Posts by Mark61

Smart Fortwo Electric Drive e-car

Plenty of space

...in the boot. Seriously. You can even fit two people sitting in it, although not that comfortably.

I suggest that next time you try looking at a smart car first.

Alternative View...

Smart Car owners don't have any inadequacies that they need to make up for by having a big car.

Ever seen the 'Electric Vehicle Only' charging bays?

Plenty of London Boroughs are introducing 'Electric Vehicle Only' bays next to chargers.

Most are openly looking for 'ideas' of where to put future chargers / bays, I imagine the primary criteria is "Who in the Borough will actually use it?" I'm sure that speaking to your council and applying a bit of encouragement could easily get a bay installed near you.

And before you say "But someone will park a normal car there", remember how 'efficient' parking wardens are.

iDect iHome Android phone

Alan Sugar

...you've read Alan Sugar's biography?

You poor thing.

Visa goes all P2P in US

Currency Exchange

I think the UK banks escape the SEPA regulations as they oblige that payments in currency X to country y must be charged the same as payments in currency X to your home country.

Therefore they argue that if you're sending EUR, SEPA doesn't apply.

Midnight theft left Vodafone users bereft

If you pay £30 a month line rental...

...that'll be 50p compensation for service lost for half a day.

Frustrating as outages are, I don't think Vodafone contractually owe retail customers more than that (and even then, it's a stretch, as they cover themselves with protective clauses in their T&Cs).

Vodafone says sorry for pro-Mubarak messages

Alternatively...

...they should follow all government texts with a separate text from Vodafone that states that "we were obliged to send the previous message...." etc etc.

Burying a press statement on their global corporate site (I note, nothing on www.vodafone.com.eg) is a bit of a cop-out.

London bike hire scheme suffers pre-launch wobbles

Yes, you have misread it.

It's £1 per day that you use the scheme.

If you're going to use it a lot, an annual pass is £45.

Aaand... breathe.

Before you start making yourself look like a Daily Mail commentard...

It is £1 per day that you use the scheme. So if you don't use it on a given day, you don't pay.

HTC Legend

Exchange Email

"For the business users out there, Android 2.1 also supports Exchange email."

ish. It doesn't support remote wipe or pin lock, which means many corporates still won't let it sync with Exchange. You'll still need to buy a 3rd party app (e.g. Touchdown) if your employer insists on these security precautions.

I still can't believe that Google haven't yet sorted this out once and for all, it seems to me to be a major barrier to wider adoption of Android devices by corporate users.

Samsung's Galaxy stuck in history

Sorry, but...

...limited sympathy.

Expect a phone manufacturer to fix faults? Yes.

Expect a phone manufacturer to give free upgrades that were not promised as part of the sales package? No.

Where does it say that having Android on *any* phone will get you an upgrade? A phone company doesn't have to pander to freetards who expect something for nothing. If they choose to do so, then great, that's a commercial decision that they've taken. It is by no means an obligation.

O2 grovels for London network failure

Finally

I'm glad somebody at O2 has finally joined the dots on this...

- Quite a large number of city analysts probably have iPhones

- Quite a large number of city analysts work in, err, the City

- O2's coverage in the City is appalling

- iPhones used to only work on O2

Ah. Potential for share price fail as analysts express concerns about network and customer flight when the exclucivity deal goes.

It doesn't excuse the fact that over the past 6 months O2 have been telling people calling to complain about connectivity that there are no known issues, and proceeding to muck them around by telling them that it's a sim card / handset fault. To my mind that is quite simply inexcusable.

O2 leaves travellers in the lurch

Data was down abroad too

Data roaming was also taken down by the outage earlier this week, so that will have lost O2 a pretty penny too. Whole thing stinks of incompetence.

Wheels come off O2's data network

Roaming

Even when roaming, you end up connecting through an O2 APN. And yes, in the NL, my O2 data service is kaput.

I pay £50 for 50mb of access when roaming. Wonder if I can haggle a rebate seeing as I'm actually paying a sizeable wedge...

Mandy promises end to illegal staff blacklists

@ BNP in police etc

It is not a 'no-BNP' rule in the police. It's a 'no political parties' rule. There to ensure the police are neutral. Very different from a BNP ban, and quite reasonable, tbh.

Ryanair requires web check-in, shuts down website

@Simon Hobson

The difference is that once you've checked in, you can't change / refund your ticket.*

*I know the 'refund' bit doesn't apply to Ryanair, but I vaguely remember reading somewhere that they will let you pay a vast fee to change.

First plug-in Prius paraded by car rental firm

Boris Johnston Spin

I don't think this project has anything to do with the economics of running the vehicle... it's a £9000 publicity stunt for Streetcar and Boris Johnston, who will probably now claim that he has a 'fulfilled' manifesto pledge as a result of this one vehicle.

Yes, the idea of a plug-in which lasts for 35 miles sits nicely with the Streetcar concept (designed primarily for short runs, extra charges over 30 miles, and you have to return it to the same bay at the end of your rental), but I really can't see this as being anything other than greenwash.

Mobile internet? It ain't just for the iPhone

O2...

There's something certainly going on at O2.

For example, if I browse to m.facebook.com, "O2 Home", "O2 Search", and "My 10" links appear at the bottom of the pages. I'm pretty sure they're not in the original data served by Facebook...