Category Archives: In the News

Tech news and opinions

National rate numbers – I don’t get them.

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I’ve never seen the point in national rate numbers. If you want to have a free phone service, you use an 0800 or local rate number. If you want to charge for a phone service, you use a premium rate number. Yes I know, apparently national rate numbers are shared cost, but what’s the point in that?

More than that, it bugs me why customer service lines are always 0870 or 0871 numbers. My webhosting company has one, many enquiry lines have them, and it just drives me mad.

I use Skype for most of my paid calls, mainly because it is easier for me as I already have a broadband connection supplied where I live, and Skype calls are much cheaper (in most cases) than BT calls. I have my own online number with Skype (which costs about £8 every quarter) and the unlimited country package which gives me unlimited UK calls to landlines (costing me about £3.50 per month). But that, of course, does not include 0870 numbers or any national rate numbers.

Believe it or not, it costs almost as much on Skype to call a national rate number than it does to call a mobile in the UK. What a pain in the backside. At the time of writing, mobile calls cost 16.6p per minute and calls to 0871 cost 14.8p per minute!

But that’s going off the point. What really gets to me is when business put in big bold letters “FREE 24/7 PHONE SUPPORT” or similar, when they are lying! They give you an 0871 number that costs me nearly 15p per minute to call! What a joke! It’s really frustrating!

And yes, I know we have sites like “saynoto0870” which might be brilliant for some people, but they don’t have all the numbers in the book and I’ve never managed to find a local number that corresponds to a national rate one.

In real honesty, I wish Ofcom would ban 0871 numbers and the likes, because I find them really annoying and I waste so much money every year calling them. They should make it simpler – we already have 0845 numbers and stuff like that, why do we need more?

We just need one band of numbers for freephone, one for shared cost, and one for premium. The end.

iTunes 9 Review – A definite improvement

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As most of you will already know, the Apple conference on the 9th of September brought a lot of news to iPod users. As well as the new iPod Nano and “new” iPod Touch (I can’t say it’s new, all they’ve done is made a bigger size), Apple also released the new iTunes 9. Sadly I wasn’t able to get it right away as I’m going through small problems with internet bandwidth, which also explains why I haven’t been able to post reviews on the new iPod Touch/iPhone firmware yet – don’t worry I will get round to it as soon as I get my unlimited bandwidth back which, as far as I know, should be next week.

Anyway, as for the new iTunes, I am surprised to say that I’m actually very impressed with the new release. The new features aren’t ground breaking, but the new performance upgrades have finally arrived.

The new iTunes packs new features such as Home Sharing, which allows you to share your music between other computers in your home, and a brand new redesigned iTunes Store. Both of which work very well. I haven’t checked out the Home Sharing yet but from what I’ve read online it looks very good. The new iTunes Store is certainly very tidy and works very efficiently and I much prefer it over the previous version.

But I’m happiest about the much smoother performance. The load-up time has improved dramatically and actually browsing through the application is much more speedy.

What used to be a misery is now much easier to use and much less time consuming. I still don’t think iTunes is brilliant, but the new version has definitely made syncing my iPod much less of a chore.

Well done Apple, this is a big improvement.

If you’d like to download the new version, open up iTunes and click Check for Updates in the Help menu. Otherwise, you can head over to apple.com and download a copy from there for free.

Orange UK and T-Mobile UK to merge – T-Orange?

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Is T-Orange the new network to replace T-Mobile and Orange in the UK?

Unlikely, but it has been confirmed that T-Mobile and Orange will merge sometime in the next 2-3 years.

It’s not going affect you in the near future, but it looks like we might be waving goodbye to the brand names T-Mobile and Orange in a few years time.

At the moment, it looks like Orange will be taking over T-Mobile rather than the other way round, but it looks like T-Mobile staff will still be taking an active part in the new merging.

It could be as early as next month when the deal is set in stone, but the networks will continue for 18 months independently.

So it’s nothing to worry about for now, but I would think twice about opening a new contract with either of the companies.

GEEK! will keep you up to date as news flows in.

Spotify app launched on iPhone/iPod Touch App Store, at last!

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Just some quick news for any Spotify lovers:

The Spotify app has now arrived on the app store, so you can head straight over there and download it.

Bare in mind you’ll need to be a full premium user to be able to make any use of the app, which will cost you a tenner a month!

Oh and the other thing to bare in mind is that apparently it won’t play music in the background which is a bit of a newsense, so close the app and you’re music will stop playing. Hopefully that will be fixed in an update before too long.

Otherwise, go ahead and try it out. Sadly, I’m not a Spotify premium member (for now) so I won’t be able to review it, but if you’ve got any opinions on it feel free to throw in a comment!