Page 25 – Dug Campbell

Design Something They Didn’t Know They Needed

In the ‘good’ old days, a business would sell a new product based on its perception of what potential customers might want. A product or service would be designed, priced and shipped, and there would be precious little that you could do other than wait for the demand (or lack thereof) to be proved beyond any doubt as the money either subsequently piled in or the launch flopped.

It didn’t take long for businesses to start to refine their approach, eager as they were to develop more successful products using more efficient methods. Market research, focus groups and interviews with target customers were all introduced to help accelerate the time spent from initial product design to the launch of a product that (on paper at least) satisfied certain articulated demand.

With the emergence of software businesses, the delay between research and shipping a minimum viable product in order to capture valuable market feedback has contracted significantly. This can be a double-edged sword however, with significantly cheaper costs also bringing with it far lower barriers to entry for competitors. And this process is likely to only get faster with the growing use of 3D printing to produce rapid prototyping that will act as the first iteration of a product for potential customers.

But whilst the process is speeding up and more valuable customer feedback is increasingly being captured, there is also a far wider strategic risk that many businesses simply fail to consider. The problem is that any potential customer who is able to tell you what they need is just as able to pass on the same information to your competitors. So you face a very real risk of becoming engaged in a feature-war with competitors as you each continue to replicate the other’s features in the course of a competitive price war that continues to spiral downwards as both sides seek to capture market share.

The alternative is to come up with a product or service that is far more valuable, one that delights the customer. Achieve this and customers will be happy to pay a premium. Easier said than done, no doubt about it. And what makes it worse is that this just isn’t possible if you are relying alone on conversations that you set up with people that may turn out to be potential customers. As Henry Ford once commented when looking back on his successful car business, if he’d started by asking his customers what they wanted, they’d have said ‘a faster horse’. To succeed in what is likely to be a far more complicated task, you need to be far more empathetic to the lives and needs of your customers. By pursuing a ‘design thinking‘ mindset. the truly successful business looks at the bigger picture:

“Approaching a problem with a design thinking mindset, however, certainly takes into account what a customer says, but simply as one input among many. In this approach, observing the way people really live, developing a deep understanding of the real problems they have, and gaining an appreciation of the “hacks” they devise to overcome them can deliver an understanding of prospective customers’ needs that is more accurate than what any of those prospective customers could ever articulate on their own.” (Stratechery)

I find this approach fascinating because it makes clear that ‘design’ isn’t about the product simply looking amazing. Instead it’s all about building up that knowledge and understanding of those that you wish to convert into customers. To be successful, you can’t help but end up understanding more about the group’s motivations and needs on a far deeper level than even they’re likely to be conscious of themselves. And when you’re creating a product that aims to delight and command above-average loyalty, that seems to be a pretty sound investment to my mind.

Are You Advising Or Simply Restating Facts?

Part of the reason that I blog regularly is so that I have a place to record some of the many gems of wisdom that I stumble across randomly during the course of each day’s online travels.

Today it’s the turn of Brad Feld’s post ‘Mentors 9/18: Clearly Separate Opinion From Fact‘ which is taken from his upcoming new book, ‘Startup Opportunities: Know When To Quit Your Day Job‘.

He points out that many people who advise others fail to fully appreciate the difference between facts, data and opinions. Whilst Brad is tackling the mentor/mentee relationship in his post, it’s clear that the same warning applies to anyone who advises others (the role of lawyers immediately sprang to mind here to me).

In short, advisors will often justify (unconsciously perhaps) their role in the relationship by stating that something is a fact when the statement is in reality simply their opinion. Of course, a statement might be based on data (truth) which you used to subsequently form your opinion. But an opinion is necessarily an extension of the facts. Your opinion is not factual in and of itself. But the person who listens to it has no way of knowing that they’re listening to an opinion rather than a fact.

The point is simply to be clear about the advice that you’re offering to the person that you’re helping – is it fact or is it opinion?

Both are valuable but conflating the latter with the former can have negative consequences for the person who is eagerly waiting to use what you say to help them make a decision. And the more transparent you are during this process, the more valuable your help is likely to be.

Festive Drones Take Off (When Will Santa Upgrade?)

It used to be the case that the focus around this time of the year was only ever on one type of flying machine, usually piloted by a rather rotund chap in a red suit who by all accounts manages to remain jolly despite working the night shift and dealing with strict deadlines and the mother of all rush hours.

But those days appear to be fading fast and it looks like Santa’s going to have to get used to a little more air traffic in the future. Increasing numbers of early adopters unwrapped parcels under the tree yesterday morning to discover new consumer drones before taking them out for a quick festive spin – often with not entirely unexpectedly disastrous results.

I’ll be posting a larger article on drones, their near-term potential and an analysis of some of the legislative hurdles and opportunities in the not-too-distant future. But until then, despite the fact that I’ve written about them before a number of times, I thought it was time to share another great drone video. Filmed in Edinburgh back in 2013, it’s a great example of what’s possible – already.

D’Andrea suggests that by developing this athletic playfulness in quadcopters, the result – in exactly the same way as the process of play serves to develop capabilities in young children – will be that the existing capabilities of machines more generally could be extended.

Enjoy.

Isaac Asimov: How Do People Get New Ideas?

Where do ideas come from? It’s a question that’s puzzled mankind throughout history. Ideas are the fuel of innovation, with creativity being a somewhat indefinable skill that has been lauded, misunderstood and yearned for in equal measure over the years.

Whether it’s evidenced by a natural ability to paint masterpieces or in the regular application of inventive thinking to solve problems, most people would agree that creativity is “a good thing”. As a result, it’s common to find people attempting to somehow replicate the conditions from which creativity once sprang forth, a form of eternal search by mankind for the secret recipe.

Recently, a previously-unpublished essay from 1959 by acclaimed science fiction writer Isaac Asimov surfaced in which he looked precisely at this issue. When one of the most prolific writers in human history opines on such matters as creativity, it’s probably worth paying attention.

Asimov points out that it’s very hard to reverse-engineer the process of creativity for a variety of reasons – partly because the process is usually mysterious even to the creator. He suggests that one way forward might be to look at two individuals who discovered the same idea themselves entirely independently and identify any similarities. He uses the example of Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace who both came up with the theory of evolution independently. What attributes and experiences did they share?

Both Darwin and Wallace were extremely well-travelled, which meant that they had each been exposed to a wide range of plants and animals. In addition, both had been inspired by reading ‘An Essay On The Principle of Population’ by Thomas Malthus. Yet that was not sufficient to explain their simultaneous breakthrough. Others must inevitably have been in a similar position – but why had no-one else come up with the theory of evolution before them? Asimov suggests that they not only had a strong background in the field in which they were engaged but critically also that they had both chosen to apply the knowledge gleaned from the Malthus essay in a very specific way.

The critical ability that Asimov identifies is the rare ability to connect the dots in such a unique way. Logically, doing so is a difficult task – if it had been simple, other people would have discovered the theory of evolution in all probability before they even started thinking about it. And as a diffcult task, with no guarantee of success, the person who is willing to travel down such a path will inevitably be a confident, self-assured and eccentric individual – in the eyes of others at least. Most people, no matter how well travelled, how knowledgeable they might be about their subject, would hesitate before travelling in a direction viewed by others as unreasonable. For example, most would have considered it unreasonable to believe that the world was anything other than flat before Aristotle got involved.

A creative breakthrough in Asimov’s view requires also the overlap of a strong background in the field in question and is far more likely to be achievable in isolation. By its nature, creating something new inevitably involves repeated failure. And failure is far more willingly embraced by those who are unshackled from the self-awareness that comes from being observed by others. Creative people also tend to work continually on problems (consciously or not) around the clock, a process that is hard to fit into the more restrictive formal and planned structure of collaboration.

Yet he’s not entirely negative about a group’s potential to create ideas. Given the right circumstances, creativity can and will thrive when a group of individuals can use the contributions of each to develop ideas that no individual could have contributed on his own. But special consideration must be taken to the dynamic of the personalities within the group. Being creative in public is difficult. It is crucial that each group member must be sympathetic to the suggestions of others in the group. Without exception, everyone must be willing to both sound foolish and to listen to others’ foolishness. Anyone without this attitude must be removed from the group immediately as, irrespective of any brilliant ideas that they may bring, the harm that they inevitably cause to others who modify their behaviour in response will always far exceed their value to the group.

Asimov suggest keeping such creative groups small, with no more than five people involved. His view is that bigger groups will invariably introduce damaging tension as individuals are forced to wait for longer before talking whilst more people contribute. These ‘ideas sessions’ must be lighthearted in order to encourage others to join in the “folly of creativeness”, with an informal setting far more productive than a conference room. Finally, the sessions should be co-ordinated by someone who has the ability to ask questions which cause people to consider their existing experiences in a new light so that they can see them in a new light.

Asimov’s advice is old but valuable. Personally, I find it hard to believe that humans will ever truly uncover that ‘secret sauce’ behind creativity that unlocks the talent behind the imagination, ingenuity and inspiration that produces what we view as cultural highlights today. Those cultural standards may (and must) of course evolve over time. But to the extent that any output of creative thinking can be objectively assessed, there’s no doubt that the advance of technology will come into play. After all what is the indexation of all existing human knowledge across a global network if not a way to trial all possible permutations between our collected knowledge at increasing speeds? And I wouldn’t be surprised if Asimov was thinking something along those lines some 50+ years ago.

PS Yes, I know today is Christmas Day. I’d like to claim that I was organised enough in advance that this was pre-written but I did actually spend this evening reading and writing this post. There’s only so many times you can watch ‘Morecambe & Wise’ re-runs, after all.

Glenn Greenwald: Why Privacy Matters

As we approach the end of 2014, a year in which privacy, surveillance and data protection continue to be ever-present themes below the surface of every Bitcoin conference and talk that I’ve been to, I’m finally now getting around to reading ‘The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man‘.

As we all know, regardless of your views, it’s an astonishing story. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on various aspects of the story more fully on this blog in the future – but in the meantime, here’s a recent TED talk given by Glenn Greenwald, one of the key journalists that broke the Snowden story eighteen months or so ago. If you’ve ever struggled with any variation of the “only people with something to hide crave privacy from surveillance” line of thinking, you’ll find it useful I think.

Greenwald quotes Rosa Luxembourg: “He who does not move does not notice his chains”.

How true.

Aaron Swartz: The Internet’s Own Boy

Travelling today so just a quick post. I finally got around to watching the documentary about Aaron Swartz that was released earlier this year after a successful Kickstarter campaign. It’s a great, if tragic, story and thoroughly recommended if you have even a passing interest in technology, Open Access, Reddit, RSS, Creative Commons, hacktivism or any other of the myriad of other interests that he somehow managed to pack into his 26 years.

I was following the case being brought against him at the time and vividly remember reading the blog posts by Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig (‘Prosecutor As Bully‘) and Cory Doctorow at the time as the news broke that he’d died. Almost two years after his death, attitudes towards freedom of information and surveillance have changed drastically in a post-Snowden era. The rest of us are simply left wondering where his ferocious intellect might have directed in today’s world.

It’s worth watching. Please do. As one review puts it, ‘it feels like the beginning of a conversation about Swartz and his legacy and not the final word“. There remain many unanswered questions.

Reddit Notes & Rewarding Your Users

I was a latecomer to Reddit. I remember taking a quick look at it a few years ago and just not getting it. The self-styled ‘front page of the internet’ just seemed like a mess to me. But before long, I was a regular visitor. I’m not quite sure how and when that happened. But at some stage, it ended up in a head-to-head battle with Facebook for my attention – and Reddit won. Decisively.

These days, the r/Bitcoin sub-reddit is undoubtedly one of the key news sources for everything crypto. Sure, the commentary can be variable – everything from the most valuable, detailed and informed responses to the most puerile and misinformed nonsense that gets amplified in the Reddit echo-chamber. But in the depths of such chaos, the quality (usually) rises to the top. Which is, of course, the point of the voting system. They’ve had their problems in the past with such an inclusive model (“Traffic was never the problem. Everything else was“) but the reality is that the ultimate curation of content by a community of generally like-minded individuals is valuable.

There’s always been a synergy between Reddit and Bitcoin. Partly because there is a significant overlap between the demographics in the user bases. However, the other more subtle attraction is that Reddit has always struggled to raise money by targetting users with advertising content in the usual manner beloved of so many social platforms because of its users are anonymous. Indeed, Reddit were one of the first ‘big’ names to start accepting bitcoin in return for Reddit Gold back in February 2013.

Now with just under 175 million unique visitors a month, Reddit has turned into a powerhouse of content discovery with sub-reddits housing thousands of active communities of like-minded individuals. So when they announced a $50 million fundraising recently and promised to return some of that value to their users, the logic was clear.

The only problem of course is how they could actually do this. In the original blog post announcing the investment, they suggested that the investors in this round would return 10% of their shares back to the community. This idea then evolved into a suggestion that the company might create its own cryptocurrency (backed by 10% of the existing share capital of the business) which would then be shared out amongst the community.

The idea is brilliant. However, perhaps unsurprisingly in retrospect, the heavy current regulatory and legislative framework that underpins the public issue of shares appears to have put the brakes on their good intentions. So new hire Ryan X Charles has now just announced a new plan: the business is planning to issue something that they are calling Reddit Notes. It’s an interesting proposition, although the details still remain scarce. They have to build a conclusive case that proves that whatever they give to users is absolutely 100% not share equity if they want to avoid the risk of serious criminal penalties that tend to follow the illegal public offering of shares. But it looks at this stage as if they are developing something that is far more akin to a customer loyalty reward scheme that will be redeemable within the Reddit ecosystem.

It’s interesting to see both Colored Coins and Sidechains being mentioned as possibilities for delivering what is essentially a decentralised digital asset project. Both options present real potential in crypto-currency – as well as splitting opinions (so what’s new?) – within the community so it’ll be interesting to see which is chosen.

Put simply, the concept of Colored Coins simply means that an additional layer of information is added to certain bitcoins. This gives those coins certain attributes – effectively turning them into tokens which can then represent other assets. So by transferring a fraction of a bitcoin, you can also transfer ownership of the asset.

As for Sidechains, the topic really needs its own post. But in the meantime, check out Richard Gendal Brown’s succinct summary and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s blog post explaining why was part of the $21 million seed round into Blockstream, the company that are pursuing this idea. A potential game-changer given that it has the intention of significantly extending the functionality of Bitcoin, this has been one of the big stories of the year.

Again – put very simply – you send a bitcoin to a specific address. It remains cryptographically locked there whilst another asset is released for use upon a separate blockchain. At a later stage, this process can be reversed. If all goes according to plan, there are two huge results. Sidechains now encourage innovation to thrive because people will be free to try out ideas without worrying that they might damage Bitcoin’s blockchain. And secondly, it gives such innovations a far higher chance of success, given that these experiments can shelter under the protective wing of Bitcoin secure network.

It’s worth pointing out at this stage that whilst there is a significant optimism around sidechains, the concept remains theoretical until Blockstream delivers the first code in 2015. The Colored Coins technology on the other hand exists today.

I’ll be fascinated to see which way Reddit goes on this. The scene is developing so quickly that more efficient methods may very well arrive in 2015 (it’s worth remembering that Ethereum and Counterparty have only been around for under a year so far, for example). But whatever road they end up on, the experiment will be fascinating. It’s obviously interesting from the viewpoint of the crypto-currency community. But it’s also of much wider interest to anyone who is struggling with the question of how best to reward a community that has developed around your business. Done the right way, I’m a huge fan of tokenisation to incentivise and reward those in a community (see my post on Folding Coin for example) and the choices they make could provide some very valuable lessons for us all.

Given Reddit’s growth trajectory, this project is definitely one of the many key stories to watch in 2015.

The Role Of Experts In Modern Society

“If experts are wrong, it’s because they’re experts on an earlier version of the world” (Paul Graham)

Most people agree that the world’s changing but few fully appreciate that the pace of change itself is continually accelerating. But that presents us with a problem. As the world evolves in response to a stream of new discoveries, how can we identify the true experts within society?

As Y-Combinator’s Paul Graham pointed out in an essay a couple of days ago (‘How To Be An Expert In A Changing World’), the title of expert is one that’s most commonly bestowed by others. Others view your work from a distance and judge it to be leading the way. Yet that work is inevitably historical. For others to assess it objectively, the work must have already been carried out. No-one is deemed to become an expert simply because of work that they merely aspire to do.

In the past, this focus on past achievements was fine. The pace of change was slower and it took much longer for the newly-discovered knowledge to filter throughout the rest of society. Experts had time to delve deeply into the details and learn how to apply new developments based on the foundation of past principles.

But what about today?

I think we’re still working this out. It’s easier than ever for individuals to claim to be experts. Similarly, it’s easier to debunk dubious claims given the right motivation to filter through another’s digital detritus. And while social media undoubtedly can build a profile, it can destroy reputations just as swiftly. But even for those who are undoubtedly ‘old-school’ experts, does this mark of expert represent a seal of approval for the duration of their career? Or is it no more than simply another qualification that must be maintained? To use a simple example, if a marketing expert in 2000 hasn’t bothered to learn anything about digital marketing, can he or she still be seen as an expert today?

The key attribute for any modern-day expert, Graham suggests, is flexibility. To lead your field, you must still be willing to listen to those who bring forward unusual ideas that don’t fit your pre-existing conception of how things work. In many ways, being this flexible is counterintuitive. But unless you’re willing to listen and assimilate the new knowledge that is being discovered daily, the reality is that you are increasingly living off past glories. Short-term, ignorance may be sustainable. Long-term, this inflexibility will kill off your career. A form of individual creative disruption, if you like.

No-one can predict the future. So if you want to avoid that inflexibility, it’s worth remembering that many ‘hit-the-ball-out-the-park’ type businesses seemed to be formed around bad ideas at the start, ideas that experts would have laughed at. For a good example, look no further than the story Fred Wilson tells about missing out on investing in Airbnb back in 2011 (current valuation: $10 billion).

Of course, bad ideas might be just be that. Bad. Or they might simply be bad today because they’ve identified a demand that the market hasn’t quite caught up with yet. That’s why you’ll always hear investors say that they invest in people: the great team with the bad idea will get investment in front of the bad team with the great idea every day of the week. The idea can change. It’s harder to remove the team. And the best people will continue to work away until they’ve found the idea that works.

It seems that if you’re an expert, you’ll be increasingly walking a tightrope. Perhaps you know the most about how the world works in your field, with people across the networks you’ve built up throughout your career helping to highlight new developments to you. If you willingly change direction and go against the grain in your chosen field, the stakes are inevitably higher if you ultimately get things wrong in a world when your every public comment is recorded online.

We’re certainly seeing this play out in the Bitcoin world. There are many well-known and respected individuals who are experts from the pre-Bitcoin era who are struggling to understand what all the fuss is about. Of course, I’m biased in that I’m certain that Bitcoin’s fundamental technological innovation – the creation of a cryptographically secure system of direct value transfer online – will drive the next stage of the evolution of the web. But for those that don’t share this view, whilst they may rail (justifiably at times) against what they perceive to be a lack of expertise among some of the Bitcoin community, it is naive to assume that these experts are somehow automatically experts also in this new corner of a new world. They certainly could become so – but first they must overcome the ‘expertise inertia’.

An example might be Paul Krugman, the American award-winning economist who wrote the infamous “Bitcoin Is Evil” op-ed in the New York Times almost exactly a year ago. Viewed by many as an expert in his field but entirely dismissive of the technology behind Bitcoin, it’s also worth remember that an earlier prediction of his was that “by 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

There is no doubt that as time marches on, knowledge is becoming increasingly specialised.

Something else that experts can expect is to be asked to give their opinions. If that question is posed around this time of the year, that often translates into a request for predictions about how the next twelve months will pan out. As I’ve written before, trends do fascinate me (for example, global trends in 2015 and collaborative consumption). But I found myself particularly uncomfortable at being asked to provide a prediction for where Bitcoin will be at this time next year on the panel for the CNN Twitter Live Chat earlier this week.

Part of this may simply be a natural caution (most people tend to overestimate progress in a year but to underestimate progress over the course of ten years). But I applaud Brad Feld’s view on this: he just point-blank refuses to make predictions. He’s far more interested in the longer-term trends and themes than the hot startups. For investors, it’s not an uncommon position to take – take a look at the investment themes for Feld’s VC firm Foundry Group and also at Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures, for example.

So when it comes down to all of these big predictions for the year ahead, it’s probably worth taking them all with a healthy pinch of salt. And whilst you try to pursue your particular area of expertise with a permanently open mind, there’s maybe one more thing to learn:-

“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.” (Lao Tzu)

The Evolution of MOOC’s

When I first heard about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC’s), it seemed to be an obvious way to upgrade higher education in a digital world. The possibilities were limitless – simply remove the cost and location barriers and watch what happens when you open the doors to anyone with an internet connection.

Depending on whether you believe information wants to be free or not, ‘liberating’ valuable knowledge that’s been cultivated thoughtfully across the years in institutions around the world sounds like a move that can’t be anything other than positive.

As we increasingly expect to find the answer to every question on the web, the decision facing many students about whether or not it is sensible to start a career under a mountain of debt is a far harder one these days – particularly when the current generation can now expect to earn less than their parents ever did. Add to that the fact that people will change jobs more frequently in the future and suddenly some degrees invariably starts to command less value than they did in days gone by.

So I found it interesting to read an article in MIT’s Technology Review this week that argues that MOOC’s are failing to deliver on the promise of revolution that they’d originally promised.

For example, Udacity co-founder Sebastian Thrun stated only a couple of years ago that he believed that only 10 institutions would be responsible for delivering higher eduction in 50 years’ time. But interestingly, he’s now changed Udacity’s direction by choosing to focus on corporate training as opposed to educating the masses.

Critics often point to the fact that the courses have extremely high drop-out rates and question whether the resulting certification is worth it. It’s clear that MOOC’s are experiencing growing pains but the evidence shows that the overall concept itself remains successful (just perhaps in a sightly different way).

The drop-out rate is often no more than a symptom of the fact that with such low barriers to entry lets people window shop in order to try out courses that they could never otherwise risk committing to. Furthermore, it’s unarguable that this type of education is far more flexible. So whilst those who planned to disrupt higher education may not have seen the results that they hoped for, the data is clear that it’s enabled people from a far wider age range than the classic university demographic to start learning.

For example, Coursera‘s data shows that 85% of sign-ups come from those outside university age. So it’s clearly appealing to people who are looking to ‘skill up’ in this modern age. This is both unsurprising and vital given just how many new important subjects exist today that were unheard of only a few years ago when many of the current students were perhaps finishing their formal education (mobile, big data and digital marketing, to name but three). On top of that, Udacity is now focusing on teaching teachers. Logically, helping to distribute knowledge and updates amongst those responsible for teaching others is far more likely to have a valuable multiplier effect.

It’ll be interesting to see where the model goes from here. There are different business models out there but the optimal organisational structure for delivering MOOC’s hasn’t yet been settled upon. We also should remember that technology has not yet started incorporating AI to any serious extent yet. This is an inevitability and perhaps this will be the tipping point. Combine the open access with the sort of adaptive learning that I’ve blogged about before, and you could have something that’s hugely powerful. In the meantime, I thoroughly recommend Charles Hoskinson’s Udemy course (‘Bitcoin or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Crypto‘) if you’re looking for something to get stuck into for free.

The Dangers Of Public Wifi

I wonder how many of us have sat in a public location like a coffee shop and used the public wifi on offer. Stab in the dark, I’d guess it’s north of 90% and that those numbers are getting bigger. Whilst businesses used to be hell-bent on squeezing a few extra pounds out of customers for wifi access, the growth in both mobiles and people’s expectation that connectivity should be provided as a basic service has seen the provision of free wifi become more common.

But with convenience comes danger. A couple of months ago, the risks of simply relying on public networks were clearly highlighted by security firm F-Secure following an experiment that they carried out in London. Using a mobile hotspot device hacked together for the princely sum of £160 (comprising a Raspberry Pi, a battery pack and a wifi aerial, held together with elastic bands), they set up a temporary network in busy locations and sat back to see what would happen.

As random people logged onto their temporary free network, F-Secure could read their passwords (displayed in plain text via the POP3 email protocol) and also view the last 19 or so networks that each had logged into (valuable information if you’re tracking someone down).

There’s more details about the experiment in the document they produced here and a short video:-

We obviously need to think more carefully about the data that we’re leaking across our devices. I consider myself to be fairly tech-savvy but whilst I pay for a VPN service that I use across all my devices in public, I’m as guilty as anyone else of having connected to public wifi occasionally for the sake of convenience. The solution to this problem has to get over two interrelated barriers, namely education and cost. The risks must be clearly understood by the wider public before the majority can justify paying that additional cost.

I suspect the solution is either going to have to come via phone companies who choose to integrate VPN-like protections directly within the devices (challenging in such a competitive business) or from consumer demand (driven by more high-profile security scares no doubt).

An interesting aside: I originally heard of this experiment when it transpired that F-Secure had hidden a clause away in the terms and conditions that people had to accept before accessing their wifi hotspot. The so-called “Herod clause” meant that people were entitled to use the wifi but only if “the recipient agreed to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity”.

In case you’re wondering, they didn’t follow through with it:-

“We have yet to enforce our rights under the terms and conditions but, as this is an experiment, we will be returning the children to their parents…..Our legal advisor Mark Deem points out that – while terms and conditions are legally binding – it is contrary to public policy to sell children in return for free services, so the clause would not be enforceable in a court of law.”