Recycling your mobile for profit

I’ve just moved over to iPhone, as you’ll see if you browse about abit, but obviously I had a great phone before that, a Samsung i780 and before that a t-mobile touch plus (aka HTC Touch Dual) and before that an m3100 from orange (HTC Hermes) and before that an Orange c550 and before that … you get the drift.

And I still have all those phones, or at least I did until we decided we needed to declutter, we’ve been selling stuff for months on eBay! Checking out the prices for all those mobiles on eBay and it seemed a bit hit or miss so I decided to look at the mobile recycling companies. Just as an aside here worth noting it’s taken me a while to come to terms with actually getting rid of gadgets (I kept the i780), I say this only in case some thinks I’ve lost the plot, or a portion of my mind a least. The final decider, apart from the clutter was the cash.

I opted to use Mazuma mobile. The reasons behind this choice were many but mainly based on a first hand endorsment from a colleague and my being overly inflenced by the TV! So how was it?

On their website you fill details in about the phone and you don’t really even need to know much about it since they have a huge catalogue to choose from. Next you enter the IMEI number of the phone and they go off and check that the phones not been stolen (or at least not stolen and put on the register). Finally they give you a valuation. The touch dual and Hermes fetched £45 a piece and the older phones abou £15 each. The price is based on the condition of the phone; either working or not working. The definition is happily very loose too. “Working” basically means it turns on and you can, therefore, guess what the “not working” deffinition is too. The m3100 I sent had a button missing, but I still got full price and none of the Windows Mobile devices had propper firmware on, but that was no problem either. Anyway back to the process because I didn’t have money in my pocket at this point.

Having submitted the “order” through the web site I got a little pack in the post a couple of days later that contained instructions, a plastic ( and unpadded) postage paid returns bag and a certificate of postage for the post office clerk to sign. All I had to do was pop the phones in the bag and put it in the post box at the post office. A day or two later I recieved an email to tell me the phones had been recieved, then hours later I was told that a check was in the post. Full price for each!

And so a day or two later I have a cheque waiting for me to make it to the bank and I’m writing a review of a company that is actually more based on low tech postage methods than a digital lifestyle. It’s a superb service though, worthy of recommendation and in my oppinion it could be improved only by allowing an option like me getting my cash though paypal. If you don’t fancy using Mazuma then there are some alternatives listed below.

What I’m reading right now

If all goes well, and I don’t see why it won’t, this post should come out whilst I’m off on vacation having just been to an old friends wedding.  Obviously I’ve taken some holiday reading, an iPhone on the beach just doesn’t cut it for me.  Reviews when I get back.

First up is the 4 hour work week, by @timferris (a.k.a) Tim Ferris.  If you’ve not heard of it then you’ve missed something, it’s about how to better manage your life, have more fun, automate your income and other interesting stuff.  I’m hoping it’s going to give me some ideas.

Brilliant NLP is next up, it’ll be my second attempt at reading this having not managed it last time I went away.  NLP is a system for “programming” yourself to get more out of your interactions with others, it’s a system that’s always interested me and lots of what’s involved I do naturally.

The Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland is the first of the fiction I’ll be digging into.  I really enjoyed JPod , and I’m currently watching the TV series.  Coupland has razor sharp wit and I hope this lives up to his previous works.

The last two novels are, The Bombmaker by Stephen Leather, and The Hijack by Duncan Falconer, which should be satisfying my need for reading about explosions and manly stuff.  I actually seriously doubt I’m going to get this far, I don’t read fast enough.

Best value charging cable ever

I’ve just been to one of my favorite gadget shops again, Poundland.  I’ve written about them before when I’ve hit upon a bargin and I’m really motivated to do it again so that everyone can benefit.   The image with this post is their retractable USB iPod charging cable and they sell it for just £1 like everything else in store. Here’s a similar item available online. These should be available UK wide right now and they’re the perfect, compact cable for your gadget bag. Quality is ok, not Apple standard but then I could buy one of these a month for the price of the Apple sync cable.   Bargin.

Art

One of my favourite artists is cartoonist Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid), he’s got a great sense of humour and I reckon he’d be good value at a dinner party.  I discovered him through @stevecla and he’s the genius behind Microsoft’s Blue Monster.  I thought I’d post my current iPhone wallpaper, taken from his blog where he’s been churning out some classics, such as the one on the left rescently, for some reason this resonated with me.

Streaming in Windows 7 – PlayTo with play lists

It’s not just individual media files that can be played over the network with PlayTo, whole playlists can be sent to other machines too.  There are a couple of things you need to do, first make sure you have a machine running as a Digital Media Server (have a look here to find out how to set that up in Windows 7).  Second there needs to be a Digital Media Receiver on the network (have a look here to find out how to make Windows 7 into a DMR).

Build a play list

The first thing you need to do is build a playlist in Windows Media Player, so drag the files into the right hand pane of WMP after making sure the Play tab is active.  If you really like it then enter a name, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to save it, you don’t have to.

PlayTo the play list

Next just go the top of the pane and click the PlayTo drop down, it’s highlighted in the picture to the left of this text, and select the device you want to play it to.  If your devices have names that mean nothing you can change them easily by following the instructions in the Beyond the basics post.  That’s it your play list should start to play on the target device and a window should pop up for you to control the playback.

Posted by Simon May, follow me on Twitter or if you like email me

clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, windows7, how-to, PlayTo, media player, challenge-windows 7

Companies and brands I think are worth my time and money

There are some companies and brands out there doing some really great stuff right now, and I thought I’d post up a list of why I like them and who they are.  All of these brands I feel some kind of affiliation to, in some way, I like what they do, their ethos, or their products.  I tend to talk about them quite a bit anyway to people, I wanted to get them back into my Windows Live Writer link glossary and hopefully introduce more people to them….I should probably have used affiliate links…I’ve not.

• Glasses Direct – Their face furniture adorns my visage every single day, I’m currently up to 3 pairs.  I love their approach to revolutionising their industry, the people are friendly and they are genuinely engaged in social media.  They’ve picked up on my blog before and offered my readers a discount.
• Fav.or.it – This is the company behind tweetmeme, twit or fit (gone) and obviously fav.or.it and they’re a great bunch, I feel like I follow half their office on Twitter and they’re based in Reading.  I love their approach.
• Microsoft – I have a lot of love for them, I think they’ve come through a crisis, they are turning their ship and they’ve really learnt along the way.  Everyone I know there loves what they do, and are the best ambassadors for any company that I’ve ever come across.  They continue to ship (especially this summer) some of the best, most usable software and in a way that I like.
• Amazon – They sell my book, they sell everything.  It’s almost a way of life to buy their stuff.
• Play.com – The best competition to the above, but they actually do lots of things better, free shipping on everything is one thing.  I found some invoices from almost 8 years ago recently.  As with Amazon, I like them because they sell stuff I buy.
• Spotify- Free streaming music, like radio, but better, even the ad-supported version is great.  The ability to share playlists easily, especially on Twitter is superb.  Innovative product, well delivered.
• Tweetdeck – Not my twitter client “du jour” but my twitter client of choice, on both Windows and iPhone.  It’s a UK company, and the synchronisation features set the thinking of the company apart from the competition for me.
• Kikkerland –Design shop of choice, D obtained a brilliant doormat in the shape of an enter key for me from them…they are simply a stunning shop with great taste.
• Case-Mate – Great iPhone case, I’ve reviewed it here, it’s innovative and again they’ve got their use of social media right on the money, with great responses via twitter and customer involved YouTube vids.
• Moo – We’re using these guys to create our wedding invites, they’re superb.  Like every single one of the above, customer service is fantastic in some or all ways.

iPhone App news

I’ve already said that one of the big reasons I moved to iPhone was for the innovate apps, well how’s this.  The people who make the excellent TVGuide.co.uk application have created this for Londoners, an “augmented reality” application that shows you where your nearest tube station is.  It’s 3GS only, because it uses video and looks amazing.

[Via @jamestenniswood and Gizmodo]

Also leaking out today is news of the TomTom application, which is what pushed me over the edge when it was announced that my favourite navigation application was on it’s way.  There’s some very promising information in this and I must say I’m looking forward to it….it’s one app I know I’ll buy.

[via @jangles and macworld]

IPhone 3GS battery life

The battery life on my iPhone 3GS is really starting to impress me. I cannot remember the last time I got more than a full day out of a phone, with pretty average usage and email on a 15 minute pull schedule.

There is a secret to this, I’m actually using 2g most of the time and am using WiFi in most locations turning on 3g when I need fast data on the move…which isn’t that often right now as most places seem to have WiFi. Incidentally this works well because connecting to Wifi is so easy on this thing. This is my “Usage” screen a few moments ago on 10% battery.

How much are your memories worth?

This is a little off topic for Media Center but you’ll see the link in a little while.  One of my contacts on Twitter got in touch about the latest first Panasonic Blu-Ray recorder available in the UK and it looks like a very cool unit, in fact it’s not far off got most MCE features built in, which is an interesting move.  What this really shows is that there’s a very genuine consumer desire for the features we take for granted with Media Center and competition is good for spurring innovation – the compression that this box can do around HD content’s really interesting.

What got me interested though is that they’ve worked out just how much our digital memories are worth to us, using a very clever mathematical formula…in the UK 4 in 10 would sell their Christmas for less than £500 but a wedding would go for £3,000,000…I’ve already asked “D” if she’s willing to sell ours next year and she said  “yes, as long as we spend the money on another one!” any offers?

You can work out the value of your memories just here using the spreadsheet, and check out Panasonic’s Blu-Ray Media Centre worrier just here.  Take this into the context of how you can backup and archive those memories and suddenly you’ve got a business case built to use to sell it to the holder of your purse strings.

So folks, I’m guessing I know the answer, but would a box like this make you move away?  I know it wouldn’t make me move but it’s an interesting question for Sunday evening.

I have in my hand….

…the very first copy of my new book, and that makes me very happy indeed.