Agile

Agile working refers to the idea of connecting processes, people, technology, time, and place to create a dynamic workforce. Giving workers the freedom and maximum flexibility to work where and when they want, thereby minimising constraints, can improve productivity and performance. Other results of agile working can include the creation of a more responsive, efficient, and effective organisation that has more balanced, motivated, innovative, and productive teams and individuals working within it. There are models to help with agile working, such as core and flex and activity-based working.

Difference Between, Agile, Flexible, and Hybrid

Adaptive working is primarily concerned with work hours. Hybrid working is mainly concerned with where the work is carried out (at home or in the office). In contrast, flexible and hybrid working can be components of agile working. Rather than removing traditional barriers, agile working involves adopting new practices to help employees work effectively and efficiently.

Challenges

Examples of some of the main challenges to successfully introducing agile working include:

• Culture and mindset. Agile working means fully embracing an agile agenda where people are the organisation and are empowered in a relationship of trust and responsibility.
• Resistance to change from key individuals and management not fully accepting the idea.
• Preserving outdated legacy systems.
• Inadequate resource planning and ignoring its introduction’s cultural and change-management aspects.
• Insufficient training and terrible experience with Agile approaches.

Technology’s Contribution To Agile Working

Agile working (a whole strategy and approach) means that buying new technology is not enough. However, there are many ways that technology can be used strategically to help to contribute to successful agile working. These include:

• Digital transformation to give workers fast access to information.
• Cloud-based technology. This facilitates the use of collaborative working platforms, real-time communication, and digital canvases that workgroups can use and can be updated in real-time.
• Using wireless and plug-and-play solutions (in offices) to facilitate collaboration between workers.
• The early adoption and use of ‘disruptive technologies’, e.g., machine learning, artificial intelligence, the IoT and robotics.
•  Agile working tools, e.g., Kanban, and scrum/project management tools, e.g., ActiveCollab, Jira, Pivotal Tracker, Trello, GitHub, collaborative working, and comms platforms, e.g., Teams, Slack, and Zoom.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

In other words, agile working is a commitment to adopting a new way of thinking and working that increases speed and flexibility in the workplace. It’s aimed at improving productivity, performance, and efficiency, and it’s about creating value and gaining competitive advantages for companies. Of course, it goes without saying that cloud technologies and agile working tools play a significant role in enabling progressive businesses to adopt a dynamic approach to working.

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What Is Starlink?

Starlink, operated by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, uses a constellation of low orbit satellites around the Earth (launched by SpaceX rockets) to provide broadband Internet. Starlink offers satellite Internet access coverage to most of the planet and is particularly useful for areas where connectivity is unreliable or completely unavailable. Starlink says that users of its satellite broadband can expect to see download speeds between 100 Mb/s and 200 Mb/s and latency as low as 20ms in most locations.

Sent A Kit

Starlink customers are sent a kit that includes the Wi-Fi router, cables, and base to connect to their satellite broadband. Being a satellite connection, however, users need to have a clear view of the sky to join and download the Starlink App to determine their best install location.

Can Be Seen In The Night Sky

Starlink’s satellites can be seen with the naked eye as a bright, equally spaced line of star-like objects orbiting in a line/train. This has led to criticism by astronomers that the SpaceX satellites are ruining their observations. Astronomers also say that in addition to the amount of light reflected by the satellites, there are also the problems of background light diffusion and the satellites’ radio noise. Back in June 2020, SpaceX responded to the criticism by developing a new strategy to reduce the number of light Starlink satellites reflecting down to Earth. Starlink says that it now leads the industry in innovations to reduce satellite brightness, minimising the impact on astronomy. The company says that it is also testing rolling satellites, so the vector of the Sun is in-plane with the satellite’s body, i.e., so the satellite is knife-edge to the Sun.

Satellites Destroyed By Solar Storms

Starlink suffered a costly setback recently after 49 satellites it launched in one mission were burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere only days later, costing the company $50 million. The failure was caused by a sun storm/geomagnetic storm. These storms sometimes called ‘space weather’, happen because of plasma explosions from the Sun’s surface and solar winds escaping the Sun’s outer atmosphere. These fluctuations result in electrons, protons, and other particles blasted out from the Sun into space. When this happens, as in the case of the recently launched satellites, the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs the solar storm’s magnetic energy, heats up and expands upward. This expansion creates drag on satellites, and it was this drag (while the new batch was in their lower dropping off orbit, i.e. between 60 and 120 miles/100 and 200 km) above the Earth’s surface that caused them to fall towards Earth burn up.

Is This Your Space Junk?

So-called ‘space junk’ (debris orbiting the earth/orbital debris) is a big problem. NASA (2021) said that the Department of Defence’s global Space Surveillance Network (SSN) sensors track more than 27,000 pieces. Also, the European Space Agency estimates there are now 36,500 pieces of space junk more significant than 10cm. These pieces of natural meteoroid and artificial (human-made) orbital debris include non-functional spacecraft, abandoned launch vehicle stages, mission-related garbage, and fragmentation debris. The significant dangers are that debris and spacecraft travel at orbital speeds (approximately 15,700 mph in low Earth orbit). Therefore, any impact of even a tiny piece of orbital debris with a spacecraft could create catastrophic problems. Recently, astronomers accused Elon Musk’s SpaceX firm of being the company responsible for an abandoned three-tonne rocket part that they had been tracking since 2015 and which was on a collision course with the moon, travelling at 5,500 miles per hour. On colliding with the moon, the part has left a 65ft crater. Elon Musk has confirmed that the domain did not belong to SpaceX, and it is now believed that it was a part of a Chinese rocket.

Needed In Ukraine

Starlink also made the news last week after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky asked for Starlink Internet terminals to be sent as Ukraine’s broadband infrastructure was damaged in Russian attacks. President Zelensky noted that, besides working anywhere with a clear view of the sky and requiring no ground infrastructure (other than a spot for the dish), Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still active in some parts of Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. Elon Musk, who communicated personally with President Zelensky, has donated Starlink satellite Internet terminals to the embattled country.

Thanked, But A Warning

Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, tweeted his thanks to SpaceX’s billionaire chief executive officer Elon Musk for help, including a photo of the truck loaded with terminals. President Zelensky has also expressed his gratitude. There have, however, been warnings via Twitter from Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab project, that the terminals could become targets and beacons for Russian airstrikes. Concern has also been expressed that the dishes would need to be installed in vulnerable locations for the system to work.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The crisis in Ukraine has highlighted how functional the often-criticised Starlink system can be and has illustrated its advantages over traditional ground-based systems operated often through state control. Although it can’t fully replace terrestrial internet on a large scale, it is likely to provide vital communication links where they’re needed. The speed with which Elon Musk responded and the fact that he became personally involved, which could hold a risk for him in the future, is also likely to positively impact his public image, which could rub off on his SpaceX and Starlink businesses. However, it remains to be seen whether the Starlink terminals and even the Starlink satellite operations end up being targeted by physical and or cyber-attacks.

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What Are Disposable Email Addresses?

Disposable/temporary email addresses (DEA), also known as ‘burner’ email addresses, are (mostly free) services that allow the user to set up and generate email aliases and, in some cases, associated domain names. DEAs enable users to keep their real email addresses secret. They are temporary because, depending on the email service, the email addresses and the emails received in the inbox (and domains) are deleted within the specified brief period.

Why? A Way To Reduce Spam

There is a growing need for DEAs due to the overwhelming spam that now clogs up many email boxes. In addition to making it difficult to find important emails, spam wastes time and can be pretty frustrating. Using disposable email addresses to sign-up and receive something that a person wants means that they don’t have to receive countless more follow-up emails and offers from that company.

Benefits

Some other substantial benefits that the use of DEAs bring to the user include:

• Maintaining Privacy and Security. It is possible that some sites that users sign-up to/register with may be hacked and the email addresses (and other personal data) stolen. Using a DEA means that even if there is a hack, the user’s actual email address is not used for further attacks or sold to other hackers. Also, using a DEA offers more privacy.
• Control. Spam emails and emails from legitimate sign-ups where their marketing emails are frequent and where a user may not have time to go through and unsubscribe can mean inboxes soon fill up. DEAs provide a way to take more control.
• Ease of management and convenience. DEAs are easy and fast to set up, can be outsourced entirely, are operated from easy-to-use dashboards, don’t require extra software or hardware, and don’t interfere with a user’s existing email infrastructure.
• Identification and traceability. Setting up one disposable email address per service that a user signs up for can help identify the source of any spam by specifying the service that sells email addresses or leaks them. The associated DEA can then be deleted to stop the flow of spam.
• The ability to ‘cherry-pick.’ Using DEAs, users can sign up for the good parts of offers, e.g., rewards or special offers, and avoid the destructive features, i.e., the marketing follow-ups that are not relevant.
• The ability to test the nature of a service. Signing up for new, untried service with a DEA can allow the user to assess the nature of that service, e.g., whether they immediately send out lots of junk emails.
•  Anonymity. There may be some occasions where users want to make a point, comment, or send a message of importance but, for whatever reason, remain anonymous.
• Flexibility, scope, and scalability. DEA services can offer generous or no limits on the number of disposable email addresses per account and the size of incoming and outgoing messages. The user can set up and delete email addresses for multiple services as and when required.

Disadvantages

There are, of course, some drawbacks of DEAs. These include:

• They are great for end-users but can be damaging and create work and costs for marketers. Those businesses receiving sign-ups using DEAs have difficulties converting trial customers, skewed churn-rate figures and analytics, and possible backlisting from the bounced emails sent back to DEAs that don’t exist anymore. DEAs also enable a marketer’s offers (and trust) to be abused and can mean extra wasted costs in identifying and verifying addresses and clean lists.
• Emails from a DEA service may be blacklisted so users can’t sign up for services with email addresses using their domain.
• There may be a security risk for DEA users, for example, emails passing through free services may be readable to others, and users may have access to a pool of addresses for which others can see the inbox.

Examples of DEA services include:

• GuerrillaMail – An open-source, basic looking service that allows the creation of email addresses with nine domain names. There’s no registration, and email addresses last an hour. https://www.guerrillamail.com/ .
• Air Mail – Auto-generated email address which gets changed every 10 seconds. Mailboxes are not deleted and can be used for as long as the domain is active so users can read their inbox via a browser later using a unique URL. http://getairmail.com/.
• 10 Minute Mail – Just like the name suggests. Users can set up a temporary email address and any emails sent to that address show up automatically on the web page. They can be read, clicked on, and replied to, but the mail address expires after 10 minutes. http://10minutemail.com/ .
• Mailinator – This offers a offers a 100 per cent free, public disposable email system where users can choose any address @mailinator.com (scroll down the home page to find the link). https://www.mailinator.com/.
• Email – This free service allows users to use ‘any-name-of-your-choice’@YOPmail.com, sign up anywhere, and there’s a disposable inbox where messages are kept for eight days. Users can also manually remove them. http://www.yopmail.com/.
• EmailOnDeck – Free service where temporary email addresses typically expire after more than an hour but within a day. https://www.emailondeck.com/

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For DEA users, these email addresses can provide a low-cost (often free) way to tackle any spam and a clogged inbox and offer privacy and security benefits. However, for businesses operating their marketing, sign-ups and offer take-ups with disposable email can create real challenges, affect analytics and figures, create more work, and even lead to problems like being blacklisted. DEAs, therefore, are more beneficial to end-users than businesses/marketers. That said, it is possible to see why they have now become popular and are one of many valued spam tackling tools and services.

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