Orange hand me an £800 phone bill

£877.13 to be precise. Yes, I was pretty surprised too! The reason, it turned out, was data costs. I had used over 300Mb of data in a matter of two days.

I often use my phone as a modem for the laptop, either over Bluetooth or via USB. I connect to send and receive e-mail when not near a wireless network, or to use the web. Sometimes I do these things directly on the phone, not using a laptop. Had I accidentally made a rogue call, one of those that last for hours? Had I accidentally streamed an enormous video at peak time?

Well, I got onto Orange and was put through to a supervisor. He assured me my phone was set up for “push” e-mail and was constantly connecting and checking for new mail - I mean constantly. I assured him it wasn’t. He went away to look into it.

Eventually I heard back from him, and it turns out that when connecting using the laptop MSN was logging in, in the background (as I well knew). Even when not using it, if it was logged in for an hour, this would ping the server repeatedly, clocking up such massive data usage.

Now, one would think MSN would need to send only a few bytes to ping the server. I am astounded by the weight of the data it apparently used, but this is the best explanation, well - the only one, I have yet. Orange would not release the GPRS statements to me, but they did retro-actively apply a bundle, effectively waiving this bill.

Anyway, the moral: be extremely careful of MSN usage when on a cellular line unless you have a GPRS bundle to cover it!

Sonic Boom Boy

I’m currently in Florida and yesterday witnessed first-hand the double sonic boom, like a crack of thunder, as space shuttle Endeavour returned to Earth after 16 days in low orbit. The trip took place so that astronauts could fit new parts to the International Space Station and the landing was perfect.

The shuttle touched down just a few miles away, at Kennedy Space Center where, if you visit, you can see the amazing 3D film Magnificent Desolation, which puts you virtually on the surface of the moon…

Safari 3 Beta

Apple have released a Safari 3 Beta for Mac and PC. It’s looks nice too (as much Apple stuff does) but as is usual for Macs it suffers from various limitations - they have even built in the Mac restriction that one can only resize the window from the bottom right corner, not from any corner or edge as is possible with other Windows browsers.

How to fight back against brainless advertising

You know all those annoying banner ads all over your web browser? And those ones all over MSN Messenger? Did you ask to see them? I didn’t think so. Every time we go out and use public transport, even walk down the street, we are patronised by someone else’s usually impoverished idea of wit as they lie to us and try to manipulate us into buying whatever it is they have to sell. While all the time everybody knows that a really good product sells itself, and the best means of advertising is word of mouth.

They even get us in our home - but we can stop them there. TV stations are yet to broadcast a signal notifying your TV to mute itself and turn to a black screen while the vacuous adverts are on (which would be great), but fortunately there is little on the TV worth watching anyway, so our primary concern is stop these stupid adverts coming at us on the web. There are some excellent means to achieve this end:

1. Ensure you are using Firefox web browser, the fastest and best.
2. Install the Adblock Plus extension. You can right click on offending iframes and adverts to blank them, and if you subscribe to a service (free!) it even automatically blocks all known ads.
3. Get the Mess Patch for your version of MSN Messenger, which enables you to totally configure the application and completely removes all advertising from it.

These measures will enable you to enjoy the peace of mind of ad-free surfing without idiots trying to make you buy things. Happy surfing!

iPod retirer

This device, in association with this, has just retired my iPod Nano. Why carry two devices around when you need carry (effectively) only one? Especially as this enables wireless connection between the earphones and the music player (incidentally, always buy new decent earphones to replace the cheap ones that come with MP3 players, and you will notice a major difference in frequency response).

Regarding the iPhone, by the way, it is locked down to a particular network and I have noticed nothing new that it brings to the table. It is not only very expensive but also in my view not worth considering while it lacks the extremely useful ability to sync contacts and calendar with Outlook.

More on Facebook

Facebook is an interesting phenomenon which has already been more successful that MySpace or Friendster. Why?

First of all, as I mentioned in a previous post, Facebook capitalises on the best way to meet other people, which is through recommendation, and puts it online. Facebook is also very organic. It’s designed to allow people to update their status constantly, in real-time (which is potentially extremely time-sapping) - and it’s extendable. As such, it threatens to be very addictive!

Facebook is essentially a good thing, but like all good things, it must be used in moderation. It is also interesting to note that the site is made using PHP. It is an enormous, extremely well engineered and successful site, which should surely put to rest any doubts about the capabilities of this language.

Facebook

I have just joined Facebook, which is noteable in that it replicates the best way of meeting people - which is through recommendation - on the web. Check it out…

Orange SPV M3100

I have just upgraded from this to this, and I have to say it’s an amazing piece of technology…

Apple Genius Bar

I have discovered that the “Genius Bar” in the Regent Street Apple Store is not, in fact, populated by geniuses.

Mac problems

I never expected that using my new Macbook would have the effect of really making me appreciate Windows. I previously had the impression of Macs being very nice to look at, with solid hardware, but being too “simple” and not configurable enough. The more familiar I become with OSX, the more this view is confirmed, unfortunately. It helps explain why devotees are so defensive of the operating system. Here are some apparent problems with it, which I have noticed in a matter of days:

• You can only resize windows using bottom right corner. This is especially a problem on the Mac because there are so many floating panels the bottom right corner of a window can easily be obscured.
• The machine’s response when the lid/screen is closed is not customisable. Explaining this topic, Apple simply say: “Portable computers sleep when the screen is closed”.
• Impossible by default to list directories above files in the Finder.
• iTunes downloads all album artwork separately instead of keeping it embedded in MP3 files.
• Impossible to synch mobile contacts with Outlook without using costly and dubious third party applications (no ActiveSync).
• The OS up locks when a network drive disappears during copying, and even “Restart Finder” doesn’t work.
• Function keys are by default reserved by the operation system and cannot be used as shortcuts within applications.
• They treat directories as files and cannot combine contents when over-writing. I have learnt this the hard way in the past, having to retrieve data from a backup as a result!