Archive for May 2010
Happy Bank Holiday Weekend!
Wishing all our customers a very happy bank holiday weekend!
New Forest
Posted by Shahnaz Awan in Opinions on 26th May 2010
New Forest is one of my favourite places to visit in England. Why don’t you go there on one nice weekend, there is beautiful nature and many attractions for everyone. And these places I recommend to see….
Burley, the traditional New Forest Village where you can find wild ponies freely walking around the village, picturesque thatched cottages. I specially recommend visiting the Burley cider press and trying their great scrumpy cider. Witches, smuggling and dragons are also part of burley’s unique character.
Efficiency at Work? Here’s a solution.
At Powwownow we’re always looking for new ways to be more efficient during the working day. Here’s an approach that we particularly like…
Watch out for more of these over the next few weeks!
Security and lax syntax
Posted by Staff in Techie Talk on 24th May 2010
Imagine you’re sitting in the pub trying to remember a film title and you just can’t, for the life of you, summon up more than the fact that it begins with an ‘N’ (or maybe a ‘D’) and it definitely has something to do with cars… and then your friend says “Casablanca” and you say “YES! That’s it!” Sound familiar? Yeah, me too. Despite being totally unsure of any details a moment before, you know beyond any doubt that you have it, the instant somebody suggests the correct answer. It’s the difference between recall and recognition that divides frustrated vagueness from confident certainty. But can it be useful?
The answer is yes. There is a way to store information so that a computer can recognise the same information if it sees it again without actually knowing the information – which means that what you stored is totally secure. It’s called one-way encryption and it’s very simple. You put in some information (a file, a name, a password etc) and the system creates a ‘hash’. You always get the same hash for the same input but there’s no way to input a hash and figure out the original input. For the 32-character format we use, there are 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different possible hashes so it’s very unlikely (1 in 3 x 1038) that two different inputs will give you the same one. So if you give me your password when you sign up, let’s say waterberry, I would generate a hash4fa29303bf3155789ae1e8969bb029ae. Read the rest of this entry »
Fancy a walk….and a drink maybe?
As most people you ask will tell you, the best way to experience London is on foot. I would like to agree; however the only issue is I don’t really like walking. That is until I found out that you can walk, learn a whole lot about London and take regular rest breaks at great pubs on the Along the Thames Pub Walk.
I also found out that it’s also a great way to kick off a Stag night, which is exactly what we did for Powwownow’s Web Developer Mark who is getting married later this month.
The First Powwownow Employee of the Quarter… O-Oh!!
Last week we had a Powwownow afternoon where the whole team left our Richmond offices off to Soho, where we shared some thoughts on the branding and future of the company, and then shared some mexican food and drinks as well!
At the end of the day the first ‘Employee of the Quarter’ winner was announced… Our brand new scheme where as well as being recognised by your peers and having another accolade to add to your CV, a prize of £500 is awarded to spend on ‘an experience’ of choice.
These were the nominations presented about the Jan-Mar Employee of the Quarter: Read the rest of this entry »
Mayday, Mayday, Mayday
Recently I attended a 1-day course to obtain my Short Range Certificate (SRC), which is the radio operator qualification which authorises the holder to operate a VHF Radiotelephone fitted with Digital Selective Calling (DSC) on board any British vessel which is voluntarily fitted with radio equipment. The most important thing that you learn on such a course is when and how to send a Mayday message.
Mayday is an emergency code word used when sending a voice distress message. Why Mayday and not Juneday, or Aprilday? Well Mayday is derives from the French m’aider – help me (or more fully venez m’aider – come help me). The use of Mayday as an emergency code word was not a French imposition on the rest of the world but was suggested by a radio officer at Croydon Airport, which was London’s main airport before WWII.
Infected by the Doctor
If asked to list the popular icons of British culture, your list would most definitely include the Queen, Big Ben and tea. Music enthusiasts would have theBeatles, Elton John and Oasis, while younger people might consider David Beckham, Wetherspoon’s Pubs and Mini Coopers. Tourists would add Heathrow Airport, Princess Diana and red buses, and most people would agree with them. After a while though, eventually everyone would agree to have the Doctor on their list…
I have been in London for 4 years but it was only recently that I had my first introduction to the British TV series “Doctor Who“.
This new interest was sparked by the clever Marketing of the Doctor Who team as they built up the tension for the introduction of the Eleventh Doctor and then finally unveiled him in January 2010.
Powwownow keeps it ‘Business as Usual’ whilst BA strikes
Europe’s favourite free conference call provider has launched a multi-channel campaign to offer free conference calls to those affected by the BA strike.
In this difficult time for both the British economy and airline industry, Europe’s leading conference call provider Powwownow is jumping on board with BA and alleviating some of the pressure by offering business travellers free conference calling during the strike period.
Resurrecting their hugely successful ‘airline’ www.flypowwownow.co.uk anyone can take advantage of the free conference calls between 18th May and the 9th June 2010. Read the rest of this entry »
Spill, baby; spill!
“What happens,” asks one shrewd Internet commentator, “when hurricane season starts in the Gulf of Mexico and lightning strikes the oil slick? FIRE-ICANE!” The movie is, no doubt, already in production. Yet the gallows humour masks an extremely uncomfortable truth – Deepwater Horizon is not an act of God but a disaster we have created.
Yeah, ‘we’. It’s a funny thing, responsibility. The Horizon isn’t actually owned by BP which means the explosion itself may not legally be their fault but the technicality is that as the owner of the oil rushing out of the wells they are the ones obliged to retrieve it. They have a plan, too.