118888 have withdrawn their free SMS service, which the Mercury desktop program could use to send SMS. Seems like Thumbache might be the last viable option- just one advert and you get free texts. They also do a 4p per text version with no ads.
Mailinator allows you to use a temporary email address- you might want to do this if you have to give your email address to someone when you don’t really want to, like a dubious website or a company you’d rather not give your info to.
Get enough SPAM lately? Have you ever gone to a website that asks for your email address for no reason (other than they are going to sell it to the highest bidder so you get spam forever)?
Welcome to Mailinator(tm) – Its no signup, instant anti-spam service. Here is how it works: You are on the web, at a party, or talking to your favorite insurance salesman. Wherever you are, someone (or some webpage) asks for your email. You know if you give it, you’re gambling with your privacy. On the other hand, you do want at least one message from that person. The answer is to give them a mailinator address. You don’t need to sign-up. You just make it up on the spot. Pick jonesy@mailinator.com or bipster@mailinator.com – pick anything you want (up to 15 characters before the @ sign).
Later, come to this site and check that account. Its that easy. Mailinator accounts are created when mail arrives for them. No signup, no personal information, and when you’re done – you can walk away – an instant solution to one way spammers get your address. Its an anti-spam solution for everyone. The messages are automatically deleted for you after a few hours.
Let’em spam.
Once the email has been received for you, it is deleted after a few hours. If you’d rather keep a copy of the mail, and you’re using it fairly often, it might be worth looking into Nator, which will check the address you’ve set up at Mailinator and download the messages to your real address, so you’ll get a copy on your PC (or gmail, hotmail, or wherever you want).
What is it?
Nator is a utility that makes use of http://www.mailinator.com. It can grab email from Mailinator.com and mail it to your home email address and it can also create random usernames and monitor those for you.
Thanks again to JimG for the link
During his legal career, Pakenham became something of a legend, and, 25 years on, accounts of his exploits are still current. During his appearance before an irascible and unpopular judge in a drugs case, the evidence, a bag of cannabis, was produced. The judge, considering himself an expert on the subject, said to Pakenham, with whom he had clashed during the case: “Come on, hand the exhibit up to me quickly.” Then he proceeded to open the package. Inserting the contents in his mouth, he chewed it and announced: “Yes, yes of course that is cannabis. Where was the substance found, Mr Pakenham?” The reply came swiftly, if inaccurately: “In the defendant’s anus, my Lord.”
No2ID have created a clever petition/ pledge using the great Pledgebank website.
“I will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 10,000 other people will also make this same pledge.”
Anyone who’s dealt with the government behind the scenes as I did during my days working for ICL will know that this whole issue is a farce and destined to fail, wasting billions of pounds of our money on the way- just look into any government organised IT project and see how it failed. That’s before you even start to consider the super dubious reasoning behind needing ID cards in the first place.
Do yourself and everyone you know in the UK a favour and sign up now.
Did I mention that we’d also hve to spend £300 for the pleasure of being fingerprinted and having face and iris scans to own an ID card?
I love this quote from P H Richardson on the Plegebank page:
“just remember any ID badge you might get can always be micro-wave’d , 10 seconds should make it secure from anything , even working.”
Some other great quotes and info on there too.
For years I’ve been waiting for a way to record what I was seeing, ideally I’d have a way to go back a few minutes if something unmissable happened that I wasn’t expecting, I could start recording from 5 minutes ago, or take a picture from exactly an hour ago or something.
Well these video camera glasses aren’t too far from that. With a tiny video recorder and enough sensitivity for low light, they would be great. Shame they cost so much ($3,399.95 today).
This is an amazing use of LEDs.
A tiny, (pocket?) portable projector from Mitsubishi which won’t blow lamps, doesn’t get hot and doesn’t use much power.
It uses Luxeon LEDs from Lumileds.
Starting price when it’s released in July should be less than £400. As long as the room doesn’t have to be too dark I think I’ll be getting me one of these once the price drops a bit.
Bought this from eBay the other day. I’ve been after it since I heard the track “Proclamation” on a tape when I was living in The Crescent in Leatherhead many years ago (still have a copy of that tape, which was an ear opener into the world of prog rock with stuff like Gentle Giant and early Pink Floyd.
So when it came through the post I was gutted the seller had put it in a regular jiffy envelope. She had taken the inner sleeve out and added a card stiffener, but there was no protection for the edge at all. Never mind, when I got the vinyl out of its sleeve I was happy to see it had hardly been played, stuck it on the deck and wondered why the needle jumped violently. Wasn’t too hard to find the problem…
Typically, the song I bought it for was the first track on the album, so no chance of playing that.
Luckily the seller was cool and I just had to send a photo of the problem back via email for an instant refund, which was nice. At least I got to keep the cover, which was in good nick.
Also had a spate of registered packages being sent to me that are just being left at the door. Very annoying when I’ve paid extra to have to sign for them.
Found on backstage.bbc.co.uk “Use our stuff to make your stuff”:
BBC’s travel information overlaid on Google maps.
You can also use the dropdown at the top right to choose from:
It’s a bit buggy at the moment (doesn’t centre on double click, items don’t update until you rezoom), but you can get to what you want after some playing.
It was him is named after a poster for “The Usual Suspects” movie spotted at a South London underground station in the mid 1990s – someone had drawn an arrow pointing to Kevin Spacey, and scrawled the legend “IT WAS HIM!”.
Juvenile or genius? Some will say the work we showcase is made by the drunk, the immature, and the stupid. We don’t mind. Surely democracy is not dead when people can stick a chewing gum bogey onto the nostril of some airbrushed celebrity face.
We’re on a mission to assemble the best – ok, only – gallery of its kind. Dedicated to the arse end of subvertising.
Altering advertising to subvert its message.
“The advertisers portray a world where all normal people drive expensive new cars and smile perpetually. The message is: good sex-bonding is available only to those who live like this. The use of sex in advertising may seem crude and obvious, but the effect, through repetition, is to emotionally sensitise social comparison, so people feel humiliated driving old cars, for example.” [www.anxietyculture.com]
It’s hard to pretend that great sex is coming your way when you have a chewing gum bogey protruding from your nose. Which is why the efforts of the unsung heroes on this site are of relevance. Their work becomes, perhaps unwittingly, subvertising.
We went to the Skint Records night to see Hardkandy who were playing with The Ralfe Band, Emiliana Torrini and Lucky Jim on Monday (23rd May) in the Spiegeltent as part of The Brighton Festival.
