News Archives - Management Services and Solutions

Olympics – Paris 2024

Wonderful Sporting Competition!

The summer of sport continues with the fabulous event that is the Olympics, bringing together competitors from nations from all over the world. This time hosted in Paris, showcasing the widest diverse collection of the most popular together with some lesser known sporting activities.

Following our favourites!

We are keeping abreast of the action from France, and have in particular have been impressed with performances by athletes in TeamGB. Here are their medal successes (so far):

Total medals for TeamGB: 63

(Source: Olympics.com)

Gold: 14

Athletics (women’s 800m): Keely Hodgkinson
Cycling Mountain bike (cross country): Tom Piddock
Cycling Track (women’s team sprint): Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell, Emma Finucane
Equestrian (team eventing): Rosalind Canter, Laura Collett, Tom McEwen
Equestrian (team jumping): Ben Maher, Scott Brash, Harry Charles
Rowing (men’s 8): Morgan Bolding, Sholto Carnegie, Jacob Dawson, Tom Digby, Charlie Elwes, Tom Ford, Rory Gibbs James Rudkin
Rowing (Lightweight Women’s Double Sculls): Emily Craig, Imogen Grant
Rowing (women’s quadruple sculls): Lauren Henry, Hannah Scott, Lola Anderson, Georgina Brayshaw
Sailing (women’s kite): Eleanor Aldridge
Shooting (men’s trap): Nathan Hales
Sports Climbing (men’s boulder & lead): Toby Roberts
Swimming (men’s 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay): James Guy, Matt Richards, Tom Dean, Duncan Scott
Trampoline Gymnastics (women’s): Bryony Page
Triathlon (men’s individual): Alex Yee

Silver: 22

Artistic Swimming (duet): Kate Shortman, Izzy Thorpe
Athletics (men’s 400m): Matthew Hudson-Smith
Athletics (men’s 1500m): Josh Kerr
Athletics (women’s heptathlon): Katarina Johnson-Thompson
Athletics (women’s 4x100m relay): Dina Asher-Smith, Imani Lansiquot, Amy Hunt, Daryll Neita
Canoe slalom (men’s canoe single): Adam Burgess
Canoe slalom (men’s kayak cross): Joseph Clarke
Cycling Park (BMX freestyle): Kieran Darren David Reilly
Cycling Road (women’s time trial): Anna Henderson
Cycling Track (men’s team sprint): Jack Carlin, Ed Lowe, Hamish Turnbull
Cycling Track (men’s team pursuit): Oliver Wood, Ethan Vernon, Charlie Tanfield, Ethan Hayter, Daniel Bingham
Cycling Track (women’s madison): Elinor Barker, Neah Evans – Silver
Diving (men’s synchronised 10m platform): Tom Daley, Noah Williams
Golf (men’s individual stroke play): Tommy Fleetwood
Rowing (Men’s Pair): Ollie Wynne-Griffith, Tom George
Rowing (women’s four): Helen Glover, Rebecca Shorten, Esme Booth, Sam Redgrave
Shooting (women’s skeet): Amber Jo Rutter
Swimming (men’s 200m freestyle): Matt Richards
Swimming (men’s 100m breaststroke): Adam Peaty
Swimming (men’s 50m freestyle): Benjamin Proud
Swimming (men’s 200m individual medley): Duncan Scott
Taekwondo (men’s +80kg): Caden Cunningham

Bronze: 29

Artistic Gymnastics (men’s floor exercise): Jake Jarman
Artistic Gymnastics (men’s vault): Harry Hepworth
Athletics (men’s 4x100m relay): Zharnel Hughes, Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, Louie Hinchliffe, Jeremiah Azu
Athletics (men’s 4x400m relay): Alex Haydock-Wilson, Matthew Hudson-Smith, Lewis Davey, Charles Dobson
Athletics (women’s 1500m): Georgia Bell
Athletics (women’s 4x400m relay): Victoria Ohuruogu, Laviai Nielsen, Nicole Yeargin, Amber Anning
Athletics (mixed 4x400m relay): Samuel Reardon, Laviai Nielsen, Alex Haydock-Wilson, Nicole Yeargin
Boxing (men’s 71kg): Lewis Richardson
Canoe slalom (women’s kayak single): Kimberley Woods
Canoe slalom (women’s kayak cross): Kimberley Woods
Cycling Track (men’s sprint): Jack Carlin – Bronze
Cycling Track (women’s sprint): Emma Finucane
Cycling Track (women’s keirin): Emma Finucane
Cycling Track (women’s team pursuit): Elinor Barker, Josie Knight, Anna Morris, Jessica Roberts
Diving (women’s synchronised 3m springboard): Yasmin Harper, Scarlett Mew Jensen
Diving (women’s synchronised 10m platform): Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix, Lois Toulson
Diving (men’s Synchronised 3m Springboard): Jack Laugher, Anthony Harding
Diving (men’s 10m Springboard): Noah Williams
Equestrian (individual eventing): Laura Collett
Equestrian (dressage team): Carl Hester, Charlotte Fry, Becky Moody
Equestrian (dressage individual): Charlotte Fry
Rowing (women’s Double Sculls): Mathilda Hodgkins Byrne, Becky Wilde
Rowing (men’s Coxless Four): Oli Wilkes, David Ambler, Matt Aldridge, Freddie Davidson
Rowing (women’s 8): Annie Campbell-Orde, Holly Dunford, Emily Ford, Lauren Irwin, Heidi Long, Rowan McKellar, Eve Stewart, Hattie Taylor
Sailing (women’s windsurfing): Emma Wilson
Skateboarding (women’s park): Sky Brown
Triathlon (women’s individual): Beth Potter
Triathlon (mixed relay): Alex Yee, Georgia Taylor-Brown, Sam Dickinson, Beth Potter
Weightlifting (women’s +81kg): Emily Campbell

Whatever the sport you’re interested in and whoever you follow, good luck and best wishes for an exciting and interesting competition.

Keeping Customers Operational

@YellowsBestLtd continues with our aim of Keeping Customers Operational by seeking out new products and legacy equipment spares to maintain new and well-established networks. Recent enquiries have been fulfilled supplying refurbished and surplus stocks of equipment cards, as well as built-to-order cables and connectors to suit exact requirements.

We would welcome any enquiries for the supply of similar or alternative parts, or support services to provide hardware repairs. Please get in touch; we look forward to hearing from you!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

As the end of another successful year approaches and the bringing of the New Year is in sight, I would like to give thanks to all customers and suppliers who have taken an interest and supported YellowsBest throughout 2023, and look forward to being of assistance again very soon.

Have a wonderful festive season and enjoy the celebrations with your family and friends!

Celebrating 8 years of supporting Customers and supplying Services and Solutions

@YellowsBestLtd has been assisting with “Keeping Customers Operational” for eight years now. Over the time we have been in business, we have supported our Customers with Services and Solutions.

We provide a range of Business Development professional Services, such as Consultancy and Value Added Resale.

We help Customers to keep their infrastructure networks operational by undertaking a range of Enterprise Support activities, including O&M, training and Reverse logistics.

We ensure Sustainable Systems by sourcing Solutions to assist customers maintain the operational status of their infrastructure.

We support deployed systems by providing hardware repair and software corrections and suppling spares or functional replacements.

We offer various new and ‘legacy’ equipment Technologies and a wide range of infrastructure, telecoms and other Products, seeking out new, surplus and refurbished equipment spares equipment cards, as well as supplying built-to-order cables and connectors to suit exact requirements.

The Market Sectors of the diverse organisations we assist include Utilities, Transport and Private and Public Operators who operate and maintain their own network infrastructure, providing them with Solutions to do more whilst reaping cost-benefits.

We hope to continue to be of assistance for many further years. Please contact us to let us know how we can assist you to keep your systems operational . We look forward to hearing from you.

Good luck for the Women’s Football (Soccer) World Cup!

It’s a good time for watching sport, not least the arrival of the Women’s Football (Soccer) World Cup.

@Yellowsbestltd we will be following the competition with interest, and naturally following our home side! Whoever you’re supporting, good luck and best wishes for an entertaining and enjoyable event.

Wen you have time between work commitments and leisure time, we would be keen to hear from you should you have any views or news, or indeed any consultancy, solutions or support services requirements. Please get in touch to let us know how things are with you and if we can help.

Ultrafast Fibre Broadband – ‘FTTP’

Although the installation of fibre broadband services have been rolling out across the UK for some time now, there still seems much confusion relating to the various services on offer.

@YellowsBestLtd has been receiving ‘Fibre To The Premises’ (FTTP – sometimes referred to as ‘Fibre To The Home’ FTTH) from @Gigaclear since our formation in 2015. We are therefore able to provide this brief summary of our experiences and comparison of the types possible and their capabilities:

Full Fibre (FTTP) – fibre runs directly to the office or house, giving the fastest and most reliable speeds. This is what we had installed by Gigaclear; a dedicated fibre line into a fibre modem which can be directly connected to using ethernet cable or via a wifi router.

Part Fibre or ‘Fibre to the Cabinet’ (FTTC) – fibre runs to the neighbourhood cabinet, and then data runs over copper lines into the building. The transmission speed and bandwidth is therefore reduced in comparison to Full Fibre. This is the type of on offer to many consumers where the local telephony provider is not able to rollout fibre replacement for the ‘last mile’ of copper connection.

Copper or non-fibre – the traditional, existing telephone lines are used to provide the broadband service. This naturally provides the slowest speed and least data bandwidth. Many communities still rely on this as the only means of internet connection, since no fibre broadband deployment has been made.

The net result is that with Full Fibre, it is possible to receive previously unheard of speeds. Indeed the maximum service on offer is so fast, it outstrips the requirements of most homes and businesses. It is therefore typical that a reduced service is selected purely for cost-saving purposes.

Our own experiences have found that the Ultrafast 300 service from Gigaclear to be more than adequate for our needs. This is a screen shot of an actual speed test of the service we are being provided with:

In many cases the ‘full fibre’ service we have chosen, approximately a third the speed of the maximum possible, is still at least 10x faster than part or no fibre services. Not only is it faster, it provides a very stable connection less prone to interference and service outages. Thought due to network backhauling connections, is not unknown for interruptions to be possible; fortunately these are relatively rare.

The main difficulty for most businesses and homes remains the lack of universal provision. Whereas we have no reservations in recommending Gigaclear’s full-fibre service, we recognise this is not available everywhere. It is just fortunate for us that rural communities like ours was prioritised in their initial service rollout.

@YellowsBestLtd our mission is in “Keeping Customers Operational”. We’re always keen to enhance our range of #business services, increase the #enterprise infrastructure we support and expand our mix of #sustainable solutions we offer for supply and maintenance of new and legacy #technologies and products for our customers.

Please get in touch to help us understand your management services or solutions requirements, whether you’re implementing new systems or maintaining existing infrastructure networks to serve your operational business needs.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

It was hoped to be a year of ‘getting back to normal’, but unexpected world events seem to keep coming. Consequently, we have had much to deal with this year, but as it draws to an end, it is once again a time for reflection, hopefully celebrating with friends and family.

Thanks for your continued interest and support in @YellowsBestLtd, we look forward to being in touch again in the forthcoming New Year.

We wish you all the best for the festive period.

Celebrating 7 Years – Yellow Best Limited

YellowsBest, with our mission of “Keeping Customers Operational” by providing solutions and services to support and enhance infrastructure systems, is celebrating our 7th Anniversary milestone.

Sincere thanks to our loyal Customers and suppliers in making this achievement possible. We look forward to continuing to assist in fulfilling requirements for #business consultancy, #enterprise infrastructure support services, spares and repairs #sustainable solutions for maintenance and the supply of new and legacy #technologies and products for our customers.

In memory of the Queen

The ‘Banana Phone’ reloaded …

Communicating, or stuck in The Matrix?

The original Nokia 8110 ‘slide’ mobile phone was immortalised in the film ‘The Matrix’ in 1999.

Back then, people used mobiles for mostly … calling people, and the occasional text message. Ok, and a few plays of the game ‘snake’!

It was affectionately referred to as the ‘banana phone’ due to its unusual curved shape, though the only colour you could get it in was black.

Since then, we have had a revolution in data networking and an explosion of app-based touch-screen smartphone slates. So much so that people are finding themselves addicted to looking at these personal pocket computers ‘all the time’.

Consequently, there is now a growing trend of wanting a ‘digital detox’ and to get back to basics with a simple, cheap device that keeps you in touch without taking over your life.

The updated Nokia 8110 4G ‘Banana’ phone

In 2016, HMD Global Oy took over the licence to produce Nokia branded phones, and have since been revisiting and refreshing classic designs including their take on the ‘slide-phone’ with the 8110 4G.

As well as traditional black it’s available in bright YELLOW, making it this time the true ‘banana phone’.

With a design that harks back to those simpler days, it never-the-less comes with a number of advanced features.

What’s Good: Simple ‘Real’ number and calling keys for phoning and familiar ‘Nokia’ menu structure providing Call log, Contacts, SMS. Twin SIM cards for 4G calling flexibility at home and away. WiFi. Removable micro SD-card for expandable storage. Replaceable battery. Music Player, FM Radio and headphone jack. Camera, gallery and video player. Internet Browser and e-mail. Flashlight, Notes, Recorder, Calculator and Unit Converter. Clock and Calendar. Google Maps and directions.

What’s not-so-great: No touch-screen! Small display. Minimal App support. Fiddly ‘old school’ text-entry. Slow and limited internet capabilities. Low-resolution imaging and video, and no front-facing 2^nd camera. Cursor keys surprising small and tight to bottom of display making scrolling more awkward than it ought to be. Having to take the battery out to insert / remove the memory card.

What’s Fun: Answering calls with a slide (and end them again by closing. Freedom from ‘smartphone’ addiction, though if you really must, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube can just about be used. And ‘snake’ (though a strange ‘modern’ version), plus some other games and more can be downloaded.

In summary, this is a feature-packed but ‘basic’ mobile which brings an iconic design up-to-date, is fun to have, does the basics and a bit more.

Keeping connected with a digital detox

This Nokia ‘featurephone’ doesn’t pretend to rival ‘smartphones’ in capabilities. But useful as a supplementary device in case of a flat battery, and good for just keeping connected while getting on with life. Handy too when wanting to avoid carrying a very expensive piece of hardware when active or travelling.

There has been a trend to have just one device with as many functions as possible packaged in, with inevitable strain on battery life. It can however be sometimes preferable to use a Hi-Res player for music, a quality camera for photography, a tablet for internet browsing and a phone for – phoning!

So not a complete digital ‘detox’, rather just providing another alternative option to keep ‘plugged in’ to today’s ‘Matrix’ world of communications.

Your technology experiences

If you have fond memories of past technologies, views on future trends or experiences to share on managing your digital life, please get in touch. We’re keen to discuss how we may be of assistance in developing your business and keeping your new and legacy systems operational.

Nokia 8110 4G: YellowsBest would be delighted to hear from you!

New and Legacy communication issues

Challenges with maintaining Legacy systems

It can make perfect sense to continue to run existing reliable and proven systems, especially if operational requirements have not changed. Alas, the developing nature of technology means that from time-to-time, issues arise.

Changes to email encyption protocols

Modern computer communication services support the Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption protocol. This aims to protect the information sent and received over a standard Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) connection between two computers while ensuring that they both agree and understand the method of data transfer.

However, the earlier versions of TLS 1.0 and 1.1 have been deemed by the industry to be not secure enough and have been superseded by versions 1.2 and 1.3. You and/or your service provider may have already transitioned to the latest protocols. However, if you have old hardware running legacy software, as support from service providers is withdrawn, you may find your email stops working.

How you can tell if it’s an issue

If you’re using an Apple Mac then the Safari Browser has supported TLS 1.2 for web traffic protection since version 7 in 2013. However, if you’re still running ‘El Capitan’ OSX 10.11 with Apple Mail 9.3, it won’t support TLS 1.2 for email. Other computer hardware and software combinations may also run into problems.

Most browsers including Safari ended support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in March 2020, and various service providers have either already dropped or soon will withdraw operation of the older TLS protocols.

For instance, one.com will stop support of TLS 1.0 and 1.1 on 17^th August 2021. Other service providers may have different end of life dates. If you’re using the one.com service then there’s an easy way to check:

send an email to:

protocol@tls-check.one.com.

This will provide an automated reply telling you what protocol you’re using (works with iPhones and iPads too), like this:

{
            “started”: true,
            “protocol”: “TLSv1.2”,
            “cipher”: “ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384”,
            “keysize”: 256
}

Other service providers may have similar methods of verifying the protocols, so it’s worth checking with them. Failing that, you may be able to examine the headers of your emails, to look for something like this:

version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128

Solutions if you’re affected

To ensuring your email continues to function, the options include:

Updating your operating system. In the case of Apple Mail on Mac computers, this means moving to ‘Sierra’ OSX 10.12 as Mail cannot be separately upgraded.
Using a different email client with TLS 1.2 support, e.g. Mozilla Thunderbird.
Using a browser based solution for your email
Changing your settings to send and receive email without encryption (not recommended)

Balancing New Requirements and Legacy Support

If you want to stick with your current hardware and software choices, this does present a problem, particularly if you’re otherwise happy with your setup and are unable to upgrade.

Alas if you want full compatibility (and security) with the latest industry supported functionality, whilst retaining operation of other legacy applications, consideration has to be made to invest in new hardware to run in parallel with older systems, which continue to be maintained to perform dedicated compatibility functions.

YellowsBest: Keeping Customers Operational

If you have similar or other new requirements and legacy maintenance needs, please get in touch to discuss how we may be of assistance to keep you operational.