Hello all. I know I said I wouldn’t start posting again until the end of August, but I’m a little ahead of schedule.

I’ve been looking into a new mobile phone and contract, and mobile phone companies keep telling me that they have ‘unlimited’ internet. Tesco told me this in person last week, and T-Mobile told me this over the phone today. But these ‘Unlimited’ deals are not unlimited. Here’s an example:

Despite the big print saying “£30pm for unlimited calls, texts and browsing”, the small print says “subject to a fair use limit of £500″.  So, it’s not unlimited, it’s limited to £500.

T-Mobile said today that I (currently) have unlimited data allowance on my £15pm SIM cards.  I said “It’s limited to 3GB, so how is it unlimited?” and he replied that if I exceed 3GB, I still have unlimited data but I’ll be charged for anything above the that.  I don’t think he’s right there either, but it does illustrate how these companies are trying to mislead people.

I just sent this email to Tesco Mobile and should receive a reply within 24 hours.

Subject:  Complaint about misleading advertising

Body:  Your advertising states “£30 per month for unlimited calls, texts and browsing”, then in small print states “Unlimited calls, texts and browsing subject to a fait use limit of £500″.  How can it be unlimited, and limited, at the same time.

I’ll let you know what they say.

Don’t expect any new posts until the end of August.

I’m working hard on my two businesses for a few months; my Financial Services clients need even more help in the current climate and my IT (PC) services clients need the best service I can offer. 

It reminds me of when I started business in 1990, there was a recession but I worked hard and built a business I am proud of.  Although I have two stable businesses now, I figure that if I work hard now, my clients and I will benefit more in the future.

So, I’ve decided to focus my time on my businesses for a few months.  As usual, I’m busy with my family (visits and holidays) too.  I miss posting here but it does take more time than I currently want spend on it.  Sometimes you have to focus on the most important things in life.

All this could change though…  I’m considering entering a national karting championship.  Although it will take up time, that sort of activity puts me in effeciency overdrive, so might be a good use of my time.  If I enter, I might be making short, quick posts here, and might start tweeting @BowenRacing.  In any case, I’ll continue tweeting @ColinBowen.

Here’s the way the Constructors’ Championship ended last year.

1st: Ferrari 172
2nd: McLaren-Mercedes 151
3rd: BMW Sauber 135
4th: Renault 80
5th: Toyota 56
6th: Toro Rosso-Ferrari 34
7th: Red Bull-Renault 29
8th: Williams-Toyota 26
9th: Honda 14
10th: Force India-Ferrari 0 (lack of funds meant they couldn’t race after
Spain)

Don’t expect changes overnight, because this is way down the list of priorities (far lower than ‘Spend time with family’ and ‘Earn money’), but I plan to make some changes at BowenRacing.com.

Initially I started the site to tell people about my karting and other racing. Since then it has morphed into a place for me to post all sorts of stuff. Clever people like Nikki Pilkington suggest that a website should be more focussed. So, I’m going to have three websites:

• www.BowenRacing.com will focus on my motor racing, F1, and other car-related stuff
• Another website will be for my IT Consultancy business, with topics that might be of interest to a typical private or business client
• Another website for… there’s no other way of saying this, for the geeky stuff

There are still no plans for a website for my Financial Services business (yes, this is the Colin Bowen from Berry Bowen Financial Services).  Regulatory constraints are one reason, and another is that we only deal with existing clients and new clients by recommendation; that’s just the type of personal-service-based business we are at the moment.

Subscribe to this site’s RSS feed for updates, and I’ll post on this website when the other sites go live.

I’m on Twitter too, with two accounts:

• @BowenRacing is now the account I’ll be using for racing and F1 news
• @ColinBowen is the account I’ll use for tech and general tweets.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please leave a comment.  Thanks!

Introducing, the new MacBook Wheel!

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

I’ve just exceeded the number of people I feel I can effectively follow, 60.  Any more than that and I feel that Twitter will become less interesting/useful to me.  I want to stay close to the people I follow, and see a decent proportion of their tweets. 

Already I have come to the conclusion that I can’t read all the tweets, I’ll just dip in and read what I can in the time available.  If I follow more people, it just reduces the number of tweets I see per person.

So, what do I do if someone new follows me now?  My initial thoughts are that if they have something really interesting to say then I’ll follow them, but it’s going to have to be really, really interesting.  If I do follow them, I’ll be looking for someone to un-follow so I keep the numbers effective. 

It’s hard to un-follow people, as I may have a relationship with that person.  I feel bad when someone un-follows me (and always wonder why).  So, should we feel un-follow people?  And if we do, should we feel bad about it?  Should we feel bad when we’re un-followed?

Please leave a comment.  Please include your @username.  Please also say how you found out about this post.  Thanks.

Completely off-topic, but I’ve just read the leaflet that explains the changes to my MBNA credit card, and I noticed a worrying new condition which paves the way for them to increase interest just because there’s a recession. Quoting extracts:

Charges - We have introduced two new paragraphs - 11b and 11c - which explain how we may increase your interest rates.

11c - Examples of reasons why we might increase your interest rates could be one or more of the following:

• [fourth bullet point] changes in external factors, such as…. changes in general economic conditions

So, they can now increase interest rates due to the recession. 

The recession is largely due to the lack of availability of credit.  This means that people who were taking on more and more credit (and spending it) now can’t get more credit, so they have to reduce their spending, and that is one of the causes of the recession.

Because credit card companies (and other lenders) have less money to lend, it’s harder for card holders to switch credit cards and get new 0% deals.  So people are stuck with credit cards that are charging interest.  Now MBNA (and other card companies possibly) can increase their interest rates because of the recession, meaning their customers will have higher repayments, and even less money to spend elsewhere.

If you found this article interesting, please subscribe (for free) to this website using the link at the top-right of this page.

I hate advertisments.  Sorry if you hate them too, but I need to use every income stream available to me at the moment.  I’ve tried to make them subtle; no flashing graphics, no lurid colours.  I’m hoping they’ll generate a little income for me as I get the the visitor numbers up.

I only get a few pennies when an ad is clicked, so I’m not expecting to get rich.  But please take a look at the ads from time to time, and if there’s anything that genuinely interests you, please go ahead and visit the advertiser’s site.

Thanks,

Colin.

PS. Please don’t click multiple times in the hope of sending me cash.  Google is wise to that and will cancel my account if such ‘abuse’ takes place. Ta very much.

I had to re-install Windows XP on my 18 month old Dell notebook to solve a problem I was having. Unfortunately, the problem still remains. But, that’s not what I need help on.

See my earlier posts about my T-Mobile mobile broadband on my phone? Well ignore those. The following has nothing to do with the broadband connection on my phone, it is about the mobile broadband USB dongle I have, and the cable broadband (via a WiFi router) I have at home.

I was a bit surprised about how my set-up worked before the reinstall, but since it did work (and it suited me), I didn’t look into how it worked. Now it has changed though, and I want it back the way it was. Here goes!

At home I was connected to the net via WiFi to my cable broadband provider, Virgin (lovely 10 meg trial period ends next week). However, my smtp email server settings were set to use the USB mobile broadband dongle from T-Mobile.

What would happen was that Outlook 2000 (I know) would send and receive emails via USB mobile broadband, while simultaneously my surfing on IE (I know) would use my WiFi-based cable broadband provider (at much higher speeds).

I verified this was happening by sending emails (which would fail if sent using my cable provider), whilst running a broadband speed test (showing over 8mbps) at www.speedtest.net. That proved that emails were going via mobile broadband and IE was using the cable broadband, at the same time.

Since the reinstall, I can either use mobile broadband exclusively, or cable broadband exclusively. I’ve checked a few settings, but can’t see anything obvious I can do to get it back to the previous settings.

Can you help please?

If so, please leave a comment or twitter me www.twitter.com/ColinBowen. I’ll post any answers here in the comments anyway. Thanks very much.

PS. I know the fonts sizes are different, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to change font sizes in WordPress. I know, RTFM, but life’s to short.

This thing looks glued to the road (at the front, at least). I’ll have to get round to watching the programme on TV.

I’m sure The Stig is my Cousin Les.