Weekly Round Up - Fiona Bruce, Touch Phones, Segways & APPS

Hello all,

Well what a hectic few weeks it has been. I have been kept busy with work as usual. What with the strikes and the working to rule I've hardly had a minute to myself. Today I played at being a Supervisor for a few hours cause there was no cover at one of my stations. It was jolly good fun, actually. I made lots of announcements and used every bit of technology at my disposal. For a while there it almost looked as if I knew what I was doing. I think the staff were stunned to see me there, but not as stunned as I was to see me there. It was almost as shocking as finding me at a Gary Glitter concert.....again.

I've been mostly pre-occupied with my new Touch Phone. I finally succumbed, despite all the bitching and moaning I've done over the last three years to my ever increasing pool of iPhone carrying friends. Honestly, if syphilis spread this fast, there would be a public outcry. Not that I am likening the iPhone to a sexually transmitted disease, of course. Unless it was herpes. You can't get rid of that easily either.

Anyway, I have finally decided that if you can't beat them you have to join them. Since I had no takers for my suggestion that we all go back to writing letters with pens and queuing up outside piss swamped public phone boxes, I reluctantly decided I had no choice. I was originally going to get an iPhone but the contract was not as good on the iPhone and I do like value for money. I basically get double everything (including the inconvenience) by opting for the HTC Wildfire instead. I am reliably informed that my phone is actually marginally slimmer than the iPhone so that's a positive plus in the phone stakes. Unfortunately, I subsequently found out it does not have that great swipey action through photographs. You know the one - where it looks like you are flicking an escaped bogey off your side plate before the waiter serving the bread notices. Apparently its copyrighted. Ah well. My phone runs Office, so that evens it up again.

Its been a very steep learning curve. I couldn't get anything to work on it. I kept calling people by accident. This would not be so bad, but I don't like a lot of the contacts in my phone very much and only really keep them there because I don't want anyone who steals my phone to think I only call my mum. Come to think of it, I've called my mum quite a few times by accident as well. She's never had it so good. I spent four days trying to attach photos to my contacts to no avail until my friend Osk pointed out that you can't attach 2 mb pictures to a SIM card contact. Not sure why when I can cram Bowie's entire catalogue onto an SD card the size of Jordan's moral centre, but apparently the technology has not caught up. Anyway, after a quick bit of exporting I've now got all my contacts piccied up. I've also learnt to "link" contacts, so I no longer have 8 numbers for the same person and can now click on my friend Pete's contact and select "home", "work", "mobile", "mobile his wife doesn't know about" or "current shag" at the touch of a finger.  Now that's what I call convenience.

I've also learnt that widgets and icons are not the same thing at all. I'm not entirely clear what the difference is, to be honest, other than widgets are bigger and tend to be nowhere near as useful. One widget that takes up almost a whole screen is the Weather Widget. This is also an APP, which is confusing. I should really get rid of this widget, since I don't really need to know the weather across eight time zones. I'm not the much loved and retired weatherman, Ian McCaskill, as his lawyers have recently made clear to me. But I suppose, come winter, it would be nice to know there was somewhere even colder.I could then use Google Maps to find out exactly where it was, before pinning it to my Wishlist APP of places I need to visit before I die. I could then link that to Flicker and have all the pictures taken about that subject sent to me for my perusal, whilst I dine out at a restaurant that came to my attention through my GPRS linked ThingsILike2Eat APP.

I'm constantly downloading "APPS" at the moment. APPS is apparently short for Applications. This, for the uninitiated means things you can do on your phone when you are waiting for it to carry out its primary function of ringing. I've found loads of them. I never knew I could not do without SpaceWars until now. Apparently there are much more up to date games out there but, as someone who has still not mastered Sonic on my 6 year old Nokia, I have some catching up to do. I'm just pleased they are in colour. Pong has never been so interesting. I've also downloaded something called "AppKiller". This is an absolute must as it kills all the applications that are running in the background that you downloaded, tried once and then forgot all about that are doing such things as tweeting your location to the world when you are having a shit in the next door neighbours garden.  Since downloading this useful application I have found my battery now lasts rather longer than 32 minutes. I have also found that the number of unsolicited yet strangely prescient direct messages I was receiving from people on Facebook with less than wholesome screen names has dropped dramatically. I've been swopping APPS at work and having lots of discussions and feel very much like of the hip kids. Now, if only I could remember the words to a Justin Beiber song, I would be complete.   One word of warning though - this phone has a useful application that auto links some of your contacts in your phone to Facebook profiles and e-mail addresses and such like. This can be cause some employer/employee awkwardness if you give your phone to someone who offers to help you with a problem. I found this out today when a member of staff asked me who "Cockmaster" was. Truthfully I have no idea, but I assume they know me and I have their real name in my phone somewhere. Anyway, if its you, could you please let me know so I can link you to your real name! If I find out it is my sister, I will be quite shocked. I doubt it is though as she doesn't really have it in her. Well, not as often as she would like, at any rate.

I also downloaded Skype, which has proved to be a real boon. Thanks to Osk for pointing me in the direction of this fantastic tool. This brings me nicely on to my news round up. I read in the Guardian a few days ago that Sky are attempting to sue the makers of Skype on the grounds of trademark infringement. Apparently, the average consumer could easily confuse Skype with Sky on account of the fact that some of the letters are the same. I'll let you work out which ones. This is nonsense. On that basis drug dealers could sue the makers of Coke, the brewery who makes Tetley Bitter could sue the makers of Tetley Tea Bags, Durex could sue Andrex and the maker of hula hoops could sue the makers of, errrr,  Hula Hoops. Personally I think the consumer of these two services is just about savvy enough to work things out for themselves. One is an over-hyped service providing a service prone to hanging and frequent drop outs, and the other broadcasts television programmes into the homes of people on benefits who are too fat to get jobs. As a side issue, have you ever wondered why Virgin Cable as never made it into the homes of the unemployed and unemployable? I think its because there is no status symbol dish that says "I can afford telly".

In other news this week I see that the Creator of the Segway has accidentally careered off a cliff whilst riding one of the things. You really couldn't make it up. Of course it is terrible for his family who were said to be shocked and saddened by the fall [in share price], and my thoughts are with his family at this difficult time.

Lastly, I see that the beloved BBC newsreader and presenter of The Antiques Roadshow, Fiona Bruce, has been stalked in the most "sinister and disturbing" way.  Apparently a guy by the name of Peter Oakey bombarded her with love letters and flowers for a considerable period of time, despite being under a court restriction against doing just that. He was back in court today and it transpired that he had previous convictions for sending threatening letters to Basildon library. Ms Bruce is clearly concerned that the behaviour will escalate. Clearly with good reason. He's already escalated from sending threatening letters to an inanimate building to sending bunches of flowers to Ms Bruce. If it carries on at this rate he'll be converting to Catholicism and buggering school boys by Christmas. Apparently sentencing was adjourned as the judge wanted to see the psychiatric reports. Well, I can save him the time. The man's a nutter. On a serious note though, although I make light of this, being stalked is no laughing matter, as a police officer made very clear to me at 2am just the other day, and I hope, for the future quality of the Antiques Roadshow, that this man is put in prison or at the very least made to resign from parliament. Oh wait, that's not him.That's Peter Mandelson. Nothing sinister about him.

Anyway, that's about it from me. I'm off to download some more APPS I never knew I needed. And best of all they are mainly free. I am amazed that so many people are prepared to give of their time so selflessly with the sole aim of improving my life. Its wonderful and something I could never hope of doing. Mind you, I recently discovered a website choc full of naked people doing unspeakable things in the public privacy of their own homes for free and I couldn't do that either. Its £20 per 30 minutes minimum with me, more if you want me to pull in my stomach.  I take Paypal, Visa, Maestro and (as a reflection of the precarious economic times we live in) luncheon vouchers and dry cleaning tokens.

I thank you.