Random words from FrequencyCast

That’s it. I’ve had enough TalkTalk. Thanks for playing.

Years back, I did the smart thing and switched my home phone calls from BT to TalkTalk – My line rental stayed with BT (for Broadband reasons), but calls went through TalkTalk to benefit from cheaper calls.’

However, there’s a problem with TalkTalk, and that’s that they won’t leave you alone. Despite opting for paperless billing and no marketing material, they keep posting me junk and trying to upsell broadband.

Junkmail I can live with, but it’s the TalkTalk silent phone calls that drive me insane…

My home phone number keeps getting silent calls from an unknown International phone number, followed by a call from an International human at an unknown TalkTalk call centre a few minutes later trying to flog me something. I assume they have software that randomly dials their customers until someone answers, then get a human to dial to make a sale.

Every time TalkTalk call, I politely tell them I’m not interested in being upsold, and to stop calling. “Certainly sir, we’ll make a note”.

Last time I was hassled, it was from a UK TalkTalk number – when I complained about being hassled again – I was told that she was hassling me from the Broadband team, not the Home Phone team.

Today was the final straw – two silent calls yesterday, and one today, followed by a human wanting to conduct a “tariff review”. She didn’t seem in the least surprised when I expressed my desire to close my account, and transferred me to their Customer Services number without haste.

After 15 minutes on hold (“my call being valuable”), I gave up, went to bt.com and switched my calls back to BT.

Switching back to BT should take 11 working days, and BT’s calling packages seem to be far more competitive than they were a while back – their Unlimited Evening and Weekend pack looks like it’ll work better than the TalkTalk deal I was on (perhaps that’s why TalkTalk were trying to sell me a new plan?)

Hopefully BT will have better luck telling TalkTalk that I just want them to leave me alone and cut out the unwanted TalkTalk nuisance calls.

Anyone else sick and tired of being hassled by TalkTalk, or annoyed at their apparent inability to remove you from their calling list? We’d love to know.

As we covered in our last podcast, details of what’s believed to be the next iPhone have been leaked, as a result of some Apple bod leaving a prototype in a bar.

Someone’s created a rather nifty little video showing the 4G iPhone spin and flip in an iPhone TV ad style. Take a look at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Prf5Oy1n7iM

The ad’s actually a bit of clever viral marketing for a £0.59 iPhone app that makes a virtual cup of coffee, but if you have 37 seconds to spare – take a look at video, as it’s a good introduction to what the next phone could look like.

Hurry – before Apple asks YouTube  to zap it…

Mine’s a wappuccino…

Breaking News – Nothing to report!

If you’ve been following the unprecedented situation with Britain’s Hung Parliament on one of the rolling news channels, you may be mistaken for thinking that No News is Breaking News.

I’ve been following the story by watching the 24 hour BBC news channel over the last few days. I’ve now come to the conclusion that their “Breaking News” button must be stuck.

While we wait for the Liberal Democrats to make up their mind which bunch of desperate politicians to sell themselves to, the news channels are in overdrive. Add to that, the new drama of a search for a new Labour leader.

This morning, the “Breaking News” that Nick Clegg was to walk out of his front door was interrupted by “Breaking News” that David Milliband was walking to his car. The BBC spent about 15 minutes swapping from doorstep to doorstep waiting for something to happen. We’re also treated to split screen shots of pundits outside Westminster in their little bubble. Now and then, shots of the outside of No. 10, or a car driving past.

Take a look at this screen grab captured a few minutes ago:

“Breaking News: Hung Parliament: Lib Dems negotiating with Labour & Tories”

Given that those negotiations have been going on for what seems like days, I’d argue that this is “Breaking news”. Still – at least Live from Westminster, we get to see shots of camera crews filming some chap. No idea who it is, but he seems to be wearing a shirt of some kind. No idea if the colour of his shirt is significant – if it is, there’ll no doubt be a breaking news update.

Breaking News: As I’m typing this, BBC News have just broken from Westminster, to a camera outside Clegg’s front door. Caught off-guard, the cameraman was pointing at a nice leafy tree. Managed to catch that moment, live:

“Breaking News: No comment from Nick Clegg’s Tree”

Breaking News: Stressed Sky News chap loses it with Alastair Campbell – This clip from yesterday’s Sky News coverage has gone viral. If you want to see Adam Boulton from Sky News nearly decking Labour’s Alastair, take a look at this YouTube Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gkHwU4DRA8

Are we nearly there yet?

Now and again, sites like Amazon throw up odd results.

Out and about looking for a new ink cartridge, I had call to use Amazon on my iPhone to look up what ink cartidges my printer takes. Without a model number, I entered “HP all-in-one” to see a list of printers. I got pages of HP printers, as expected, with one exception.

Very odd – but a pleasant change from a long list of printer hardware. Thanks Amazon.

The UK’s lead story today is the fact that UK airspace has been closed.

Volcanic action in Iceland has resulted in a clould of volcanic ash moving towards the UK. The authorities have closed UK airspace, as the ash can use a serious hazard to aircraft engines.

We’ve had lots of fun watching planes landing and leaving the UK, thanks to the website FlightRadar24. This site can track the movement of aircraft that are equipped with ADS-B (Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast).

Here’s a picture of the aircraft in Europe captured at 1245 on 15th April 2010, showing almost nothing over the UK, but a very busy Europe.

If you’re at a loose end, have a look at this site that cleverly overlays aircraft with the ADS-B beacon onto Google Maps – although it’ll be a little quiet of the UK for the rest of the day!

You can click on a plane to see altitude and air speed, and if you zoom in, you can watch planes land and the alt drop to zero. Check out the impressive site at www.flightradar24.com

Everybody loves pizza. Friday night was pizza night for the FrequencyCast boys tonight, and we took the easy option and ordered a Dominos pizza online. Car’s a “create your own” kinda guy, and Pepperoni does it for Pete.

Ordering online is pretty straightforward, obviously. Slap in your details and address into the ordering engine at www.dominos.co.uk.

Then, the clever bit – pizza tracking. See the moment that your pizza goes from “prepared” to “in the oven”, then a nice satisfying “it’s on the road”.

Yes, we like Dominos tracking service, but we think we need even more real-time pizza info.

Here’s what we’re thinking… a GPS tracking chip in every pizza. It’s great to know the moment that the pizza’s out of the oven and on the way… but where is it? Stuck in traffic? Navigating through the one-way system, or maybe the driver’s sat nav’s out of date. Dominos… if you’re listening – how about an interface to the fleet’s TomToms, or a chip in every box… so we can get a pizza overlay in Google Maps…

Now we know we’re asking a lot… but it’s only a matter of time before there’s an iPhone app for that…

A little musical challenge for you.

The FrequencyCast phone, the INQ1 has a distinctive 3 note “Low Battery” tone that wafts through FrequencyCast HQ and reminds me of a certain UK song.

Click on this link to have a listen: http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/audio/inqnotes.mp3

Have a quick listen, and see if it reminds you of anything… Comment below if it sounds familiar!

Pete

 Three notes from the INQ Phone [0:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Freeview’s HD service launched in December 2009, but it’s only now that the required set-top boxes are trickling onto the market.

The first of the bunch of Freeview HD boxes to appear, as was reported recently by our podcast boys, is the Humax Fox-T2 Freeview HD box, pictured below. On the face of it, a decent HD receiver, likely to be in demand by those keen to get a little dish-free HD action.

Here’s the rub though.

You can get a standard definition Freeview box for £25 – a standard definition box is capable of getting 50 Freeview channels.

With the new Freeview HD boxes though, you’ll get 52… the Freeview channels, plus BBC HD and ITV 1 HD (Channels 4 and 5 will be along in the next 2 years)

The cost of the new HD boxes? £180… yep, that’s £155 extra to get BBC and ITV in HD.

So, for that money, either the content needs to be awesome, or the box needs to be amazing. Perhaps the box has a built-in hard disc recorder or DVD player? Nope. And it can’t make the toast either. Sure, it does support playback of a handful of media formats if you plug in a USB hard drive, and there’s an Ether net socket to support a connection for BBC iPlayer in the future… but £180? Yee-ouch.

Add to that, only two regions can get HD at the moment – growing to 50% of the UK later this year.

Compare this to Sky… Sign up to their basic package for £18 a month and you’ll get over 200 channels (including almost all of the Freeview ones). Plus a FREE Sky+ HD box. For an extra £10 a month, you’ll get over 30 HD channels, and even if you save on the £10 HD subscription, you’ll still get BBC HD (but the box will now cost £49). Did we mention that the Sky box has a built-in hard disk recorder? Sky Offer details.

OK – You may have an objection to subscription TV, or not a fan of the Murdoch Empire, which may make you want to steer clear of Sky, but you have to admit that Sky’s HD offer’s a good one, and if you want to make the most of that HD telly, Freeview’s two channels.

So, the question is this… Freeview HD. Is it really worth the wait? You decide…

Channel 4 has announced that it’s relationship with the US series Friends will come to an end next year.

4′s digital channel E4 has been showing two eps each night for the last six years, and it still draws a steady audience despite the show’s end in 2004.

Channel 4′s Gill Hay said: “After 15 years, 10 hit series and 236 terrific episodes, it’s time to say goodbye to old Friends and welcome new ones,” said .

Channel 4′s 15 year relationship with Friends comes to an end in 2011 allegedly to free up some cash for new shows – we think differently though…

It’s because the UK population now know the words to every single episode.

“We were on a break”.
“18 pages… front and back”
“It’s not that common, it doesn’t happen to every guy and it is a big deal”…. “I knew it!”

See?

The end of an era – but fear not, those old episodes will still be “there for you”… to ensure you don’t start forgetting the words, we hear Comedy Central pay be picking up the rights from next year…

“How YOU doing?”

Spend any time watching rolling news services such as BBC News or Sky News?

This little video clip from Charlie Brooker explains how it’s all put together. You’ll never look at another news item in the same way again!

Be warned, the clip contains a couple of rude words…

YouTube Clip : How to report the news

For Charlie Brooker’s regular take on the TV news, and UK media in general, keep an eye out for the superlative Newswipe on BBC Four.