Dec 16
Mobile News David
3g, cloud, data, discovery, driving, explore, good things, google, gps, landmarks, layers, location, maps, mobile, navigation, nokia, ovi, ovi prime, phones, photos, poi, points of interest, road, s60, satellite, series 60, services, share, symbian, sync, tavel, walking, wifi
Mobile Map Applications
I recently wrote an article in which I compared Nokia’s Ovi Maps application to Google’s mobile Google Maps application, for Series 60 phones. I’m pleased to say it’s just been published on Allaboutsymbian.com.
When it comes to S60, we are fortunate to have a choice of which mapping application we use, but which is best? Is it Ovi Maps (née Nokia Maps), with its worldwide pre-loaded maps, voice navigation and PC integration, or is it Google Maps with the power of Google search, high-res satellite imagery and the perfect price? David Gilson has been testing both, and here reports on his findings.
Click here to read it. Comments are welcome here and at AAS.
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Aug 3
Personal David
3g, charges, data, expenses, mobile, tariffs, vodafone
Vodafone
Last week I wrote about my week without broadband, and I mentioned that I had used a Vodafone mobile data connection. Well, I’m sad to say, this lead to quite a drama.
The 3G modem I used was a free gift with my current laptop, over three years ago. It wasn’t a proper retail pack so there wasn’t proper documentation. All I knew, by word of mouth, was that you paid by the megabyte, but I didn’t have a document stating the charge. I’m also having a mass clear out of my house at the moment, so having gone through all my paper work, I can definitely say there wasn’t an old letter put away and forgotten about! I didn’t use the card at all, I just kept it as a back up for if my home internet ever went down.
Therefore, on Saturday the 11th of July, I had to start using the modem. But it wouldn’t work, so I called Vodafone and found out it had been deactivated due to age. The account was in credit too, deactivated with over £40 of credit! Anyway, the modem started working after the phone call. However, soon after the call had ended, I had a d’oh moment. I hadn’t asked the data charge, and I certainly had not been told the charge.
I called Vodafone, but was asked to call back on Monday as their computer systems had gone down. Well, I called back Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, it took until Thursday evening to get through to someone. The other days I kept getting a recorded message telling me my call couldn’t be taken and to call again later. The Vodafone website was no good as they neither show real-time usage or tariff information for old accounts.
Money Grab
When I spoke to Vodafone, not only was I told I’d only used approximately 250MB, but I was also told my bill was going to be £526+VAT !!! This was based on a charge of a whopping £2.37+VAT per Megabyte. If you’re reading from outside the UK, VAT is Value Added Tax, our version of sales tax and is currently 15%.
The woman I spoke to at the time spoke to a colleague and said the best they could do for me would be to write off that charge and transfer me onto an upto date data plan which would cost me £15 per month, for a minimum of 12 months! That would be £180, just because I transferred 250MB data across their network.
We’ll fast forward the story a few days. Suffice to say that I didn’t agree, and I subsequently was bounced around several unhelpful call centre people. So I submitted a letter of complaint via their “Contact Us” page, twice, and had no response either time. I eventually mentioned my case to people I know at CNET UK, who were able to get me in touch with Vodafone via their PR firm. At first I was contacted by someone from Vodafone Web Relations, who looked to be as helpful as the call centre people.
A few more days later, just when it seemed like I couldn’t get anywhere, I got a phone call from the director’s office. Where the gentleman I spoke to apologised for the situation, stated that I had not been dealt with satisfactorily, and that he would write off the charge (of course with the caveat “this time only”). That was a great relief, it still is.
Now, why am I telling you about this unfortunate episode? Because I’d like you to be more aware than I was at the time. In this situation, I believe Vodafone were at fault for a number of things.
- There is no automatic upgrade review cycle for old legacy accounts (i.e. no house-keeping of old accounts).
- There was no alert that my tariff was not economical at the time of my reconnection.
- There is no way of checking your real-time usage on their website.
All that said, they did do the right thing in the end, so credit to them there, but I had to go to the press before my case was brought to the attention of someone with sufficient authority to rectify the matter.
So please, if you have an old mobile account, be very careful before you start using it after a long time, and if circumstances allow, consider getting a whole new deal rather than insisting on using your old account.
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May 4
Reviews David
64gb, corsair, data, drive, flash, storage, thumb, thumb drive, usb, voyager
Well, I thought it was about time I wrote something new. Seeing as I just got my hands on a new gadget, what better time?!
I have finally got my hands on (by virtue of recently having my birthday!) something I’ve been tempted to get for a long time – this being Corsair’s 64GB Flash Voyager USB thumb drive. So far, this is the largest capacity thumb drive you can get. For me it is ideal, because as I’ve spoke of before on here, I really seek to minimise my data footprint. So while those of you out there may need Terrabytes of storage, for reasons I can only imagine; perhaps you’re archiving the entire internet; I do not need that much storage space. I often trim my files, only keeping things that are worth keeping. As to content, I’m speaking about everything: documents, photos, music, etc. My footprint constantly floats between 42 & 44 gigabytes. So a 64GB drive with no need of cables or moving parts is my perfect back up device.
Unboxing …
So, let’s have a look at the thing…
Here’s the packaging, it’s presented fairly simply. There is a box-out on the back containing all the extra paraphernalia. The box is at the top-rear while the you can see the drive is lower-centre on the front. So the packaging could have probably been made smaller. It’s the standard hard plastic pack that you have to completely wreck to extract the contents.
Speaking of paraphernalia, here is everything included in the pack:
If you click on the photo to view it on Flickr, I’ve annotated everything, but here is a short list of the contents:
- 64GB Corsair Flash Voyager
- Short USB 2.0 cable
- Lanyard
- Attachable chain with a rubber fob to slot the drive’s lid onto while in use.
- Draw-string pouch to contain everything in.
The drive is encased in rubber which gives it a definite robust feel. The drive itself is also very large for a thumb drive, here’s a picture of it in my hand so you can see:
Because of the size, the USB cable that is supplied is welcome, as it might be too much weight if, say, your laptop’s USB ports aren’t very sturdy. To see what I mean, see how far it sticks out the side of my laptop (particularly note how it dwarfs the dongle of my VX Revolution mouse):
The drive also has a blue indicator light which blinks to show when it is reading or writing (click photo to see annotations):
Usage
In everyday use, I am practising what I preach and using Truecyrpt to make sure that the contents are safe from prying eyes. However, this does slow the drive down. In my owns tests, I found that the write speed directly to the drive was almost 10MiB/sec. However, the write speed to the Truecrypt container volume drops down to 4.7MiB/sec.
To back up all of my files, I’ve cranked up the geek-o-meter somewhat by writing a batch file that uses a little known Windows command line tool called “Robocopy“.
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