Tag: telephone
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Your phone is not the problem
Following the discussions in the blogsphere lately about our relationships with our phones, I'd like to echo Antonio Santos' sentiments, and add a few supporting thoughts of my own.
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Hint Line 93
Hint Line 93 is an amazing interactive exhibit about the experience of working on a computer games hint line. It's a deeply-researched, immersive, and clever piece of art... and even though the real experience is in a Australian museum, you can play an approximation of it via the Web. Awesome.
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This telegraph pole in the centre of Eynsham carries the scars of hosting countless community announcements, notices, and flyers over the last 30 years.
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Close-up of a wooden telegraph pole littered with rusted staples and drawing pins of different sizes and ages, with an out-of-focus urban street disappearing into the distance.
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Somebody just called me and quickly decided it was a wrong number. The signal was bad and I wasn't sure I'd heard them right, so I followed up by replying by text.
It turns out they asked Siri to call Three (the mobile network). Siri then presumably searched online, found Three Rings, managed to connect that to my mobile number, and called me.
If Siri's decided that I represent Three, this could work out even worse than that time Google shared my phone number.
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Google Shared My Phone Number!
When people started calling my personal mobile number with questions about a voluntary organisation I'm involved with, I was confused: we weren't sharing that number. It turns out that Google had decided to take the number I used to verify my identity for Google Business some years prior and start putting it in Google Search results. WTF, Google?
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I'm in an extremely rural area and I needed a phone call with my lawyer about my recent redundancy. Phone signal was very bad, so I resolved to climb a nearby hill and call him back.
"I'm at a crossroads," I said, when I finally found enough bars to have a conversation with him.
"In your life?" he asked.
"I guess," I replied, "But also, y'know, literally."
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Pre-Worboys Committee British junction signpost in black and white, photographed against a bright blue sky. The signs point to Rosgill in one direction, Shap and Kendal in a second, and Bampton and Haweswater in a third.
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On Wednesday, Vodafone announced that they'd made the first ever satellite video call from a stock mobile phone in an area with no terrestrial signal. They used a mountain in Wales for their experiment.
It reminded me of an experiment of my own, way back in around 1999, which I probably should have made a bigger deal of. I believe that I was the first person to ever send an email from the top of Yr Wyddfa/Snowdon.
Nowadays, that's an easy thing to do. You pull your phone out and send it. But back then, I needed to use a Psion 5mx palmtop, communicating over an infared link using a custom driver (if you ever wondered why I know my AT-commands by heart... well, this isn't exactly why, but it's a better story than the truth) to a Nokia 7110 (fortunately it was cloudy enough to not interfere with the 9,600 baud IrDA connection while I positioned the devices atop the trig point), which engaged a GSM 2G connection, over which I was able to send an email to myself, cc:'d to a few friends.
It's not an exciting story. It's not even much of a claim to fame. But there you have it: I was (probably) the first person to send an email from the summit of Yr Wyddfa. (If you beat me to it, let me know!)
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Sometimes you just gotta have exactly the right prop for a presentation...
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Transferring to a new phone network, 2022 edition
Stuart shared his experience of changing mobile network. I have only one tip to add...
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Unable to sleep, I found myself wondering whether anybody with a retro-hipster vibe had built a smart pocketwatch. All your smartwatch features, but in pocketwatch format.
Then I realised I was describing a mobile phone on a keychain. -
Tesco Abingdon's phone menu system is diabolical, Dan discovers.
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Review of Vodafone
This review of Vodafone originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan. Vodafone, 3 Cornmarket St, Oxford OX1 3EX, United Kingdom. Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ Like most mobile phone shops, this one enjoys a confusing layout and less-than-completely-helpful staff.
If you know exactly what you want then you can have a reasonable experience, but if you … -
Looking for red phone boxes in Oxford. Can you help?
I'm trying to index the location of red telephone boxes in Oxford, for a project I'm doing. I'm especially interested in ones outside of the city centre (it's easy to find the ones on Broad Street, High Street, Parks Road, St. Giles, etc.). If you're aware of any, or if you're e.g. willing to … -
Pocket Searching
Accidental pocket-dialling is so last decade. Dan's been practicing accidental pocket-searching, and he's coming up with some strange results.
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Phone Security == Computer Security
Dan gets paranoid and despairs about the ease with which mobile devices can be stolen, the wealth of personal information stored on them, and the under-use of readily-available encryption tools.