Anna Tobin

What is a smart meter?
A smart meter tracks your energy usage and automatically transmits your meter readings to your energy supplier. It means that you no longer have to read your meters and log your usage yourself or rely on estimated readings.
The smart meter programme is an essential national upgrade to replacing old gas and electricity meters. Having a smart meter helps to create a smarter national grid which in turn allows energy suppliers (like us) to better balance supply and demand f...

Britt Ide reveals why she was so excited to join her first international Advisory Board and how she is helping other women in the energy industry to follow in her footsteps.

Taking the first steps
There’s no denying that becoming more sustainable is a hot topic right now, and rightly so. But where to start?
If we all take steps to reduce our impact on the environment, the world would be a much healthier place. So, here are 10 simple steps to help you go greener.
1. Shop at food refill shops
There are a growing number of food refill shops across the UK – you can find one near you by searching online. To cut down on waste packaging, take your own reusable container...

Ott Vatter, managing director of the Republic of Estonia’s e-Residency programme, which enables business people to establish and manage an EU-based company paperlessly from anywhere in the world, explains how UK businesses can benefit from the service after Brexit
Can you explain how e-Residency works?
e-Residency is an Estonian Government programme. It’s a transnational identity that is issued by the Estonian police and border guard. Estonia has had a digital identity programme for fifteen o...

Once U.S.-based chip maker NVIDIA completes its $6.9 billion acquisition of Israeli tech company Mellanox in the next few months, Palestinian engineers contracted to work for Mellanox as reported by Reuters are set to share a $3.5 million payout.
With a shortage of engineers in Israel, the growing pool of talented Palestinian engineers is well placed to fill any gaps in Israel's burgeoning tech sector and Israeli firms are offering stock options to demonstrate to potential Palestinian contrac...

One in five UK organisations could make insurance claims linked to a disorderly Brexit and many will be unsuccessful, warns insurance governance expert Mactavish. Anna Tobin reports
Research by Mactavish shows that 22% of senior executives and managers at British firms believe that over the next 12 months there is a strong chance their organisations will make business interruption insurance claims linked to damages and losses worsened by a disorderly Brexit. Of greater concern, is that many o...

I styled the shoot and wrote the copy for this reader at home feature

Car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover has made a breakthrough in the battle to cure motion sickness. The Tata Motors'-owned brand has pioneered a new technique that could reduce cases of motion sickness by at least 60%.
Drivers are less likely to suffer from motion sickness, but passengers are susceptible to it, so the move towards driverless cars has revved up the funding and interest in finding a cure for this unpleasant condition.
Using a variety of test vehicles and other Jaguar Land Rover f...

Lobby group CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion marked its second anniversary yesterday by urging U.S. CEOs to adopt a new pledge to engage boards of directors and equivalent governing bodies in the development and evaluation of inclusion and diversity strategies.
CEO Action members have already committed to focusing on cultivating workplaces that support open dialogue on complex, and sometimes difficult, conversations about diversity and inclusion. And, they have agreed to implement unconsc...

Anna Tobin, reports on the workshops that BASF has been running this month for SMEs.
The world’s largest chemical business, BASF, has a large network of companies in the UK. Over the last few weeks, it has run a series of workshops for those working in its supply chain to ensure that its UK infrastructure ...

VAT is one of those taxes that you generally accept and think very little about – until you start a business. All of a sudden you have lots of questions about VAT. What exactly is it? When do you need to start charging VAT? And when do you need to start paying VAT? This small business VAT guide is designed to answer all your VAT queries.
What is VAT?
VAT is an acronym that stands for Value Added Tax. VAT is a tax that is added to the price of certain goods and services, it was introduced when...

The blending of video production and distribution techniques with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is now at the stage when it needs to move from an expensive experiment to a profitable mass market success story. But, how feasible is this and over what time frame can it be achieved?
AI and ML have been trialled in various parts of the content chain over the last few years and some applications have even been quite widely adopted. The problem, argues Jacques-Edouard Guill...