Gidley's Gossipings

A blog about not much really

iPlayer Trends

For several years I’ve been tracking the usage of iPlayer as I think it’s a great ‘bellwether’ for consumer behaviour in the TV industry. iPlayer is a unique proposition that has (nearly) ubiquitous device coverage, premium content consumers want to watch and is free (at point of usage). This lets consumers behave as they would naturally do, if you remove commercial pressure like bundling and content rights being split between services. Read more →

Google Cloud Migration Part3

Continuing from Part 1 I had a change of heart… I decided I really wanted my wild-card mail boxes (it’s a great way to manage spam) and I also noticed Cloudflare had launched their inbound mail relay service. The new plan is Inbound mail goes to Cloudflare who redirect it to whoever it’s for gmail account The gmail accounts are set up with an alias and a SMTP server (AWS SES) for gidley. Read more →

Google Cloud Migration Part2

Continuing from Part 1 the next task is to migrate email archives from Google Workspace email to the destination. I decided to Use iCloud as the new primary domain Use Outlook.com as a backup for my old archive I split it like this as I have email going back a long time and frankly searching them is becomming a hassle. Migrating a Mailbox Migrating the mailbox is pretty straight forward - I decided to use imapsync running on a ‘free’ Google cloud instance. Read more →

Google Cloud Migration

I’ve been a user of Google Workspace for ‘gidley.co.uk’ email for me and my family pretty much since it launched. At launch it was ‘free’ for small users and over the decade I’ve been using it they have slowly moved it over to a paid service putting us ‘legacy’ users on a special (still free) plan. Google have finally decided it’s time to stop us freeloaders… so it’s time to migrate. Read more →

Microsoft Teams Virtual Backgrounds

I was excited to see Microsoft Teams have now enabled virtual backgrounds - but they’ve missed a key feature. How to set your own images. A quick fix is upload files to Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams/Backgrounds/Uploads And presto you can use them in teams Read more →

Isolation - what changes are likely to stick?

We’re now entering week 2 of the UK’s recommended social isolation and people are adjusting to being at home. It’s early days yet - but I think it’s going to accelerate some longer term changes in our lifestyles. The first two that struck me were working from home and shopping! Driving / Commuting Many people have never worked at home for an extended period - after 3-6 months of doing it (based on at least 12 weeks as cited by Borris! Read more →

What was more significant for PayTV the Apple TV+ or Google Stadia announcement?

There have been 2 big announcements this week that impact the TV industry - 1) Apple announcing their OTT proposition and 2) Google announcing Stadia and I’d like to argue that of the two the most significant for the TV industry is the Google announcement. If we review what we know about each announcement Apple TV+ A PayTV Service reaching Apple and some non-apple devices (FireTV) A large potential global audience Lots of content - both original and from existing networks Aimed primarily at Apple Ecosystem, with some support for 3rd party devices (Amazon Fire, Samsung, LG, Roku) Google Stadia A Gaming service based on cloud servers and low latency streaming A Game controller offer low latency response Tools to enable games to be ported to the service Targeted at any device - runs on Phones and Browsers These are both big announcements but I’d argue the Apple one is less significant. Read more →

manifesto for cybersecurity

The recent ransomware attacks have focused lots of minds onto cyber security, however many of the solutions being proposed are little more than sticking plasters to the larger underlying issue - namely systems are not secure by default. The ‘trend’ in software has been to launch it, then fix it. This is a very attractive proposition for business, as it lets them discover the ideas that work and don’t work, and then iteratively improve them. Read more →

WannaCrypt was it good for the security industry?

This weekend we saw ‘the biggest cyber attack ever’ and a few people (who don’t work in IT) have asked me - will it be good for you (as I work for Irdeto - a Digital Platform Security company). It’s an interesting question to consider - these big attacks make a lot of noise, so you’d expect on Monday morning the business of cyber security will get easier! However I think the reality is a bit more nuanced. Read more →

wanntcryptor 2.0 ransomware and negligence

Yesterday the news rapidly filled up with reports on a ‘massive cyberattack’, as I’m in the UK the press coverage was focused on the NHS and initially was full of comments about ‘smart’ hackers. This reporting is, in my opinion, giving these organizations an excuse for their negligence. The reporting often implies the attack is some kind of ‘act of god’ that they could not avoid, in this case it was trivial to avoid it, simply don’t connect out of date systems to the internet. Read more →