In through the outfield

Information Law with Charles Oppenheim

Picture from OneIS

A late night last Thursday due to attending an excellent talk by Professor Charles Oppenheim on information law. The event was the second in a series of talks organised by the wonderfully entrepreneurial information professional Jennifer Smith and sponsored by her OneIS company. Charles generously agreed to make his slides available on the One IS website

For his talk Charles cantered through a range of important and controversial topics, which was described as a chocolate box taster approach rather than an in depth analysis due to time constraints.

Having known Charles for many years I was already aware of his amazing ability – not only to bring what could be quite dry topics to life with amusing examples, but to explain really quite difficult subjects with clarity and brevity.

The topics covered were data protection, personal data, cloud computing, protecting your reputation online, disability discrimination, contracts and last, but by no means least, copyright.

Data protection

This is a notoriously difficult and worrying topic for information professionals, and in fact anyone whole collects data about people in the United Kingdom. It all stems from the Data Protection Act of 1998, and covers information about individuals ranging from the innocuous to highly sensitive. One curious exception to its provenance is financial information, and we spent some time during the lengthy questions and answers session at the end pondering why this might be the case. My theory is that the UK banks recognised the law would have a disruptive impact on their activities, and used their considerable influence to ring-fence this area.

The Data Protection Act is based on the following eight principles, all of which have legal status (either civil or criminal), and is regulated by an Information Commissioner:

1. Personal data must be obtained fairly, and for a bona fide purpose.
2. It can only be used for one or more purpose, which must be clearly specified.
3. The data obtained must be adequate, relevant and not excessive. Charles gave a wonderful example of a town council who included a question on chest size on their form for all new employees. The reason they asked the question was to help them keep their stocks of overalls correct for those staff who did ‘dirty jobs’, such as dustmen and women. However, when a secretary complained about the question the council (and the vast majority elsewhere in the country) were forced to change their policy.
4. The data must be accurate and up to date (where relevant).
5. It should not be kept for longer than necessary. (This led to a discussion of the recent news story about the UK police being forced to delete their DNA records of innocent civilians after six years, instead of keeping them forever).
6. The data should be processed in accordance of the rights of individuals, who retain the right to sue for inaccurate information.
7. It must be protected from loss, damage or destruction.
8. It must not be transferred outside the European Economic Area. (This led to a discussion of Google and Amazon data servers which are based in the United States).

Charles then went on to give brief overviews of five more information law topics:

1. Cloud Computing – In particular the risks of exporting or storing data outside of the European Economic Area. Many organisations are not aware that by using Google or Amazon S3 servers their data is being stored in the United States, and so in breach of UK law.

2. Protecting your reputation online:

-       This topic was about slander (temporary) and libel (published) where the reputation of an individual is harmed by false statements, to more than one ‘third’ party.

-       It only applies if there is a reputation to be harmed. So saying Jeffrey Archer is a crook would not be libellous.

-       An email to an individual is not libellous, but if it leaks out to others, then it becomes so.

-       This is a particularly thorny topic due to the big differences in libel law between countries, in particular between the United States and the UK. We currently have the strictest libel laws in the world.

-       Charles recommended regularly ‘Googling’ yourself to see what has been written about you online.

3. Disability discrimination – How you must make reasonable adjustments to cater for those with disabilities.

4. Contract law – This consists of five key elements. Offer and acceptance, consideration, intention to create legal relations, legal capacity and formalities. Charles reviewed the three levels of formality. 1. A verbal or email agreement (unlikely to accepted in court). 2. An email with a digital signature (generally accepted as binding). 3. An email with a signature and full encryption (full legal strength).

5. Copyright – Charles ended on this most complicated and controversial topic which led on to a lengthy question and answer session. He wanted to ensure we were all aware of the fact that just because content was freely available on the Internet, this did not mean it was not covered by copyright law. He recommended using sites such as Flickr which are covered under Creative Commons licences.

Our new business information wiki – Business Essentials on the Web

As part of our continuing experimination with all things Web 2.0 (Social Media) we have created a wiki for essential business information. Still currently in beta, this wiki is a designed to allow any of my British Library business information colleagues to add useful links.

 

But more revolutionary (for the British Library) is that we are also opening up the wiki to anyone who has useful information to add. In particular our partners, who have expertise in a wide range of business support activities.

 

The wiki will be of help to people who are not able to come and visit our St Pancras building, and who find that Google does not provide all the answers.

 

Obviously we ony want useful content on the wiki, and will be taking any spam off straight away, much like you see on Wikipedia. Our wiki guidelines explain in more detail.

 

Please join our little community and add your comments and submit links of your own.

http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com

 

The current hot topics are, Business planning, Grants and finance, Industry specific, Intellectual property, Marketing and PR.

If you have any ideas or comments on the wiki, you can email bipc@bl.uk

Free vs Fee – the Future of News – SLA Europe meeting 3 November

Another successful SLA Europe event this evening, this time at the swanky venue of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, five minutes away from Blackfriars station.

The hot topic was Free vs Fee – the Future of News. And stemmed from the fact that most newspapers have offered their content via the Internet for free with the expectation that display advertising would create enough revenue to cover the cost of creating and distributing their content. However, with the continuing decline in physical newspaper sales and the softening of the display advertising market, news organisations are exploring new ways to charge for their digital content.

On the panel were Jeremy  Lawson  VP Sales, EMEA, Dow Jones & Company, Andrew Hughes – Commercial Director for the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), Laurence C. Rafsky Ph.D. – CEO of Acquire Media and Laurence Kaye – Principal at Laurence Kay Solicitors. The panel was excellently moderated by Donald Roll – Managing Director, Europe for Alacra.

Here are my notes from the evening:

Don Roll introduced the evening by talking about the steep decline in newspaper circulation, the recent arrival of the first free quality newspaper in the form of the London Evening Standard, and how the NLA wants to ensure newspaper publishers receive payment for web content.

Andrew Hughes – NLA initiatives

NLA are moving towards creating a set of licences for commercial use of newspaper websites.

UK newspapers spend £1b a year in creating this content, which is quite different from paper published information. For example 31% of newspaper websites has never appeared in print.

The plan is that for those who charge for access to newspaper content will be charged by the NLA, who will also charge end user clients for access to content.

Existing licences will be extended and new ones created where necessary

e-Clips Web – Working to improve access to content by using newspaper CMS systems.

Laurence Kay – The legal view – 10 key points

1. Professional journalism, ‘trusted content’ and UGC (user generated content)

2. Change takes time! Business models and culture takes time to change.

3. Global Media / local copyright?

4. If content is going to be free, why does copyright matter? Provides the framework for access and usage rights.

5. B2B versus consumer copyrights

6. ‘Effects-based’ approach to copyright. Helps to work out how to apply rules to the real world. Look at the commercial impact of activities.

7. ‘Legal’ versus ‘Illegal’ content. When to take action or technical measures over infringements.

8. Who are the ‘intermediaries’ in the value chain? E.g. Where does Google fit in? Searched for or ‘scraped’ conent?

9. ‘Fair Use’. Big variations across Europe. United States has a broad definition. If the use is commercial is that no longer fair use?

10. We are still lacking 21^st century infrastructure to cope with licensing and payments for use.

Laurence C. Rafsky – What do we mean by free?

Once freedom has been tasted there is no going back.

Value chain –

1. professionally produced but given away selectively – e.g. advertiser supported
2. Non-professional content
3. Gifted professional content. E.g. Stephen King novel
4. Free to some but not others
5. Content that should not be free.

Two enemy camps

1. Information wants to be free – the hippies
2. Corporate suits who want to charge for everything

The solution will need to be  a compromise.

A question for the NLA to consider:

Do you use copyrighted material for commercial gain without payment to content owners?

Do you use copyrighted material for commercial gain without permission from the content owners as we understand it?

The crux of the debate is between these two viewpoints.

Can we separate business use from personal use? Google don’t distinguish between the two.

Jeremy  Lawson – Supporting publishers and their right to monetise their content.

Questions from the audience:

Did the newspaper industry start digging its own grave by giving away content?

New York Times started with some free and mainly fee access. They ended it because when compared pay per click ads versus pay for access would give ten times the revenue. But as ad revenues fall they may go back to first model.

Should be driven by economics.

Do you think news aggregators are a serious threat to publishers?

Links are fine, but extracts complicate the issue as readers may not link through to content. But as web content grows and newspaper content becomes a smaller fraction, increasing hits to newspaper sites lose their economic value to the publishers.

85% of newspaper traffic comes via Google. So should Google pay the majority share?

Is the Kindle from Amazon a potential future model for subscription access to newspaper content?

Disagreement – ability to break news up into selected streams for readers counts against Kindle model.

When will paper newspapers die?

Laurence C. Rafsky predicted that by 2030 newspapers would cease to exist in paper form as a  mainstream product.

He compares their future to candles today – they will become a decorative only production.

As he pointed out, if you had a choice, why would you use paper for something that only has a value for a few hours, and then you need to scan it to create a digital version which can be archived.

B2B vs B2C

Issues about consumers within a business environment – now that the genie is out of the bottle, how do you get individuals in a corporate environment to accept paying for information.

The event was kindly sponsored by Dow Jones.

What is a CRM, and when are they best used by small business? Lucidica workshop Tuesday 3 November

This morning I managed to find the time to attend a workshop by one of our partners. Lucidica are a relatively new partner for the Business & IP Centre and currently provide six workshops related to IT and business.

This particular half day workshop on what is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and when are they best used by small business, was presented by immensely knowledgeable founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Thomas Jeffs.

He got straight down to business by explaining that a successful CRM implementation requires both staff discipline and management buy-in. With out both of these you will be wasting both your time and and your money.

Here are my notes from the morning:

What can a CRM system do?

1. Contact Management

• the most basic function of a CRM
• who they are
• what they are doing
• central point for all staff

Shared office address book – suppliers – customers – for many business this is just a piece of paper stuck onto a computer terminal

if people don’t use it and keep it up to date it become worthless

2.  Sales Force Automation – now the most popular aspect of CRM – making sure you make the best use of your sales force

• What to do and when, with regards to sales and follow ups
• Helps make sure you chase opportunities when you need to
• Allows you to forecast your predicted sales and leads – only tends to work on larger scale of operation
• Allows you to see how your sales agents are doing
• Essentially automating your sales force and sales force reporting
• Benefits not so clear to staff due to reluctance to fill in details of customer interactions

3.  Marketing Campaign Management – linked to previous activity

• How much did £100 in marketing spend raise in sales?
• How many leads did a marketing campaign generate?
• How many internal resources were required as a result of a marketing campaign? E.g. Did it attract the wrong kind of customer who were ‘high maintenance’?

4. Customer Service Management – support tickets – complaints – consistency across the Business & IP Centre

• A centralised place for tracking – breaks dependency on one member of staff
• Can provide automated responses to issues. E.g. generated ticket number and expected response from the company
• Can monitor and escalate issues if still outstanding
• Result in – consistency  and efficiency of service
• Benefits clearly visible to staff and customers

It is important to establish which of the above are the most relevant to your business, as this will have an impact the the most suitable package for you.

How do CRM systems help your business?

1. How do they do it? – Automation

Health warning

-       Automation to internal users is good

• Creation of follow-up tasks/ reminders
• Workflow tools
• Creation of templates, timelines and standards

-       Automation to external users is mixed

• Acknowledgement of complaints/issues/feedback work well
• Automated quarterly sales email – don’t work so well – de-personalises the business.

2. How do they do it? – Tracking / Recording

-       Change of address for existing clients

-       Client moves to a new company

-       Recording emails and phone contacts with sales leads

-       Recording information that client is under contract with competitor for next three months

-       Has your entire team access to this information

3. How do they do it? – Reporting

-       Reporting is the purpose for a CRM for management

-       Some things a CRM can tell you:

• Predicted sales for next three months
• Which clients haven’t been in contact for a while
• Which sales agents are getting the most leads
• Which sales agents are making the most sales
• Which contracts are up for renewal
• What total sales have you achieved from each marketing campaign
• Which clients have service level issues
• Which people work for which clients

Thomas reviewed several case studies based on real experiences at Lucidica.

Which CRM is right for you?

1. Which CRM? – Questions to ask

1. What is the function of the CRM?
2. What will it need to integrate with?
3. Who will need to use it, and from where?
4. What is the potential benefit for my business in £’s?

2. Which CRM? – Quick and dirty recommendations

-       Excel – 1st choice for people thinking about what they need to track

-       SharePoint – 1st choice for precision applications and power users

-       Sage ACT! – 1st choice for integrating into Outloook and Sage, below 10 users, primary use for contact management and sales force automation

-       SugarCRM – 1st choice for Linux users

-       SalesForce.com – 1st choice for users with little infrastructure and who rely on internet traffic for business

-       Goldmine – 1st choice for businesses with over 10 users but can’t afford Microsoft CRM

-       Microsoft CRM – 1st choice for businesses with high volume of sales and contracts

Summary

-       Make sure your CRM does not have superfluous functions

-       Make sure it can scale both up and down

-       Make sure you can get your data out of the system

-       start small and evaluate after six months

Lucidica Technology Seminars

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

- how to improve your website so search engines, like Google, lists or ranks it better/higher.

Email Marketing

- how to use professional looking emails, in bulk, to market effectively, and/or keep your clients informed (e.g. newsletters).

Technology “Must-Have’s” For Small Businesses

- from the best computers and laptops, virus-protection and back-up software we know of; to “what is a server and when does my business need one” and many free software and technology tips to reduce technology risk and increase value in your business.

An Intranet and more with Microsoft Sharepoint

- touted as a big thing in the 1990s, Intranets are finally adding value to business – especially small business now they are affordable with products like Microsoft Sharepoint. In this seminar we explain what an Intranet is, how you can use Sharepoint and how to get this powerful solution from Microsoft for FREE. We’ll talk and show you how you can use Sharepoint for your own CRM, wiki, time sheeting forms and reporting, expense summary forms, other procedures and forms with built-in workflow and much, much more.

What is a CRM, when are they best used by small business and which one to select

- Client Relationship Management (CRM) software can bolster your relationship with existing clients as well as help you work on your prospective client contacts better and more frequently with ease. We’ll outline what a CRM, how it should be used for small business and profile the top 4 or 5 CRMs affordable to small business.

Designing, developing and maintaining an effective website

- every small business should have a website. Here we dispel many myths about designing, developing and maintaining a website – it’s really not that hard! For most websites we design and build for our clients we recommend they buy some great Adobe software which allows them to maintain their website like they edit Word documents. We provide plenty of advice and tips on what is a good design, and what your developers should be including in the code when they build it.

Micro Men and the birth and death of the personal computer – 1980 to 1985

Last night I watched Micro Men, another in the recent BBC series of dramatised portrayals of historical events from the 1970’s and 80’s, such as Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley.

This was the story of the battle for dominance in the newly emerging personal computer market from in the early 1980’s. It was also a personal clash between eccentric inventor of the pocket calculator Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry (formerly his right hand man).

The film cleverly interwove news footage from the period and actors, effectively reawakening memories of my involvement in that era as a callow youth.

In particular I remember the excitement young people felt at the rapid development of the technology, and how we thought they would change the world. One scene from the seminal BBC Computer Programme talked about how personal computers would replace manual typewriters and much of the associated office paperwork. (here are some snippets). It was also something of a shock to remember how Britain led the world for that brief period, with by far the highest rate of ownership of personal computers. There was an optimism that this lead would give us an immense advantage in this newly emerging industry.

As with so many cutting edge technologies of course expectations far outstripped reality. As a ‘programming expert’ with 98 per cent in my Computer Science ‘O’ level, my father presented me with a brand new £99 Sinclair ZX81 and asked me to show him what it could do. My memory is a bit hazy on the details, but I seem to remember that its state of the art 1k of memory (compared to 2 gigabytes in today’s computers), allowed me to create a spreadsheet about 5 rows high and 16 columns wide. Unfortunately that didn’t leave any room for calculations or content.

However this did not dim my nerdish enthusiasm and I went on to study Computer Science at ‘A’ level using a Commodore Pet, and then to university on Apple II computers. It was only when I came to leave university and was pondering which model of personal PC to buy, that reality dawned. I remember my cousin asking me what I would use it for. Programming of course was the main purpose, but outside the learning environment that was not a practical application. Games were next, but the basic ones available did not appeal to me. The applications we take for granted today such as word processing and spreadsheets were not established at that time. I decided to save my £600 and wait for the technology to develop.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. Today we are surrounded by personal computers which have profoundly affected how we live our lives. Whether it is the constant bombardment of emails via Blackberries, shopping over the Internet, sharing our lives through social networking, watching or listening to films, television or radio on our iPods and personal media players, meeting new life partners through internet dating (7.8 million in the UK alone), spending time in virtual realities like Second Life, or just computing on the move (I am writing this on the train sitting next to another laptop owner – who appears be writing a gripping novel – from my furtive glances)

So although the personal PC went from boom to bust in just five short years between 1980 and 1985, apparently taking its future promise with it, the long term impact of computers on our lives has been truly revolutionary.

The footnote at the end of the show reminded me of how the two companies at the centre of the story subsequently went in very different directions. Clive Sinclair returned to his obsession with creating the world’s first mass produced affordable electric car. And produced the legendary Sinclair C5, perhaps the single most spectacular failure in the history of personal transport with sales of less than 12,000.

However, the chip that powered Chris Curry’s Acorn computer went on to be developed into the ARM processor, which has gone on to become the most successful computer chip ever, with over 10 billion shipped to power the majority of mobile phones manufactured across the world.

I made it onto net@night

As I am sure you will be aware if you are a regular reader here, I am something of a fan of Leo Laporte and his one man TWIT.TV broadcasting corporation.

From his current output of fourteen netcasts, I currently subscribe to Windows Weekly (which was instrumental in my decision to skip Vista and go straight to Windows 7) and net@night co-hosted with Amber MacArthur from Toronto.

As a loyal listener from their very first netcast, I feel honoured to have been selected as their email of the week in the latest show.

Perhaps surprisingly the topic was the controversial  choice of typeface by IKEA the global furniture brand. To be more specific it was their recent switch from the traditional print fonts of Futura and Century Schoolbook to Verdana which was designed primarily for screen use.

Although this might seem a rather esoteric topic for a show about the Internet, both Leo and Amber have experience of designing websites. And of course they spend their lives using and reviewing newly designed sites and web based services like Twitter. Consequently they are well aware of the importance of screen design and the impact the choice of typeface has on this.

For myself, ever since being volunteered to create and edit a staff newsletter way back in 1992, in the early days of desk-top-publishing, I have been interested in the impact of type styles and fonts on readers.

My email to net@night was pointing to a fascinating discussion on the BBC arts program Front Row about the implications on the IKEA brand of their change of typeface.

SLA Europe event – The Google-isation of [Re]search

I’m just back from one of the most popular events I can remember in my many years membership of SLA Europe. I’m not sure if it was the catchy title, the interesting speakers or the recent sad closure of the City Information Group that resulted in nearly 100 information professionals gathering in the Balls Brothers rooms at Minster Court this evening.

Kathy Jacobs the Library and Information Manager at Pinsent Masons,  Professor David Nicholas Director of the Department of Information Studies at University College London and Professor Roger James Director of Information Services at University of Westminster talked about how Google is influencing our research behaviours, the challenges this brings to information professionals, as well as the opportunities new search technologies offer.

I should point out that as a rather hastily appointed Chair for the event, my view of the evening might be somewhat skewed. For a more balanced view from the audience I recommend you check out the Organising Chaos blog review. Melanie Goody has also written a short review on the TFPL blog. Sara at Uncooked Data has a more in depth review which I recommend reading.

Dave Nicholas was as controversial as I remember from way back when he was my lecturer at North London Poly (as it was then). He concentrated on the ‘D’ words of dis-intermediation and de-coupling caused by the Internet in general and Google in particular. He pointed out how we as information professionals can’t see what is going on in the digital space. Which has led him to monitor how researchers behave in cyber-space. His evidence shows that consumers want to dive in and out quickly, snatching bits of information. They want everything short and bite sized, preferring abstracts to full content. They scan web pages vertically, zooming past headings and sub-headings, instead of reading horizontally taking in the full text of every paragraph.

One of his most memorable points (which I have only just remembered four days later) was the views of consumers of a health information screen located in a Tesco branch. People seemed to assume that the information came from Tesco and were happy with that trusted brand as a source. However, when informed the content was actually coming from the National Health Service their confidence plummeted. As David put it, Tesco don’t make mistakes, wherease the NHS regularly lets its customers die.

Kathy Jacob reported on her real life experience of going from a meeting with a new manager who wanted to know why they needed a research library when ‘everything could be found with a Google search’, to building a federated search tool for her current firm. The lessons learnt were that the new system must have an equivalent usability, design and speed to Google in order for staff to even try it out. Kathy had the advantage of working in the legal sector, which enabled her to scare researchers with horror stories of cases which had collapsed due to relying on Google searches. In some cases the cost to the law firms involved and subsequent negative impact on the careers of the lawyers concerned were high.

Roger James began his session by asking the audience some provocative questions such as ‘who does the work for Google’? And ‘what is the next big search technology coming down the line’. The answer in both cases is ‘we are’. Every time we click on a link in Google we help them refine their search capability. He wanted to know how many members of the audience were applying this approach in their workplace. Or were they still relying on the old fashioned concepts of surveying their customers? His view was that unless we all join the Google ‘arms race’ we are doomed.

The speakers were followed up with a lively question and answer session from the audience. Which was followed by some intensive networking aided by tasty food and wine sponsored by EBSCO Information Services.

How good is your Escalator Pitch?

I often ask my business advice clients if they have an elevator pitch. Quite a few have not heard this expression before which surprises me.

The basic idea is that in the fortunate event you find yourself in a lift with a potential backer for your business (think Richard Branson), could you convey the essentials of your idea or invention before he got out on the 20th floor?

In practice this means between 30 seconds and two minutes to express all the salient (selling) points without any waffle, which for some of my clients is a challenge to say the least.

To see examples of this in an even more demanding environment head over to Techfluff.tv to watch one of their many escalator pitches. Just be aware that practicing this on the London Underground might get you arrested.

Another inspiring place to visit for when you get a little bit longer to get your idea across (in this case 6 minutes), is Demo.com. In particular have a look at some of the Demo Gods in action to see how it should be done by the best of the best.

About DEMO
The feel you get when you enter the ballroom at DEMO is unlike any other conference. Each company is given just six minutes on the DEMO stage to truly demonstrate how their product will change the world. No PowerPoint or flashy corporate presentations allowed. Just the founders and the technologies many are staking their careers on… it doesn’t get any more straightforward and fast paced than that.

Build your own snazzy website with Squarespace

As a non-techie who has dabbled with building websites for many years, I have constantly been in search of the holy grail of easy build web software.

This is also a big issue for many business start-ups who feel under pressure to have a website, but are worried about the cost or time it would take to build a professional looking one.

Having graduated through Hot Dog (from Sausage Sofware), Microsoft FrontPage and various versions of Adobe  Dreamweaver, I have come to conclusion that building even small simple websites is hard work.

However thanks to a mention on net@night with Amber and Leo I have discovered Squarespace. Using some very clever programmers they have produced a web based service which enables you to produce really quite snazzy websites about as easily as one could imagine for a relatively low cost.

According to their blurb their service has the following advantages:

Know Your Visitors
Learn where they’re coming from, and what keywords they’re using to find you. Our powerful analytics tools help you view the traffic and behavior of your visitors in real time.
Templates That Aren’t Templated
Dozens of professionally designed style variants from name-brand designers. All Squarespace styles allow point and click control over every design element.
Beautiful Photo Galleries
Customizable photo galleries let you choose how you want to present your work. Lightbox integration, hover effects, and automatic image resizing are just a few of the perks.
Intuitive Editing
Want to add content? Perhaps edit something you already wrote? Want to trash something all together? No problem. Our rapid on-site content editing tool will assist you every step of the way. All elements of your text can be manipulated here.
Form Building & Data Collection Squarespace Business packages come equipped with an industrial strength visual form builder. Our form builder contains over 14 field types, and can collect data concurrently via email and a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet
Moving In? Moving Out?
Do you have a blog or website you want to switch over to Squarespace? Moving over to another platform? We make it easy! Regardless of your direction, we can help.

They also give you a month to try it out for free to see how you get on.

Goodbye to the CD-Walkman

I was having something of a mini-clear out over the holidays and came across two rather forlorn looking portable CD players. Neither of my kids expressed any interest or even recognition of these previously prized possessions. Actually my daughter did get excited at one point, but only when I revealed a long missing CD lurking within one of the players.

All of which made me realise just how quickly we have moved on from the orginal format of the cassette-walkman to the CD-walkman to the now ubiquitous MP3 player.

Although Amazon.co.uk still has lots to choose from, evidence is found on the Sony UK website which has just two current models of player to buy, compared to their 42 ‘previous’ players.

The end of the road for the portable CD-player?