FWIW: Just got this email from Barclays Cycle Hire Head of Operations….

During the recent Meet the Managers online consultation, it became clear many customers were not aware they can get an extra 15 minutes of usage if a docking station is full when you come to return your cycle. So I am sending this mail to ensure everyone knows how to take advantage of this.

To do this, touch the ’No docking point free’ icon on the terminal screen and you will automatically be granted the extra time. The status of empty docking points at the nearest six terminals is always available on the terminal screen and maps are displayed showing their locations.

Please note that if you hired more than one cycle this request needs to be made for each cycle on hire.

So if you can actually get a bike when you need one, and find you can’t get rid of it at your destination, doing the above will give you 15 mins extra to race around looking for somewhere slightly further… and further and further to re-dock it…

I tried the hire bikes, found it to be a massive let-down. The gear ratio is too low so you have no hope in hell of going fast on one, waterloo is out of them in the morning, if you get a key for yourself and your wife on the same account, then everytime you borrow a bike yourself you get charged for two bikes (utterly retarded logic).

If you are a tourist and want a way to get around London, they are probably great, for commuting purposes.. no chance.

I took a couple of my old phones (E71 and k800i) on holiday to sell them but that didn’t happen so was looking to try one of those phone recycling by post companies here in the UK last week, I was about to pop down the post office with my jiffy bag full of phones last week to send them off to “Phone Recycle Bank” (found via moneysavingexpert.com) who had the highest payouts, but decided to google them for reviews where I found really bad writeups from people who had either had their phones lost or the company said the phone was not working and paid out less money.

So I did a bit more research and remembered all the mazuma mobiles ads on TV… googled their customer experiences instead where the ratings were far more positive so decided to go with them.

You start on the Mazuma website by entering the phone models  you want to sell and they give you the price they are prepared to pay, which was lower than “Phone Recycle Bank” but at least the phones don’t get lost or you offered less than you thought you were going to get. Then you wack in your address, make a username and a password so they can post you a prepaid bag to send your phones to them in with a delivery note already created.





After two days the envelope arrived, I popped the phones and note in then went off to the post office to get a FREE proof of postage which was just a sticker and a receipt.





The proof of postage give you free insurance up to the value of £41 if your package does not get to mazuma, so off went the phones…

I expected to get no feedback for 2-3 days however the next morning I got an email saying the phone had been received for processing.





And sure enough later the same day (just the say after putting the phones in the post office I got the payment is on it’s way email.





Day 3 (today) I checked the bank account and sure enough there was £49 from Mazuma… I’m very impressed, now rather than cluttering up one of our brand new IKEA cupboards they turned into cash!.

1 year ago today was the most amazing day of my life and every day since then has been awesome in one way or another – our boy Theo had his first birthday party yesterday and we want to thank you all for coming, if any of you have photos from yesterday could you email them to me so I can cook up a gallery of sorts online.

Like most people, at first I thought twitter was a load of rubbish – then people started developing applications around the concept and you can go crazy with it now – I am quite heavily into twitter nowadays.

Windows Twitter Clients

The best of the bunch is TweetDeck, perhaps the most popular professional Adobe Air client for Twitter. Supports, searches, groups, multiple accounts

CRM
If you are serious about doing business through twitter, you will most probably use some kind of CRM tool for Customer Relationship Management.

• CureCRM – Twitter and Email bases CRM
• Salesforce Service Cloud supports Twitter
• IGOpeople Twitter CRM business suite
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers a Twitter “accelerator” integration

Twitter User Directories
If just searching for someone isn’t enough for you to find people you could always use one of the directories that have sprung up.

• Twellow – Twitter “Yellow Pages”
• JustTweetIt is a clean and web directory with many users
• Geofollow – Location based Twitter directory covering the whole planet
• Twibes find people based on what they are interested in!

Enhancements to Twitter
Twitter has only very basic features, even Twitter clients offer only a few more. Since the Twitter API was released so people could make their own software to interface with Twitter there are literally thousands of tools.

• TwitterLocal allows you to address local Twitter users
• Social Oomph (formerly Tweet Later) is a tool with multiple features, some of clients some of extra tools, scheduling and automating tweets are just two of them
• PingFM allows to submit links to Twitter, Facebook and many other services at once

Other favorite of mine is Twitter Fall which makes for interesting viewing.

I have been thinking for a few weeks to change our huge 32″ dolby la de daa bass subwoofer thingy on top built in JVC telly to something a little more LCD, same size is OK as we are modest people and don’t have the hugest of houses.

Week and a half ago we had a walk around the big outlets to see what the picture looked like on the main brands, I thought Toshiba looked good with their “regza” thing (current buzzword BS), samsung looked shite, and LG looks wooOooO very nice. But the ones that looked good enough were around the £500 mark which I wasnt prepared to spend on a 32 inch telly nowadays. I told my mum and wife that it would be pretty easy in this economy to get a £500 telly for around £350, in the following week low and behold the group that encompases currys, PC world, pixmania put the 32LG5570 that usually retails for £499 for sale for the bank holiday weekend for £348, 32 inch full HD rated 8.9/10 overall by shitloads of reviewers across several sites and I knew this was the perfect upgrade. I placed my order online quickly from work that day as I knew this would be a  sellout once the word got out (I find out about good deals pretty early with my network of sites and retailers contacting me directly).

I was expecting delivery the following thursday, after bank holiday weekend and all was set, just sit back and wait for free delivery. Then I thought to go to PC world and see what this set looked like for real to see if the stats matched up with the real deal, and yes it is indeed a great box with a really nice picture. I got home then thought hmmm why not go to the store cancel the online order by phone and just take the thing home today… then I read about people getting stuck pixels on TVs and such and it’s far easier to get your money back without the hassle of testing etc if you just get it delivered.. so I left it for Thursday.

Right at the end of the bank holiday weekend (one hour high street trading left) I got an email from PC world saying there was a problem with payment… ring your bank… which I did.. they said nobody attempted to take payment.. so I called PC world and the show begun… ending up me realising I typed by credit card number into their site incorrectly (FFS a little verification would have noticed that on the spot, hole in the website me thinks..).

So I went to PC world once the guy on the phone confirmed there were still 3 in stock there. Now if you are in the UK and have ever graced a PC world store with your presence then you will realise they are painfully understaffed, all of them… if you ever get to speak to a sales assistant in PC world you are in the minority.

20 minutes of stringing along begun that I wont bore you with except to say that they did not have 3 in stock (centralised stock control fail) but they had “4 on display”… now WTF would convince a store manager to take so much stock of a great deal and stick it on the friggin shelves on display….

I got this guy to check currys and to cut a long story short I drove over there like a maniac and snagged the last one in west London.

Had it resting on the other telly all week enjoying the crisp clarity of the LCD picture and ordered a  wall mount from ebay, which arrived thursday… today I drilled the wall and mounted the telly… and it really is a nice sight :), now all I have to do is flog the JVC, I put an ad in the loot.com website for £150, seems that is towards the upper end of the second hand market pricing scale for this type of TV… so I can see myself dropping the price to just £100 to free up some space in the living room this week when I try to resell… damn that seems like such a cheap price for a big TV with great sound.. but then we as humans must constantly upgrade…

If you are considering getting the 32LG 5570, go for it the picture, even standard non HD broadcast is great!