Asda have announced that they’re turning their back on celebrities for their 2008 Christmas campaign. It could be because they don’t want to be saddled with a loose cannon like Kerry Katona but they reckon they’re doing it because they want “to return to traditional community values, which remain at the heart of our business.”

Indeed, their parent company WalMart have had very strong links with traditional communities down the years, allegedly causing the collapse of scores of small businesses as they ruthlessly spread their empire across the United States.

Good to see that Asda had the balance just right back in 1980. The high-profile celeb is present and correct (Hattie Jacques) but her mammoth fee (probably a skip filled with iced buns) is offset by the fact that someone has knocked out the ad’s music on the kind of Bontempi keyboard that went for just £25 or so back then.

Not An Actual Sperm Bank

While us Brits slouch around moaning about the cr***t cr***h and wondering why we’re all skint, enterprising male Aussie backpackers are seizing every opportunity to make the quick cash that will allow them to extend their stay in Blighty.

And they’re not the only things that are being seized and extended – the boys are throwing their lot behind Britain’s sagging sperm banks, bagging themselves a few quid, and helping to repopulate the country that banished their ancestors in the first place.

Still, it means we might have a decent England cricket team by 2033…

Are you the kind of utter tool who enjoys having your air travel disrupted by needless body searches?

When asked, “Did you pack your own bag today?” do you invariably reply, “No, it was packed for me by a bearded, brown-skinned man who was wearing a large, ticking jacket” before chortling to yourself as the burly officer pulls on his special gloves?

In short, are you a complete and utter tit? If so, you might enjoy this range of controversial suitcases, each with the shape of a dangerous weapon moulded into their exterior.

Take one into an airport and you might think you’re being arch and cool, but you’re EXACTLY the kind of knobhead who the authorities enjoy making an example of. Go on, do it if you don’t believe us.

Give thanks to American citizen Johnny Henry, for he is the inventor of the one thing that decadent Western society is almost certainly lacking – it’s the vibrating toilet seat.

And why not? We all like those vibrating relaxation chairs that are in every shopping centre, so why shouldn’t we recreate that same woozy sensation while we’re cutting off Bungle’s fingers every morning?

“I wanted to create something that is a little unusual,” says Johnny. “This invention is designed to stimulate. It’s to make you feel good while you are there.”

Maybe version 2.0 could incorporate some piped music as well? How about ‘Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay’ or ‘Good Vibrations?’

The Times Online has run an article worthy of the tabloids announcing, “Public figures refusing to pay TV the fee are being let off to avoid making them heroes.” The article suggests several well-known figures including Noel Edmonds are not being prosecuted for their public refusal to pay TV licensing fees.

There may be an argument for TV licensing fees (let’s hammer that out in the comments) but there is no excuse for the bullying tactics employed against those who don’t register. There is a sad public complacency about the powers private companies have been given under mandate from the government to enforce this fee. How many other government enterprises run on the premise that citizens are guilty until proven innocent? From personal experience I have been there, done that, with TV Licensing. I declined to prove to the TV Licensing enforcement team that I do not have a TV (which I don’t nor do I watch it through receiving equipment) in order to stop the flow of threatening letters. The letters themselves are phrased with the supposition that anyone without a TV License is definitely in breach of the law - there is no room in the letters for the possibility a person may simply not have a TV. This eventually culminated in TV Licensing visiting my flat to which I declined to let them in (everyone should understand you have the right to deny entry without reasonable grounds).

Bitterwallet definitely does not advocate breaking the law and if a person is in possession of TV receiving equipment or otherwise accessing TV they should be prepared to pay the fee or pay the penalty for refusing to do so. However, it is essential that we do know our rights and where the government is crossing the line.

That being said - Noel Edmonds should definitely be abused equally to the rest of us when he publicly states he won’t pay TV Licensing.

[jasmin49 on HUKD]

The metal winged beasts of the sky may be quicker than their terra firma counterparts, but planes suffer one distinct disadvantage compared to trains and automobiles. Several hours sealed in a pressurised metal tube six miles up has long equated to zero communication - no phone, no Blackberry, no wi-fi, no laptop.

That’s all changing - in the US at least - with the introduction of Gogo inflight internet. Already operating on three major routes operated by American Airlines, Gogo allows users to connect to a ground-based wi-fi network once the plane ascends to over 10,000 ft.

The cost is $9.95 for flights under three hours and $12.95 for longer flights, although the service is currently restricted to US airspace. For those who would rather read the well-thumbed in-flight propaganda than cough up, the likes of The Wall Street Journal and Frommer’s online travel guides are available free of charge. Gogo is due to launch on several other major airlines, including all 330 of Delta’s mainline aircraft by Summer 2009, but again the service will be restricted to internal US flights.

Reading through Gogo’s FAQ, it seems they’re already expecting to run into problems similar to those experienced by National Express’ wi-fi service, namely significant variations in service availability brought about by demand. Gogo make it clear that certain types of usage will be throttled to ensure nobody eats up all the bandwidth; file sharing, multi-player gaming, streaming audio/video, and VoIP will be given low priority and may not work consistently or at all. Boo.

[electricpig]

Price fixing is a dirty business, one that benefits the big boys and picks the pockets of the consumer. If you’ve bought a Motorola mobile, a Dell PC or an iPod in the last few years, you may have spent over the odds as a victim of a manufacturing cartel.

Three companies - LG, Sharp and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd - have admitted to fixing the prices of liquid crystal display TV screens, computer monitors and other LCD screens. In particular, Sharp was charged for fixing prices on LCD panels sold to Dell for computers, Motorola for its Razr phone and Apple for its iPods.

Collectively, the three firms have been fined nearly $600 million by the US Department of Justice; LG was fined $400 million - the second highest criminal fine the department has ever imposed.

[Broadcasting & Cable]

You enjoy working out on the running machine at the gym, but you miss the feeling of the wind in your hair, taking a breath of fresh air deep into your lungs, making conversation with other runners, and so on and so forth. Quite a dilemma. If only there was some way to combine your love of running indoors with the advantages of running outdoors…

Introducing the man-powered treadmill! What’s really worrying us, is that we can’t figure out if this is genuine; it’s linked to a seemingly real company called Speedfit. That can’t be right. Am I being secretly filmed in the office as I type this? I’ve been set up, right?

[geekologie]

Here’s today’s coming together of the beautiful people from HotUKDeals, dressed up all smart and offering forth their finest bargains like gifts for the infant Jesus. Y’all shizzle to the hizzle to the dizzle.

Remember Buffy The Vampire Slayer? It was a while ago so it’s all a bit vague now, but wasn’t she kind of like Kerry Katona, only American and with lasers in her fingers instead of frozen sausage rolls?

Ah well, if you want to remind yourself what it was all about, the entire series can be had in DVD box set form for a ghost-busting £49.99. Sausage rolls are available from a wide range of sources at significantly lower prices.
(Deal found by amibees)

(Read more…)

Throughout history, men have been found conkers-deep in all the wrong people places. Every conceivable means of squirming out from these inexcusably tight spots has been sought by the gentlemen in question; sometimes successfully, other times less so.

One excuse that is unlikely to hold water is; “What happened dear, was that I accidentally took a photo of myself bollock naked which, due to a well know iPhone glitch, not only attached itself to the email address of a woman but sent itself to her as well.” Ah yes, that old chesnut. In fact, it’d take a guy with pretty big balls (which may or may not be visible in said photo) to a) dream up such a preposterous story and b) think it’ll actually work should his wife discover what’s going on.

Which she does. So let’s pick up the story with Susan, who posted on Apple’s official support forum:

Please help! I took my husband’s i-phone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an e-mail to a woman in his sent e-mail file (a Yahoo account). When I approached him about this (I think that he is cheating on me) he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone. He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The future of my marriage depends on this answer!

Sure, everyone’s heard of that bug Susan. No wait, sorry, they haven’t at all. In fact there are only two posters in the whole of the Apple forums who seem aware of this issue; one of them, Erikislame, was previously active in a thread entitled “Can you erase single phone calls or SMS from the iphone?” and the other, judgement, only registered after the thread was started. Curious. Another poster suggests they may in fact be the same person; Susan’s husband. Hmm.

As an aside, even if there was a buggy line of code that could somehow attach photos to an email and send it to specific individuals without prior knowledge, there is no application in the iPhone Store that forces people to get nekked. Or is there? If so, what else does it make them do? Surely the picture wasn’t that revealing, was it Susan?

Well, if you must know … it was a close-up shot of him pleasuring himself taken at the exact moment of maximum pleasure. (I’m trying to remain G-rated here.) It’s such a good shot that one must wonder if he actually practiced it a few times before getting it right!

Ah. Susan says her discovery of the photo ends any doubt she has concerning the whispered phone conversations and anonymous texts she was already aware of, and that her attorney is already involved.

Next week, we reveal how a Blackberry bullied a middle-aged mother of two into sleeping with the entire first team of West Ham United. Twice.

[The Register]

If you saw the movie Minority Report, you probably wondered when futuristic computer interfaces like that would come to real world technological fruition. While no head shaven teenage psychics in tubs of ice cold water are predicting future murders just yet, the Oblong operating system does a pretty good job at mimicking Tom Cruise commanding the computers from mid air instead of a computer keyboard.

Dubbed ’G-speak’, the system is a real world implementation of the movie technology.  Watch the video below and see if you notice any similarities…

(Read more…)

In your mind, the prospect of asking for a pay rise during an economic meltdown may not be dissimilar to setting your own hands on fire. Why would anybody pay you more for doing what you already do, especially when there are whispers of redundancies or a Ski Sunday-style slide in trade?

Well, your boss may not entertain the idea, but they won’t even consider it if you don’t ask. Here’s the beef: you work to live, you don’t live to work. Chances are that affording your basic standard of living is becoming increasingly difficult as every shade of household bill goes stratospheric. And if we’re honest, unless you’re running the company you work for, its primary concern is not you right now.

That’s why you need to look after number one. You need to sell yourself, but not like a two-bit hooker. That’s just wrong, unless you are a two-bit hooker, in which case negotiating a pay rise shouldn’t be much of a problem. Not that we’re suggesting for one moment you sleep your way to a better deal, but… never mind. Wikihow has plenty of advice if you want to negotiate a few quid more, without spending a deeply dissatisfying night at a Premier Inn with the chief exec. (Read more…)

In my head, the world of pirated films began with ET. Dad turned in from the pub, smelling of Skol and clutching a VHS copy of the Spielbergian classic, a white sticky label slapped over it with the title scrawled in Biro. The film meanwhile, looked as if it was shot through the bottom of a jam jar smeared with vaseline. I wasn’t impressed.

Fast forward 26 years and I’m still not; not because I’m a hardened man of morals and virtue, but because movies look gob-stoppingly amazing on a movie screen and not unlike a burglar’s dog when viewed in illegal form on a television.

There’s still a massive market for pirate movies, and those in the business are always on the lookout for the next hook that’ll pull the punters in. According to Gizmodo, they’ve found it in Blu-Ray. Now that the format is breaking through into the mass-market, there’s money to be made from downgrading Blu-Ray films and copying them to regular DVDs, before tarting them up with some shiny packaging to dupe the punters. Lest we remind you that such rubbish is against the law, but for the same price you can see the film as it was intended; with a sense of scale, splashed across the big screen and without some shiny nosed teenager pissing about with the auto-focus.

[Gizmodo UK]

I came across this taxi fare app today, World Taximeter which will calculate the fare on any route when you put in your start and end point. The app uses the published taxi rates along with distance, estimated travel time, minimum fare, airport surcharges, environmental charge and anything else relevant. On the few tests I put it through on routes I knew it seemed within a reasonable margin of error all things considered.

Unfortunately only London is available in the UK but really this app is going to be more useful when traveling to a foreign country (which London can be!). There are currently only 16 cities supported but they are all major ones - if you are traveling to New York for example this could be great info to have.

[World Taxi Meter]

So when it recently came to light that spammers have to send over 12 million emails to find one gullible fool who’ll sign up to whatever they’re selling, the question that came to mind was “who was that idiot, then?”. Step forward registered nurse Jenella Spears of Sweet Home, Oregon who was duped to the tune of over $400,000.

How the blithering hell do find yourself emptying your husband’s retirement account and re-mortgaging the house for the sake of a spammer? All it took was the name of Spears’ grandfather to start the ball rolling. An email arrived from the Nigerien government (where else?), promising to cough up $20 million left behind by grandpops J.B. Spears, with whom the family had lost contact over the years. (Read more…)