Deals Of The Day – Wednesday 22nd May
May 22nd, 2013 • No Comments
The all-new Xbox One is coming soon, and that’ll mean a whole host of brand new games to play on it. The thought of it is generating so much drool here that we’re all wearing Microsoft-branded bibs today.
But let’s not forget about the humble, soon-to-be-obsolete Xbox 360. There’s still a bit of life left in the powerful old dog, and the good people in the Xbox Live Marketplace have just thrown out a particularly tasty, chewy bone in the shape of Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. It was 1200MSP, but you can have it for just 320MSP, which of course is two quid in Earth Money. Enjoy your nightmare…
WAIT! THERE’S MORE…!!!
• 32GB Nexus 7 Tablet – only £179.00 with £10 off voucher.
• Dead space 1 & 2 (PC) – just £6.24.
• Need For Speed: Most Wanted (PS3) – yours for £13.98.
• Acer Iconia 7 8GB Android tablet – only £89.00 with code.
• The Complete Sopranos (DVD box set) – yours for £37.46.
• Holidays to Greece, Turkey and Cyprus – under £200.
• Anker Uspeed 4-port USB 3.0 PCI-E Card – just £10.99.
• Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed (PS3/360 limited edition) – only £12.99.
• Panasonic Lumix G compact camera with interchangeable lens – just £249.99.
• Resident Evil 6 (PS3/360) – £11.99 delivered.
All those and more can be found over at HotUKDeals…
Don’t buy a burger in Bexley
May 22nd, 2013 • 6 CommentsWhen it comes to dirty burgers and rat-infested branches of Chicken Cottage, there’s something of hygiene postcode lottery going on, according to a new Which! report. The worst place to satisfy a fast food craving is apparently Bexley, where 45% of businesses fall below the official hygiene rating of ‘generally satisfactory.’
The report took stats from Food Standard Agency hygiene reports up and down the UK and found that Bexley was bogging, followed by Birmingham’s B35 postcode, which was the second place most likely to find a verucca plaster in your kebab.
Established UK fast food chains were also exposed as well dodgy, with 29% of Chicken Cottage outlets and a quarter of Dixy Chicken shops rated below satisfactory. On the higher end of the scale, 18% of La Tasca branches are crappy too – so don’t think you’re getting away with botulism just because you’re eating tapas instead of a dog burger in the street.
If you don’t want to end your night peering at the toilet bowl, though, you should head to Carluccios, Zizzis, Eat or the Premier Inn, which had no low scores at all.
Which! are calling for clearer hygiene ratings in restaurants, but surely this undermines the whole point of a grubby late night fried chicken blow out – whether you can still eat it and wake up alive?
Connoisseurs pop their corks over £12.99 Aldi champagne
May 22nd, 2013 • 9 CommentsQuick, stock up the shed with booze: a champagne which costs just £12.99 from Aldi has beaten loads of other fancy champagnes in a blind taste test at the International Wine Challenge 2013. And that includes Veuve Cliquot, which retails at £130.
Wine boffins and spittoon filling tossers gathered at the event and tasted several vintages. One of the best was Aldi’s Champagne Veuve Monsigny by Philizot and Fils. The judges said it was ‘classy and complex’ – which sounds like a ghost written novel by Kim Kardashian – but apparently that’s wine speak for ‘ace.’
The champagne won the silver medal at the Wine Challenge – with the panel decreeing that it offered ‘an intense nose of baked apple, brioche and stone fruits with gorgeous flavours of apples, red fruit and minerality on the palate.’ (But does it get you pissed?)
Last month Aldi’s £10 own label gin also scored highly in a similar taste test at the International Spirits Challenge, beating brands that cost five times as much.
So if you’re a booze enthusiast – or just a common or garden alcoholic – get down to Aldi today with an articulated lorry.
94% of you would rather give up sex than your phone
May 22nd, 2013 • 7 Comments
“Sex? No ta.”
Apparently, the majority of you lot would rather go without sex than go without your mobile phone. Two thirds of young Britons reckon that they “couldn’t live without their phone” and, astonishingly, 9% said they’d rather part with their own children than part with their gadgets.
The survey by Mobileinsurance.co.uk found that 94% of people in the UK would rather live without sex than their mobile phones while almost a quarter of those polled said they were ‘very dependent’ on their handset, while 10 per cent felt they could ‘take or leave’ their device.
Remarkably, the poll also found out that nearly half of the survey would rather live without ‘basic meals’.
Either people weren’t taking the survey very seriously or we, as a nation, have reached a stage where we’re so jaded that only our phones are our friends and we’d actually rather die than face that realisation.
Which is nice.
Prague makes special train journey for sad singletons
May 21st, 2013 • 5 Comments
A single man
Over in Prague, a place so pretty that it makes you vomit when you look at it, they plan to create a humiliating ‘love carriage’ on underground trains so single people can find love.
This is a move to try and encourage people to use public transport more. Of course, the mystifying payment system for Prague public transport doesn’t help either, where you have to pay for ‘time’ rather than ‘distance’.
Filip Drapal, spokesman for the capital’s transport company, told AFP: “People meet there, pass by each other, and if they like one another they can start a relationship. We do not know yet whether the dating car will be the last carriage on each train, and whether it will work [for a] day, a week, or one an hour.”
If it works, the trains might have to stop for rubbers on the line.
There are doubters. Commuter Petr Voracek said: “When I’m in a rush, I enter the first open door I see. I should watch out now and make sure no-one starts seducing me.”
Driver ‘pulls’ mucky prank on drive-thru
May 21st, 2013 • 4 CommentsThe Shake Weight prank has been performed on drive-thru workers. In the clip-compilation, the driver
In a compilation of clips, the driver is seen pulling up to a number of drive-thrus and instead of ordering, he uses the modified dumbbell which makes himself look like he’s tugging himself off.
Have a look at the video below.
[DS]
Credit Card Sharks- don’t let them bite you on your holiday
May 21st, 2013 • 3 Comments
This week the Independent claimed a victory against Barclaycard, forcing them to reveal the interest rate you could get if you aren’t a credit angel as well as the headline rate you could have won.
This means that consumers can weigh up the chances of them getting the advertised 18.9% rate against the possible 29.9% rate offered to the less-than-holy before Barclaycard run a credit check on their account. The difference between the two rates is the widest spread of any major lender, so it’s good news that consumers can make an informed decision.
But another card scenario also requires consumers to know the financial consequence of what they are doing, or pay through the nose. Using your card while abroad can weigh heavily on your pocket when you get back, and it’s best to know what you are doing before you incur the charges.
Figures from uSwitch estimate that one in four consumers will each put an average of £992 on a credit card racking up a whacking great £327 million in additional charges, owing to the average 2.75% exchange rate transaction fee charged by card providers. Those who use their credit card to withdraw cash abroad will be stung even more, with additional 3% cash handling fees and daily interest rates for cash of up to 39.9%.
But are debit cards any better? The same proportion of customers will use a debit card, but in addition to the 2.75% exchange rate fee, an estimated £1.25 transaction charge also applies. This would mean a customer paying a £100 restaurant bill on their debit card abroad could typically end up being charged £104 for the meal – instead of paying £102.75 on their credit card. However, uSwitch figures show that cash withdrawal fees on a debit card are normally 1% cheaper and do not suffer punitive interest charges, unlike a credit card.
Of course, these fees do not take into consideration the cost of changing money anyway, and even if the exchange provider doesn’t charge explicit fees or commission, their take will be incorporated in the exchange rate. Today, ICICI would give you €1,163 in exchange for £1,000, although the strict currency conversion (from xe.com) would give you €1,176. Still, the £13 fee only works out at just over 1%.
Last one in the water’s a wuss.
Deals Of The Day – Tuesday 21st May
May 21st, 2013 • No Comments
Those power outlets in our homes – they’re not just for sucking electricity out of, or accidentally weeing against when you come home drunk. Oh no, there’s now a third use – internet enhancer!
Your home network can be enhanced no end with this 200Mbps Ethernet powerline network adapter kit. Plug one end into your router and the other into your computer, via those crackling, fizzing electricity wires inside your walls. Hey presto – Ethernet-speed broadband wherever you fancy it. Right now, one of these kits can be yours for just £19.99 delivered, which is ALMOST too good to be true.
WAIT! THERE’S MORE…!!!
• 14 nights Turkey – just £165pp.
• Dredd (2D/3D Blu-ray) – only £7.00.
• Unreal Deal pack (PC) – yours for £5.75.
• Xbox 360 (4GB, with Kinect Value Bundle) – only £139.00 with code.
• Three 30-day SIM (calls, texts & unlimited data) – usually £15, now £9.98.
• Pre-order Arkham Origins (Xbox 360/PS3) – just £32.00 with voucher.
• Firefly – The Complete Series (Blu-ray) – yours for £10.95.
• LG 42” full HD 1080p Freeview 3D LED TV – just £379.99 delivered.
• Lenovo IdeaPad S206 – only £199.00.
• Dear Esther (PC) – just £1.39 with code.
• Sweet Sundays at Cineworld – collect 4 codes for free cinema tickets.
All those and more can be found over at HotUKDeals…
Taiwan news geniuses give Yahoo a kick in the Tumblrs
May 21st, 2013 • 1 CommentThere’s no finer news source on the PLANET than Taiwan’s animated NMA service – your one-stop shop for batshit-mental news stories.
And they haven’t let us down with this, their coverage of Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr.
It kicks off by describing the deal as a ‘death sentence’ and doesn’t get much kinder after that…
Xbox Reveal… coming later today…
May 21st, 2013 • 2 CommentsIt’s Big News Day if you’re an Xbox user, with Microsoft’s Xbox Reveal event getting underway from about 6pm UK time.
We’re assuming that we’ll be finding out all about the new Xbox, as opposed to Microsoft revealing that the 360 has a previously-hidden hidden compartment in it where you can store cotton wool buds.
We won’t be giving the Xbox Reveal the big all-inclusive coverage that it will surely deserve, but our learned colleagues over at Dealspwn WILL be doing just that, with live coverage and comment on their site, and updates via Twitter.
Get over there later, gawp at the marvellous Xbox Reveal and chip in with your thoughts and opinions. Except you – yes, you. You know who we mean.
Long, laborious bra drying may soon be a thing of the past….
May 21st, 2013 • 2 Comments
Now there’s a better way to get that wet bra dried in a hurry, bang it on, and get out there with your chesticles supported and protected.
Ladies (and large-chested gents) – your days of hanging around waiting for your bras to dry are almost at an END.
We are proud to inform you of the existence of the Bra Dryer 2.0 from Ricasol. Using infrared light to warm up and evaporate moisture in the bra’s padding and fabric, it’ll dry your bra out in 20 to 30 minutes, leaving it in perfect shape and not battered around the place by a tumble dryer or hanging on the washing line for half a day.
Speaking of hanging around, the Bra Dryer itself was developed in 2009, but the company behind it held it back due to the poor economic climate. Things are clearly on the up for us all now, and tit should be available soon for somewhere between $150-200.
It. It should be available soon. Sorry.
Below: some keen Bra Dryer customers, yesterday…
Bacon restaurant closes down because of the bacon stink
May 20th, 2013 • 4 Comments
A bacon restaurant in San Francisco – called Bacon Bacon – has been ordered to shut its doors forever, thanks to the smell of bacon.
Who would have ever thought a bacon restaurant would stink of bacon? Well, for one, the neighbours who complained about it.
The owners apparently had months to address the “porcine aroma” and “grease disposal” issues, but alas, didn’t manage to do so.
“It’s frustrating,” said owner Jim Angelus. “Two weeks ago, the health department showed up saying we had no permits. So we had a hearing and one person showed up saying they were opposed.”
“They told us we had long enough to resolve these issues – and as a result, we have to cease operations May 17.”
Piggin’ awful, etc.
Yahoo may be trying to act cool with their purchase of alt.porn-fest Tumblr, but they’ve got problems to sort out before they start going on about Sasha Grey and making Miguel memes.
It has been revealed that its Japanese users might have had their data stolen.
Yahoo Japan sent out a weak-wristed not to their users, saying that their personal data may’ve been swiped, but didn’t say sorry or anything. It must be a small number of people then? Only 22 million user IDs.
“There was unauthorized access from the outside to the server that is managing the Yahoo! Japan ID was found. Where he was to strengthen the monitoring system in response to the unauthorized access occurred on April 2, it is what it is detected suspicious login,” they said, adding that the “result of the investigation, it has been found that files that have been extracted only the ID of 22 million maximum of has been created.”
“The files that were created, such as ‘secret question’ you need when you have forgotten your password… data other than ID is not included,” it said. ”ID is the public information that is available to everyone, it is displayed on the service, personal information of everyone in the user is not included at all.”
Tumblr users will now be worried that all their tentacle porn will be leaked at some point in the future, alongside pictures of bearded men stroking cats and self-confessional journals about how their exes are awful.
Rise of the Contactless Payment Machines…
May 20th, 2013 • 6 Comments
Near Field Technology or NFT is one of technology’s latest strides. It means you can pay for things using a mobile phone, or with a bank card flashing a sideways wireless symbol. If you are using a card this means you can save seconds of your time by not entering your PIN into the terminal. Handy if you have only seconds to live or if you have forgotten your PIN number. But is it any use?
Well, lots of people seem to think so, with latest figures from Visa Europe showing 46% increase in contactless payments across Europe in the first three months of this year. That’s a total of 19m transactions, with 5.3m of them here in the UK. We are, in fact, “leading the way in contactless usage” along with Spain and Poland.
However, as with all things technological, there is also scope for what cyber-geeks like to call a cock up. The BBC Money Box programme has been investigating claims that so-called Near Field Technology has become more of a Not-So Near Field, with customers reporting contactless payments being swiped from cards minding their own business inside purses or wallets.
Rosemary from Sussex wasn’t even trying to save time- she only realised the contactless payment had been taken when the machine wouldn’t allow her to enter her PIN on her old-fangled debit card. Paula from London had a double whammy- the till took the payment from both her purse-enclosed contactless card and the debit card whose PIN she dutifully entered into the keypad. Both ladies were shopping at Marks and Spencer and both claim the contactless card was at least a foot away from the card reader. Another customer reported a similar issue at sandwich shop Pret a Manger.
Contactless cards are only supposed to charge the card when it is tapped on the reader, and in Marks and Spencer’s case, the readers are only supposed to work within 4cm, although they do work through the material of a purse or wallet. Tests undertaken by Martin Emms, a researcher into new payment formats at Newcastle University also showed that payment would be taken if cards were placed within a wallet at the side of the card reader. According to the card issuers, the cards themselves are only supposed to work within 5cm of the contactless payment point.
For the ladies concerned, having a purchase accidentally charged to a credit card is probably a nuisance, but perhaps not the end of the world. But what if this happened to someone who was already in a punitive overdraft at the bank? That one mistaken charge could result in daily penalties being slapped on an account, and a refusal of access to funds. Or if you’ve been doing something clever and transferred balances on a credit card, so you don’t get charged interest unless you make a purchase.
While far-reaching payment systems are probably a glitch that won’t cause most people a problem, perhaps this is a sign we should beware of all this digital tech. We’ve all seen Terminator…
Deals Of The Day – Monday 20th May
May 20th, 2013 • No Comments
Sky have recently snapped up O2’s broadband service and are in the process of amalgamating everything together – and if you’re a current O2 customer, you could cop for a nice little bonus as a result.
The Murdoch-flavoured media giants are offering free TV and Broadband for a year for O2 Broadband customers in advance of the switchover of their service to Sky. It’s the Entertainment Extra+ service with 48 HD channels etc, plus their Broadband Unlimited package. You’ll have to fork out for Sky line rental instead of O2 line rental, which may work out worse for some, but it does include free caller display which O2 doesn’t. Sky are saying that the package you get for free is worth £468. Not often you get something nice for free is it?
WAIT! THERE’S MORE …!!!
• Daft Punk – Random Access Memories MP3 download – only £5.00.
• Need For Speed Most Wanted (PS Vita) – just £14.86.
• Samsung 64GB Class 10 MicroSD – yours for £38.08.
• The Complete Bourne Movie Collection (Blu-ray) – only £15.95.
• Lego City Undercover (Nintendo WiiU , limited edition with Chase McCain minifig) – only £32.99 delivered.
• Assassin’s Creed 3 (PS3/360) – yours for £14.99.
• Far Cry 3 (PS3) – just £17.59 delivered.
• Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix (limited edition) – yours for £24.29.
• Lexar 8GB SDHC card class 6 – £3.99 delivered.
• The Last of Us – Joel Edition (PS3) – only £39.00 (with code).
• Toshiba 3TB USB 3.0 3.5” desktop hard drive – just £90.96.
All those and more can be found over at HotUKDeals…
