Showing posts with label Orange. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orange. Show all posts

Saturday 26 October 2019

Charged - #Oktoberfest #31 - Cigarettes and Alcohol - Oasis


A weird thing , last night I switched my phone (a Google Pixel) off and put it on charge. It is always good to switch the off at some point, I do not understand people who sleep with their phone's next to their bed (unless you are on call for something) but it was about 20% charged when I went to bed last night. Switched it on this morning and it was on 2% , yes that's 2%. So although it was off, therefore not doing anything , even if it hadn't been plugged in to charge, it should have still been around 20%, so that is just a little disconcerting. It is on charge now, and though it says it's charging slowly, it's sitting at 60% charged.

I got the PIxel on the recommendation of my youngest daughter Kirsty who pointed out that you don't get all the phone brand crap that you don't want and by going on to SIM only with EE (who still are probably the best network to be with as they are reliable , fast, and have good customer service despite the awful Kevin Bacon adverts , they need to get Brennan Brown and Steve Furst back who did the amazing classy ads for Orange also check here but one of my faves was the Elton John one advertising the dawn of 3G here)

So continuing #Oktoberfest and another reserve is "Cigarettes and Alcohol" by Oasis. Oasis always annoyed me as mouthy Mancs and Beatles rip off merchants, but they actually came up with a handful of decent tunes and this one is OK.

So have a good Saturday everyone.

Sunday 14 April 2019

#TenAlbumsInTenDays #4 - 7 and 8 and The Record Store Day 2019 Aftermath


This is just a short post to record numbers 7 and 8 in the #TenAlbumsInTenDays sequence adn they are:


  • Tempest by Bob Dylan
  • Have One on Me by Joanna Newsome


Both these albums contain a lot of long songs and the Joanna Newsome one is a three CD set. I first heard Joanna Newsome on the soundtrack to the excellent New York Blackout Orange advert ("THis Side if The Blue" from "Milk Eyed Mender") which you can watch here this was when the company that became EE had consistently excellent adverts , unlike the populist Kevin Bacon rubbish the continually push these days. Joanna Newsome's instrument of choice is the harp, and I think she is the only  harpist I listen to apart from Alan Stivell.

The Bob Dylan album is was his best with the thirteen minute title track about the sinking of the Titanic, but it is full of seven and eight minute stories that keep you riveted throughout the album.

For Record Store Day 2019 I picked up a Carter USM 12" single "Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere" and Brian Eno's "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" on vinyl as well as an amazing tea towel from Powder Butterfly , check out the website to see some amazing stuff.

So now it's time for bed as it's Monday tomorrow.


Wednesday 26 March 2014

Forgetfulness and Elton John



A friend told me that Elton John has a film showing at the moment, with only two showings only at selected cinemas. An interesting strategy, but I do think that the showing of concerts and other live (even though they may actually be recorded)  events at cinemas enables people who couldn't get to or afford the actual event to experience it. In Britain a lot of plays and operas are done with cinema simulcasts.

Incidentally Elton John appears in one of my favourite Orange adverts which I have to include below at the dawn of  3G.



Always makes me smile, then , as everyone knows I can be very forgetful. The benefit of this is that you can re read and enjoy books and rewatch films, and I was wondering what I should read next and then remembered I bought a pile of books while I was on my last holiday, so I think one of those will be accompanying me to work today.

It's frosty outside, but the sun is out and it looks another gorgeous day. So have a great day everybody.

Monday 27 May 2013

Slide Comes Before A Fall


..and my how I fell , wandering into the bathroom barefoot and 18 stone of me hit the Amtico floor with a fair jolt . Somehow the floor and Kitchen ceiling were undamaged , while I survived with a sore back and bruising. Think that the Tom Petty song title is fairly appropriate for the situation.

After that have had fun with passwords and mobile phone and broadband technology with Orange and Virgin , eventually succeeding despite the best endeavours of the website "designers" to make their site unusable. I've worked with a few programmers and one of them cauled Paul who I worked for at the National Bus Company gave me these three rules for a program , though they can be applied to anything you do:

  1. It must work and do what it is supposed to do
  2. It must be legible and easily understood and documented
  3. It must be efficient
It seems very few designers / programmers take those maxims into account these days. Many of the people on the end of the phone are fine but they do have to work with systems that make their job very difficult , although you get some places that actually blame the incompetence of the user , with "You must have done something wrong" or "Try later" , as though some magic is going to suddenly make things work. If it doesnt work now , it wont work tomorrow unless it gets fixed. I'm thinking Tesco , Barclays and Nationwide for this particular bad attitude.

Anyway it's the end of the Bank Holiday , work starts again tomorrow , and it's almost time for bed .

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Dreaming of an Orange Christmas?





This year once again Orange are tempting me with their excellent Christmas box promotion. If your spend £49.99 plus a £10 airtime tope up , not only do you get a decent phone you get a pair of WeSC Headphones worth £100 free. These look like the ones you get. Also here's a thought you can use them to listen to music on your phone , if , like me, you are not a fan of in ear headphones.

Last year I was tempted and resisted , and this year will probably resist again , especially as I'm taking delivery of an LTE Samsung Note II so I can use 4G when I'm in London or Newcastle.

But it really is an excellent promotion , tempting you to buy even if you dont need the product, and if you do need a new phone or headphones or both well you're well in. So as well as having a white Christmas you could have an Orange Christmas as well!

Wednesday 4 July 2012

The Quality of Advertising


I got to thinking the other day about some decent adverts for products . This is one of the few posts where my main web site and blog coincide.

Most adverts are forgettable to the consumer , so are so downright atrocious that no mater how hard you try and forget them they com flooding back , such as the Shake 'n' Vac and Odor Eaters adverts . Horrible things they are . Halifax Building Society produce adverts that make you want to at the very least turn to another channel , well the English ones do . Althougg interestingly I cam e across these excellent adverts for Halifax Ireland. The first a quite inspired dance off:

Then there's the truly inspired bank fight:

Why can't we have that here?

Then you have the inspired Virgin ad for comfortable roomy travel on their flights:

Though some companies have a history of great and memorable adverts such as Guinness , their White Horses adverts regualary still tops polls, and their "Pure Genius" motif still hits themark:

And Orange have some amazing adverts in their back catalgue , as well as the excellent "The Future's Bright , The Future Is Orange" motif. Theyir was the excellent series of adverts featuring elliot & Mr Dresden managing to comically scene steal from stars such as Elton John , Sean Astin and even Steven Seagal !!

Orange also managed to capture the zeitgeist with adverts such as the excellent New York Blackout one:

So these are a few of my favourite adverts in the same place , all soundtracked by excellent contemporary music , meticulously put together , and with an excellent sense of humour in places, and I remember what all the ads wer advertising!!

Get your Orange phone here!!

Monday 7 May 2012

Back To Work .... Back To reality



Well today I start back after a pleasant holiday interlude looking forward to getting my new Samsung Note. Incidentally I installed the Kies software , complete rubbish , doesnt detect my works issue Samsung Galaxy , and just keeps reinstalling drivers. Oh it's also slow and resource consuming.



Anyway will be taking my car back , hopping on a bus , then a train , then a bus and arriving in Darlington with hilday cake for all assuming people are back after the Bank Holiday.



Oh incidentally have you every thought that if you are on a capped data allowance for phones or internet , that advertisements use up a great deal of your data allowance , an example of which is below this paragraph!!



Oh and the song I nicked the title from Soul II Soul's Back To Life:

Saturday 7 April 2012

There Are Lies , Damned Lies and Mobile Phone Contracts

Not long ago I thingk it was Talk Talk who won a case allowing them to advertise ridiculously low ceilings as "unlimited" . More and more companies are offering seemingly unlimited all inclusive packages. Oftenthese are based on two year contracts , with a "free" phone that of course just carries a one year guarantee. To protect this you have to take out a care package that will cost at least £150 for the duration of the contract.

O2's Best Ever Contract
Today I saw O2's latest foray into the arena. O2 are a market leader and have their "On and On" Best Ever Tariff that offers a "massive" 1Gb a month data, from £36 a month . This also doesnt include picture messaging and lets face it everyone picture messages so that could add a tidy sum to your all inclusive rates . 1 Gb is about a weeks normal web browsing with no downloads of MP3s or films. A single DIVX movie will be almost a Gb , and when you that that watching Youtube , streaming radio as data , you could use up that "massive" 1 Gb in a couple of days. T-Mobile used to have an excellent Flext plan that included everything with a limit where you started paying but everything came out of the same pot. It annoys me that so many companies hide behingd the small print almost getting like insurance!



I have my Mobile Wifi with 3 , who charge me £15 for 5 Gb on a monthly rolling contract which is more than adequate . I seldom come anywhere near that but its a good data package. Another company offers unlimited data on a similar rolling contract except in the small print is capped at 1 Gb per month.




So when you are taking out a new contract ensure you check the small print. Probably one of the most honest I've encoutered is Orange and as I say 3 offer excellent value for money , but a lot of companies are still trying to take you for a ride . Be wary!!



Wednesday 11 January 2012

Queen Elizabeth The First and The National Lottery




Just a very short post . Yesterday we were and a works sales conference. Tables were named after iconic figures such as Mother Theresa and , our table, Queen Elizabeth The first. Somehow Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had slipped in there , although they feature heavily in the film "The Iron Lady" just on national release.




All tables were given a pound as an illustration of a point one of the speakers was making . What can you do with a pound . As the team leader for the table of ten I appropriated the coin with everyones agreement and put the following numbers on the lottery for tonight , 11th of January 2012. Below is the ticket , and above is an illustration of a good use of web slide controls when trying to sell products. Anyway the numbers are 32 , 33 , 34 , 36 , 38 , 39.



If you want to play yourself follow the link below!!


Friday 30 December 2011

Six Point Eight Millon Phone Activations On Christmas Day

Thats more than one phone for every ten people in Britain , given the saturation of mobile phones in this country , that's quite amazing , obviously sales campaigns are being amazingly successful . Apple are the greatest marketers with the abiltity to create want and need in people , and their target market don't even know why they want the damned thing (iPhones and iPads especially) , hell I nearly bought an iPad so that's how good they are!

Anyway this must create a lot of disused handsets which companies like Boots will take off your hands and give you a couple of quid in return. Anyway I didn't get a mobile phone , my trusty San Francisco 1 still going strong and enabling me to make calls , text , surf the next and take bad pictures!!

Saturday 12 November 2011

Multimedia @ The BBC

Lots of people complain about the BBC and "why should I pay the license fee when I dont watch it" (apart from iPlayer , radio etc etc. Over the years , apart from the excellent David Attenborough helmed  natural history programs (Frozen Planet is his current masterpiece) , the BBC has recorded numerous music sessions by some excellent bands .

This month has seen the release of some excellent collection from TheYardbirds , Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple , that latter for some reason incorporating CD and vinyl copies in the same box , surely you dont need both!!Though over the years I've accumulated ELO and Bowie at the BBC introduced by Bryan Matthews, and am waiting for a definitinive Half Man Half Biscuit compilation which would surely sell by the barrow load. Anyway this could be another reason to succumb to Orange's excellent Christmas Box package to get my hands on the Angle & Curve Headphones for a £40 outlay (with a PAYG phone , piggy bank and other extras thrown in).

Today I took a copy of the 40th Anniversary copy of Tago Mago by Can from the excellent RPM in Newcastle, on the player now , think the Stone Roses had been listening to Halleluwah!! . The Orange is calling harder ......

Friday 11 November 2011

Orange Temptation

I don't need a new phone , yet. But Orange are giving away an excellent value Christmas box with any Pay As You Go phone over thirty pounds (plus ten pound top up). The blurb goes like this:

"We’ll give you a free pair of Angle & Curve headphones worth £60 when you buy any pay as you go phone priced at £30 or more. It’s all part of our Christmas gift box"


This is the power of advertising , I keep finding good reasons to go out and buy a phone I dont need. I also dont need headphones, If I did I could by a perfectly good set of Sennheiser Headphones for £20 , rather that fork out the £40 my free gift requires.

As yet I haven't given in to temptation but I have been close . This is the essence of a brilliant advertising campaign, get people to want to buy , even though they dont want to or need to .

Very good Orange!!


Monday 7 November 2011

An Orange Widget

This is a very short post to check out widget creation , and see if I can sell the odd iPhone. I do find it amazing how Apple products are spreading  every where , every music player has an iPod dock and according to "Q" magazine without Steve Jobs we would have no music!!

Though this is at a time where Orange have just produced an excellent Muppets based Goldspot advert to promote Orange Wednesdays film nights!!

Saturday 2 April 2011

Me and My Content Delivery Device (A Short History of Me & Mobile Phones)


About ten years ago my daughter forced on me an old Pay as you go Motorola phone, and through the years I eventually got a contract , a bike , and then became employed by my present company who provide me with a phone and pay my bill.

When I started I saw article that one of the big cheeses in Orange had hoped for a 25% take up of mobile phones by the population - at that time it was around  130% (a number of people have multiple phones , personal and business). Apart from being able to make calls , you can communicate by text, take photographs , send pictures , browse the internet and interact with social networks as well as playing music and watching video. The latter option could bring some truth to the phrase "It'll Make You Go Blind!!" as watching films of a certain kind on such a small screen cannot be good for your eyes!!

Thr rise of smart phones (big hitters being Apple / iPhone and Google's Android) mean that phones can do anything bar teleportation.. Apples main failing is that you need a PC with iTunes on but they do the job , though the iPad is a big iPhone you cant make calls on!!.

Anyway here's my progression:

  • Samsung Tocco - My first touch screen phone - generally very good apart from the fact if you had the number pad on and put it to your ear it started pressing keys and cut you off.
  • Nokia X6 - Nokia have great cameras but a terrible operating system and it wmanaged to wipe my contacts twice so it went in exchange for ..
  • LG Chocolate - A Gorgeous Looking phone , absolutely brilliant until you switch it on!! This went in exchange for
  • LG 505 - Worse than the Chocolate and without the looks
  • Orange San Francisco - Android Phone , processor to slow , camera rubbish , but dirt cheap and brilliat in every other department - I do love this phone despite it's few drawbacks . Still have it and can't see anything I want to upgrade it for. Bought myself a tiny Panasonic camera to make up for the picture shortfall
I still can't believe how far mobiile phones have moved on since thefirst ones came out....

Sunday 18 October 2009

Exclusive? Moi?

click here
What is the meaning of exclusive? Given that Vodafone and Orange have just acquired rights to sell Apple's iPhone , which was previousle only available on O2 , I was surprised to see a full page advertisement in the Sunday Times advertising the iPhone's exclusivity to O2. I suppose you can't believe all you read in the papers then!!!
What I could belive is that my neighbour had provided me with a barrow load of firewood for my wood burning stove when some sizeable branches from his tree fell into our garden whilst on holiday. As well as clearing the wood away he also chopped the thing into stove and chimeniere sized sticks - well deserving of a couple of bottles of Oddbins fizz!!!

Friday 12 June 2009

What's The Meaning Of Free?

After Carphone Warehouse's re-imagining (see Orange Goldspots ad below) of the word "unlimited" in relation to mobile downloads (250 Mb a month se article here) we now have Sky offering free broadband, calls and Sky+ Box as the main thrust of their advertising campaign. In the small porint it does mention that you have to pay a minimum of about £16 a month to get these "free" services.

A similar thrust is 3s "never pay for another phone call" advert , the condition being that you make Skype to Skype phone calls using VOIP and incur the related internet access data charges . Yes, you dont pay for the calls , but you DO pay for being able to make them!!

The Orange Goldspot that uses THAT word:


Wednesday 31 December 2008

It's New Year's Eve

Hope all the apostrophes are where they should be. Apparently the mobile phone company Orange are expecting to process 112 million texts . Thats a lot of texts that should help pay for their excellent Goldpot adverts , the current one featuring Dennis Hopper below , but if you can find them check out the McAuley Culkin and Michael Madsen ones!!




By the way the Partycam for tonight is here