Remember when I mentioned yesterday about the world record attempt in Toronto with Mel B (Scary Spice) and Virgin Mobile to have the most mobile phones go off at the same time? Well I was hunting around today trying to find out if they succeeded in their attempt (sorry, no luck finding it yet) but I did however find this photo.

In case you haven’t caught on, here’s the irony. This is an event put on by VIRGIN MOBILE to break a world record to have the most MOBILE PHONES ring at the same time.

AND EVERY SINGLE PERSON THERE HAS A DIGITAL CAMERA.

*Falls over*

There isn’t one camera phone in sight. Like not one. Even Mel B doesn’t have one in her hand. These people must have them somewhere, the whole point of the exercise was to get your phone to ring at noon. There must have been phones on their persons, but every single one of those people thought “ooh I’ll have to bring my digital camera along to get a picture of her”

Jeez louise.

I’m sat on the phone to Chris from The Dogs Trust earlier today, right? We’re debating the finer points of charity funding when all of a sudden I don’t hear anything from Chris. I’m chatting away and I hear silence.

I check the screen of my Nokia E61i and I see the dreaded message:

CONNECTION ERROR

I phoned back and spoke to a confused colleague (”Chris is on the phone?”)

“No, he was on the phone to me, just a second ago, seriously…”

I get connected back to Chris and apologise. He queries what happened.

I have to explain that I’m a T-Mobile user — we then continue our conversation.

How stupidly embarrassing is that?

My handset just disconnected. This isn’t a handset feature. It happens whatever I’m using, whether it’s a Sony Z7, iPhone, any Nokia or whatever. I just get disconnected now and again, randomly.

I have to phone back and it makes me feel like a total numskull.

Why am I using T-Mobile? Well, I think the Flext plan is a good deal. I like it. I don’t like Vodafone’s idiot call charges once you use up your minutes. I think it’s ridiculous to pay 35p a minute to talk to someone on another network. It is, afterall, 2007.

I’m also rather impressed at the 55p/min interational rates. Yes it’s expensive to make a call from Los Angeles to London, but I like the fact I’m paying rates nearby what a Vodafone customer is paying to talk to me on T-Mobile when we’re both in the UK.

By contrast, Three’s US rate is £1.20/min to make a call and £0.80/min to receive.

Every time I get near dumping T-Mobile, I take a close look at the prices and……… arse. I don’t know.

What’s your opinion?

Should I stay or should I go?

Link: BBC NEWS | Entertainment | ITV ‘misled viewers on phone-ins’

So TV broadcaster ITV have just finished an internal A review into their use of premium SMS and phone services.. and guess what? They’ve figured that they screwed up, and overcharged a stack of people. Ok so they didn’t exactly say those words - preferring to announce the discovery of a “serious cultural failure” within the company.

According to executive chairman Michael Grade, the company made £7.8m from uncounted votes. Whether that’s just their cut of the revenue or the amount ripped out of viewers isn’t clear - however he did say they’d reimburse anyone who was ‘misled’.

Mr. Grade also said “I’ve never been involved in anything as grisly as this or anything that’s damaged broadcasting as much as this”.

Perhaps he hasn’t watched the output of his own channel lately?

Rax, Where’s Mike? and Loulou have recently added some fantastic mobile crimes to the Top 10 Mobile Crimes thread on the SMS Text News discussion forums.

We’ve gone way past 10 now.

A few nuggets:

- Saying “I’m on a train” more than once when you’re on a train. (Where’s Mike?)
- People who insist on keeping their phones on silent so they can’t be disturbed, but then take them out and check them every 5 minutes in case they have a text or call. (Loulou)
- Leaving on your key tones on so that everbody is forced to listen to ever letter you input into the SMS you are in the middle of composing… beeb-beeb-beep… beep….

Have you got more pet hates? I’d like to document as many as possible and turn them into a How-To feature, I reckon (or actually, a How-Not-To feature!). Please do add yours to the thread!

A bit of dramatic license there with the headline. In fact, the Postal Strike is just winding me up. It will no doubt cause a large amount of chaos for people waiting to receive their mobile phone bills or trying to pay them by cheque.

I don’t entirely know what’s going on, strike wise, except that I’ve not had any mail for ages. Days, weeks, … I dunno, I returned from Italy having been away SEVEN days and had no post, with the exception of a birthday card that was entirely wrongly addressed.

In this age of immediate communications, I can’t explain to people just how insanely frustrating it is not to have a decent postal system in this country.

My mother posted me a letter last week — she got the ‘last post’ (that is, 5.30pm pick up from the local mailbox) mid-week last week. The letter still hasn’t arrived.

How bad is it that we don’t have a basic infrastructure that works — even when there’s no strike on.

And how bad is it that, in 1776, the Great British people were able to deliver a letter from Bristol to London (118 miles) overnight, taking 16 hours and requiring around 11 horse changes? Yet in the 21st Century, all we’re able to muster is a raised set of eyebrows, a wry smile and a ‘tut’, together with ‘isn’t it ridiculous?’ mutterings.

British Postal Museum: 1776 -John Palmer proposes using coach and horses to deliver mail. August 2 The first mail coach journey is made from Bristol to London via Bath overnight and takes 16 hours. Palmer’s system requires horses to be changed every ten miles because of the speed at which they travel.

I haven’t bothered with the strike much. Is there a strike? Apparently. South London somewhere. Who cares. It just means your shitty mail service is, temporarily, shitter.

The Telegraph reports that there’s another strike due — a week long walk out because folk don’t, according to the Post Office Chief Exec, want to ‘work the hours they’re being paid to’. Oh and most probably a pay increase. I’m deliberately not paying too much attention otherwise it would wind me up far too much.

Sentences like this really do it for me in terms of maximum wind-up value:

A union spokesman said organising rolling stoppages meant that workers would not lose more than a day’s pay while maximising the impact on services.

Just ridiculous.

Me? Well I’ve started couriering stuff. I found a wicked little firm that will send a document or small parcel anywhere in London for £4.99. Pure genius. The chaps arrive on their bike and bish bash bosh it arrives at the other end, same day, same hour(ish).

That or I fax it, or get FedEx to sort it out. The post is for eBay stuff that doesn’t have to arrive for weeks. I have, for years, been trying to avoid using the shoddy postal service.

Ever since I studied law years ago and found out that one is deemed to have ‘received notice’ one business day after a first class letter has been posted to you, I’d get nervous when it came to mail because nothing ever seemed to arrive on time. I didn’t like the idea of being served notice by someone and only finding out 5 days into the 7 day notice period because of the dire service.

Goodness me, in this world of electronic magic and instant communications, the last thing you want to be doing is going on strike. It’s far too easy to cut the Postman out nowadays.

Link: I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language | the Daily Mail

It must be a slow news day over at the Daily Mail. With no apparent stories of immigrants stealing our jobs, paedophiles ravaging our kids or any other general threat to the pretend ‘la la land’ middle England readership that the Daily Mail purports to represent, they’ve decided to lay into text messaging.

It is the relentless onward march of the texters, the SMS (Short Message Service) vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours eight hundred years ago.

They are destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped.

Right.. I’d imagine Genghis Khan would be a little peeved to have his plundering and pillaging antics compared to someone asking if you fancy a pint later (or should that be l8r?)

PS: I expect someone will buy me this t-shirt after my little rant

The internet is about collaboration, community, and the sharing of information, right? Even more so with blogging - which is why we love writing this site so much. However, what’s not really fair is ripping off the whole blog, removing all references to SMS Text News and republishing it under your own name.

Quoting our stuff is good, and is welcomed. There’s nothing wrong with link love either..  but the biscuit is well and truely taken when you find sites out there that are pumping every single article we lovingly handcraft for your reading pleasure straight into their own site and passing it off as their own. No link love, no hat tips, no credits, no nothing. And then they fill it up with Google ads, get it indexed by the search engines, and sit back to wait for their fortune to amass from advertising - ableit very slowly.

Honestly (and I’m sure Ewan will agree), it’s not an ego thing - it’s just principle. If you’ve referenced posts in your own blog or site in the past, we salute you. If you’ve given us link love or a hat tip, again you’re our friend - and we owe you a pint sometime.

However.. If you’re one of those people who are ripping everything we post lock stock and barrel, removing all sign of a credit, pretending it’s yours and didn’t even have the decency to ask first - then watch this space. Your details might be appearing on a ‘name and shame’ list in the not too distant future..

I used to love my Good mobile email. Having seen Ewan wax lyrically about it in previous blogs, I took the plunge in April, got myself a Nokia E61 and a Good-enabled account with Fasthosts.

It was all lovely and dandy for a while, but in the last few months it’s gone completely to pot. The application itself is constantly crashing on my phone - which wouldn’t normally be the end of the world except it holds all my contacts. This means I’m getting phone calls and texts from people who are in my address book but no name coming up on the screen - just a number. I’ve sent a few embarrasing replies to texts asking who people are - which really makes me look stupid.

At the moment, the last email in my Outlook inbox is 1.53pm today. The last one on my Good app? 10.09pm last night. There’ve been quite few emails in between those times. No amount of synchronization, restarting, prodding poking or hitting my phone seems to want to make it sync.

Just to check it wasn’t just me, I talked to Ewan. He’s running good on a Nokia E61i - and is having the same problems. Maybe Good will fix it in their new version - announced as ‘coming soon’ a while back but no ones quite sure when…

In the meantime, I’m seriously considering my alternatives. I like my push email, in fact I rely on it to keep in touch when I’m out and about. However, if it ain’t doing the job, why bother keeping it?

Answers on a postcard please.. especially if you’re from Good themselves.

Update:  about three hours after I wrote this blog entry, all my mails mysteriously appeared, and my mailbox is now up to date. I haven’t heard anything official from Good or Fasthosts as to why it was broken, but then I wasn’t expecting a miracle.

Link: BCNG Portals Page (R)

Welcome to the picturesque town of Maple Ridge, about 45 minutes East of Vancouver. Surrounded by magnificent mountains, pastoral meadows and beautiful lakes, it’s a great place to take a vacation (so says the area website). However, bad things are afoot in Maple Ridge. Residents are getting worrying text messages telling them they’ve won a cash prize, in a ’smishing’ outbreak.

The text message that beeped on Veronica Cellier’s mobile phone was too good to be true. It said congratulations, you have won $428,000 and directed the Maple Ridge resident to e-mail “the claims office” at claims@standfordproductions.org.

“I’d never heard of scams through text messaging,” the 32-year-old said incredulously. “I’m just not stupid enough to respond.” Cellier was one of four Telus customers to report the scams which targets short message service (SMS).  Smishing or SMS phishing variation of the phishing scam where the user will receive a text message with an Internet or e-mail address.

The article goes on to say that ’smishing’ is like phishing - if you follow the link or reply, bad virus things will immediately invade your computer, phone, washing machine and toaster.

It’s times like this when you do wonder about how gullable some people really are.. Anyone know if Nigeria gets cheap texts to the UK?

Had this enquiry in from an SMS Text News reader:

Wonder if you can help - I have an Orange mobile (new contract as of last week) and I cannot recieve ANY text messages from anyone on O2….all other networks can text me with no problems. Have you any ideas why this may be?

Any help most appreciated

Does anyone have any suggestions what could be causing this?

A few friends of mine have HTC phones. HTC? You know, the guys that make that nice Touch handset - the one that Ewan quite likes. I’ve really been into Symbian phones over the past few years (both S60 and UIQ), and never really considered a Windows Mobile device. However if someone had asked me up until a few weeks ago which one would I recommend, I wouldn’t hesitate to send them off to get an HTC unit.

Then I witnessed a strange thing. In the same weekend, two friends had their screens completely fail, both within a couple of hours of each other. We’re not just talking a slight failure, or maybe a few duff pixels: oh no, we’re talking complete and castastrophic display failure. There’s no sign of physical damage to the plastic part of the screen, not even a scratch.

They’re both with Orange, so a quick phone call, and Orange being their usual unhelpful self (’have you tried switched it off and on again?’), and the next day they got their handsets replaced by courier.

Over the weekend, the screen went *again* one of these two week old replacement handsets. That’s it in the picture at the top of the article. It looks like someones shot at the middle of the screen - but again not a single scratch on the plastic. They haven’t been dropped, kicked, sat on, or anything obvious like that - the displays just seem to be randomly failing.

One phone having a problem is just bad luck. Two - hmm, perhaps a concidence. Three phones from two people in as many weeks? It reeks of a manufacturing fault, or a problem with a batch. Orange just keep replacing the handsets under insurance - but how long will that last? 

Incidently in all my years in mobile, with more handsets than I can remember under my belt, I’ve never had a broken screen on a phone. Seen it happen once on an HP iPAQ, but that was after serious daily abuse and a catastrophic dropping incident.

I’ve been going to and fro between King’s Cross, St Pancras and Euston Station for about three hours this morning. Total arse.

Having established that there was insufficient space on the Sheffield train (”change at Sheffield for another mind numbing trip to X, Y and Z prior to arriving at Darlington”), I headed back to my place here in London to de-sweat.

On the escalator, I was barged out the way by a chap in a rubbish pinstripe suit (unforgivable) with an equally cheap hands-free kit.

He was holding the microphone bit continuously in front of his mouth which, because it was a piece of crap hands-free kit, would normally hang around his belly button.

I can’t stand to see this. It really winds me up. What is the point? Just talk on the handset. The whole REASON for a hands-free kit is that you use it without your hands.

Gahh.

On a lighter note, my Jawbone bluetooth hands-free thing should arrive soon.

I took a picture of him with the N95.

But when I was walking back here, considering exactly what I should write, I decided that to publish his picture could well be bad news.

This is quite an interesting one sent in my an SMS Text News reader and T-Mobile USA customer who can’t quite understand why his 160 character text messages are being delivered with wildly inaccurate timestamps.

Any ideas?

I am not sure if you are aware of this, but shortly after the time change in March, those of us in Arizona noticed that all of our incoming text messages were time stamped an hour ahead of local time. I have contacted their ‘customer support’ folks many times by phone since March, and gotten nowhere. I have e-mailed them numerous times.

Reeeeeeally weird!

Yesterday I was told that it is because we are on the Denver network.

What’s that got to do with anything?

You’re on the Denver network therefore you should be expecting messages to phase shift in and out of this universe? Is that it?

IF that is the case, why are my incoming texts time stamped correctly? Why does my phone show the correct time? Anyway, I was able to get an e-mail address for the T-Mobile Senior Vice President of Customer Service (Sue Nokes), so I sent her an e-mail.

Right on! Straight to the top!

I received a call from a guy who works in the office of their President. They say that they are going to get it resolved. Incidentally, I have been with T-Mobile for five years now. This is the first time the text messages have been time stamped incorrectly.

Keep us updated.

If you too are on the phase-shifting T-Mobile Denver network, this is why your 9am text message from your girlfriend appears to have been sent at 6am this morning.

It’s July (just in case you hadn’t noticed), and time for the industry to clear off for two months. That means it’s all very quiet out there in the world of mobile at the moment. Very quiet indeed. The only real thing happening is the iPhone PR steam roller is in it’s usual frenzy - Google News reports about 18,346 in the past 24 hours on Apple’s ‘wonder device’.

In comparison, SMS comes up with 3,797 mentions. Most of it is either dull as dishwater, or we’ve already talked about it - so there’s not a lot to link to at the moment.

Anyway, that aside. Can I have a show of hands (or a click of the mouse and a few keystrokes to leave a comment) on a proposal to not post any more pointless stories about the iPhone. Obviously if something exciting happens, like we get one to play with (look, there’s a flying pig!), it might just justify a story.

What do you think? Leave a comment, or drop me a mail to alex@smstextnews.com

Link: PC World - iPhone Activation Disasters

What with other rather more pressing issues keeping the news broadcasters busy the past few days, you’d be forgiven for forgetting the iPhone launched on Friday just gone. So how has it gone so far? Rather badly, it seems.

There’s reports doing the rounds that many quite delighted purchasers of Apple’s new wonder-toy have been driven to despair, as their handset resembles a rather expensive brick until it can be activated. A simple process, you’d imagine? Apparently not.

Jim Dalrymple from Macworld posted a blog entry late on Friday, in which he says “Three hours after getting my hands on one, I am ready to drop the thing from the 44th floor of the New York Hilton”. Fellow Macworld reporter Dan Moren reports that he had a DOA iPhone, which lasted all of a few seconds before giving up the ghost forever. Declan McCullagh over at CNET has, at the time of writing, been waiting 36 hours so far for his phone to be activated.

So what do AT&T have to say about these problems? Apparently they pretty much don’t exist. Courtesy of the San Jose Mercury News:

A spokesman for AT&T, however, said that the glitches had been minor and isolated, and that the company was working to fix them on an individual basis.

“The vast majority of iPhone activations on iTunes are going through in a matter of minutes,” said spokesman Ted Carr. “Many of the situations causing a delay are being resolved in a matter of hours. But we are not experiencing any significant companywide activation issues.”

Just by chance the apparently few people that are affected by this ‘minor, isolated’ problem are prolific bloggers and journalists - that’s if you believe AT&T’s response. Whilst writing this post I’ve come across about 20 or so different examples of activation problems on less than five different news reports and websites.

Three things AT&T and Apple should do at this point. 1 - admit there’s a problem. 2 - refund everyones $36 non-activation fee they’ve paid, and 3 - say sorry. Denying the problem exists (in AT&T’s case) and ignoring phone calls from journos (in Apple’s case) is not going to win you any friends.

Link: BBC NEWS | Education | Mobile phones ‘offensive weapons’

Expect this to turn up in the Daily Mail tomorrow..

A teaching union is calling for mobile phones to be classed as potentially offensive weapons.  NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said the way pupils misused them to bully their teachers meant they should be banned from school premises.

Hmm ok. There was me thinking from the headline we were talking about throwing mobiles at the teacher, or attacking them with the power of a Razr flip. Anyway, the article goes on:

Ms Keates is raising the issue of mobiles with ministers at a task force meeting on Tuesday. She is particularly concerned about websites such as Ratemyteacher and Bebo which, she says, provide a vehicle for false allegations and abuse by pupils which can damage teachers’ self esteem and careers.

She said: “These sites are fed by pupils’ misuse of mobile phones. The time has come for mobiles in schools to be placed in the category of a potentially offensive weapon and action taken to prevent their use by pupils while on school premises. Regrettably, our evidence shows that some schools are still not taking these issues seriously.”

Right. Firstly, what’s stopping pupils using Ratemyteacher and Bebo from their PCs at home? In fact, they’re probably more likely to do that as the data charges on prepay are pretty crippling. 

And second - ‘offensive weapon’? What’s that about? I’m surprised they haven’t banned pencils yet, following my complaint sometime in the 80’s that the boy that used to sit next to me in Infants school used to constantly stab me in the leg with a blunt HB.

Of course if you’re a Daily Mail reader, this is yet another serious issue that needs a knee-jerk reaction. Standby for the feedback from ‘Angry from Tunbridge Wells’..

I’m absolutely tired of dissing Windows Mobile.

I’ve had enough of it, I really have.

I met ANOTHER guy the other day sporting a Windows Mobile handset.

“Do you like it?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s brilliant,” he responded, “I love it!”

“Shit!” I thought, reaching for my SMS Text News business cards, “Maybe I’ve found someone I can actually blog!”

I grabbed the guy, sat him down and explained I ran this site and that I really would like his opinions.

“So,” I began, “Tell me about your device, what do you love about it?”

“Well, it’s just amazing. I really love it,” he starts, “Although I do have to reboot it about 3-4 times a day, especially when it hangs or cashes,”

My face dropped.

F*** it. What do I have to do to find someone who actually uses these devices without trouble?

Seeing my face, he asked if my new Nokia E61i needs a few reboots each day.

I looked at him with a degree of horror.

Er no. No. No it doesn’t. Maybe if you overload it, as I often do, with a ton of things, it might slow… but crash? Rare. Now and again you’ll get an application error, but, you know, we’re talking rare.

So.

I’ve had enough.

I emailed HTC’s PR and asked to be put in touch with whoever does their PR in the United Kingdom. After an abysmal time with that iPAQ over the weekend, I am desperate to:

a) Find some people who LOVE their Windows Mobile devices without immediately telling me how many times they crash.
b) Check out some of the latest HTC handsets and try and redress the balance of reporting here on SMS Text News.

I’ll let you know if I get any response from HTC.

If you can help, by the way, let me know?

I teach a class of 11 and 12 year olds web, blogging, Google and the like every Thursday evening.

En route to the centre yesterday (it’s in a particularly dodgy part of town) I decided to be uber-organised and book a taxi for my departure later on. I even remebered the number of Addison Lee, the taxi firm, without having to go on the web to look it up.

Chatting leisurely to the lady on the phone, I had almost completed my reservation when I felt my Nokia N95 slip away from my ear.

My first instinct was to reach around and pull a rather vindictive Karate move. I don’t practice regularly, but I still know the moves well. But I stopped myself as I thought that one of my students — seeing me walking to class — was playing a joke. It wouldn’t look too good, I decided, to turn around, disable the student and snatch back my N95 with his parent looking on in shock.

Imagine my surprise and amusement when I saw that it wasn’t one of my students — it was a lumberling fat bloke jogging away with my handset.

Ah.

‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU IDIOT?’ I yelled at him.

‘I’M ONLY GOING TO DISABLE THE HANDSET!’

There were a group of this chap’s friends standing nearby. Maybe 8 or so. One or two on pushbikes.

‘Does he know what he’s doing?’ I asked them.

‘Did your fone get nicked mate?’ one of’em replies. I stared at him in the eyes for a few moments.

‘Does your colleague know how it works with mobile phones nowadays?’ I ask.

To wide-eyed looks, I explain the rudiments of IMEI and sim locking, ‘That means when he tries to flog it, the guy buying it will try to use it… and find it DUNT WURK.’

They didn’t seem to know this. One of’em turns to me, “He’s my cousin, I know him, I can get your sim card back for a tenner, mister?’

Ahh. A well trodden path of crime, I thought.

‘Sure, I”ll give you £20 if you get me sim card back,’ I offered.

‘No, just a tenner, mister, now. Give it to me now and I’ll go and get it off him.’

They must think my head buttoned up the back.

Well, I can understand why: I just let some total arse walk off with my N95.

I declined the offer and walked round the corner to the education centre. My students were wide-eyed with excitement — “Someone jacked your phone, Sir?”

I phoned the local Police. Having not had my handset stolen in stuch a stupid manner before, I wasn’t quite clear on the procedure. The chap at the local station asked me to dial 999.

‘I haven’t been stabbed or anything, it’s just a handset?’ I queried.

‘Yeah, but it’s a crime isn’t it sir?’

Very well. I phoned 999. The emergency mobile lookup worked nicely.

Two emissaries from the baddie who took my phone turned up on pushbikes: ‘Mister, we can get your sim card back for a tenner!’

‘No, I’m fine thanks,’ I replied.

‘What about all your valuable numbers, Mister? Don’t want to lose them doya?’

I smiled at the guy and motioned to the air, ‘My numbers are in the clouds.’ (I was referring to Zyb, to Good Mobile Messaging, to Fasthosts, to the fact I am more or less device independent. My data doesn’t reside on just one handset.)

Heh. That confused him and his mate.

‘But, for a tenner! We can get the sim back! Think about your numbers!’

Ahhh. Definitely a well used technique.

I walked into the centre as I explained that, ‘Mine are synched, I don’t need them back. Thanks.’

Within a few moments, plain clothed Police Officers arrived and I sat in the back and cruised the streets hunting for the chap. Very good service.

‘You’re remarkably calm,’ the lady from T-Mobile said, when I phoned to deactivate everything. I had my E61 you see. Never without a phone!

I smiled to myself, still feeling a Class-A idiot for letting the guy run off.

‘Well, I was getting slightly bored of the N95 and it was just a pointless crime.’

T-Mobile were extremely efficient. Good news.

I realised then that I was truly device independent. It is an arse to have lost the N95. But not a huge problem. Not a real issue. It hasn’t stopped my business in it’s tracks. I am using my 3UK Nokia N73 and my new T-Mobile sim arrives tomorrow. For other people, losing their handset is a total, total, total bind.

For me? Meh. Annoying, yes. I feel stupid for not slapping the arse. Although I doubt his friends would have reacted well to that.

I ended up doing what everybody else in the real world does: Just walking away.

I’m disappointed that this chap felt his best bet that early evening was to take my handset.

Mostly, I’m in a little bit of confusion that I didn’t feel more cheated, more outraged, more angry.

When the Police Officer radioed into his handset, ‘We’re onboard with the victim doing a cruise around the area,’ I thought, ‘Who’s the Victim?’

Definitely not me. I’m briefly inconvenienced but I’ll just buy another.

As for insurance, no. I don’t have any mobile insurance. I never bother. I think it’s the height of nonsense to pay £19 a month (which, I think I was quoted) to insure my handset…

First, I’ve got a ton of them and typically, I end up changing them like the wind.

Second, £19 a month is what I pay to T-Mobile for 1,000 off-peak minutes for one of my other accounts. That’s a WHOLE service plan, a month.

Third, I’m never stupid enough to use my phone in a dodgy area…………………

So, last night, I changed the SMS Text News database and login details as a precaution. They were on my phone contacts.

Smart man, yes?

Only, I forgot to update the configuration files here on the server, thus I’ve been displaying a WP error to the world for about 7 hours.

Duh.

We’re back… welcome! You’re looking healthy today!

DEVELOPING STORY

More shortly from the reporter on the scene.

Had this in from SMS Text News reader Reuben Raveendran, talking about his experiences with the new Vodafone Mobile Internet service. He’s very kindly allowed us to quote his email, so over to Reuben..

- - - -

On Wednesday last week I called up Vodafone to add the £7.50 “Mobile Internet” bundle to my account and was looking forward to using it the next day (activates overnight) on my Nokia E61. I used the “internet” GPRS access point like I have in the past and was joyful that I no longer had to pay £2 per megabyte for Good Mobile Messaging and Roadsync or so I thought…..
 
I did my usual RSS feed reading that Thursday morning and read about how Vodafone had butchered the internet. Various individuals commented that you can avoid the butchering when web browsing on your phone by switching your preferences to “PC Standard” or using the “internet” access point instead of the Vodafone Live access point. I then wondered if usage of the “internet” access point was actually covered by the £7.50 bundle and today I can unhappily confirm that it isn’t because my unbilled usage for last week has finally updated and I was charged whenever I used the “internet” access point. To be fair Vodafone do state that you have to use the wap.vodafone.co.uk (Vodafone Live) access point to use the “Mobile Internet” bundle. (second paragraph under Pay Monthly customers)
 
The big problem is Good Mobile Messaging refuses to work through the Vodafone Live access point because of the gateway in the middle that breaks the end to end connection. Roadsync will connect to an Exchange server with Activesync Direct Push but will disconnect after 2.5 mins with a timeout error. This doesn’t happen when using the “internet” access point. So if you plan to use push email with Vodafone forget about signing up  with Vodafone’s “Mobile Internet” data bundle because it just won’t  work. It would be nice if you could warn your readers about this. It’s back to WiFi for me and I’ll just have to wait a few more months for my contract before I’m off to T-mobile or Three where I don’t have to pay £2 per megabyte for a few megabytes of email…..

- - - -

Thanks Reuben for sharing your experiences - but oh dear me. Why can’t this stuff just work? I’ve seen tube posters around London extolling the virtue of using mobile email with Vodafone. I think it’s part of the same campaign that suggested mobile TV was a good way to cheer up your morning commute into work on the train. I wonder sometimes whether the marketing people actually speak to the product and technical people at mobile operators..

Had this in earlier from our very own Krystal.

- - -
So I went to the mall on my lunch, and after being thoroughly
disappointed with the selection at H&M today, I thought I’d poke my
head into Wireless Wave (generic phone type place, probably like
Phones 4 U?)

So I say to the guy (full well knowing the answer) after his pouncing
on me the minute I go in and saying “Can I help you miss?”

Me: “Yes, I’m looking for the Nokia N95, I saw a photo of it it looks very nice”

Man: “The what sorry?”

Me: “The Nokia N95, do you have any?”

Man: “Ummm I’m sorry miss, you must have the name wrong, there is no
such thing as a Nokia N95. Are you sure it wasn’t this, or this or
that you’ve got the name wrong?”

Me “Nope I’m sure.”

Man: “well that phone doesn’t exist”

oh boy… that was almost cruel of me wasn’t it?

- - -

Hilarious

Link: MIKA’S SKINT! - 3am - Showbiz - Mirror.co.uk

If you were looking for affirmation that it’s not just SMS Text News contributor Ben Harvey who has problems with staff in mobile phone stores, maybe this will help.

According to the Daily Mirror, pop star Mika - the number one selling artist behind that catchy/annoying (delete as applicable) tune ‘Grace Kelly’ was ‘laughed out of the shop by a gleeful assistant’ after failing a credit check.

A red-faced Mika, 23, reveals: “The salesman was determined I was not getting a phone from him. He took real delight in announcing to the entire shop I was broke, skint and penniless.”

The star confesses: “I went into a mobile phone shop and failed every credit rating check there is. I didn’t even know what a credit rating was until then.”

Says the Beirut-born 24-year-old: “The guy serving had no interest in who I was. My friend who was with me was just p***ing himself with laughter. Shamed Mika tried to save face by offering to pay two years’ worth of bills in advance - but still the shop guy wouldn’t budge.

Oh dear. So it’s one thing failing a credit check, but making such a song and dance about it? Of course this could just be hyped out of proportion for a bit of PR spin.. Maybe he should have just got a prepay contract?

Link: Vodafone says VoIP is ‘expensive’ and ‘unsafe’ | The Register

Another day, another crap reason from a mobile operator for not allowing VOIP on their network and/or handsets. This time, it’s Vodafone.

Vodafone is telling customers that VoIP services are insecure - even as Sky News is reporting that VoIP calls threaten our war on terror because such calls can’t be intercepted.

Several El Reg readers have been in communication with Vodafone about their VoIP policy, and one sent us a received email from Vodafone Customer Services.

This explains that VoIP is an expensive and unsafe way to communicate. “Expensive” is certainly true, depending on the data tariff, “unsafe” should really be justified, especially with Sky News whipping up a storm about terrorists using VoIP to evade detection.

Oh dear me. Meanwhile, the article also reports that Vodafone Australia are quite happily selling the Nokia N95 with the VOIP client intact, unlike the UK operation which is stripping it out.

After my post the other day about, amongst other things, T-Mobile restricting my web access via web’n'walk, I finally snapped. I did something about it.

 Logging on to the T-Mobile mobile homepage last night, I noticed they’d added Facebook on the front page. Wicked. Perhaps they’ve added it to the whitelisted sites and I could access it?

Alas no, it was still locked this morning. So off to the T-Mobile store I went, ID and handset in hand.

“Hello, can I unlock my handset please?”

“Certainly sir, you want to access adult sites?”

“No, just Myspace, Facebook, and MSN. I don’t want dodgy stuff”

At this point the rather charming sales assistant gives me a dirty look. I then go into the total denial that I’m accessing p*rn on my mobile mode, trying to persuade her it’s for proper things. Uhuh. Right. She’s looking at me like I’m a fully paid up member of the dirty raincoat brigade, and my newspaper of choice is the Daily Smut.

Anyway couple of minutes later, and an hour of waiting for it to update, I can now access a service that T-Mobile are advertising on their homepage. Fantastic. But what a palava.. She even gave me a lecture in the shop, reminding me if I lend my handset to anyone under 18 I’d have to call up and put the lock back on. Yes of course, Facebook and Myspace are a hot bed of sordidness and nudity. Then again, maybe I’ve lead a sheltered life