Jamster. Seriously?

Despite being 28, having a PhD, a good job and being a pretty sensible and normal kind of a guy, I do like my phone to make silly noises. Ringtones, message alerts – the whole 9. That’s some of the reason I got rid of the iPhone, and why I’ll never have a Samsung phone again. My latest Nokia (6500 slide) lets me set pretty much whatever sound I want for pretty much any action the phone performs, so I’m happy. And from my days on student radio, I have tonnes of ridiculous sounds to use on my phone, which I’m certain brighten up the office for my colleagues. Hmm.

I saw an advert on TV today for Jamster. I’d certainly heard of Jamster before, I mean, they were the ones who proliferated the goddamn Crazy Frog – but never really paid it much attention. But the latest ones made me take note. Apparently they’ll send you applications such as a “lie detector” or “friend tracker”, which presumably need some sort of Java support in order to pretend to do whatever they claim they can do. My gut feeling as a geek is that these apps certainly won’t do what they say they can do. But these pointless apps aren’t Jamster’s main selling point – it’s the ringtones. You can text a number, they send you a ringtone. But pay careful attention to the smallprint. Getting the ringtone subscribes you to a service, which costs no less than £4.50 a week! That’s £234 a year! Far more than most people will even spend on their phone or bill. Crazy.

And it seems, you don’t have to go far to find people who have been ripped off by Jamster. (The particularly concerning thing is – what’s to stop someone subscribing your phone to that service? Nothing, as far as I can see.)

It’s a ridiculous rip off service, but I’m not here to debate that. My real concern is: who would even actually use it? Even with the promise of a free ringtone, I can see no point, whatsoever. Most phones nowadays are equipped with Bluetooth, and even those that aren’t will easily connect to your PC over IR or USB. Bearing in mind that pretty much any sound or song that you may want to use on your phone is merely a download away from the T’Interwebs, why would you need a Jamster service? Why pay £4.50 a week or even accept giving over your mobile number for a free ringtone, to do something that, with a just a little effort, you can do yourself, for free?

I just don’t get it.

On a related note, there’s an interesting article about Jamster and the Crazy Frog here.

There are a lot of comments from people who got duped in to the subscription service, in particular, this one:

Yes I have suffered the same problem, ordered Crazy Frog for my own and my son’s mobile, expecting to pay £3 for it, but nothing else. When my bill arrived it had two further text messages at £3 each.

Why on earth, seriously, would you spend £3 on the Crazy Frog, not once, but TWICE? £6 for the stupid frog? Even if you can’t find it for free yourself, why not buy it once and then transfer it to the other phone? Some people are idiots.

10 Ways to be more green

There’s really no excuse to be wasting energy nowadays. Microsoft, of all people, have a quick and handy guide to things you can do to reduce your company’s carbon footprint and electric bill at the same time. Go to it.

Copied from the article which is roughly here.

Read the rest of this entry »

More coffee

Private Sub btnSomething_Click(ByVal sender as Object, ByVal e as System.Eventargs) handles btnSomething.Click
btnSomething.PerformClick()
End Sub

I’m thinking that’s not the correct implementation of a recursive function

Good News

I have just found out that a paper I submitted for publication in Computers & Geosciences has informally been accepted (whatever that means). The paper describes a geostatistical optimisation technique using anisotropy ratios for predicting directional variation in remotely sensed imagery. Watch this space for the formal acceptance!

Complications

I think I might be overcomplicating my PhD thesis. A section of Chapter 4 goes as deep as 4.3.1.1.2.2.

What did I miss?

I’m going to try and round a few things up here, seeing as I’ve been too busy in the last little while to post here.

News stuff

I haven’t mentioned the bombings. And I don’t intend to, other than to say that a) I don’t agree nor condone them, b) I’m not surprised they’re happening and c) we should expect some more. On a related note though, something connected has royally pissed me off. The shooting of the innocent man. The man repeatedly ignored Police warnings, and armed Police shot him. Simple. The people who are calling for the necks of the officers involved, saying that it’s outrageous, saying this and that should all shut the hell up. Tony Blair and the chief of Police publically apologised for it. Why? Yes, it’s unfortunate that he turned out to be innocent. But the Police are operating under extremely difficult circumstances. And they did their job. What if he had turned out to be a bomber, and they hadn’t shot him? And another 20 innocent people lost their lives? It makes me mad. So well done to the boys that shot him. And yeah, apologies to his family, but he had it coming. Sounds callous I know. Fuck it.

Small pleasure

I got my first Google adsense payment. I’m not allowed under their TOS to disclose the details of it, but I will say, that for what is essentially free money (I had the website anyway) it’s a real pleasure to check your bank balance and see a not inconsiderable amount of money in there, for no extra work. So thanks to Google. And thanks to the people who clicked the ads.

Personal guff

Well it’s all go round here. I’ve been busy. I’m still working 3/4 nights a week as a doorman, but only for another 2 weeks, because I’m moving to Guernsey to write my PhD thesis. I’m moving into the house next door to my folks which will be good because I haven’t spent any real time with them in the last 6 years. So I’ll be close, but not actually living with them. That means it’s all mad round here as I’m packing up all my stuff and sorting the house here out to move out there. I’ve moved out of my office at Uni and already sold my big TV, my couch, and hopefully my beer fridge. So I’m still looking to let go of my Dolby Digital surround kit. I’m also considering selling my beloved Honda CBR600 FX as I can’t take it to Guernsey with me. I’m aiming to get the first draft of my thesis written by the end of September, with a view to submitting before Christmas. After that I’m travelling, Long Way Round style.

A sphincter says what?

The average man will get his hair cut roughly once every 2 months. At an average cost of £10. I haven’t paid anyone to cut my hair in 10 years. So aside from the £30 or so quid I spent on clippers, I reckon I’ve saved myself nearly £600 (not to mention all that money saved on shampoo). Interesting.

I’ll try my best to update the other sections of this site soon, I have some movie reviews to do, and I really ought to update Fingers.

Frightening behaviour

I’ve always kind of known it, but last night frankly confirmed it. There are a lot of fucking idiots out there in the world. Alright, not exactly ground breaking news. But after what I saw last night, you’ll maybe think again.

It was a busy night at work, but it all went smoothly. I leave work, and I’m in the chicken shop getting some dinner. I order, and decide to wait outside where it’s a bit cooler. There are a few drunk people milling about, the odd lunatic, the odd “blatantly just pulled” couple. As I’m watching the world pass me, a car screams up the road. Not unusual for Southampton I think.

Except for when it reached the set of traffic lights, about 50 yards up the road. It screeches to a halt. I’m thinking it’s missed the red light. All of a sudden the passenger door flies open and a woman is thrown out of the car, onto the road. The car accelerates away, with part of her still in the car. The car disappears up the road, with only the screams of the woman to be heard.

I legged it up the road to find out what was going on, if she was alright, etc. She is, but in shock. Hyperventilating a bit. Fortunately the worst of her injuries was a cut finger and a few grazes up her arm.

I spent the next 4o minutes trying to talk to her, find out what I could, finding out if there was anyone I could call, and finally getting her in a taxi. The whole thing could have been a lot worse. There was a point at which I thought she was actually under the car when it drove off. It turns out it was the ex-boyfriend driving and doing the throwing, but I couldn’t establish why he’d done this.

Regardless. How much of a fuckwit do you need to be to throw a woman, hell anyone, out of a car into the middle of the road and then drive off, leaving them there, alone, in shock, at the mercy of busy city traffic at 3am?