The 2-tier idea looks nice on paper, but it's not about assuring some level of QoS on tier 1; the purpose is to make the 2nd tier incredibly crappy for services that a) compete with the ISPs own content services, or b) make a lot of money (e.g. Google). The goal is to levy a tax on services deemed useful or essential by end-users, either by asking consumers to pay extra for uninterrupted service, or asking the likes of Google to pony up for tier 2 service to their servers.
If you have to pay extra on top of your subscription for an assured QoS, you can be sure that the "free" best-effort service is going to suck. It's a cute attempt to get around the stipulations of net neutrality, and it might sound reasonable to legislators, but it absolutely does violate net neutrality, both in letter and in spirit.
And rightly so. Some IT managers like outsourcing because they think they're outsourcing accountability as well. Wrong: when you make the decision to outsource or move stuff to the cloud, it is your responsibility to do some due diligence on the vendor, make sure there's a sensible SLA, and have contingency plans just like you had when the servers were still under your control. Regarding the latter point: a lot of managers forget that when disaster strikes in their own data center, they are in control, and they can allocate resources and extra funds towards getting the most important servers back up first. But when disaster strikes your cloud provider, what priority will you get, when there's thousands of angry clients (including a number of fortune 500 companies) all shouting to get their service restored first?
That doesn't mean that outsourcing and the cloud are bad per se. It means that when you make that decision, you should apply the more or less similar skills and considerations as you did when you still ran your own data center. You as an IT manager are still end responsible for delivering services to the business, and you cannot assume the cloud is a black box that always works. Plan accordingly.
It really depends on what role you are playing. Thinking outside the box, trying a few things here and there, quickly cobbling crap together with whatever tools lie to hand, no process or documentation, modify stuff on the fly? Not such a good idea on a project, even when its stuck badly. But great when doing a quick proof-of-concept on a dime. In PoCs and pilots, you need a lot of agility, and outside-the-box thinkers who might not be the best and brightest but who are good generalists rather than specialists, with knowledge of a vast array of tools and skills they can apply or quickly master as needed. Not someone who cares overly much for office politics but also not someone who smells so bad that you can't let him or her anyone near business people. On the contrary, the ability to speak to "real people" in their own language is important.
I fulfill this role from time to time for one of my clients, doing pilot projects and proof-of-concepts of an innovative and rather volatile nature. I'm not extraordinarily good or bright, and even in an increasingly specialized and compartimentalized IT world I am not the only generalist, but my client thinks I have some rare skills to fill a rare role, and gives me free reign to get their PoCs off the ground (nice work if you can get it, by the way). They do that because I get them results, much cheaper and much faster than a regular project team ever could, while knowing which regulatory and security boundaries not to cross.
Even better: apparently you can wear your "crying" mask for a relaxed, ad-free evening of TV viewing.
Seriously, where have we gone wrong? Somehow, ads seem to have become so important that they have to be crammed into every waking second of our lives (and perhaps into our sleeping time too, at some point). The amount of advertising still seems to be going up, with an every increasing number of commercial breaks, and more recently the annoying popups and overlays during the shows themselves. And everybody's sick of it. Yet there's no apparent consumer outcry for less advertising.
Sure, ads pay for part of the content, but at some point you'd think the market gets saturated. We can increase ads from 6 blocks an hour to 12, have constant overlays, product placement and perhaps ad jingles playing the the background of the show's audio track, but at some point consumers aren't going to buy more, and ad budgets are going to be exhausted. Or have companies entered into some sick arms race, were your ad *has* to be the loudest, and in all of the 12 commercial breaks during one show, in order to beat the competition?
I'd pay handsomely for a TV (or more accurately, a content service) that lets me view what I want, when I want, without any damn ads thanks. But pay extra for a box that puts a camera in my living room, the better to serve me ads?! Seriously, who came up with this?
The UN do a lot, and some of it is actually useful. My beef with the UN, and with pretty much every government ever, is that they are always seeking to extend their span of control beyond what can be considered reasonable, in terms of power, influence, money and taxation. But in democratic nations, government is held in check at least to some degree by its constituents. The problem with the UN (and the EU for that matter) is that there is pretty much no control over what they do. UN-crats and Eurocrats are not held in check by the mandate of their voters, nor by voters in the countries they represent, but only by their colleagues. If a majority of them agrees to something that is opposed by all of the people they are supposed to represent, it will still pass. And what politician will say no to a chance to extend their influence, or an opportunity to take a big wet bite out of some fat cat overseas company's profits?
I really fail to see why the UN or Europe (or anyone else) should be entitled to part of Google's profits. Because they use our infrastructure to make money? For "the privilege of serving non-U.S. users"? That privilege works both ways, and I as a European am (and should be) grateful for the privilege of having so many useful US-based services at my fingertips. I might also add that this infrastructure has already been paid for, by my monthly subscription fees and plenty of public money.
Of course, saying that there is no good reason to tax Google is naïve... they will tax Google because they can, and come up with a good reason. Something along the lines of: "revenues from this internet tax will be applied towards building infrastructure in underdeveloped regions". Enter the Telcos, who are eager to get a nice cut of the job of building that infrastructure. Probably why their lobbyists came up with this proposal in the first place.
I've been pulled aside as well, took about 30 minutes of answering pointless questions. That was a random check though, or maybe the guy just didn't like my face. The question here is: was this guy singled out because of his work on CryptoCat, or was he randomly pulled out of line, with the questions arriving at some point at the work he's doing? "Why are you here? Where did you depart from? Was the trip for business or pleasure? What line of work are you in?" At this point, the guy might have brought up the crypto stuff, after which the interviewer focussed on that.
I think it is supposed to be for trademarked brands... and for whomever can pony up the $100k+ for a generic TLD, after ICANN has extorted those fees from the trademarked brand owners.
If Apple manage to offer that overseas, they might have a winner; I for one would be all over it. I am hoping that one party will come along with enough marketing cloud to convince the content guys that global on demand is the future.
Most legal systems take precedent very seriously, and rightly so. This needs to be fixed on the legislative side; if a law is overly ambiguous or if case law shows that it is interpreted counter to its original intent, then it falls to the lawmakers to come up with a better law.
Of course, in a country governed by lawyers, this will never happen.
I have a last name that is very uncommon in the Netherlands, even more so because it is capitalized differently than usual, and it is "misspelled" to boot. Even so, there's a guy (not family) who shares my first and last name, went to the same university, same department, and graduated on a topic similar to mine. We've published on overlapping topics. So yes, confusion does happen, and I've often been contacted by someone looking for the other guy. Sounds nice since I have just four publications to my name whereas he went into research and has many more, but of course I can't take credit...
I think you are right, though the key differentiator is not chatty vs. discrete messages. Chat done right can solve a number of problems that email has:
- Email sucks as an archive. It's fine to store personal emails just for yourself, but when you dig deep and assess how much critical corporate knowledge is locked away in this multitude of personal archives of all employees, you'll be in for a shock. A Twitter-like chat system for corporations (like Yammer) will retain that knowledge for the right group, including its future members. I find that only a small part of my conversation is actually really private between me and someone else. Most of it will be relevant for my team, for another team, for a special interest group within the company, or for the company as a whole. In a corporate Twitter, asking for knowledge is automatically the same as sharing it, as soon as an answer is given. In email, any answer is lost for everyone but yourself.
- Email is fine for communicating 1 to 1 or 1 to many, but it is a poor vehicle for many-to-many conversations. Chat systems (again citing Yammer as an example... by the way I have nothing to do with Yammer except that my current client uses it) can solve this by having private, ad-hoc chat groups in which participants can be invited or drop out as needed. New joiners will see a clear, linear history of what has already been discussed, instead of a steaming pile of replies-to-replies-to-replies in multiple sub-threads, all intertwined in a single email exchange.
In our team, we've tried sticking to the rule that forbids the use of email for anything that will still be relevant one week from the day of sending. The idea is that any such messages belong to the corporate memory, which means email is out as a vehicle for storing it. Instead, people use Yammer or email links to documents stored in a central repository. It worked out quite well, both improving recall from our corporate memory, keeping everyone on the same page and aware of each others' work, and improving the quality of discussions by electronic means. But we too found that it is extremely hard to break the email habit. One thing that email still has going for it in the corporation is that everyone has it, and everyone is expected to read it several times a day. You might get told of for missing an important email, but being told off for missing an important discussion on some social media thingy? We're not quite there yet.
The point that the article makes is that Facebook cannot adapt in the face of rising use of mobile internet. They may be able to offer users a good mobile experience, but they will not be able to monetize that experience. Personally, I think that's a bit of a stretch. Even if Google and FB can't come up with an effective way to serve ads on mobiles without pissing us off too much, they can still mine and sell our data. Even better: mobile data often comes with location info.
On a side note, I find it a bit sad that the business models of two of the most succesful recent tech startups revolves around finding new ways of serving us more goddamn ads, and selling our data to marketeers who will use it to "improve" their understanding of the market, whatever that means.
That reminded me of the 2nd episode of Charlie Brooker's "Black mirror" miniseries (recommended viewing, by the way). A future where skipping ads costs money, and looking away during an ad will only result in the ad following your gaze along the walls so that you're always looking directly at it. Closing your eyes only pauses the ad and causes a voice to remind you to "resume viewing" over and over again until you open your eyes again. A broadcaster's wet dream...
Few of my friends and family members, young or old, use Facebook as their primary means of communication. Many have accounts there but most still prefer email, their Facebook use is limited to having an online presence and posting pics of their kids to friends. Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who doesn't have or use email. Maybe there's a few kids who only use Facebook... but they will be quickly disabused of the notion that email is dead as soon as they enter the workforce.
If you think email is on the way out, you may be right... but Facebook isn't the replacement. Facebook seems to try very hard to be what AOL was way back when.
What content providers can learn from Steam and Spotify, is that there are plenty of people willing to pay for content even if they can get it for free from some pirate site. And the lesson from iTunes is: reducing the amount of DRM on your content will increase your revenue from legal downloads, not reduce it. Your content will be pirated no matter what measures you take, and the more DRM you add on, the more you will piss off your actual paying customers, and the illegal (and DRM-free) versions of your content will become all the more appealing to them.
I would gladly pay for video content if it comes in convenient formats with the option of format-shifting as well; who in their right mind wants to hunt around on pirate sites with annoying pop up ads, wait for some poorly seeded torrent to finally download, and then finding that what you've downloaded only has the German dubbed audio track? Instead, if I could pay to download from Warner's or HBO's full library of content, I'd be all over it.
Surprisingly ugly, in fact. Same for the Sony watch... It looks great at a glance but from most angles you will notice that godawful cheap-looking white wart on the back of the stylish steel and glass body. Steve Jobs used to kill designers for atrocities like these (rumor has it they're buried behind the Infinity Loop sign).
Speaking of which, the iPod nano would make a nice smart watch; it looks decent with the right strap. Shame we can't put apps on it (plus it lacks Wifi).
I think the whole point is that it doesn't have to be particularly focused. The 20% might be spent on something innovative, on personal study of no direct benefit to the company, or it might be spent on catching up on some background tasks, beneficial to the company even though it doesn't contribute directly to the bottom line or move the little bars in some Gantt chart along. The time should be spent on something more or less related to the business, but the employee gets to decide how that time is spent, without supervision. Even if nothing of value gets produced by that employee in that one day a week, it can still make him a better motivated, smarter, more effective and less burnt-out employee.
It wouldn't work for everyone but I have seen it work for a lot more people than you'd think. At the end of the day you might find the benefits to the employees for whom it does work far outweigh the loss in productivity for those few who will really do nothing of any value whatsoever. If you find yourself at that stage, for gods sake do not try and optimize the scheme by introducing some supervision, detailed reporting, or a list of "acceptable" was to spend that time. Instead of killing the whole scheme that way, accept the loss in view of the larger gains.
1) Back up your stuff. To the cloud, if you expect to write a lot on your travels and/or expect to be able to replace and reprovision stolen devices.
2) Keep details of your account credentials somewhere separate, where you can get to them easily via the web. Properly secured, of course. Use an online password vault or encrypted cloud data store that lets you access files via the web. Also store details of the devices and SIM cards themselves, as well as URLs or phone numbers of the services used to remote wipe/block those devices (if applicable). If your stuff is stolen, you'll want to be able to take quick action and have everything blocked.
3) Properly secure the devices themselves, of course. Use screen locks / pin codes, and set any password vault software so that you have to key in the pass-phrase every time you use it (or per session).
4) If you travel, it helps if you have a credit card with a high enough limit to replace your devices, if you need replacements right away.
5) Check with your cell provider if you can get a separate (spare) SIM, or how you would go about getting a stolen SIM replaced and delivered to your address away from home. Do this before you travel.
Slashdot Mirror
The 2-tier idea looks nice on paper, but it's not about assuring some level of QoS on tier 1; the purpose is to make the 2nd tier incredibly crappy for services that a) compete with the ISPs own content services, or b) make a lot of money (e.g. Google). The goal is to levy a tax on services deemed useful or essential by end-users, either by asking consumers to pay extra for uninterrupted service, or asking the likes of Google to pony up for tier 2 service to their servers.
If you have to pay extra on top of your subscription for an assured QoS, you can be sure that the "free" best-effort service is going to suck. It's a cute attempt to get around the stipulations of net neutrality, and it might sound reasonable to legislators, but it absolutely does violate net neutrality, both in letter and in spirit.
And rightly so. Some IT managers like outsourcing because they think they're outsourcing accountability as well. Wrong: when you make the decision to outsource or move stuff to the cloud, it is your responsibility to do some due diligence on the vendor, make sure there's a sensible SLA, and have contingency plans just like you had when the servers were still under your control. Regarding the latter point: a lot of managers forget that when disaster strikes in their own data center, they are in control, and they can allocate resources and extra funds towards getting the most important servers back up first. But when disaster strikes your cloud provider, what priority will you get, when there's thousands of angry clients (including a number of fortune 500 companies) all shouting to get their service restored first?
That doesn't mean that outsourcing and the cloud are bad per se. It means that when you make that decision, you should apply the more or less similar skills and considerations as you did when you still ran your own data center. You as an IT manager are still end responsible for delivering services to the business, and you cannot assume the cloud is a black box that always works. Plan accordingly.
It really depends on what role you are playing. Thinking outside the box, trying a few things here and there, quickly cobbling crap together with whatever tools lie to hand, no process or documentation, modify stuff on the fly? Not such a good idea on a project, even when its stuck badly. But great when doing a quick proof-of-concept on a dime. In PoCs and pilots, you need a lot of agility, and outside-the-box thinkers who might not be the best and brightest but who are good generalists rather than specialists, with knowledge of a vast array of tools and skills they can apply or quickly master as needed. Not someone who cares overly much for office politics but also not someone who smells so bad that you can't let him or her anyone near business people. On the contrary, the ability to speak to "real people" in their own language is important.
I fulfill this role from time to time for one of my clients, doing pilot projects and proof-of-concepts of an innovative and rather volatile nature. I'm not extraordinarily good or bright, and even in an increasingly specialized and compartimentalized IT world I am not the only generalist, but my client thinks I have some rare skills to fill a rare role, and gives me free reign to get their PoCs off the ground (nice work if you can get it, by the way). They do that because I get them results, much cheaper and much faster than a regular project team ever could, while knowing which regulatory and security boundaries not to cross.
Even better: apparently you can wear your "crying" mask for a relaxed, ad-free evening of TV viewing.
Seriously, where have we gone wrong? Somehow, ads seem to have become so important that they have to be crammed into every waking second of our lives (and perhaps into our sleeping time too, at some point). The amount of advertising still seems to be going up, with an every increasing number of commercial breaks, and more recently the annoying popups and overlays during the shows themselves. And everybody's sick of it. Yet there's no apparent consumer outcry for less advertising.
Sure, ads pay for part of the content, but at some point you'd think the market gets saturated. We can increase ads from 6 blocks an hour to 12, have constant overlays, product placement and perhaps ad jingles playing the the background of the show's audio track, but at some point consumers aren't going to buy more, and ad budgets are going to be exhausted. Or have companies entered into some sick arms race, were your ad *has* to be the loudest, and in all of the 12 commercial breaks during one show, in order to beat the competition?
I'd pay handsomely for a TV (or more accurately, a content service) that lets me view what I want, when I want, without any damn ads thanks. But pay extra for a box that puts a camera in my living room, the better to serve me ads?! Seriously, who came up with this?
What exactly does this have to do with Ayn Rand?
We* vote for UN-crats? I must have missed that bit when I was at the ballot box.
My point exactly. Perhaps I should have worded it differently; they are not held in check by *any* voters directly.
The UN do a lot, and some of it is actually useful. My beef with the UN, and with pretty much every government ever, is that they are always seeking to extend their span of control beyond what can be considered reasonable, in terms of power, influence, money and taxation. But in democratic nations, government is held in check at least to some degree by its constituents. The problem with the UN (and the EU for that matter) is that there is pretty much no control over what they do. UN-crats and Eurocrats are not held in check by the mandate of their voters, nor by voters in the countries they represent, but only by their colleagues. If a majority of them agrees to something that is opposed by all of the people they are supposed to represent, it will still pass. And what politician will say no to a chance to extend their influence, or an opportunity to take a big wet bite out of some fat cat overseas company's profits?
I really fail to see why the UN or Europe (or anyone else) should be entitled to part of Google's profits. Because they use our infrastructure to make money? For "the privilege of serving non-U.S. users"? That privilege works both ways, and I as a European am (and should be) grateful for the privilege of having so many useful US-based services at my fingertips. I might also add that this infrastructure has already been paid for, by my monthly subscription fees and plenty of public money.
Of course, saying that there is no good reason to tax Google is naïve... they will tax Google because they can, and come up with a good reason. Something along the lines of: "revenues from this internet tax will be applied towards building infrastructure in underdeveloped regions". Enter the Telcos, who are eager to get a nice cut of the job of building that infrastructure. Probably why their lobbyists came up with this proposal in the first place.
I've been pulled aside as well, took about 30 minutes of answering pointless questions. That was a random check though, or maybe the guy just didn't like my face. The question here is: was this guy singled out because of his work on CryptoCat, or was he randomly pulled out of line, with the questions arriving at some point at the work he's doing? "Why are you here? Where did you depart from? Was the trip for business or pleasure? What line of work are you in?" At this point, the guy might have brought up the crypto stuff, after which the interviewer focussed on that.
I think it is supposed to be for trademarked brands... and for whomever can pony up the $100k+ for a generic TLD, after ICANN has extorted those fees from the trademarked brand owners.
It's an interesting idea, but it will not appeal to the masses if setting it up is as easy and cheap as getting a FB account.
If Apple manage to offer that overseas, they might have a winner; I for one would be all over it. I am hoping that one party will come along with enough marketing cloud to convince the content guys that global on demand is the future.
Let's turn that around... How much of our own rf emissions would be detected by some faraway listener circling another star? Seems like a long shot...
Or any of the non-free but still relatively cheap navigation apps for Android or iPhone, like TomTom or Navigon, to name a few?
Most legal systems take precedent very seriously, and rightly so. This needs to be fixed on the legislative side; if a law is overly ambiguous or if case law shows that it is interpreted counter to its original intent, then it falls to the lawmakers to come up with a better law.
Of course, in a country governed by lawyers, this will never happen.
I have a last name that is very uncommon in the Netherlands, even more so because it is capitalized differently than usual, and it is "misspelled" to boot. Even so, there's a guy (not family) who shares my first and last name, went to the same university, same department, and graduated on a topic similar to mine. We've published on overlapping topics. So yes, confusion does happen, and I've often been contacted by someone looking for the other guy. Sounds nice since I have just four publications to my name whereas he went into research and has many more, but of course I can't take credit...
I think you are right, though the key differentiator is not chatty vs. discrete messages. Chat done right can solve a number of problems that email has:
- Email sucks as an archive. It's fine to store personal emails just for yourself, but when you dig deep and assess how much critical corporate knowledge is locked away in this multitude of personal archives of all employees, you'll be in for a shock. A Twitter-like chat system for corporations (like Yammer) will retain that knowledge for the right group, including its future members. I find that only a small part of my conversation is actually really private between me and someone else. Most of it will be relevant for my team, for another team, for a special interest group within the company, or for the company as a whole. In a corporate Twitter, asking for knowledge is automatically the same as sharing it, as soon as an answer is given. In email, any answer is lost for everyone but yourself.
- Email is fine for communicating 1 to 1 or 1 to many, but it is a poor vehicle for many-to-many conversations. Chat systems (again citing Yammer as an example... by the way I have nothing to do with Yammer except that my current client uses it) can solve this by having private, ad-hoc chat groups in which participants can be invited or drop out as needed. New joiners will see a clear, linear history of what has already been discussed, instead of a steaming pile of replies-to-replies-to-replies in multiple sub-threads, all intertwined in a single email exchange.
In our team, we've tried sticking to the rule that forbids the use of email for anything that will still be relevant one week from the day of sending. The idea is that any such messages belong to the corporate memory, which means email is out as a vehicle for storing it. Instead, people use Yammer or email links to documents stored in a central repository. It worked out quite well, both improving recall from our corporate memory, keeping everyone on the same page and aware of each others' work, and improving the quality of discussions by electronic means.
But we too found that it is extremely hard to break the email habit. One thing that email still has going for it in the corporation is that everyone has it, and everyone is expected to read it several times a day. You might get told of for missing an important email, but being told off for missing an important discussion on some social media thingy? We're not quite there yet.
The point that the article makes is that Facebook cannot adapt in the face of rising use of mobile internet. They may be able to offer users a good mobile experience, but they will not be able to monetize that experience. Personally, I think that's a bit of a stretch. Even if Google and FB can't come up with an effective way to serve ads on mobiles without pissing us off too much, they can still mine and sell our data. Even better: mobile data often comes with location info.
On a side note, I find it a bit sad that the business models of two of the most succesful recent tech startups revolves around finding new ways of serving us more goddamn ads, and selling our data to marketeers who will use it to "improve" their understanding of the market, whatever that means.
That reminded me of the 2nd episode of Charlie Brooker's "Black mirror" miniseries (recommended viewing, by the way). A future where skipping ads costs money, and looking away during an ad will only result in the ad following your gaze along the walls so that you're always looking directly at it. Closing your eyes only pauses the ad and causes a voice to remind you to "resume viewing" over and over again until you open your eyes again. A broadcaster's wet dream...
Few of my friends and family members, young or old, use Facebook as their primary means of communication. Many have accounts there but most still prefer email, their Facebook use is limited to having an online presence and posting pics of their kids to friends. Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who doesn't have or use email. Maybe there's a few kids who only use Facebook... but they will be quickly disabused of the notion that email is dead as soon as they enter the workforce.
If you think email is on the way out, you may be right... but Facebook isn't the replacement. Facebook seems to try very hard to be what AOL was way back when.
What content providers can learn from Steam and Spotify, is that there are plenty of people willing to pay for content even if they can get it for free from some pirate site. And the lesson from iTunes is: reducing the amount of DRM on your content will increase your revenue from legal downloads, not reduce it. Your content will be pirated no matter what measures you take, and the more DRM you add on, the more you will piss off your actual paying customers, and the illegal (and DRM-free) versions of your content will become all the more appealing to them.
I would gladly pay for video content if it comes in convenient formats with the option of format-shifting as well; who in their right mind wants to hunt around on pirate sites with annoying pop up ads, wait for some poorly seeded torrent to finally download, and then finding that what you've downloaded only has the German dubbed audio track? Instead, if I could pay to download from Warner's or HBO's full library of content, I'd be all over it.
Surprisingly ugly, in fact. Same for the Sony watch... It looks great at a glance but from most angles you will notice that godawful cheap-looking white wart on the back of the stylish steel and glass body. Steve Jobs used to kill designers for atrocities like these (rumor has it they're buried behind the Infinity Loop sign).
Speaking of which, the iPod nano would make a nice smart watch; it looks decent with the right strap. Shame we can't put apps on it (plus it lacks Wifi).
"Why is it called an eyePhone?"
- "Ehm, I'll explain after I install it."
I think the whole point is that it doesn't have to be particularly focused. The 20% might be spent on something innovative, on personal study of no direct benefit to the company, or it might be spent on catching up on some background tasks, beneficial to the company even though it doesn't contribute directly to the bottom line or move the little bars in some Gantt chart along. The time should be spent on something more or less related to the business, but the employee gets to decide how that time is spent, without supervision. Even if nothing of value gets produced by that employee in that one day a week, it can still make him a better motivated, smarter, more effective and less burnt-out employee.
It wouldn't work for everyone but I have seen it work for a lot more people than you'd think. At the end of the day you might find the benefits to the employees for whom it does work far outweigh the loss in productivity for those few who will really do nothing of any value whatsoever. If you find yourself at that stage, for gods sake do not try and optimize the scheme by introducing some supervision, detailed reporting, or a list of "acceptable" was to spend that time. Instead of killing the whole scheme that way, accept the loss in view of the larger gains.
Some suggestions:
1) Back up your stuff. To the cloud, if you expect to write a lot on your travels and/or expect to be able to replace and reprovision stolen devices.
2) Keep details of your account credentials somewhere separate, where you can get to them easily via the web. Properly secured, of course. Use an online password vault or encrypted cloud data store that lets you access files via the web. Also store details of the devices and SIM cards themselves, as well as URLs or phone numbers of the services used to remote wipe/block those devices (if applicable). If your stuff is stolen, you'll want to be able to take quick action and have everything blocked.
3) Properly secure the devices themselves, of course. Use screen locks / pin codes, and set any password vault software so that you have to key in the pass-phrase every time you use it (or per session).
4) If you travel, it helps if you have a credit card with a high enough limit to replace your devices, if you need replacements right away.
5) Check with your cell provider if you can get a separate (spare) SIM, or how you would go about getting a stolen SIM replaced and delivered to your address away from home. Do this before you travel.