Author: Peter Hicks

Goodbye Orange, Hello 3

I can’t remember exactly how long I’ve been with Orange for, but it’s been something in the order of a decade. That’s a long time.
I remember the days of Wildfire, withdrawn because they didn’t develop it and people stopped using it. I remember HSCSD, where I could get a blazingly fast (for the day) 28.8kbps connection out of my mobile. That’s been superseded by GPRS, 3G and UMTS. I remember, and loved, Everyphone, where I could divert all my incoming calls elsewhere if my battery ran out – but that’s just for business users now.
I remember being with a mobile phone network that was different, innovative and fun.
Now they’ve gone downhill in my view. They are slow to offer new phones, and they put special Orange firmware on them which means months of delays getting updates. Their GPRS service was good, but their 3G service is abysmal and I can’t even connect half the time (and I can tell when that is now – Android 2.3 shows the H or 3G icon in green if the connection will give you Internet access, and in grey if it isn’t) despite having good signal coverage. They proxy and filter the life out of any Internet connection you do get, to the point at which proxying my web traffic over an SSH tunnel through their network is *faster*. They tease me with Orange Wednesdays, but I pay a lot for the privilege of half-price cinema tickets. To top it off, they took away my loyalty bonus when I dared upgrade my phone in-store because “the loyalty bonus only applies when you upgrade online” – why!?
Orange, you’ve had your day, and unless you suddenly manage to fix your 3G service for me and reduce your prices drastically, I’m using my “PAC code” and going to a 1-month rolling contract on 3 for a mere £10/month.

Android, Facebook and the undialable phone numbers

For some length of time, I’ve had problems with my Nexus One and the Facebook for Android application. Phone numbers from Facebook are imported in to the Android Contacts application with a country code but without a leading +, for example – 447700952155 rather than +447700952155. This makes them rather difficult to dial, as your mobile carrier won’t recognise them.
If you have this problem, try http://www.253below.com/prefixer (or search for Prefixer on the Android Market – find the 253 Below application). Set up a rule to match 44[0-9]+ and tell it to add a prefix of + to the number. Hey presto, you can now dial successfully.

Customer Service

I wouldn’t mind if I could just ask a question and get a reply….
UPDATE – I strolled in to a 3 store, asked “Do you sell the MiFi?”, and was told “Yes”. I bought one and was back on my way within five minutes – the way it should be!
I want to get a 3 MiFi so I can get on the Internet for a semi-sane price (Orange charge a small fortune, and their 3G service rarely works on my phone, if I can actually get 3G that is) whilst I’m not at home. I choose the product on 3’s website and click ‘Support Chat’ to see if I can buy it in-store. Y’know, where you walk in to a store and buy something, and have the gratification of an instant purchase, as well as the product when you need it.
Here’s our conversation…
[Peter] Can I buy the MiFi PAYG + 3Gb product in-store?
[Srinivas] Hi Peter.
[Srinivas] Welcome to Three.
[Srinivas] I’ll be glad to help you with the purchase of the deal query and thank you for choosing Three.
(this is not answering my question)
[Srinivas] I would not be able to comment on the store deals.
[Srinivas] I can help you purchase this deal online with a free gift for today’s online purchase.
(purchasing things on-line is beyond me, I find it reeeeally difficult)
[Peter] I need it today
[Srinivas] I’m sorry if y ou order now , you would get the delivery the day after tomorrow.
(this it not ‘today’)
[Peter] OK, I will find my nearest 3 store and ask in there
[Srinivas] So would you like to go ahead with the order online?
(……..)
[Peter] NO! I need it today!
[Peter] If I order online, I will have a free gift that I don’t want, and will have no means of Internet access for the next four days when I am away
[Srinivas] You can check at the store .
(Great, I can check in-store to see if they sell something in-store. Who’d have thought?)
[Peter] I was hoping I could check with you now to save me a wasted trip in to town.
[Peter] Thank you for your help – I will put some clothes on and find my nearest 3 store and ask in there instead.
(I am fully-clothed actually, I just wanted to vent some frustration)
[Peter] Have a good day, and thank you for your time
[Srinivas] http://www.three.co.uk/Help_Support/Store_locator/ Click on this link to find the nearest store.
(JEEZ, YOU THINK I’D JUST TAKE A RANDOM BUS AROUND LONDON AND STOP WHEN I SEE A 3 STORE?)
[Srinivas] Anything else I can help you with?
[Peter] No, that is all – thank you
…so I’ve wasted 10 minutes chatting to him just to find myself in a situation no better than before.
Grr.

Jobs

I am now ‘between jobs’, as some unemployed people say. Or am I? I have some short contracts lined up – a few days here and there working on specific tasks. Is that really unemployed or not?
To celebrate the occasion, I bought a MacBook Pro. I am mightily impressed, particularly at the sheer speed of the SSD and ease of use, but I have been a Mac user for the past four and a half years and only used Windows under duress or by requirement.
One thing puzzles me – after hardly touching Microsoft Word for the best part of four years, why is it still largely the same as it was in the mid-90s? Are all the new features generally invisible? Are they so tightly integra… no, actually, I probably don’t need most of the features that are in there.

A problem isn't always what it seems

I had a call today from somebody who was trying to use an Avaya IP Phone from their office at home. The phone has built-in IPSec VPN capability, and their phone switch is some distance away on – surprisingly – a DSL line. Call quality is not an issue, which is testament to Zen Internet‘s network quality.
In the office, the phone works fine. At home, it fails to establish a VPN, displaying an “Invalid PSK” error. Looking on the VPN router at the site with the softswitch, I see nothing untoward, so I set about asking the caller to tell me his default gateway address – which is the same address as the network range that the softswitch is no. No prizes for guessing why it doesn’t work.
Here I was, expecting a full-on IPSec debugging session, and it turns out to be IP addresses.

TransportHacker

I’ve been hacking away at a project called TransportHacker for the last month or two.  I’ve only shown it to a few people I know, and the reactions have been largely positive – thanks to Laura, Su, John and Ellis for your feedback.
I am not usually one for giving ‘sneak previews’, but in the spirit of getting feedback and ideas, I present – for your viewing pleasure – a sneak preview of TransportHacker.
TransportHacker sneak preview
TransportHacker takes its data from a variety of sources – currently some of those on the TfL Developers’ Area, although adding new data is straightforward. I’m putting TfL’s live traffic cameras up in the next few days, and experimenting with the Highways Agency’s DATEX II feed to see if I can include other parts of the country.
TubeHorus will be integrated, but also be available standalone – both this and TransportHacker will use geolocation to display only the parts of the world you’re near.
I have plans to make the data richer and more exciting – at present it’s just a mash-up of some data with no value-added logic, and that kinda thing can only go so far before it’s dull. When TfL get around to releasing real-time iBus data, things are really going to start hotting up – imagine being able to compare taking the tube from Highgate to Warren Street versus taking the bus. Colour in the 134’s route in red where it’s congested, and lighter colours where it’s free-flowing. If I included the Journey Planner API – when that’s ready for public consumption – I could augment the information it returns with real-time performance data for different modes of transport.
Now that all my Christmas shopping is sorted, it’s going to be a fun few weeks while I get TransportHacker in to a robust and workable product. Christmas is perfect for that sort of thing, although I better go easy on the mulled wine…

TfL re-release Trackernet API

Back in June, Transport for London released their Trackernet API to the public. This is about as close an insight in to how the tube network is performing as you can get without being there in person. Its enormous popularity caused their internal system to collapse, and the service was pulled. What a way to demonstrate the appetite for this data!
Ever since, there’s been frequent talk of whether the API is going to return or not. I, for one, have been particularly looking forward to the day it returns so I can get to work adding more feeds to TransportHacker. In the meantime, I’ve resurrected TubeHorus.
That day was yesterday.
I was invited to a press conference at 55 Broadway, London Underground’s headquarters, where the TfL Developer area was relaunched with additional feeds, and importantly, the Trackernet API. This time, to cope with demand, it’s been placed on the Microsoft Azure platform, although Microsoft’s representative was keen to point out that it’s not just for .NET applications.
Despite having to rush out of the press conference to catch a train out of town, I’ve had a few hours playing with the API, and it differs little from the original service. The biggest changes I can see are:

  • URL change – it’s on a different server and the URLs are RESTified
  • There’s little server-side filtering of the data, so you may end up pulling more than you actually need
  • Data freshness – the data is only pushed out to the cloud every 30 seconds. I know at least one person who was deeply unhappy about this
  • You need to register – free – to get the URL for the service, but it’s not locked down with an API key

TfL really haven’t had an easy task to get here, and I salute their efforts. TrackerNet was a system designed to take multiple sources of data from the trackside and other operational systems, and present them internally in a coherent manner, including to drive other internal systems. It was never envisaged that the general public would have access to it, and so architectural decisions were probably made regarding its sizing that precluded making its data available en-masse.
So, TfL have set the standard. If they can build a platform to disseminate their real-time information sensibly, why can’t the likes of National Rail Enquiries? Hopefully NRE will see the benefits of making their real-time data (and whilst we’re at it, static data too) available without onerous contracts and agreements. Heck, NRE already have a scaleable platform for their Live Departure Boards service that can handle train information for the whole country – why are they concerned about scaling?
On a less political note, we’ve also been promised access to the Journey Planner API within the next few months, and there were some murmurs about real-time bus information, but nothing concrete.

Open Transport Data

The Guardian published an article on National Rail Enquiries’ refusal to be sensible about licensing its data. Malcolm Barclay has mused on NRE’s inflexibility, claiming “They are stuck in the command & control mentality of the industrial age and have zero understanding of what open data is or it’s benefits”.
This whole debacle is reminiscent of Eric S Raymond’s “The Cathedral and The Bazaar” for me – where
TfL have had no problems making their data available free of change, and they’re working really hard to bring the Trackernet service back to life. Emer Coleman, Director of Digital Projects at the GLA, posted “But you can be assured that it definitely will be back and hopefully the solution will be so robust there will be no chance of it falling over like it did the last time. That is TfL’s main concern that once it foes back its there for good and in a robust way”. Hats off to them – TfL were caught by surprise with the popularity of the Trackernet API, and they’re tackling it head-on.
If TfL can be this innovative and forward-thinking, why can’t NRE?
NRE’s jealous data-guarding is not just limited to real-time train running information. If you want daily-updates of fares, timetable and routeing guide (the official definition of the routes you can use with ‘Any Permitted’ route tickets – a complicated beast that few people properly understand), you will need to part with £27,430 according to ATOC’s RSP Data Feeds document. That’s a ludicrous price that serves only to lock data on our country’s rail system away from prying eyes. Heck, it’s £600 if you want a CD with test/trial information.
This data is probably of most value to companies who are deeply involved in selling tickets, such as TheTrainLine and those who

Invoking Shibboleet

I’ve just come off the phone to my bank – First Direct – having asked them about a problem viewing previous months bank statements. It just doesn’t work and tells me “No statements have been produced for this account”. This is highly likely to be an account-specific of server-side problem.
Upon being asked what operating system I’m using (Ubuntu 10.10), which browser I have (Firefox 3.6.11) and who my ISP is (Andrews & Arnold), I am talked through deleting all my cookies and the browser cache, shutting down the browser, starting it again and logging in.
Hey presto, the problem has been summarily worked around since I’ve been load-balanced to a completely different server on First Direct’s network as I can clearly see from the URL bar.
I was precariously close to uttering “Shibboleet” when asked who my ISP was.