only dropping into the standard desktop occasionally for power user stuff. The transition from Metro to Windows is a little jarring, but not as bad as being dumped into a command line. Treat it as a hierarchy:

• Metro – quick, simple, visually appealing, focused on single applications. For ‘process workers’
• Windows Desktop – Powerful, flexible, visually interesting, focused on multitasking. For power users and ‘knowledge workers’
• Command Line/Powershell – Extremely powerful, arcane, visually repulsive, focused on  ‘under the hood’ processes. For ‘propeller heads’

Windows 8 provides an extensible OS – as you need more power you step down through the levels and expose the next level of capability and complexity. But no one forces you down that path if you want to stay simple and focused.

It’s great for home users in this regard. It’s good for power users. Nevertheless I can’t see companies adopting it any time soon.

If we want growth and more jobs we’re just going to have to do it ourselves.

The good news is that there has never been a better time to start a digital business (and if you’re reading this I assume you have some involvement in web site or software application development). Here’s why:

• A digital business isn’t limited by its location. Its just as easy to develop a web site or mobile app in Hull as it is in London or Silicon Valley and customers of digital applications and services are increasingly agnostic to where that product or service is supplied from. Trust me on this one: I regularly talk to our customers in Hong Kong, New York and the City and they just assume I’m in some plush office in London. The fact that I’m actually in a little village in the Yorkshire Wolds is my smug little secret.
• Digital businesses are increasingly cheap to set up. If I wanted to start a web-based business 10 years ago the first thing I’d need to do is buy or rent some hardware and software to run it on. If it was a big idea I’d need millions of pounds to do that and even a small idea would require tens of thousands. Today there are a whole load of ‘cloud platforms’ I can build on that not only dramatically reduce the amount of work I need to do but also cost just a few quid to get started with. Take a look at Heroku.com, Force.com, Google App Engine, EngineYard.com, Google AWS and even WordPress. Or if mobile apps is your thing all you need is a phone and a computer to develop on, Apple, Amazon and the like have solved the problems of distribution for you with little up-front investment required on your part.
• We’re in the middle a huge financial slump. Sounds counter-intuitive but the middle of a downturn is the best time to start a business. If its a good business it will survive and as conditions improve it will come out the other side with a solid financial and customer base to build on. If its not a good business it will fail pretty quickly and that is no bad thing; if its going to fail better to waste as little time and money on it as possible.

So lets suppose you have an idea for a digital business, what next? If you watch Dragons Den you might be fooled into thinking that you need to turn that idea into a three-year business plan with a six-figure valuation and then go tout it around to investors. My advice: don’t bother … at least not yet. Here’s how I would spend that time instead:

• Talk to people who are potential customers about your idea. Ask them whether they would buy your service or product if it existed. If not, ask them why not; if they would, ask them how much they’d pay for it. Listen to them: you’re not just trying to validate your idea, you’re trying to come up with a business that works and it just may be that they have a better idea about that than you.
• Spend as little time and effort as possible in creating something that those potential customers can buy from you. If it solves a problem they really have, they’ll pay for it no matter how rough around the edges it is or what problems it doesn’t solve. We sold our first license within 6 weeks of writing our first line of code; great for our confidence, our bank balance and for keeping us focussed on what actually mattered.
• Sell it to them. As techies we tend not to like the process of asking people for money. But even if you don’t like it, learn to live with it because it doesn’t matter how good or valuable your idea is – if you can’t sell it you don’t have business. Freemium and pay-if-you-like models are fashionable and dodge that awkward question of putting a price on your work but unless you have £10m of VC money to burn, grasp the nettle and demand cash in return for your hard work.
• Listen to and act on feedback. Chances are the idea you start with isn’t going to be the one you end up with and your customers will tell you what they like and what they don’t. If you ask they’ll tell you how they’d like to see the idea develop and if you deliver they’ll become increasingly loyal and increasingly happy to spend their money with you.

People have been bootstrapping business this way for years but recently there has been a lot written about starting up like this. It’s been dubbed ‘Lean Startup’ and there’s a great book on the subject: http://theleanstartup.com/book. I also have a few top tips of my own.

• Don’t do it alone. “Two heads are better than one” is a very old saying but it applies just as much to starting a digital business as anything else. Having a partner to bounce ideas off, share the workload with and to keep you sane when the going gets tough is essential. However the other old saying “Too many cooks …” also applies.
• Don’t be afraid of failure. Most start-ups fail and in the US this is seen as a positive thing: you learn a lot more from failure than you do from success. In the UK we’re a lot less tolerant of failure but that will have to change if this SME revolution is actually to take place. If your idea doesn’t succeed, look at what you’ve learned and try again.
• Understand what you want from the business. One of the things that annoys me most about Dragon’s Den and the like is that they promote the idea that the only measure of a successful business is whether it makes its founder millions of pounds. Actually, a business that creates a job or a few jobs and allows people to do something they enjoy or interests them is a success. Anything else is a bonus. If you want to create a small business that provides for you and your family, good on you; not being a millionaire is not being a failure.
• Be bold. The main thing that holds people back from starting a business is the perceived risk. They have a nice secure job in a solid company or the public sector and throwing that away seems like madness. What’s that you say? ‘Solid’ companies are going bust at the drop of a hat and the public sector is cutting jobs like there’s no tomorrow? There is no such thing as a secure job any more and at least if you start your own business you are master of your own destiny and have all relevant facts available to you.
• Be realistic. Boldness is all well and good, recklessness isn’t. Chances are that idea you had at 3am isn’t going to become the next Facebook or Google so convincing all your family to hand over their life savings for you to gamble on it probably isn’t the best thing you can do. But putting a few hours into fleshing it out and seeing if people will buy it is. If, once you’ve done that, the idea stands up then maybe investing a few more quid into growing and promoting it is a good step. And so on: the more the idea proves itself, the more its worth spending time and money on. But don’t get carried away … just because you managed to sell 1000 copies of your app or get 100 people signed up to your website doesn’t suddenly mean your business is worth £1million and is you should re-mortgaging your house to support it. This is why asking people to pay from the outset is a good idea: you can measure the cost of the risks you take against the value of the revenue you believe they will generate.

If you do all of this, and enjoy a bit of luck and a following wind, you may discover that you have a solid, sustainable business on your hands. If you do, you can choose what to do with it. If you want to just keep things small and manageable then do so. If you want to grow it further then now is a great time to go looking for investment; there’s actually a lot of money available for people who can say “in the face of the current crisis I’ve grown this business from nothing to a solid money-making entity”. In fact given that interest rates are non-existent, the stock market is all over the place, the Eurozone is in meltdown and big business is on one long profit-warnings junket, start-ups that have proven they can get over the first hurdle of actually getting off the ground and generating some income are seen by investors as a relatively safe (or at least no-more-risky) bet at the moment.

Oh, and one more thing: starting a business is a lot of fun. Its bloody hard work and there are times when you may wonder why you bother but being able to make your own decisions, answering to no-one but yourself is a great feeling and there’s a lot of satisfaction in being able to point to the business you’ve built and saying “I did that”.

Image used under Creative Commons – Pesh on flickr.

Hull’s been in a tough economic situation for many years now.  The reasons behind this and the associated social impact are complex.  What’s clear though is the need for some sort of economic rejuvenation.  Many believe that at the heart of this rejuvenation is the growth of the Knowledge Economy.  The Knowledge Economy covers all sorts of IP-based disciplines such as law, accountancy and consulting, but I’m going to highlight four things that I think are key to growing the Knowledge Industry in the Tech Sector in Hull.

 1. Opportunity Not Investment

One of my contracts is as a consultant to a private investment fund, so I’ve seen many sorts of businesses that need investment for all sorts of reasons.  More often than not, I see businesses who think investment is the only answer to their growth… but it isn’t.

The vast majority of businesses that we turn down actually just need opportunity.  They’re great companies, doing great work, who just need a break.  The challenge to big business and public sector procurement in the city is to shop local.  Shopping local is not some sort of philanthropic act, but a recognition that you have a world class skill-set right on your doorstep.  Why not take a different view of how you commission your projects and think what’s important to the success of that project.  Do you want your new team to spend their time learning how to be the best, brightest and most knowledgeable team they can, or do you want them to spend their time learning how to play the procurement game and getting their Healthy & Safety and Environmental Policies paperwork in order?  Those sorts of things are important, but you have to see them in context.  If you’re a cash rich local company, do you need to squeeze your small business suppliers on 30, 60 or even 90 day payment runs?

 2. Collaboration

Collaboration is key.  Through collaboration we learn, grow, improve and develop.  Hull needs that collaboration, which is why groups such as HullDigital are vital.  A group of businesses willing to collaborate becomes an attractive thing, and will start (as we’ve seen in Leeds and Sheffield) to generate outside interest in the area.

Genuine collaboration and that willingness to share amongst businesses is difficult.  It requires a level of confidence and assurance around the value of your own IP.  It’s confidence that what you have has taken so much investment of your time and energy that  it becomes difficult to replicate.  My experience has always shown that those willing to share are often the ones sharing the most value.

That collaboration is not just for peer businesses though.  Big businesses can learn from small businesses.  That direct connection between the efficiency of your business and your mortgage repayments – fundamentally, that ‘Time Is Money’ is often lost as a business grows.  It’s often said that big business should be like small business, only bigger.  That’s one of the approaches that makes companies such as Apple so successful.  Steve Jobs stated the following in an Interview with Business Week in 2004:

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

Small business doesn’t have all the answers though.  Large businesses can share how they grew to that point, the lessons they learned on the way, and some of the fundamental things they do well such as payroll and accounting.  Perhaps some of those areas I outlined earlier (Health & Safety and Environmental Policies) which are important and that previously prohibited small businesses from procuring work with large businesses, could be something big businesses help with.

3. Connectivity

KC’s new Lightstream network is a hugely exciting development for Hull.  It will free up businesses to communicate and work in ways that had previously been impossible.  It will help enable that collaboration that is so vital to economic growth.  We’ll be able to free up hours of travel/meeting time and save hundreds in travel costs.  I’m convinced that Lightstream will form the backbone of business and education in the city for years to come.

4. Education

As locally grown businesses develop they will require new talent.  We’re fortunate to have a number of great educational establishments in the city.  Stopping the ‘brain drain’ to other cities by working with universities and schools to create a new workforce for the future is key.  Businesses can help shape and guide students into jobs or starting their own businesses.  It’s an exciting time to be in education with Computer Science and Programming in schools being the latest government trend.  It’s exciting to think of the possibility of a new generation of students who are grounded and equipped with fundamental computing skills – not the latest trend or technology, as Paul Dyson put in a recent tweet.

The Future

Tech businesses come in all shapes and sizes, many of whom have no idea what they’re doing in six weeks, let alone six months.  Hull’s problems have been growing for decades, so there’s no quick fix.  As the Knowledge Economy grows, things will slowly start to look and feel very different.

We’ll see small teams of independent specialists working in a Noded way.  That might not be ticking the boxes of traditional growth and direct job creation, but the chances are that they’ll be paying more tax and spending more of their income locally than the aggregate number of employees in a similar business with a similar number of employees.

Landlords and developers who in the past could rely on economic growth to increase demand for their property will need to rethink how they provide for the needs of those new tech businesses who are quite happy working remotely and who value flexibilty and growth and aren’t interested in long term leases.

What Hull will look like in five years from now is unclear.  What’s certain though is that if the Knowledge Economy does grow in Hull, how businesses look and feel with change.  If you have an economy where knowledge becomes as critical as other economic resources, then it will mean that those rules and practices that determined success in the traditional industries of Hull will need rewriting.

It’s an exciting time to be in Hull, and a privilege to be working with some of the great minds who will be fundamental to the growth and success of Hull’s future.  Why not come along to a HullDigital Meet-Up and say hello to some of them?

What is Kickstarter?

Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative projects.

(As a quick note, the Hallmark group has done a superb job giving the previously woeful hotel a major overhaul and I would recommend it).

It was a good turn out, with support from Alan Johnson, who spoke about how important it is for the city and local area. Martin Lauer from The One Point gave an excellent talk about his experiences getting funding and support from Sirius – he had nothing but good things to say and reinforced that something like this can make a huge different to the success of a company.

We gave an overview of the exciting digital community in and around Hull and also talked about some of the huge shifts in technology we are seeing such as smart devices, the post-pc era and the rise of the ‘app’! What was noticeable was the attendance; whilst excellent, was mostly from established companies and possibly not from the type of fledgling businesses / people who are going to be the ones who are going to benefit from KC Invest.

However, the good news is that we hope to get Sean Royce along to a MeetUp in the very near future to explain to the digital / tech community just how easy it is to apply to the fund.

KC Invest is a bold step which makes a huge amount of sense and we wish it all the best.

Details of the fund can be found below:
 
Through the fund, called KC Invest, KC hopes to stimulate business growth in the region’s economy and help create new, sustainable jobs for local people.
 
The KC fund will be administered by two local enterprise agencies, the Acorn Fund and Sirius. They will each receive £150,000 from KC to distribute as loan financing to business start-ups and expanding businesses in the sectors KC is focusing its support on.
 
Both the Acorn Fund and Sirius are Community Development Finance Institutions that are able to deliver loans through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Because the financing provided by KC will be matched by ERDF, the total cash available to local businesses will be £600,000. 
 
People who apply for KC Invest funding through the Acorn Fund or Sirius will also have access to mentoring and support to make sure their fledgling business has the best possible chance of long-term success. Feasibility grants will also be available to fully explore business ideas where more market research is needed before financing is agreed.
 
Sean Royce, KC’s Finance and Commercial Director, said: “The ‘perfect storm’ caused by the banking crisis and public sector cuts mean that not only is the job market depressed, but it’s also harder than ever for people to obtain finance to set up their own businesses and create work for themselves and others.
 

“Yet we need those new businesses more than ever now to stimulate growth and help the country’s economic recovery.
 
“Through the KC Invest fund we want to give practical support to new business start-ups to help support the local economy and create new jobs.
 
“While we have the desire and resources to do this, we’re not experts in small business support, which is why we’re partnering with the Acorn Fund and Sirius, who both have excellent and long track records in supporting new business start-ups.”

 
Peter Sykes, Fund Manager at the Acorn Fund, said:

“KC’s commitment to the local enterprise economy is to be commended. We cannot have enough of this type of financial and hands-on support for new start-ups. It is to be hoped that the KC Invest fund can set an example of other leading local employers to get involved in the local community in a way that can help breathe new life into our economy.”
 

Alan Gordon-Freeman, Managing Director of Sirius, said:

“This is a fantastic opportunity for those involved in technology to develop and grow their own businesses. The funding can help to attract other forms of finance as well as bring other specialist support such as business management and marketing.”
 

People who are interested in applying for KC Invest finance can contact the Acorn Fund on 01482 324976 / www.hullbdf.com or Sirius at 01482 890146 / www.sirius-hull.co.uk. More information is available on KC’s website here.

“The cloud” is a wonderful place for developing your own products

It’s been just over 6 months since the Beta launch of Incentive Maker, a web based product that allows anyone to implement a professional staff incentive programme for their company, and just over 8 months since I first wrote a line of code for it.

Incentive Maker is the first SaaS product I’ve developed where the end client was myself and a business partner (Wildfire Advertising Ltd). This has given me a huge amount of flexibility when it comes to the technical architecture of the product and I’ve really made the most of this freedom.

Minimal budget

At the start of the project we lacked two key things; money and users. The only thing we really had to give was time. My initial plan was to host the Incentive Maker code and databases on my MediaTemple server, however when it came to improving hardware performance, it was quite costly and it lacked smaller increments.

The other downside to hosting everything internally is the responsibility factor. We certainly weren’t in a position to employ someone to look after the servers on a full time basis, so we needed to do things differently.

After a bit of research we decided to use Heroku, a cloud application platform. Heroku is one of the many hosting services that are based on Amazon EC2 services. This has been a real eye opener for us. Throughout the initial development and Beta process we paid next to nothing for the service, due to the system coping with the small number of users just fine.

On top of the codebase hosting we have two database hosting solutions; MongoHQ and Redis To Go. At the start of the project, including the Beta period, we used the free plans for both of these services.

I’m certain you can see my point here on the costs side of things. Other than our time, we had very little invested in Incentive Maker, even during the Beta stage. If no clients bought into the idea, then our losses would be a minimal.

Hassle free scaling

After the Beta period, we had a few clients on board, with more still giving Incentive Maker some consideration. At this stage we knew we needed more hosting power and more database space. This is where the magic really started.

More power took a matter of seconds to sort out. It was just a case of logging in, dragging a slider up and clicking an apply button.

More database space was again a very simple process. We simply had to sign up to a larger price plan, press the ‘clone database’ button and change a config file on Heroku. Job done.

As a web developer I’ve never had hosting this easy. The costs savings, in terms of time, from these kinds of services is incredible. Some may think that Heroku looks expensive when you up the number of dynos, but it’s worth every penny, or cent in this case.

Easy application monitoring, troubleshooting and tuning

As will all web based products we wanted to have monitoring and error handling in place. I didn’t, however, want to spend time developing code to do this for us. Fortunately there are web based services out there that could already handle this. We decided to use Hoptoad and New Relic, even better they come as addons to the Heroku service, and the costs for using them is even cheaper with Heroku.

The amount of monitoring information New Relic supplies is simple breathtaking and they are always improving the service. The money spent on this service is well worth it, even better, in a recent update, the standard package comes for free with Heroku.

Concentrating on what’s important, our own codebase

All these cloud services have allowed us to concentrate on what’s important, our own codebase. What is more, because of all these services, the amount of code we have to maintain is actually quite small, so our maintenance costs are pretty minimal.

Conclusion

In the past, the idea of having everything so spread out across different services would have terrified me and sounded like a management nightmare. The Incentive Maker project has changed my opinion dramatically and I’ve fully embraced the idea of “the cloud”. It’s cost effective, a huge time saver, and removes a huge amount of hassle and stress.

We have no idea what our requirements are going to be in the future, but we can confidently say we can happily cope with scaling for larger number of users, adding in extra cloud services and even moving to different services, should a better service become available.

Any future product development I’m involved in, will definitely be using these, or similar services.

A small independently owned restaurant with a passionate team (known to the regulars as Team Fudge!) the restaurant has an addictive personality, a friendly feel and is driven to deliver homemade brassarie style dishes focusing on great flavours, fresh food, no fuss!

That’s not to say the past 6 years have been without struggle for the young team.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire – especially in the restaurant business which is a super tough cookie to crack. Constantly pushing themselves forward, while keeping a very close eye on the financials, the team at Fudge have taken on every opportunity to learn the market, push through a recession, diversify the business to encourage income generating opportunities in order to stay focused, busy, and keep all the staff in full time employment and move in directions that ensure they do not stray from their creative, fresh food and clean crisp ethos that gives them their own little ‘milkshake moments’ as they put it.

In the middle of winning Gold Great Taste Awards for bakery items, their own creamy dreamy fudge, and popular chilli jam, a mention in the Harden’s Restaurant Guide, helping with the round the world Clipper Celebrations, cooking up giant Paella dishes from a warehouse on Hull’s marina not to mention teaching 250 adults to cook from scratch using fresh ingredients in the community – that some described as ‘life changing’ – they also took on a scruffy derelict unit next door to the restaurant on Princes Avenue with a vision of creating extra production work for the team during testing times for the restaurant and to give the Avenues area, and their regulars, the neighbourhood a fine foodie heaven it so desperately wanted!

Shock Snow over winter 2010 was the icing on the cake for the restaurant which took more than 200 cancellations in two weeks – turning the Christmas trade into a panic. And if that wasn’t enough, on the eleventh hour – the night before New Year’s Eve the funding strings were whipped away from them for the bakery plans next door.

Committed to their vision, chefs taking on painting, building duties, managers and waitresses mucking in and a lot of help and support from suppliers, customers, local business owners and consultants the team pushed through and finally secured enough to get the bakery open.

“It’s amazing to see how people genuinely cared for us. They believed in our product. When food prices are soaring the general discounting trend and swapping to poor quality commodities and cutting costs is the usual route in our trade but we held off. People really wanted us to be ok, get the bakery open and do what we do well. One regular mentioned us at mass, another put us in touch with the right people to help with small funding opportunities and others just kept supporting the restaurant by eating lots!”

Behind the scenes the three years of design, product sourcing and menu building can now been seen for all its glory in the Bakery and shop. “The product is just as we wanted it to be. Something to run alongside the restaurant, give the team new skills to learn – something we are proud of. “It’s a huge relief – now we need the support of foodies everywhere and people to spread the word, come and eat in the restaurant and buy a gift in the shop. Or pop in for a Thai chicken and sweet potato pie to take out for your tea and a takeout cappuchino… and just enjoy it as we do!.”

A few weeks in and the place is brimming with the Fudge Personality that the restaurant oozes. Bright clean and crisp, modern bakery homemade treats, whole pies and tarts to order, fresh bread baked on site by the chefs, pies, pastries, jams and dressings & fantastic quirky foodie gifts.

A box in the window is branded FUDGE BAKERY & SHOP…. PROVE YOURSELF… above that a card that shouts out….Jammy Devil! Need we say more….

We’d like to say a huge thanks to Rosie, Emma, all the team for looking after us on many occasion and letting us use their wonderful meeting room. Thanks guys!!

Fudge Restaurant/ Bakery & Shop/ Catering
93 & 95 Princes Avenue Hull HU5 3QP
01482 441019
www.fudgefood.com
Contact Rosie Goodman
07960444940

So, it’s critical to have a good solution, and John Connolly has kindly written about his recommendation to change to Google Apps. If you are considering going this route, then this is essential reading. ( I’ve now gone down this route – Jon).

I was a MobileMe user up until about eighteen months ago.  I used it for syncing calendar entries, addresses and email between my iPhone, Desktop and Laptop.  Largely, it all worked pretty well, though there were a few things that I thought felt dated.  The major issue however, was that every few months something ‘weird’ would happen… Appointments I thought I’d entered disappeared, contact data seemed not to correspond between machines, and other spurious errors occurred.  After the initial panic surrounding whether I’d missed meetings came the tortious process of working out which device had the most recent data.  This was followed by a process of resetting sync data on devices that were outdated…  Something had to change.

On top of this I also had a few niggles that I hoped could be addressed.  I needed reliable calendar sharing with my wife where we could each enter social data, vet appointments, family birthdays, fuel deliveries, holidays etc.  The same was true for work colleagues, where we needed to share busy periods or meeting schedules.  Something also needed to be done about my ever growing email account (going back to the mid 90s), which has become unfeasible to migrate every few years to a new hosting server.

Solution

The Apple apps weren’t at fault; Mail, Address Book and iCal all provide simple and elegant interfaces and I was keen to stick with them.  The reliability of the service that synced all my devices was the issue and so I set about looking at alternatives.  One of the main things I was keen to avoid was a manual or ‘docking & syncing’ process offered by various 3rd parties. What I was after was a seamless ‘push’ of data in a way that those in corporate/Exchange environments are accustomed to.  I also wanted to avoid a web based service such as Gmail or Google Calendar as I just don’t enjoy their interfaces.

The solution I arrived at was to use Google as the infrastructure behind the Apple applications.

I now have:
• A Google Apps Account for my personal information (with various other accounts for family members)
• A Google Apps Account for my work information
• iCal, AddressBook, and Mail now sync seamlessly between my desktop and iOS devices.  Information entered on any device is then instantly pushed to all other devices.
• A scalable email solution
• The ability to share calendars, invites, and meeting information with family and colleagues from any device.
• My domain names tied to the relevant Google accounts.
• Very little (if any) spam – the Google spam tools seem much better than my previous hosting package.

I’d highly recommended it.  I’ve been using the set-up for over a year now and I have no complaints.

The SetUp

A year ago, there was very little documentation on this, however, Google have updated their documentation and it’s very comprehensive, so I’ve just collated links and added my comments.

Infrastructure

I’m going to assume you have a Google or GoogleApps account set up and you’ve managed to link your domain names with those accounts.  The Google documentation is great.  I just updated my MX records for my domain, which means Google handles all my mail.  Web hosting is still covered by my original hosting provider.

Setting Up The iOS Devices

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740

If you have multiple calendars in Google Calendar, you need to choose which of your calendars appear on your phone.  This is done through Safari on your iOS device.

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=139206

Setting Up Mail

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81379

In addition, Google recommend the following settings:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78892

I use Mail in a very simple way.  I have an Inbox, Sentbox,and Trash – that’s all I need.  Email for me is a communication tool, not a management tool, so I don’t use tags or contexts or any of the other features that Gmail supports.  If it’s in my inbox it’s not dealt with.  Dealing with it either means creating an Omnifocus task for it or replying.

Therefore, I turn off all the other folders for viewing in Mail – this is achieved using the IMAP folder subscriptions setting in Google Labs. Therefore, the only imap folders that appear in Mail are Inbox, Sent, All Mail and Bin.

Rather than then having a separate list of subscribed imap folders within Mail (sent, deleted etc), you really want these mapped to Mail’s main folders.  This guy has a good explanation of this:

http://blog.monkeysthumb.org/tuning-mail-app-gmail-imap-integration

However, in my setup, I map the Mail Trash to my Google Archive.  This is because I get so little spam these days that I rarely delete mail.  When I need to, I just drag the message to the ‘Bin’ imap folder.

Setting Up Address Book

This is simple, just go into preferences in AddressBook and check ‘Synchronize with Google’ and enter your Account details.

Setting Up iCal

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99358#ical

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Hull has always been different and this is by no means a criticism. We must celebrate diversity and difference, it’s what makes us culturally rich however points of difference should be communicated, debated and argued in democratic society even if concession and compromise result. And it is through this discussion and debate that ideas are formed, circulated and agreed upon. Sounds sensible doesn’t it? but it’s astounding how sense fails to prevail in important strategic decisions that have wide reaching impact on our communities. Something Hull and Humber appear to have over looked.

I have often wondered how many people living and working in the Humber fully understand how many decisions are made on their behalf without consideration for how it may impact them or their families in the future. Huge investment has been pumped into the Humber, specifically Hull, creating giant steel encased castles of commerce which we were firmly told will bring economic prosperity and growth. Some stand empty, their silent corridors echo as birds perch on glass and chrome turrets looking out onto the river.

Some are alive and bustling filled with shoppers selecting goods from outlets mirrored across the country. Some may say that shopping is so easy these days as all centres look the same. Some may say that difference and diversity has been squeezed from our commercial districts as retail is diverted from former shopping streets now left desolate and vacant. Long standing businesses are forced out in favour of ‘regeneration’

And now we have a new pot to spend from: the ‘Economic Growth Fund’ courtesy of Mr. Pickles MP and destined for our struggling northern economies who jostle like children wanting an ice cream from the van panicking that it may run out. Towns and cities have been told to form partnerships after years in dispute and all for what? A smaller piece of an ever-decreasing cake.

The issue here is not that Hull has failed to secure its economic future by isolating itself, nor that Northern Lincolnshire is ‘all right Jack’ after finding a friend in Greater Lincolnshire, but that the Humber has become even more divided.

Parochial infighting and political process had been substituted for an opportunity to create a different approach to economic and social development that may stop the tidal obsession with short-term ‘regeneration’ projects. It is important to remember that the E in LEP stands for Enterprise and what enterprise needs is fertile and supportive environments at all levels of the regeneration process. Throughout the entire LEP proposal the rhetoric was of business and politics: the experts, the think tanks, the policy makers, the politicians BUT what about the local people? Regeneration is not about making communities fit into grand schemes of steel nor is it about edging out natural bedfellows because of historical grudges.

Those that succeed in our brave new big society will be those that do it for themselves and by that I do not mean for free! It will be those that embrace the LEP in whatever form it takes even if they need to raise they’re voice and shout even louder. There’s nothing wrong with being different but cutting your nose off to spite your face could leave you on your own in the playground.

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Personally, I could not agree more with Helen’s post. Historical and political grudges are frankly incredibly small-minded and selfish. It will be interesting to see what Carl Minns, the leader of Hull City Council has to say. You can see what he’s doing on Twitter here.

It’s time for the city to seek unity, strength in numbers and look to the future. Not withdraw, put up yet more barriers and expect to succeed in isolation. Success means hard work, communication, enterprise and innovation. The sooner the people who are ‘in charge’ realise this the better.

So what do you think?

Jon

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