Prince Andrew visits the office

February 2, 2012 Leave a comment

Yesterday, HRH The Duke of York visited the Accelerator where we are based to find out more about what is happening in the Silicon Roundabout and also what was happening with enterprise opportunities for school and university leavers. It was a tremendous honour for him to come along, particularly after the event last year at Buckingham Palace hosted by Prince Andrew that I attended, and again it is another example of the work that the Royal Family does in encouraging business and enterprise in the United Kingdom. I think he was particularly pleased to see a few army officers involved in the crazy world of start ups!

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A new business idea: take someone’s website for your own then ask them for the image files!!!

January 30, 2012 Leave a comment

Many of you may have read about how we came across a website that was basically a cut and paste from our website of all our imagery and web copy. Rather than take the website down, they have asked me to send me our original image files so that they do what they want – although they apparently ‘paid some Indian guy’ $500 for the website! The email was so funny that I thought I should post it here (I’ve taken out the email addresses and personal details though). Just in case you forgot, here’s a side by side of the real one (on the left) and the fake one (on the right).

 

  

 

If someone had sold me a fake website image for USD 500, I would have been fairly unimpressed and would have outed them, so I wonder if a new industry will get established for doing a “save website as” service – clearly quite lucrative as one of my guys said!

Anyway, sit back and enjoy the following for your reading pleasure!

 

Last Email From Them

On 24 January 2012 16:30, Websequel wrote:

Hello James,

The treating email that we are getting from you seems totally unreasonable. We are not okay providing the confidential detail about our company account to anyone outsiders. Please have a word with your employee who happened to sell us a copy of the website. Or if you can send us the full file we are ready to change the website banner (I’ve highlighted this as this is almost my favourite line). We contacted our lawyer with all the detail information we have done no wrong and we were not aware of the fact that it was your website copy, but still as a cooperation we did make few changes on the site, but you happened to misjudge the cooperation and you kept on threatening us in this regard.

If we have the complete file we will definitely change the website banner but since no PSD files were provided to us we cannot work on it. And we cannot pull the website down either as we paid $500 for this website.

We are willing to cooperate but we cannot as there is no detail information we can get for you.

I hope you would understand.

Regards,

Sukhjinder

 

From Me

Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 6:53 PM

Subject: Re: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

Hello Sukhjinder and Dave,

As you will be aware from previous emails, I have asked for you to rectify this situation by this date of using intellectual property which is essentially stolen. I presume by your lack of response that you are not planning to co-operate. I would ask that you reconsider this position as I really don’t think that it is either of our best interests for this situation to not be properly resolved. Please respond to this email by 25 Jan US time, or else I will need to look at what action I need to take to deal with this matter.

Thank you for your co-operation with this matter.

Sincerely,

James

 

From Me

On 18 January 2012 01:40, James Swanston wrote:

 

Hello Sukhjinder and Dave,

I must say that I am slightly disappointed by your response. There are actually a few things you can do as follows:

1. Please forward email correspondence with the person whom you USD 500 for the template and details of what freelancing website you purchased it from. I am sure that given that USD 500 is quite a bit to pay for a template, you will be able to easily find the records, and also, am sure that you would hate for other people to be defrauded in this manner. Given that I am sure that you are as unhappy with them as I am given that they have basically sold you something that was stolen, I hope you will be very supportive of this. In your first email, you said that you would deal with them, so this shouldn’t be a massive request from you.

2. Additionally, you could very easily take down the website or replace it with something that has other images. You may be particularly concerned with local taxi law compliance in Toronto/ Niagara Falls/ Buffalo as there is no such thing as the Public Carriage Office in the United States or ‘Transport for Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Toronto which you allude to in your FAQ – which is again almost directly copied from our website – and which again highlights that you can change the text. For your information, the Public Carriage Office is part of Transport for London and based in the United Kingdom.

I am sure as a reputable business, and Dave with a LinkedIn profile which you visited me from, you surely don’t want to be involved in such a blatant copying of someone else’s hard work. With that in mind, I would again ask you to reconsider and address this matter in an appropriate fashion.

Many thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

James

 

From Them

On 17 January 2012 19:07, web Sequel  wrote:

Sorry James but there is nothing there we can do as of now. Please investigate within the designer team who designed and sold the theme.

 

From Me

Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 8:56 AM 

Subject: Re: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

 

Hi Sukhjinder,

Thanks for your email. In the same way that Dave put images over the Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express logos, you can do the same for the main image files. We have invested a lot of time and effort in develop and building our brand profile and have trade mark protection in place.

It is not acceptable at all for our trademarked imagery and copyrighted materials to be blatantly used without our permission.

I would again ask that you look to immediately replace the imagery and other materials taken from our website, which surely you can do as a web design company, and have this achieved by 23 January.

Sincerely,

James

 

From them (I like how they ask for feedback on what they did)

On 16 January 2012 13:38, Web Sequel wrote:

 

hello james,

I was informed by my partner dave about the conversation you had with him regarding website. we bought this site from one of the freelancer in some freelancing website i don’t remember which one. he sold us the website in $500. while we bought the website we were told that he was from United Kingdom. There is nothing that we know more than that about the person. Regarding website we were not provided complete files of the website where we can make more changes.

we did not know that the website was copied, if we knew that the website was copied we would not have bought the website already. I am so sorry that we are not in a position to make changes on the website as we don’t have files. By the way out of curiosity did you do the website like we did?

Thanks,

Sukhjinder

 

From Me

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 6:14 PM, James Swanston wrote:

Dear Sukhjinder,

From Whois, I was able to get your email address as the registrant of aaashuttleny.com and also buffalosupershuttle.com. I am not certain whether you have seen the email chain below, however as you will not, these two websites are almost direct copies of our website, its imagery and web copy. As per my email below, I would ask that you immediately change the images and web copy that has been taken from our site, as well as provide the details of whomever provided you with this template.

Thank you for your assistance with this matter.

Sincerely,

James

From Me

Date: 9 January 2012 11:21

Dear Dave,

Thanks for your email

While I see that you have changed over the logos for Heathrow and Gatwick Express, the remaining imagery, which is trademarked is still there. Unfortunately we do have clients in North America and also do airport shuttles so it could easily be mistaken for us. In addition, as you can see from (I’ve taken out the two websites for client sites that I put in the original email), we built sites for our partners for which they pay us a considerable amount of money, so having something that fundamentally looks like our website is not appropriate. It is easy to change over graphics and the web copy that has been taken from our site, so I would ask that you do this immediately.

If you are willing, can you also provide the contact details of the person in the UK that you purchased the template from as we will need to find out what other sites this has been put up on.

Thank you for your co-operation with this.

Sincerely,

James

Response From Them

On 21 December 2011 13:43, web Sequel wrote:

Dear James,

This was a template we bought from a Indian guy in UK. We were charged $500 for this template. I can see website is same but since this is the template we cannot make further changes in it. Moreover the area we serve and you do is different in fact totally different country. As in regards to the logo I’ll make sure logo are changed by today. Thank you so much for informing us about the issue. We will deal with the Template provider.

Warm Regards,

Dave

 
Original Email From Me

 Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 6:30 AM

Subject: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

A request form has been submitted on the website on 12/20/2011 18:45:20, following is the result of the submission.”

First Name: James Swanston
   
Comments Hello, I was recently directed to this website from Google Analytics. I am not sure if you are aware, however the majority of the graphics, a lot of the web copy and the logos are a direct copy of ours (please see www.carbonvoyage.com). Additionally, there are two logos on your front page for Heathrow and Gatwick Express. Am not completely certain whether you have developed this inhouse or used a third party contractor to develop this, however a number of these things are either trademarked or copyrighted. Sincerely, James
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Spot the Difference: Someone ‘borrowed’ our website design and all the images and logos!!!!

December 15, 2011 2 Comments

I saw some weird search terms on Google Analytics last night about taxi journeys and then saw that there were some incoming links coming from a taxi site in the United States – and there was my website staring me back from my computer screen.  Perhaps my business was growing so fast that I didn’t even know that we’d launched in the United States. Check it out here and here which then link to here at the bottom of the page. And just to confuse you all, here is our website.

Unfortunately, this was not quite the case! Most people we chat to think we have a really nice website – clearly whoever did this thought so also!!!! I realise that imitation is the sincerest (or highest) form of flattery, but blatantly copying our imagery and logo really takes things to a new level – I particularly like that whomever did it even left in the imagery for Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express on the front page and a lot of the web copy remains the same!

Spot the difference – the real one is on the right, or is it the left – errrrr

         

The web copy is almost the same and I like how they’ve kept in some quick facts on the right hand side – perhaps it could include quick tips about the best ways to ‘borrow’ someone else’s website! Again, the real one is on the top (or left)…

         

And I like what they’ve done with our logo also!

     The real one is on the left!  

 

It was funny to read some posts on this such as webleeddesign and airbag and I did feel particularly sorry for Lingo24 who had something similar happen to them.

Am sure the DCMA and WIPO say something about this kind of stuff – it really is a bit naughty.

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Thoughts on Durban

December 12, 2011 Leave a comment

At the start of this month, I got an email from One Hundred Months just highlighting that there are five years left to start making some significant changes to what we are doing in terms of reducing carbon emissions…

I am not particularly certain of whether to think that the COP17 talks in Durban were good or bad, but I am certain that more was certainly achieved than in other recent talks. The real positive news is that there now seems to be a degree of consensus that something needs to be done, and a long term framework that is legally binding.  Without a doubt, this is a great step and is something that has been missing from the climate change agenda in recent years; consensus is crucial to any capacity for things such as Australia’s carbon tax or any emission trading schemes in shipping and aviation which I have previously written about. The EU did very well to achieve its aims for the conference – and not surprisingly the United States has failed to demonstrate any leadership in this despite Obama’s pre-election promises (and with the presidential elections twelve months out, it is unlikely to improve) – see for example here. It will be interested to watch China, as the biggest emitter, to see what they do in the next few years to curb emissions – at a national level, they seem to appear as if they may be more committed to addressing this that the US or even India.

From the Washington Post

However, the real downside here is about the timing of what is meant to come next. The existing binding agreement (although very limited in terms of what countries are signed up to it) expires next year, so there is going to be a real gap in terms of commitments to reductions over this very critical period of the next few years in which extensive action is needed. This is precisely the same period in which it is crucial to bring yearly emissions down, so it is almost a case of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted…

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Silicon Valley comes to Tech City

November 21, 2011 Leave a comment

On Saturday, I was able to attend a great event arranged by Sherry Coutu and Reid Hoffman called Silicon Valley comes to Tech City, which is part of an initiative that Reid and Sherry have been doing for a number of years (mainly at Oxford and Cambridge). It really was valuable to hear a bunch of very experienced people coming in from the US talk about many of the issues and challenges for start ups, and it is fair to say that it is pretty rare to get that calibre of entrepreneurial class in the one place at the one time in the UK. A few of the notes I took from Reid’s keynote speech:

  • Startups (or perhaps entrepreneurs or both) are about inventing and reinventing;
  • Ideas are incomplete and mistargeted; and
  • When you start, lots of things are broken – you need to focus on the problems in the right order.

As we are working on a bit of a pivot in the business, it was particularly good to attend the session discussing pivoting (or even just starting again). Given what we are looking at at present, it helped to be able to reflect on some of the things that they said. In the army, this very much goes along the lines of the saying “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” I particularly liked the view of Jeff Clavier and Jon Callghan to think big; this view echoed the thoughts of a friend who runs a VC-backed company as he and I discussed funding ideas for Carbon Voyage who basically said I should side-step angels and go straight for the big boys. On Jon’s blog, he reflected that there were many good things happening here and noted that they regularly given some consideration to heading over to this side of the pond to develop some opportunities – which I think would be a great move. I think a mix of the US VC willingness to accept more risk, combined with the perhaps more resourceful, tenacious, and creative entrepreneurs would be a great combination. Now that we have a presence in Australia, I am wondering where we need to be based as a business, and as much as I love the UK, I start to wonder whether I need to consider the US or even Asia given perceived access to capital.

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Funding, silicon roundabout Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Australia and Sustainability

November 17, 2011 Leave a comment

As the Greenest Government ever decided to wreak havoc on the solar industry at the start of last week, the Australian Government last week finally passed a bill through the Senate imposing a carbon tax starting at approximately £15 per tonne. Of course this has not been without its detractors, but I do hope that the funds raised do get used to promote and support the use of more sustainable technology – once the price is right, these things are more efficient (as well as being good for the environment), and from a capitalist perspective, allow for improved profits.

The scheme itself is a good idea, but as with the debate about shipping emissions recently, or indeed airline emissions, that has fired up some interesting debates between the EU and the US, then the whole thing will fall down unless there is a degree of global consensus on this as Greg Hunt mentions in The Australian. So perhaps, as the following clip suggests, they might be a part two to the whole story!

 

 

And next week, I’m looking forward to attending the press launch of some UNEP reports in the lead up to COP 17 which should be rather interesting – perhaps a well placed question about global consensus wouldn’t go astray!

Filed under Shipping, Sustainability Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

The Greenest Government Ever – maybe not…

November 8, 2011 Leave a comment

As a conservative voter and environmentalist, I was really delighted to hear David Cameron make this particular pledge around 18 months ago, which was a far cry from some of the unfortunate rantings back in Australia. The intervening months have seen some good and some bad things come from the government, as the Guardian nicely shows in their green-o-meter. Many people will realise that any environmental credentials and plaudits have been fairly well obliterated perhaps as highlighted by an open letter written by Solar Century. For a government that talks so much about big society, it has failed to look at the big picture. No one can question that these tariffs needed to come down; doing this so quickly will dramatically ruin the solar industry and be completely detrimental to efforts to reduce fuel poverty, and of course efforts to reduce the carbon impact of energy needs.

So why am I, who is involved in the transport industry, starting off this post talking about solar stuff you may ask. I think ultimately the key issue here is about government’s role in supporting efforts to reduce climate change, and particularly bringing in new technologies. Sustainable technology often needs government support to help pump prime industry as sometimes there is a very long return on investment period, and sometimes emerging technologies cost a lot to start with. When I was involved in the Suststainable Development Commission’s Mobility 2020 work, this was one of the key things we looked at where it was going to be critical for governments do major procurements to help bring down the cost of technology. From an economic perspective, this shouldn’t be about long term subsidies, but rather financial support that reduces over time, otherwise it is unsustainable (although certain industries do have long term subsidies that have particular political imperitives attached to them). I would highly doubt that other industries would accept a cut to subsidies within six weeks, particularly midway through a review period of subsidies. I do hope the government backtrack on this, but it will forwever tarnish any good work that they have done to date.

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IBM Sustainability Summit 2011

November 3, 2011 Leave a comment

Watching an empty train roll past yesterday morning while I waited to get on my way to a meeting gave me some pause for thought to consider the IBM Summit I attended on Tuesday in central London at 8 Northumberland. Unlike the event last year which was completely focused on transport, this had a wider series of topics being discussed, many linked to getting consumers to be more sustainable. There were a number of breakout sessions and workshops focused on questions around getting people to act in more sustainable ways, and some specifically linked to transport, for which the consensus was that it was crucial to challenge the norm of behaviour.

As with other more general sustainability events, it was a good opportunity to reflect on what we do and what some of the challenges are that we need to consider in overcoming in order to act/ be more sustainable. The key transport breakout session was around the topic of liberalising travel information to help people go greener. This is important, but at the very heart of the matter is the issue of pricing – until sustainability and pricing are linked, then it is going to be difficult to get the behaviour change necessary to really achieve great things with sustainable transport.

This morning, I attended an event put on by the Committee on Climate Change discussing UK shipping emissions, which was particularly interesting in terms of highlighting that transport-related emissions are going to become a greater problem over time as it is left behind energy in priority. It is clear, as they suggested, that this issue does need to be addressed, but it does not come without difficulty. I fear that a key stumbling block will of course relate to getting some form of international consensus on how to deal with this through the International Maritime Organization. It sort of reminded me of a Monty Python short video played on Tuesday by Mark Earls, one of the speakers at the IBM summit (shown below). Fortunately though, as one person highlighted today, it is in the best interests of the shipping community to reduce costs which will hopefully reduce carbon emissions anyway!

Filed under Events, Sustainability, Technology, transport, Travel Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Night at Buckingham Palace

October 26, 2011 1 Comment

Running a startup can be a bit tough at times as any entrepreneur knows; but a number of us who are based in London recently received invitations to an event at Buckingham Palace, which is a pretty nice thing to get in the mail! The event was put on by the UKTI TechCity folk and was hosted by HRH Prince Andrew – Mike Butcher almost likened it to a dinner put on by President Obama for a bunch of major tech players in the US.

It was the latest in a number of things that I’d been to in the last month that were focused on the entrepreneurial world building up around Old Street Roundabout, including a round table discussion with Eric van der Kleij to discuss issues affecting startups. Not surprisingly, I mentioned public sector procurement and one or two other things – I think there is a lot that can happen here. I fully appreciate that startups come with particular risks, but risk aversion in the public sector is immensely expensive, and the kind of transformation that is needed to deliver cuts while retaining some element of government efficiency really needs to incorporate the innovation that can be delivered by enterprising startups. An amazing, but true example, is where a mate running a startup called Lucidica providing IT support in London is able to regularly source IT products for his clients for up to 40% less than major universities, who you would think had slightly more buying power – but clearly not!

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Events, Funding, General, silicon roundabout, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Startups Interviews: Carbon Voyage CEO James Swanston

September 27, 2011 Leave a comment

The following was an interview for the magazine Made in Shoreditch with …

James Swanston is the founder of Carbon Voyage, a startup dedicated to finding efficient transportation solutions. Prior to moving to the United Kingdom in 2007, James ran a number of small enterprises in Australia in the wine, property, and IT industries.

As well, James has served as an officer in the Australian and British Armies, including tours of duty in Malaysia, East Timor, Iraq, Falkland Islands and Afghanistan, and was awarded the United States Bronze Star Medal and the Australian Joint Operations Command Commendation for service in Iraq. James holds Bachelor degrees in Law, International Business and Modern Asian Studies, a diploma in Export Management and a Masters in International Relations and Asian Politics.

G: Tell us about your startup, Carbon Voyage

J: Transport is quite inefficient with lots of empty journeys and part loads, which creates unneeded costs, carbon, and congestion. We have built some software that can be used to book and manage transport journeys, and in doing so, find opportunities to share journeys and fill empty return loads. Over the last twelve months, we’ve been working with some fairly big organisations to build our credibility in the marketplace and also ensure that we’ve got our proposition and technology right.

G: What were the biggest obstacles in launching your company, and how did you overcome them?

J: Funding a new business is always a massive challenge. To date, we’ve been fairly fortunate to have been able to do this without any real external investment, although a point will come where we will need to consider this. As the business grows though, this challenge will remain, particularly in terms of managing cash flow.

G: What would you say has been your most memorable moment since launching Carbon Voyage?

J: I guess the most memorable thing is to see the technology when it has first been built. We’ve just finished building some new freight software that we’ve been working on for a very long time, and this is particularly exciting for us.

G: Can you give us a few ‘Do’s and Dont’s’ for setting up a new company?

DO

  • Get your product or service out there and iterate quickly based on customer feedback
  • Look at setting up strong partnerships
  • Keep fixed costs down as much as possible, and be careful about what you spend your money on

DON’T

  • Take your focus off sales and marketing
  • Let obstacles get in your way

G: Why did you choose Shoreditch in launching your startup?

J: Shoreditch is a pretty cool part of London, and it is great to have lots of other startups around you who relate to all the ups and downs of running a business and pursuing your dreams.

G: What does the ‘Silicon Roundabout’ have to do to compete with Silicon Valley?

J: We really need to ensure that the right talent can come to the UK and London to build great startups, and the Government could play an active role doing so.

G: Who/what are your favourite entrepreneurs/startups in Shoreditch?

J: I really like Moo and Tweetdeck, and there is also a great environmental business called AMEE. And of course, there are some great businesses in the Accelerator!

G: What does the future have in store for Shoreditch?

J: I hope it continues to draw in cool start-ups so that there is a vibrant community built up of start-ups form around the world. At the same time, I hope that it doesn’t completely lose the edgy, fun atmosphere that makes Shoreditch a special place.

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