Lord Carter and Digital Britain - My 2 megs worth

I have taken a long time before settling down to write this piece on Lord Carter's Digital Britain Report. I've done that because I was conscious that my initial reaction would be something of a kneejerk one which might, if I sat down and thought about it a bit, mellow over time. I'm not sure it has.

The Report, which Lord C is keen to point out is a draft and a discussion document, has been roundly criticized in all quarters. The occasional person has put their head about the parapet to defend Lord C but, if we are being honest, there hasn't exactly been a rush.

The main charge is that the Report, in recommending a minimum 2 meg broadband speed for every household, lacks ambition. Personally, I do not think that goes far enough.

Lord C's defence is that the minimum speed is a guaranteed minimum available to every single household and it will be difficult and expensive to achieve.

My own view is a simple one – why set ourselves such dull and uninspiring targets? If we are about to spend a massive amount of time, effort and money, why not try to achieve something bigger? Developed nations around the world see 20 meg, 50 meg and even 100 meg connections as nothing out of the ordinary. We plan to give a minimum of 2 meg. And, if we are being honest, we all know that, based on past experience, if you tell people in this country that they are going to get a minimum of 2 megs, they are going to get 2 megs – nothing more.

The Report, for me, underlines all that is wrong with the country at the moment. It lacks any self belief, any ambition, any hope, any drive. It is feeble in the extreme. We no longer strive to win, we strive to provide some sort of minimum level of service. And it's pathetic.

Back in 1961, President John F Kennedy made a speech to Congress in which he outlined the reasons why they should back his space plan. He said:

“I believe we should go to the Moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. If we are not, we should decide today and this year.

This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel.

New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could in fact, aggravate them further--unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.”

He didn't say, 'Well, this is going be hard and the Russians are already pretty much there. So rather than reach for the stars, how about we reach for Dagenham? We could do that and it still won't be easy. Many people will get further but we will give you a minimum guarantee of Dagenham. What do you say?'

I do not for a second think that guaranteeing a 20 meg or 50 meg connection would be easy. I also do not necessarily believe that it could be rolled out using current technology. So, here's my thought – let's have a guarantee of a minimum speed of 20 megs by 2012 for every household in the country. Let us strive to achieve. If we need to equip a small number of house with fibre or satellite or some other technology, let's do it. Of course it will cost a lot of money but we're printing money at the moment, so we can use as much as we want! Seriously, though, if we are to bring the advantages of the internet to every household in the UK that is going to cost money and it will cost money if we strive to achieve a slow speed or a faster speed but the returns for us as a society (and the Government through increased taxes) will be great as the UK takes its place at the forefront of technological advance and of ecommerce.

Lord Carter was meant to dream of a better future and he could only come up with a slightly enhanced present (and I am being generous here). The UK needs to dare to dream because if we do not, we will be left behind by countries with real vision.

Netbooks – an open letter to Steve Jobs

Dear Steve

I hope that this letter finds you well and that you will soon be back at the helm, doing great things. But I was wondering, is there any chance that you could see your way clear to making a massive u-turn and having a word in someone's ear?

I want to make something really clear from the start – I am a MacHead, an Apple FanBoi, an iFan, whatever you want to call me, that's me. To me, Apple has some fundamental values and ways of working that should be celebrated. I guess it's just the way I am.

However, if someone else does something good, I'll happily admit it and sing their praises too – Richmond, I'm talking about you here! Equally, if Apple do something bad, I'll kick off.

And so it is that I begin to kick off...

Steve, I can fully understand that entering the netbook (TM Psion – for now) market could have an effect on sales of Apple's more expensive high end products but here's the thing – this is a massively expanding market. The reasons are probably two-fold. Firstly, we are in the middle of a recession and people are looking at every option (especially the cheaper options) and, secondly, a lot of us travel and need to be connected 24/7 either for work or because we have developed information OCD.

An iTablet thing will not be the answer simply because of the keyboard. Being able to type quickly on an iPhone is a completely different thing to being able to type quickly on a real keyboard. It is a tactile thing. Your fingers dance across a real keyboard in a way that is not possible on screen where they dance across the screen with all the grace that I am imagining Woz will manage on the tv programme that he's doing (although I may be doing him a great disservice there!). Typing on screens is a great thing and its implementation on the iPhone is superb – but at the end of the day, nobody in their right minds would write massive articles on a iPhone.

We need a proper Apple netbook, Steve. We just do. If you really believe that it will slow the uptake of MacBooks and MacBook Pros, then you underestimate both how good those products are and how much you still need a full size computer when you are using a netbook. In my mind, if you had an Apple netbook, your natural choice after experiencing the joy and wonder of OSX would be a full size MacBook.

Sadly, it is because of Apple's steadfast refusal to enter the netbook market that I am now the owner of a white Samsung NC10. It is a lovely bit of kit. It is well built and if it wasn't for the stickers on it proclaiming that it is filled with Richmond's 'finest', you would think it was a diddy white MacBook. Steve, do you remember the diddy iBook that sold so well? Do you? My fondest memory of it was when I went to magical Reykjavik. It seemed that you could not pass a coffee shop without seeing a crowd of people, huddled around giant mugs and tiny iBooks. Everyone seemed to have one. Imagine how that could have evolved, Steve, if you had not made that frankly ridiculous decision to stop making it. What was that about?

Now, I'm not condoning this and I'd go so far as to say that it is wrong, but does you wonder why people in the hackint0sh community are going to such great lengths to get OSX on to netbooks? Much success has already been had with the MSI Wind and the Samsung NC10 as well as a few others. Some of them will be doing it for the challenge but lots are doing it because they want a machine running OSX. So do I, Steve. So do I. But I will not load it on to another machine because it is wrong – so you've pushed me to use XP.

So, there you go. I'm an Apple FanBoi who, after purging his entire house of Richmond related garbage, has just gone out and bought an XP machine. And, Steve, it's your fault.

Apple's position on this is complete madness. I know that you will not want to just produce another netbook and that you will want it to be special but we both know that, if anybody can, Apple can. Imagine the MacBook Nano Air (you can have that name on me). Fantastic.

Come on, Steve. Get well soon and sort out this netbook situation. Please

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

James

Hello Spammers and Scammers

Look, don't get me wrong. I know you have to make a living and spread the word but you will notice that any comments that you post on here will be moderated by me. And, as you may appreciate, I don't like the way that you make your living - so I'll almost certainly not let any of your comments on to the site.

You really are wasting your time - which is good.

So, feel free to keep the comments coming with the links and other guff. Be as creative as you want. Put some real time and effort into it. Go on, fill your boots!

James

PS For everyone else, do not worry - I've stopped every one of them so far and I'll do my best to stop the rest too!

Oh the Excitement!

After years of blogging on other people's sites, ghosting articles and the like, I have decided to 'come out' (in the blogging sense) and so, henceforth, reviews, comment and the rest of it will be here and on Twitter.

And, I'll be guesting, as me, on Darren Hector's excellent Wildlife Photographer podcast talking about legal things (and anything else he wants me to talk about). That's going to be fab and I am very much looking forward to it.

And (you lucky people), I'm also trying to get together a merry band to do some sort of live blog or nearly live podcast from the Social Networking World Forum.

That live blog will happen in some form of another on here and on Twitter on Tuesday 10 March - so check back here or subscribe to my Twitter feed.

It is difficult to fully express the excitement that this is generating but imagine Christmas when you were about 5 and realised that you might be getting the garage set that you really wanted!