There isn’t much need to write much more on the topic of Pay As You Go mobile services. I already talked about using it to call your family and friends at home for cheap and making sure to get 25% off your Skype credit top up. Well, they officially cemented their position in my hall of fame this month byoffering an amazing deal:

For every top up of 10 quid , you receive free for 90 days:
1. 600 texts (5 quid only gets you 25 text messages)
2. Unlimited In-network calling
3. 150MB of mobile Internet
4. Unlimited Skype use
5. Unlimted Windows Live Messenger use

With this kind of a deal with no commitment, there is absolutely no reason to go on contract unless you’re using an iPhone…in which case you should just PayPal me 20 quid just because…and I mean per month. I take it as a sign that mobile services are so commoditised and competition so fierce that you need to push the envelope to steal market share from your competitors. In this case, the nimbler 3 Mobile wins on Value and Simplicity. Yeah, Vodaphone offers free twittering, and O2 has the iPhone contract but for the cheap-arses, which is supposed to be most of us in this recession, 3 is the hands down winner.

The best way is always to go to Skyscanner and literally select the option to fly from London to anywhere in the world. I previously gave an overview of the Skyscanner service but I can’t explain how much fun it is to say give me a location to fly to anywhere in the world instead of me choosing the destination. Skyscanner rocks.

Since the European flights will be the cheapest, they will show up a the top. These prices are from 5 minutes ago. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the pricing of European flights from London….these prices are fo real, yo…AND these are OUT OF POCKET PRICES. Yeah, sliced bread, flowbee, or even the overly-reinvented wheel has nothing on this.

The page is telling me I can go to Italy for 5 quid. I don’t know what kind of a world we live in but 5 quid return from London to Italy sounds absurd. If we dig in, we do see limitations to this price. It’s only offered on certain days in July and there are heavy fluctuations in pricing all the way from 3 to 106 each way. I don’t know about you, but I’m flying on the 3 quid flight. This is usually the bit that takes the most time, is finding dates that work and costs me less than 30 pounds return (5 if I can find it)

After you select the flights, you are taken directly to the airlines where Skyscanner gets an affiliate commission and companies like EasyJet or my favourite RyanAir get their sale and I’m on my way to eating ravioli tartufo in Italy.

I wrote previously about how Skype is a great way to keep in touch with friends at home. If you use Skype to call internationally via your 3 SkypePhone, it allows cheap phone-to-phone internationally calling in addition to free mobile-to-pc calling. The problem was that you had to top up your Pay As You Go plan (with 25% discount)every 3 months to continue using Skype of the phone. While 3 months was a step up from 1 month when the 3 SkypePhone was introduced, it was still something to consider. Recently, however, 3 has announced that as long as you have credit on your 3 account, you can use Skype. That means cheap international calling for cheap! You could literally put 10 quid on your Skype phone and use Skype on your mobile for a year including calling international phones, free PC calls, and Skype chats. Nice one!

My mates ODJ and Koko are visiting London for the next week for my birthday week. Since this is their first times in London, I decided to call upon my British friends for the best way for them to experience London and have found a nicely devised pub crawl. This was the brainchild of my mate Giles, who mapped out all of the Sam Smith’s pubs in London for a 20 pub crawl. There was one other option, the Monopoly Pub Crawl, that we considered but while it sounds interesting, it is 26 pubs and a bit too much to drink from 10:30am to 10:30pm. Also, a Monopoly board without Boardwalk and Park Ave is not real Monopoly as far as I’m concerned. Park Lane and Mayfair are the most expensive properties? WTF?

I grew up watching 007, hence I’ve always been a fan of Sean Connery. As such, I have developed a nice British accent, although it is closer to Monty Python than Tony Blair. As a matter of fact, it’s probably more Sloth than Tony Blair. (I hope the Sloth reference doesn’t reveal my age too much.) The BBC posted a story on How not to do an American accent a while back.

I used to scour the different budget airlines including RyanAir and EasyJet for cheap flights to different places in Europe. That is until my friends Joe and Stacy showed me the light. That light is Skyscanner. It basically does all that work for me. I can pick a set of days and it tells me what locations are under 50 quid. I can choose a location and it will give me the chart on prices.

The best thing is that it encompasses a whole bunch of different airlines. It’s something that Travelocity and Orbitz in the US sort of attempt to do but pretty much fail at. I book all of my travel through Skyscanner. The only drawback is that its prices aren’t updated automatically. Some of the prices are 3-5 days stale, which means it’s not good for last minute travel deals.

In continually pursuing the easiest way to contact friends and family at home, the opportunity came up over the Christmas period to get a 3 Skype Phone, an innovative integration of 3G and Since becoming a Brit and foregoing the debaucle that is American presidential race. Hussein Osama, Hilary, Romney, Giuliani, Ron Paul?…I will allow anyone seeking refuge a week on my futon to get out of America…but I digress….phones…right. I’ve been using Skype extensively to talk with some friends and my family and it’s been great. In particular, Skype video chat is pretty amazing. I even purchased a shiney new webcam to get better quality video and so I don’t have to use a headset when I talk. I also broadcast live streaming video in nothing but my knickers for a small monthly charge to subscribing members.

The 3 Skypephone is basically a phone that allows you persistent connection with Skype and full phone integration to be able to call and receive calls with anyone Skype for a low monthly cost. Introduced in October, it allows one to IM/talk with anyone else that is on Skype for £10/month minimum top up on your Pay As You Go plan. That £10 is used for minutes and texts. That’s great. I mean, if you have a Windows Mobile or other platform that supports a Skype client, you already had this functionality but you also probably pay a lot more than £10/month for your service.

I just activated the Skypephone today and gotta say it is a nice change to actually have a phone that can do stuff like take pictures and play mp3s. The Skype part also works very well. You just sign in to your Skype account and you can IM/call anyone that’s online. Since this is the way I chat with my folks in the US, it’s a nice service to have. They are supposedly going to bring in SkypeIn and SkypeOut features to allow you to call and receive international calls with cheap Skype rates. You can even use it to call Londonninja Inc to subscribe to our streaming video feeds. It’s worth every pence, mi laddy.

That was what I had been using for a while but there are some serious limits to how usable those damn converters are.

1. You are not supposed to leave those plugged in for extended periods of time.
2. You are not to exceed a certain watt. If you do, it will melt down and kill you.
3. You have to attach it to an adapter, which then makes your contraption quite unsightly for your imaginary friends.

This is what most people live with….but the Ninja-style does not rest. I present to you the Voltage Transformer:

Ex-pat Holy Grail

The voltage transformer is a constant voltage converter you can leave plugged in. You can also plug in an American power strip to allow you to plug in American devices without messing with adapters. I have one 6-outlet surge protector and another extension cord from that for my bedroom. I purchased a 500W model, which means you can’t surpass that number at any given time. Since I do not have my electric bull plugged in, I am well below the limit. I have my PS2 (yes, old skool), cordless phone, laser printer, computer speaker system, and everything else in there now. All the devices that would have blown the Walmart converter into smithereens(hadn’t used that phrase in some time, so had to look it up) now work just fine. Bloody brilliant…and it’s like $30 + tax/shipping in America. ZOMG.

In business terms, we like to say things like “reach out to X”, “mitigate the risks of..”, “core competencies”, “deliverables”, “big crocks”, “bloody dillweeds”, and “needle-movers”. Let me add a few more: “long cock tail”, “quick win”, and my favorite: “low-hanging fruit”…where was I?

Ah yes….so in business terms, I would call the voltage transformer an absolute “needle-moving big rock”. I would almost go as far as saying it has changed my vida loca. Lovely. Now time to go pick off some “low hanging fruit”.

“How do you keep up with football in the UK?”

There are two answers:
1. Sky Sports
2. Slingbox

I don’t think I need to describe Sky Sports in detail as you just order some premium package and pay your arse for it. My personally mantra states that I don’t generally pay my arse for anything. This leaves us at the second option: Slingbox.

Here’s how it basically works:

The Slingbox AV is the perfect companion for your DVR, digital cable, or satellite receiver. The Slingbox AV allows you to watch and control live TV, or any other TV entertainment you have, anywhere you go. Using an Internet connected computer or wireless mobile device, you can watch and control your home TV, DVR, digital cable box, or satellite receiver around town or around the globe. With a Slingbox AV you will never be separated from your favorite TV shows, sports broadcasts, breaking news stories, digital video recordings, or video on demand.

I bought a Slingbox for ~$100 before I crossed the pond and hooked it up at my folks’ place. Now I can watch anything they watch. It is essentially like being able to watch their TV. The only thing is that if they flip the channel, you watch what they watch. I would recommend a Tivo, also , as it will allow you to beat the time zone difference and be able to watch Monday Night Football without staying up past midnight. It could get a bit choppy when around 100-200kbps streaming, but good enough to get what’s going on. The audio portion generally comes down quite well, so it definitely allows you to follow the game.

The best thing is that this means I don’t have to start watching that other football anytime soon….you know, the kind you play with your foot.

UPDATE (Oct 27, 2008):
There’s a new option I have learned of, the NFL Game Pass with Yahoo. It’s currently $100 for the season or $80 for just your favorite team, but I think those are mid-season prices. I believe the normal price is something around $200-$300. Sounds like an ok option but I still prefer Slingbox. As a matter of fact…I loooove Slingbox.

1. Focus on electronics, so you will find your phones, cameras, etc.
2. Prices are significantly lower than Amazon.co.uk
3. All prices include shipping. This is huge.

I did a quick check for prices for a set of speakers. The reason being that my speakers run on US electricity and speakers are not the type of thing you want to be converting with as they draw a lot of power. Add that to the fact that these are a pair of crap 8-year old speakers handed down by my nemesis Workmonkey. Speaking of which, I have a bag of e-waste that I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with. Thinking about just leaving it on the company receptionist’s desk and letting her deal with it. We’re talking about power strips, phones, routers, and all this other waste that has been shipped to the UK that I cannot use. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Back to the new e-waste I’m interested in buying….

Siimple comparison is here on a Logic3 speaker system (not what I’m going to get, just an example)

Price on Play.com

Price on Amazon.co.uk

There are many examples of this, but I would say all in all if you’re looking for a new product, Play.com would be the place to go for electronics. eBay may offer some deals but the prices on Play.com are pretty damn competitive inthe electronics area. Of course, you should definitely check HotUKDeals, the UK version of Fatwallet, first.

All that said, I haven’t found the right ones yet and may need to use this tiny laptop speaker a while longer. Bollocks.