Editor Vincent is most likely on a transatlantic flight as we speak. But the thought of being jammed in economy like a pack of sardines does no good for his morale.

Over the years, he’s learned that some tricks and tools of the trade from the world’s finest, including how to avoid the unfortunately more than common scenario of spending a 15 hour flight jammed in between two burly men, rather than two gorgeous females.

Here’s a few things Vincent does during his flights right now; he’d love to know of any other tips you have to make the flight more comfortable:

1. Carry a noise canceling headset, like the Bose Quiet Comfort 3s (or these alternative cheaper noise cancelling ones for £4.99 from HUKD).  Remember to charge up the battery ahead of time.  And bring an airplane audio converter, like this one from memorybits for £2.65.  Much better than the plastic earpieces in case something good pops up on the in-flight entertainment.

2. Load a laptop up with some tasks to do. Obviously this needs to be a long life battery like the Samsung NC10 with it 7 hour battery life.  The 10″ screen means when the passenger in front reclines, his laptop won’t die in his arms.  A USB powered external HDD is also a good idea, especially in economy, with the seat in front of you reclined. So get some work done. Save the movies and porno for landing. (Read more…)

And so the bad news keeps on rolling in; the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development believes at least 600,000 jobs could disappear in the UK within the next 12 months, and that between now and April will be the worst for job losses since 1991.

So let’s get frugal people, because who knows what next year is going to throw at us. That doesn’t mean you have to change the way you live, it just means making every penny count:

• Start as you mean to go on; WiseBread have a simple guide to throwing a New Year party on a budget

• It may be entirely patronising to tell you to get your household budgets in order, but plenty of us are too damned lazy to bother; Bitterwallet has 5 simple financial habits you need to get into

• You’re probably aware of how you can save money by switching gas and electricity accounts, but there are savings to be made by reviewing your water rates, and even your council tax; The Guardian has these and other ideas for saving  on your household bills

• Ever swished before? Newcastle’s probably a little too far to travel for a new wardrobe, but read what Daisy Green magazine are up to, and keep an eye out for similar events where you live

• Don’t let anybody take money from you that they don’t deserve, whether it’s a high street store, a bank or a restaurant; learn how to complain well

• If you’re really pumped up, get involved in stealth-saving; some of it appears to border on stealing, but read the article by The Telegraph and make up your own mind

MSN made a pretty cool xmas video tool, that you can use to personalise a Santa reading for children on this website.

While it’s designed for children, it still made me laugh, especially after making one for myself.  To get an idea of how the end result would look like, click here.

You simply fill in 3 pages of a form answering questions like how old the child is, what their name is, and what they would like for Christmas.

The video is compiled within seconds and personalised depending on what you want.  It’s also free, and you can even upload an image of your child (max 5MB) to be included on Santa’s ‘list’ in the video.  Have fun.

[MSN]

With 2 days to go, here’s a few last minute tips to help you make it through the next few days.

1. Send some last minute cards: Missed the post office deadline to send Christmas cards?  Why not go eco friendly and send some e-cards instead?  Try Ojolie, Jacquie Lawson, E-Motion, Artleaf , or my favorite, JibJab.  Hallmark is also doing free e-cards.  Charities like Marie Curie Cancer Care (www.mariecurie.org.uk) are offering packages of 100 e-cards for £30. Plus you’ll sleep better when Santa comes down the chimney on Thursday.

2. Start wrapping your pressies now: Get your wrapping done now, so that you can spend Christmas night sipping some mulled wine instead of getting paper cuts.  If you hate gift wrapping, get someone else to do it for you.  Malls across the country now will often have wrapping services in exchange for a small donation.

3. Watch for the gift wrapping scam: A common Christmas hustle is with fake con artists posing as gift wrappers in malls.  When your gift is in the background, they will empty out the content(s) and replace it with valueless goods of equal weight (think hay and bricks), and by the time you pick it up all wrapped and pretty, you won’t even know a thing until your kids start crying on Christmas day.

4.  Partying too hard with all the bubbly lately? Start taking Milk Thistle to help your liver regenerate.  The NHS is busy enough as it is.  And make sure you stock up on the Aspirin and Alka-Seltzer, bin bags, soap and loo roll before the big day.

5.  Travelling? Make sure you book your seats in advance.  Trains are having delays across the country and will be jam packed.  Got a group? Make sure you get a Family & Friends Rail Card offering up to 60% discount for children, and only costs £24 a year.  Available online.

Got more tips? Share them below!

With less than 48 hours before the big day left, most stores no longer accept online orders. So unless you want to pay for your own personal delivery boy to cycle across the country, here’s a list of  8 last minute resources and alternative options to make it in time for Santa coming to town:

1. The High Street: If you’re planning to do your shopping tomorrow (Christmas Eve), watch out for stores shutting at lunch time, especially smaller retailers.  Larger stores tend to close between 3-6 pm.  M&S will be closing most of its stores at 5pm.  John Lewis will shut at 4:30pm.  Once you hit 6pm, you can pretty much forget it, unless you’re in London, where some Tesco stores will open until 9pm.   But good news is that some stores are bringing their Boxing Day sales forwards, so some bargains are to be had.

2. Online: ebuyer and Amazon are both doing same day deliveries, but the insane delivery charge may make it easier to just take the hit on the high streets. But Amazon is actually ridiculously organised when it comes to last minute deliveries. It’s probably too late to apply for ‘Prime Membership’, but if you live in London or Birmingham, you got up to 8:30am tomorrow.  You may also want to check out asos.com and fragrancesdirect.co.uk, both accepting online orders until the end of today.  Make sure you pop over to HUKD for a quick peek at vouchers and codes, for a jedi never rushes.

3. Reservations: We’ve passed the deadline for Argos home deliveries, but remember you can still reserve items in stock at your local branch up to Christmas Eve tomorrow.  Just check your local store times.

4. Free Stuff: Who doesn’t love free stuff? Amazon is offering a free album on Christmas and Boxing Day using code “FREEMP3S”, plus you get a bonus £3 for downloads. (Read more…)

Britain is in the grip of the worst flu outbreak in almost a decade.  According to NHS 24, 14,616 calls were received last weekend alone, which is a 33.8% rise compared with the figures in 2007 this time of the year.

With 3 days left until the big day, my hardworking co-editors here at Bitterwallet summed up their holiday spirits in just a few simple words:

Andy says: like man flu without the snot or coughing - those were replaced instead by an unsettled feeling in the stomach along with the usual aches, pains and fever.

Paul says: 48 hours of aching limbs, constant headaches, high temperatures and turning myself inside out from gratuitous acts of vomiting and rectal water.

And they are not the only one.  The infection is hitting 40 per 100,000, which is at its largest stats since 2001 before epidemic proportions.  Research from [Which?] shows that most people don’t know what healthcare services are available over the holidays either,  so as a precautionary measure, here are 5 options you have over the holidays to make sure you get the T.L.C. you need:

(Read more…)

Three days to Christmas, so it’s about time we thought about doing some shopping. We were too lazy to buy any gifts online, so now we’ll be forced to squeeze into the shopping centres and retail parks to join the commercially-induced hysteria. Maybe we’re being a bit hasty, though. Not only have we not started our Christmas shopping, we’ve been far too bone idle to think about what we should buy.

Thank sweet baby Jesus, then, for the technological miracles that are SMS question and answer services. Faced with precious little time and a complete lack of enthusiasm, Bitterwallet punched in three such shortcodes for Yuletide advice:

118 118 free

Our question:

“Can you give me three ideas for Christmas presents for my 19-year-old brother, and the price of each? Thanks!”

Their answer:

“No exact info for the price, but you may give your brother iTunes vouchers from music stores or online stores such as Amazon, perfume or electric shaver.

Those Philippine call centre folk may be quick off the blocks - they replied in two minutes - but they appear entirely incapable of writing coherent sentences, or distinguishing genders. If you’ve been to the Phillippines, you’ll probably understand why. Rubbish.

Texperts - 66000 £1 per text

“Can you give me three ideas for Christmas presents for my 88 year-old grandad, and the price of each? Thanks!”

“Popular presents for the elderly include: slippers, garden tools, alcohol, wallets, hampers, picture frame and pictures of the family. Prices will vary.”

Answered quickly (under three minutes) but very generic; at least it was readable, so we thought we’d try Texperts with a more specific request:

“Can you give me three ideas for Christmas presents for my 23 year-old thai bride nymphomaniac, and the price of each? Thanks!” (Read more…)

Ray Winstone recently launched a bitter attack against Britain, somewhat unfairly saying that the country has “gone to the dogs”.  He blamed knife crime, an inefficient NHS, high taxes and politicians to deal with.  ”Our choices are w***** No.1 Gordon Brown and w***** No.2 David Cameron. No thank you.”  But as UK unemployment edges towards the two million mark and we fight to get through one of the worst recessions ever, could more people join the likes of Ray in emigrating abroad?

It was also announced today that millions of UK workers may no longer be allowed to work beyond the 48 hour work week after European MPs voted to ban the voluntary code.   According to The Daily Mail:

“…13 of 19 Labour MEPs defied Gordon Brown and backed the move by Brussels to end the special deal… around three million workers in the UK regularly put in more than 48 hours. The tourism and catering industries, farmers, medical researchers and offshore workers are likely to be worst affected if a cap is imposed by Brussels.”

In the midst of all that’s going on with the economy, there truly cannot be a worst time for such an ordeal.  We’re talking about hard working Brits trying to put bread on the table with the rising food and electricity/gas bills along with a currency that is about to hit parity with the Euro, hitting families hard at a difficult time.

More importantly, with the way job prospects are looking, as news continues with a currency that’s constantly fluctuating along with inflation/deflation and a neverending Bitterwallet deathwatch list, I am curious: have any of you have thought about leaving the UK and emigrating elsewhere?  If so, where, and why?  And if you don’t plan to leave, for waht reasons would that be?  Do you think that the quality of life in the UK will sustain, especially if the pound doesn’t recover?

Last night over at HUKD, ASDA part-timer dh058977 released inside info that all xmas gifts at ASDA today would be discounted by 80%, reducing many presents to a mere £1 or £2 each.  

Despite a few skeptics last night, Mr. dh058977 proved himself right when this morning as early as 5am, HUKDers who turned up at their local ASDA managed to bag some amazing bargains.  Here’s a select few comments from HUKDers:

Harber78 wrote: “Offers did not start until 9am but got some great items for £1. Selling out quick and staff were trying to buy at same time too as they did not know in my shop. Stuffed Toys with bag of sweets, Simpsons gifts, High School Musical gifts, and Disney Princess gifts too. Mugs with teddys, or magnets and key rings and lots of candle and photo album/frame gifts too.”

skeeter909: “i can verify its true and starts at 7.30am… will be down to £1 for anything thats current in the 2for£8 range and £2-£4 for anything in the 2for16gbp range. Essentially the item on http://direct.asda.com/asda-fragranc…efault,sc.htm. This is IN STORE only” skeeter909: “i can verify its true and starts at 7.30am… will be down to £1 for anything thats current in the 2for£8 range and £2-£4 for anything in the 2for16gbp range. Essentially the item on http://direct.asda.com/asda-fragranc…efault,sc.htm. This is IN STORE only” 

(Read more…)

Virgin Media launched what they claim to be ‘Britain’s fastest ever broadband service’ yesterday - a 50MB service that is 9x faster than the existing regular broadband average speed of 5.5MB in the UK.  It does come with a high price tag, though. 

The new Virgin Media service claims that consumers on the service would be able to download films in 3 minutes, or full TV programmes in 1 minute.  Industry specialists welcome the concept, but question the legitimacy of the speeds suggested.  But the concept of download a whole music album in just a bit over 10 seconds, and full HD Films in 15 Minutes, is not new.  Japan’s average speed surpasses 60MB, and even France’s 18MB average is more than twice that of the actual current speeds in the UK.  According to The Daily Telegraph:

The firm said this month it was making the service available to 1.3million homes in Dudley, Liverpool, parts of Tyneside, Hayes, Wigan, Croydon, Bradford, Dundee, Glenrothes and Wolverhampton.

The days of spending hours on a 28.8 bps modem blocking the phone line may be long gone, but Virgin’s new service does come at a price tag of £51 per month.  Customers on the landline phone service at £11/month do get it at a discounted price of an extra £35 a month, and Virgin’s plan is that by next summer, 12.6million homes will have access to the fiber optic service across the country. 

Now, Virgin Media’s ‘technical support’ is a whole different matter. Be prepared to to spend hours dealing with a call center in India reading template responses off a TV screen.  Perhaps Virgin’s plan to cut  2,200 jobs by 2012 should start there?

[Telegraph and Times Online]

The UK launch of ‘Amazon MP3′ is the content e-retailer’s answer to Apple’s iTunes, means that digital consumers now have a choice for digital downloads.  But not before Amazon also gets a rival of its own in the form of a Firefox plugin released yesterday called ‘The Pirates of the Amazon’, .

Albums via Amazon start at £3 and songs at 59p, compared to iTunes songs at 79p each.   Amazon negotiated for the 3 million songs available with 4 big recording companies to be free of DRM, or Digital Rights Management.  This means that once you’ve paid up, you can move the songs to any device you own, a flexibility that most customers would appreciate. 

However, Amazon’s mp3 downloads having only 256kps quality as opposed to 320kps mp3s offered by some competitors, which includes the latest Firefox add-on, ‘Pirates of the Amazon’, which not only links to potentially higher quality of the songs, but cheekily integrates a ‘Download 4 Free’ button using the Firefox Greasemonkey script.

The plugin allows users to get any songs they want without paying a single penny by linking to ‘free’ copies on torrent website The Pirate Bay. In fact, according to website TorrentFreak, this even works even with CDs, DVDs, games, books, and any products that can be converted digitally.

The plugin site has currently been taken down, announcing that “The Ship was hit. We’re offline”.  However, not all hope sank with it, as TorrentFreak has provided a backup copy of the xpi file add-on. 

Bitterwallet has no affiliations with this offshore download website due to, ahem, potential legal implications. 

[The Register] and [TorrentFreak]

A bank manager, yesterday.

Now that they’ve f***ed everything up and are having to accept billions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash to cover their arses, there surely isn’t anyone else on the high street that boils the blood of its customers quite so much as your ‘friendly’ bank. But we don’t have to take it any more – here’s how you can get your revenge.

1:  KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR CASH
Make an appointment with the branch manager. When you get there, ask to see your money. This will upset him. Then, check the serial numbers on the notes and complain that it isn’t the same money you deposited.

2:  MAKE YOUR OWN CHEQUES
Present something ridiculous like a tractor tyre as a cheque. This is perfectly legal, as long as it has all of the correct details and signature on it like a normal cheque. The bank won’t like it but they will have to accept it.
(Read more…)

We’re all slavishly loyal customers to particular companies. You may have stuck it out through thick and thin, trusted them with your cash even when offered a better deal, because there’s a certain je ne sais quoi that keeps you going back for more. So when that company kick you in the balls, it not only stings like a bitch but it’s entirely unexpected.

For example, thousands of customers still pre-order console games weeks in advance, despite their widespread availability on the day of release in high street stores. Unless a game creates national mania then there’s rarely a problem buying a copy off the shelf, on top of which supermarkets can offer substantial discounts.

So why do people still pre-order games from GAME? Well, in their minds they’re guaranteed a particular level of customer service. Perhaps they believe in the way they do business or want to buy from a games specialist. Plus, there’s the belief that they’ll have the game first before anyone else, and sometimes that’s worth paying a little extra for.

Over the past fortnight, Bitterwallet has received several emails concerning GAME and their policy concerning pre-ordering new releases, in particular Gears of War II Special Edition. To put it bluntly, customers feel they’ve been ripped off. Anyone who pre-ordered the game paid £49.99, for delivery on the day of release. However, within a day of the pre-ordered games been dispatched, GAME reduced the price by £7, to £42.99. (Read more…)

Here’s an old Polish ad that, if it were a piece of cinema, would be regarded as terrifying, avant garde and not suitable for anything, let alone kids or work.

What the hell is it even supposed to be advertising?

Fags?

Sweets??

Bug killer???

Who knows.

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]