The James Kilgour BlogA Life Blog.

Millions of us go abroad every year, and what’s one the most important things we pack? Our Mobiles. With them, we can keep in contact with family and friends, and even take snaps of our holiday.

But using them aboard is ridiculously expensive. Sending a text in Spain, for example would cost 40p, compared to 10p in the UK!

Now the EU wants to force the networks to reduce their prices. Of course, they’re not happy.

But why? Most of the major networks actually own networks abroad, for example Orange provide network in Spain under the Movistar name.

So actually, why would it cost 30p more to send a tiny piece of data, over two networks they own?

The EU have already lowered the cost of calling, although it could have been more drastic. Hopefully Texting will follow.

JK

ChaCha are a fairly new company, in the Question and Answer market. Basically, US users text in any questions they like, free, and ChaCha texts back the answer.

How they do this, is using “Guides”; knowledgeable individuals, who get paid to reply to the questions through the ChaCha web portal. For every answer, they get paid $0.10; the top guides getting twice as much.

Out of curiosity, I tried to become a guide earlier today. Unfortunately, they rejected me at the first questioning stage; the ChaCha Fitness Stage. The topic? ChaCha.

Of course, I had no idea. To be honest, the founder of the company, the place that it was announced and the company’s ethos do not really interest me in the foggiest.

I can imagine how important to an American when their out-and-about to find out that “Cha” means dance in Chinese, and Scott Jones invented the concept. Wow.

I also fail to see how ChaCha actually makes any money. Users don’t have to pay anything to the company to text in, and the texts don’t have ads. Great business model.

JK 

Homepages Friends is a weirdly named site, that at first look may appear to be a scam. I’ve been using it, (out of curiosity) for a few days now, and the earnings from the site have started to pour in.

Basically, you register quickly, and get your own homepage. On it, is a Yahoo! search box. All you have to do is use it like normal; like you would Google or Yahoo! itself. The results are identical to Yahoo!.

Every search is recorded in your account however (not the actual keyword), and the next day, the number of searches will add up to earnings. The site pays fairly well; 2p for every search. It soon adds up, and the real way to start monopolising is with friends. When your refer them, you get an additional 10% of everything they earn, plus 5% of anyone they refer. Once your account reaches £20, you can request payment by PayPal.

Being paid to search actually, is something Google should be doing. They earn buckets from searchers like you and me, through the millions of pounds made in Ad revenues.

If you want to give the service a try, click here. It’ll sign you up as a friend of mine, and I’ll get 10% of the amount you earn (It won’t affect your profits). Leave a comment if you do!

JK

Halifax Bank of Scotland is one of the UK’s big four financial institutions, and whether separate or together, have been part of the highstreet for years. In fact, the bank holds 20% of all mortgages in the UK, and has millions of savers.

The events of the current economic climate though have caused unsteadiness, with the HBOS share price falling by more than three quarters.

But is a Super Bank a good idea for the UK? The new bank would have just under 40 million customers, with a 28% hold of the Mortgage market. (Under UK law, no financial institution is permitted to hold more than 25%.) The Bank would also have nearly 3000 branches, making it unmissable on the highstreet. 

The bank would offer unrivaled security, and would prevent collapse of HBOS, which if this were to happen could be devastating for the UK economy.

The bank would also have unrivaled financial powers, and would gain a controlling stake in the UK economy. However, with plentiful smaller alternatives,  I doubt it would really have an affect on the consumer.

JK

Napster once was the spawn of the music industry, a downloader’s delight, and enemy of retailers. But now, Napster is the golden child. Boasting Over 6 million, mp3 tracks available, is Napster still the best option for downloaders who want the best deal?

I’ve only just started using Napster; enticed by the offer of a free 7 day trial. The software is very cool, functional and quick and the selection is fantastic. The basic package, £9.95 per month provides unlimited downloads, of WMA tracks. These can be played on your computer, but not put on your MP3 player or iPod. For £14.95, you get the option to transfer to a Play-For-Compatible device (No iPods though).

Another great feature is the ability to stream any track. This allows you to sample it before you download. And downloading, trust me, is lightening fast (I have 4mb broadband). Also, Napster have hundreds of different “radio stations”, in any genre, plus CD Compilation playlists.

My really big concern though is the fact that you don’t actually own the music you download. If you stop paying, your music stops. At least with the likes of iTunes, you own what you pay for. Any that doesn’t expire. For the price as well, you would expect some sort of return from your investment.

JK

So at the Apple event that took place a few days ago, Genius was released, a new feature that allows users to quickly find Songs matching the one they are currently listening to.

But is the service much help?

I’ve been using it for a few days so far, and although it shows promise, I really haven’t found it that much of a revolution.

Also, it’s not like it doesn’t take effort. It can be quite slow to update itself, and on automatic, you have to wait a week. For a Genius, it isn’t always that effective either; half of the songs it picks out of my Library of 1600 are nothing a like!

I can see scope though for it; especially on the iPod where it can be time consuming to flick through endless songs to find similar ones you’re in the mood for. However it seems that Apple won’t be releasing the update for older iPods, including my 80gb iPod Classic, which is practically identical to the new 120gb version. Why not? Is anyone really going to upgrade for one small feature like that????? If anything, it rather puts me off…

You can see the new iPod range at Amazon (UK/US).

JK

After 13 weeks, it’s finally here! The final of Big Brother 9, and the possible winners are: Sara, Mikey, Rex, Darnell and Rachel. Who will win?

To be honest, I don’t know, nor do I have a real preference. As long as it isn’t Darnell (who I find over self-obsessed, paranoid and aggressive), I don’t think I would particularly be that bothered.

The shows viewing figures are actually the lowest in the shows history; 300,000 down from last year. Saying that, I thought this year was better than last year, which I found rather boring, with a house full of people who were only there to become famous.

Channel 4 currently have a contract with Endemol, the BB production company to run the show until at least 2010, meaning a guaranteed two more seasons. If the ratings don’t pick-up though, will it continue from there?

JK

Sneaky Sound System? ever heard of them? Unless you’re in Australia, you probably won’t have.

Sneaky Sound System have two albums, one self titled, the other called “2″. Neither are out in Europe or the US, although their latest single Pictures was released in the UK in July.

Personally, I think their music is phenomenal. I don’t like a lot of dance music, but this is great. All of their  songs have sensible lyrics, and a great beat. It’s the sort of music that just makes you happy, and want to get and groove.

So give them a go! You can listen to some of their singles on their Myspace page here. I can’t wait for them to release more, and hopefully in the UK. Imports are quite pricey.

An import of Sneaky Sound System is available on Amazon (UK/US).

JK

Yesterday, Google announced the launch of Google Chrome, a new web browser, from the company whose business is the web.

The news spread across tech sites like the plague, with everyone waiting to try the browser. But is it really better than Internet Explorer?

I’ve been using the software for a few hours now, just going around doing my usual things, checking email, catching up with friends and watching video.

The first thing I noticed was the sleekness of the software’s interface. The way new tabs open up is all very mac-ish, and the way the window integrates with Vista’s glass interface is all very streamlined.

Video works, just as well as in IE or Firefox, and everything seems to work, even pluggins not designed for the new browser. I tested YouTube and BBC iPlayer, which worked perfectly. However, the Channel 4 Watch Online service failed to work due to Google Chrome not having a Windows Media Pluggin. 

Another great feature is the address bar itself, which gives very intuitive guesses at what it is you want, as soon as you begin to type.

The New Tab Page in Chrome is a great development. In IE, all you get is a useless About Tabs page, but in Chrome, you get a lot of info: snapshots of your history and past searches, and your bookmarks as well. 

But is the browser as good as IE? Not yet. Loading Pages seems to take that bit longer than in IE, and the software seems to become suddenly slow. Also, the way it generates pages sometimes goes amiss; my webmail page for instance looses it’s beauty in Chrome.

The overall design isn’t brilliant either. In IE, you have access to everything you need on every page, but without being intrusive. With Chrome though, to access your bookmarks, you have to open a new tab. Also, there’s no individual print button for example, or a history button. It just seems to take… longer.

That said, Chrome can only get better. Some of it’s features would make IE fantastic. One can only wonder if IE8 will incorporate some of it…

JK