This is me trying to embed YouTube video…
Here is the video:
except, of course, there it isn’t. YouTube embedments are thrown away?
Robot
September 8, 2009 by munchyratWhere to find big-keypad phones without too many features
June 2, 2009 by munchyratI see NewswWireless.Net (Yes, grownups don’t want toy phones) … has picked up on Silverphone. Question: What do grownups want to do with mobiles? Answer:
They want to make calls!
In what they say is the first of a series of pointers for “I don’t want a smart phone!” users, Buy simple mobile phones for OAP Elderly and visually impaired – Silverphone is featured on NewsWireless. Silverphone specialists in phones for Silver Surfers:
We are the UK’s most popular place to find easy to use mobile phones. We have recently been featured on BBC 1, ITV’s This Morning show and a host of other publications.
Most of our products have large buttons and single button call functions. Our big button phones are perfect for OAPs, people with special needs and lone workers as they very often require a phone that is simple to understand and easy to use.
Look forward to seeing more pointers!
Where to find a big-keyboard phone without too many features…?
June 2, 2009 by munchyratI see NewswWireless.Net (Yes, grownups don’t want toy phones) … has picked up on Silverphone. What do grownups want to do with mobiles? Answer:
They want to make calls!
In what they say is the first of a series of pointers for “I don’t want a smart phone!” users, Buy simple mobile phones for OAP Elderly and visually impaired – Silverphone is featured. It specialists in phones for Silver Surfers:
We are the UK’s most popular place to find easy to use mobile phones. We have recently been featured on BBC 1, ITV’s This Morning show and a host of other publications.Most of our products have large buttons and single button call functions. Our big button phones are perfect for OAPs, people with special needs and lone workers as they very often require a phone that is simple to understand and easy to use.
Look forward to seeing more pointers!
The ghosts of pens…
May 21, 2009 by munchyratA friend remarked:
If a ghost needs to remember something
- like a telephone number – then she needs to write it on a ghostly sheet
of paper with the ghost of a pen.Yes, that sounds reasonable.
I think we can all agree that pens don’t have ghosts.
Therefore ghosts can’t remember things.
I disagreed:
The ghosts of many, many pens (and spectacles, and bus passes, and cups,
and paper clips) haunt me daily, as I search for them – and I seem to hear
their silent voices bewailing their disappearance. And socks…
And then someone posted this:
Postcards and letters
T-shirts and sweaters
Passports and Parkas
Mobiles and chargers
Two tennis rackets
Blue Rizla packets
A new sheep-skin jacket
I lost it allAll through my life there have been
Many rare and precious things
I have tried to call mine
But I just cannot seem
To keep hold of anything
For more than a short time
Possessions of a sentimental kind
They were mine, now they’re notGym-kits and trainers
Asthma inhalers
Silk-cuts and Bennies
Ten-packs and twenties
C-class narcotics
Antibiotics
The holes in my pockets
I lost it allAll that I’d like is to know
Just where do those lost things go?
When they slip from my hands
Then one night in a dream
I passed through a sheepskin screen
To a green, pleasant land
I found them all piled up into the sky
And I cried tears of joy
Apparently it’s from:
Lost Property – the Divine Comedy.
father, daughter… anybody know this one?
May 6, 2009 by munchyratThe Wounded Woman: Healing the Father-daughter Relationship by Linda Schierse Leonard (Paperback – 3 Nov 1998)
21 Used & new from £3.99
4.0 out of 5 stars (4)Books: See all 3,989 items
Technorati Tags: father, daughter, father-daughter bonding
Father and Daughter…?
May 6, 2009 by munchyratI want to find some activities for a new father and his daughter, and ideas that weren’t corny “she’s a gurly” stuff. You know, instead of games like “fasten Daddy’s tie” or Valentine party games for your little girl” (which is what Google throws up) (which made me throw up) bat-and-ball tomboy stuff, or gender neutral science experiments. So I went to Amazon, hoping to find some party game books, and found:
7.
8.
9.
Not offensive, not tasteless? Hmmm
May 6, 2009 by munchyratJust passing on a gem discovered by BoredStop.com last February. Not so sure that they got this entirely right. But worth passing on to your friends who like tasteless humour!
Subtle Sex Ad
“Thought you might appreciate the subtlety of this ad, done by a Brazilian ad agency, for a lubricating gel (K-Y equivalent) targeting the French market. They were trying to come up with an ad that is not offensive or tasteless. The picture looks completely innocent until you notice the details… Oh, my God. Look carefully at the details. Apparently, it has created quite a buzz in Europe.”
Wll, the buzz has reached the Munchyrat. No risk of “good taste” here…!
ID cards: “we’re not collecting data..” – UK MInister
May 6, 2009 by munchyratThe UK Government – ignoring almost universal objections – is taking its first step in launching national ID cards by making a voluntary system operational – in Manchester. The BBC, in a report — Manchester ‘launch’ for ID cards got an amazing quote from them:
“I think it is important to recognise that we’re not collecting some massive accumulation of information about citizens,” said James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service.
Of course, that is exactly what they are doing. The ID cards are, effectively, a universal indexing system for all other related data held by Government
Pilots say they are effectively being forced into signing up for the cards, the report adds, with a transcript from the Radio “Today” programme:
“Our members believed the government promise that the ID card would be voluntary,” said Jim McAuslan, general secretary of the pilots’ union Balpa.“But they now know it is anything but. Our members must have an airside pass to operate aircraft and now discover that to get that pass they must have a national ID card.
“This is coercion and a case of Big Brother knows best.”
Everybody wants the idea dropped. The Government itself is split.
But the Home Office just does what it finds convenient, right? According to FT.com
even in the Cabinet,
Objections have been raised within the cabinet about cost, particularly in light of the need to slash public spending made clear by last month’s Budget.The Home Office calculates that to introduce the scheme over the next 10 years would cost about £5bn ($8bn) for UK citizens and £379m for foreign nationals. But it argues 70 per cent of these costs would be needed anyway to introduce the next generation of biometric passports. By the plan, people would be given a choice of having an ID card and a passport or only a passport carrying biometric data.
This is a democracy. Presumably, the idea is to find out which way users will vote, rather than pressure groups. So rather than a referendum, we roll it out in a small niche market (airline pilots, foreigners) with hidden compulsion, or in a local area where propaganda will be cheaper?
Rotten time for 3 to cancel mobile broadband bargain…
April 30, 2009 by munchyratBT’s “surprise” cheap mobile broadband package should be a surprise only to those who didn’t know who has been sponsoring Vodafone’s rapid 3G network expansion in the UK. But the long-term effects on mobile data will only become clear in late 2010, when rival networks run out of bandwidth, say insiders.
At 16 pounds per month, the BT deal answers all consumer questions, except the unknowable one: “Will they really let us download as much data this time next year?” And the smart money says BT probably will, but rivals may not.
It’s too late to pick up the previous favourite half-price mobile broadband “Max” deal from 3 UK and Top 10 broadband ; the joint deal expires end April. But that makes BT’s launch of a re-badged Vodafone bundle well timed.
Stacey Higginbotham (amongst many) told her readers that the deal is based on Vodafone 3G cells.
What Higgenbotham didn’t tell her readers, is that this is a quid pro quo; for the last year, BT has been expanding Vodafone’s broadband network as part of its 21st century networking (21CN) project. She reported:
BT Group introduced packages earlier this week that add mobile broadband to home services such as voice, web and video that it provides to customers. By coming out with a combined mobile and fixed broadband package, it’s mirroring a trial plan offered by AT&T and recognizing that mobile broadband can be a good complement to wired broadband, especially as consumers start adding netbooks and other mobile devices to their lives.
Her comment was:
“If such offerings take off, AT&T and Verizon have an obvious advantage, but smaller carriers such as T-Mobile and Sprint could stand to benefit if other ISPs want to resell time on their networks. For example, BT is reselling mobile access from Vodafone to create its package.”
Similarly, Reuters quoted Ovum consultant analyst Steve Hartley in its analysis. Hartley worried:
“BT is able to leverage its strength in fixed broadband, which makes this stand out from the `me too’ mobile broadband offers that have flooded the UK market over the past eighteen months. Our main concerns for this offer hinge on the amount BT is paying to use Vodafone’s network,”
– making it appear that Reuters and Ovum are unaware of the full scope of the back-room deal between Voda and BT.
The deal could be crucial. All the big mobile operators originally budgeted huge income from mobile data. When phone users simply didn’t use the technology, and when the first model iPhone used 2.5G data (GPRS) they all dived into the market with super-cheap data deals based on (primarily) Huawei modems for notebook and netbook users.
Within a year, the lavishly generous offerings were turning out to be over-subscribed.
Deals, previously sold as “unlimited” have been transformed into “acceptable use limited” small-print quibbles by those operators who can actually monitor how much data individual users consume. One or two cannot.
One consultant, having worked with Vodafone/BT on the 21CN project, told Unthinkable that “within a year, the only UK network to be able to keep increasing its mobile data bandwidth, will be Vodafone. All the rest will have severe contention problems, with too many users clustering round too little backhaul.”
And a technical contractor for one large European-wide operator confided, off the record: “We keep telling the marketing people that we simply can’t carry on growing this market. They aren’t interested, because they know we can grow at the current rate for another three months. We say ‘But in a year, we’ll be swamped!’ but marketing doesn’t have to deal with that yet, so they ignore us.”
Did you ever tread on a British power plug?
April 29, 2009 by munchyratIt seems the founders of Ridings have done so. So they have invented a folding-pin plug, which goes flat into something without huge spikes to puncture your feet and is called Slimplug.
The official blurb is short and sweet:
Slimplug by Ridings Ltd is a power lead with a revolutionary folding pin plug. Designed for the laptop user, Slimplug is a space saving device which will fit a number of electrical items that use a figure of eight connector. This makes it suitable for most laptops and camcorders, as well as PS2, Xbox and all sorts of other devices.
The limitation is that “figure-of-eight” connector. Many laptops these days use three-wire mains cables (a design which enables better electrical safety) and you can’t connect the Slimplug to them.
Price: dependent on supplier.
