Digital Prolixity
"There is no real life; you're either online, or AFK"- Ramzi Yakob
How to make e-mail work on the T-Mobile G-1
Feb 5th
If there are any other owners of the T-mobile G1 in the UK who have contacted the T-mobile customer support folk for help regarding their mobile e-mail settings… then you too know my pain. The first few times I called, I was informed that they had not actually yet received the manual for this specific handset (you know… the one with their name on it), despite me calling them over a month after the phone’s launch. The first few times I got nothing better than “Try calling back in a couple of weeks – we might know then” lol.
Over the weekend I decided to invest some good time and effort in explaining to the person on the other end of the phone who should supposedly know more than me about how mobile stuff works – that in fact I didn’t need settings which were specific to the G1.
All I needed was T-mobile’s UK outbound e-mail settings (which don’t change despite the handset make/model). After I explained as much – and held the person’s hand for about 20 minutes guiding him through his manuals – I finally got the answer that many of us have been waiting for.
So for anyone who has been able to receive their work e-mails on their G-1 but hasn’t been able to respond to them – the information you need is below:
SMTP server: smtp.t-email.co.uk
Port: 25
Security type: None
Require sign-in: Tick box unticked
I hope this helps 
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Snow on my street
Feb 4th
Just a pretty picture I took of my street on my G1. I thought the blue aura that everything has was worth sharing here.
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Kangaroo: Its time to say goodbye
Feb 4th
And now, the end is here… and so we face… a huge delay in a dramatically improved VoD offering in the UK. The UK Competition Commission said that Project Kangaroo “has to be stopped” and that viewers would benefit if the three were “close competitors” rather than allies.
In the long term, this may be the case (I’m still not convinced though), but in the short term this definitely isn’t true.
Neither 4oD or ITV’s Player have seen any substantial improvements since they were first launched, many many months ago.
ITV’s Player is so infuriating that as a user I get a better consumer experience by downloading their programs over Bit Torrent rather than using their on demand service. Their pre-roll advertising loops endlessly, showing the same adverts 2 or 3 times back to back – the video quality isn’t amazing – and their menu for finding relevant programming is complete shite.
4oD is, although much better than ITV’s offering, is not able to compete with the BBC’s iplayer in terms of user experience both in terms of navigation and video/audio quality. Its good enough however to use over and above downloading C4 shows through Bit Torrent.
BBC’s iPlayer is an amazing service. I don’t use its download now, watch later option because I’m not a fan of the software that this comes with – however it doesn’t matter as their streaming option is the best VoD solution I’ve ever seen on the web [bear in mind I've never been able to use Hulu as I'm UK based]. Its not just the best service we have, but its also the only one which looks like it is testing new technologies, and then releasing them at incremental stages to let us enjoy the benefits as soon as possible. These include – “watch in pop-out player” which is VERY handy, “watch in high quality”, and various in-screen sizes to let people with bigger screens enjoy a larger display without having the negative side affects of full-screen pixelation.
It is upsetting that Kangaroo will have to be panned as the technology/backend side of the business was being spearheaded by the BBC which offered a lot of hope that ALL of the programming would enjoy the superb quality that the iplayer has to offer – and it means that ITV and Channel4 who have evidently been sat on their haunches for well over a year thinking that it was pointless to improve their technology when they would be using the BBC’s as soon as Kangaroo launched. Now the poor bastards are almost 2 years behind, and are deeply gripped by the effects of the Credit Crunch making it even less likely that they’ll be able to play catchup with the BBC any time soon.
Verdict: Fail
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Christian Bale goes (American) Psycho on set of Terminator 4
Feb 3rd
****NSFW****
I loled – and if anything – makes me want to go watch the film more when its released. Perhaps it IS a cunning marketing plan Millhouse, perhaps it is.
In other news Christian Bale’s personal brand tracker survey has shown that his likeability has gone down 6 points since The Dark Knight. Why… so… SERIOUS?
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Forget the year of the mobile: 2009 is all about 3D gaming
Jan 28th
It seems that 3D stuff is making a comeback – and this time without the nausea inducing headaches which we’ve experienced in the past. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, there was enough chat about 3D gaming/video hardware to create quite a buzz on Engadget, and last week I noticed that my computer downloaded a new patch for World of Warcraft which made the game compatible with Nvidia’s new hardware and software which should bring my Loatheb kills to life. I thought to myself – “Is 3D gaming going to become a reality, or is this the HD-DVD format of 2008?”
I’m sitting on the fence for now despite Sony showing off a functioning demo of a Playstation 3 running games in 3D. But my scepticism won’t stop me from dreaming about flying around Northrend, almost being able to feel the wind in my face.
via HyperBlog
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Star Wars being summed up.. by someone who hasn’t seen it
Jan 20th
Awesome… or whatever.
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How the Internet was born
Jan 11th
Gamespot… just give up please
Dec 23rd
Gamespot’s credibility has been going down the pan since the Kane & Lynch debacle which caused about half of its editorial staff to quit, but I’d like to take this moment to ask politely – will you please just have the decency to shut shop and leave gaming journalism to the professionals?
When its THAT bad that you have to recycle content from US editorial, very clearly aimed at a US audience, on the UK specific site – then surely you don’t need me to tell you that your site is about as worthwhile as Friends Reunited.
Topping this all off is the fact that the functionality of your website is piss poor. After spending the time to register to leave a comment against that story, effectively saying what I have here, I still wasn’t able to leave a comment even though it recognised that I was logged in.
Basically you fail at life – please leave. If you’re a media planner reading this thenn please put your client’s money into publishers who actually publish something of value. Also as a tip, you can buy IGN inventory for approx half the price of Gamespot ad inventory.
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Efficiency Fail
Nov 12th
This is a Ramzi original. Photo was taken about 30 seconds away from Hyper’s office in London on my new HTC G1. I found it pretty funny that 4 wardens were skulking around. As I’ve been watching a lot of The Wire recently, I had a thought that if you took away their uniforms, they could be part of the infamous Barksdale crew who were waiting for a re-up and hoping to shit that Omar didn’t turn up with his sawn off to steal their package.
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