A busy day today, late start, bowling, Sunday lunch and swimming runs topped off with the Sunday evening routine. A routine of tidying, cleaning and of collecting together all the kids stuff ready for the morning. Then just enough time to sit down briefly before heading to bed. Night night world.

I’m going to admit it, “It’s been a reality check coming back to work!”. There, I’ve said it. However on the flip-side it’s now 5:30 on Friday afternoon and I’ve had a glass of wine lovingly delivered to my desk. Therefore, by my clock it’s Wine-o-clock in the UK. Enjoy!

I think that I have managed to overcome my fear of surfing whilst abroad! Any seasoned traveler will know that using your laptop or smartphone abroad can lead to a hefty invoice from your mobile provider upon your return, especially with the current rip-off charges being applied to data roaming across the globe. It’s not a problem if you can find a WIFI hotspot somewhere, but that is not always possible and even when you do you may still be subjected to high data charges to use the service.

Enter my new gadget, the Huawei Mifi E585, a wonderful small little unit that acts as a portable modem and personal WIFI access point. The Huawei E585 can be obtained through 3 (hence the big logo on the front of mine) but it can also be purchased unlocked (this enables you to use it with any providers SIM card). The Huawei Mifi E585 unit is battery powered and will happily last for 5 hours on a charge. Configuration was pretty easy as well – just a case of inserting the SIM, switching it on, browsing to the Huawei’s internal configuration pages and setting up any further details. The Huawei Mifi E585 will allow up to 5 devices to be connected to the WIFI access point, and you can configure the security and WIFI settings as you so wish. It includes a built-in firewall, DHCP server and the option of inserting a MicroSD card for shared data storage. The unit has a nice screen that displays a selection of useful information, such as the signal strength, how many devices are connected to the WIFI, the provider and a tally of how much data has been used.

Personally, I purchased an unlocked version of the Huawei Mifi E585, along with a roaming data SIM from the folks at ABroadband (www.abroadband.com). ABroadband offer a roaming broadband SIM which works across 80 operators in 55 countries for a flat fee of about £0.50 per MB. This is much cheaper than the vast majority of providers and my current provider will happily charge me £3.00 per MB on my iPhone, so this is some potential saving!

This is certainly cheaper than roaming on my iPhone, and is ideal for sharing a data connection, whilst abroad across my iPhone, iPad and Laptop.

Happy days.

The whole concept of Take-a-Note is to keep the process easy, efficient and effective. There’s no abundance of screens and menus to get involved with, just open the app, press the button to record some audio or type in some text and press ‘OK’. Take-a-Note will store the note, assign it to an appointment in your calendar and even fire off a reminder at a set time to review them. Notes can be assigned as individual events, or digested together so you are only reviewing one item in your calendar.

Take-a-Note also stores the location of the note, which can be handy at times for me.

Take-a-Note costs £0.69 from iTunes

The Good

Take-a-Note is clean and efficient. I like the straight forward nature of this app. Your in and note taking within a second. This is great if you are on the move and need to capture a note quickly. The audio works great on the iPhone and recordings are clear and audible.

The ability to set the preferences to automatically start recording when the app is started is also very useful, allowing you to cut out even more clutter and tasks.

The daily digests and notifications are also very useful. Especially for me when I am out and travelling. I can record notes after phone calls and thoughts and them review them before the end of the day. You never know I might get to a point where I don’t forget something.

Areas for Improvement

This app is all about simplicity, so maybe there’s little room to improve. Personally though I would like to have the ability to correct my appalling spelling when typing notes; which is not possible in this release.

Secondly, it would be handy to categorize notes into sections at times – so I could split work, customers and personal and have a digest for each category to review at the end of the day.

Thirdly, whilst the entry into the diary is a great feature, there’s a disconnect with the audio. Obviously I record a snippet of audio against a note and that gets saved on the iPhone. However when I am reviewing my notes, the URL to the audio only works if I am reviewing them on the same iPhone. It doesn’t work if I am reviewing my notes on my desktop’s calendar. Maybe syncing your audio notes in the cloud would be a nice solution.

However the 1.4 made some excellent updates and now 1.4.1 has arrived in the UK, which adds the support for Paid Apps to be purchased from the Palm App Catalog. Hopefully this will help fuel developers to create more apps for this excellent device.

It’s also reported that 1.4.1 also enables Mobile Hotspot for O2 customers. Mobile Hotspot can be downloaded from the Pre App Catalog and supports secure WPA/WPA2 connections for up to five devices, with a range claimed to extend out to 50 meters.

There are the standard spaces to change and modify your details, and a box at the bottom to date and sign. What they only tell you in the small print is that by signing it you are entering into a legal contract to  pay Euro 997 per year for the privilege. All the terms and conditions are laid out on the reverse, but they are printed so faintly I struggled to read them.

A quick look on the Internet would suggest that far to many people simply fill this out, sign it and send it back! My apologies if you have already done this, but it’s amazing that scams like this are still so wide-spread and successful! This particular one come from an address in Portugal.

So – please be aware!

Update 7th September 2010

I have have today received several emails from ECG asking for this page, and the comments to be removed as they consider them ‘defamatory’. I have duly refused to do that. I believe that they are valid feedback and that the ECG should take note of their ‘customer’ feedback. We shall see what happens.

Update 24th November 2010

It’s worth noting that following the requests that I got from the ECG to remove this page, I have not had any further communication with them. They did not reply to my response; which, I think goes some way to understanding these people. It’s all about the threats. The threats to pay, the threats of further action and even further costs.

I think that the overwhelming advise from all the people that have had some involvement with these people is to ignore them. Hopefully most people will see this for what it is; but for those that have been caught out my advice is to stand your ground and refuse to pay. At worst seek legal advice if you feel that the form was filled out in error and they are pursuing you for payment.

Update 19th January 2011

I thought that I would attach a letter that was received by one of my readers, from their MEP. I attach it with their permission and in full. I have highlighted some areas that I feel are of importance.

Dear Mike,

Thank you for contacting me about the European City Guide scam. I was sorry to hear that you have been targeted by this organisation. A number of attempts to halt these scams are underway at national and European level.

In my view, you are quite correct not to have paid any money to the ECG. The ‘contract’ that you were tricked into signing has been judged as deceptive by several national authorities across the European Union, including the UK’s Office of Fair Trading. For this reason, although the ECG and its sister debt collection companies will continue to bully and threaten their victims, they have never been known to take anyone to court in the UK. Another strategy of theirs is to offer a discount as a ‘gesture of goodwill’; many victims have been tricked into paying this reduced amount, but have subsequently found that even this is not enough to end the harassment.

There has been progress on this issue in the Parliament. The Petitions Committee in the parliament has drafted a Report (Maltese MEP Simon Busuttil is the rapporteur) on the ECG which was approved in December by a massive majority. Meanwhile, the Internal Market and Consumer Protection committee has also conducted a study into the issue and an Opinion to the Busuttil report. The Commission have acknowledged the extent of the problem and have promised to urge Member States to enforce the Misleading Advertising Directive more rigorously and, perhaps, propose amendments to the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive to specifically tackle ECG-style business to business scams.

However, there are still problems. Firstly, the Commission regards the ECG’s way of working as business-to-business transactions, which means victims are not protected by consumer protection laws. Secondly, there is EU legislation which can and has been used to prosecute the ECG and its sister groups but there has been no real consistent consensus throughout Europe. Whereas Belgium and Austria have found against the ECG, and the Catalan High Court has closed their office down, the authorities in Valencia have tolerated their behaviour. Austria currently has the strongest position against the scams and both the Busuttil report and my colleague Catherine Stihler MEP, Member of the Internal Market Committee, recommend that all EU countries agree the Austrian model should be a common position in Europe.

In October 2009 my Labour colleague Catherine Stihler MEP asked the Competition Commissioner, Meglena Kuneva, to keep pursuing this issue until a way to resolve it is found. Commissioner Kuneva has reassured my colleague that the ECG scam is something which she will not give up on, and she continues to hold meetings to bring about an end to the practice.

Along with my Labour colleagues, I will continue to make representations on this issue at a European level. In the meantime, my advice is as follows:

- Do not pay.

- Contact the Consumer Protection Directorate in Valencia, Spain, where ECG is based, and ask for your contract to be cancelled. Contact details are at http://www.stopecg.org/.

- If the ECG or their debt collection companies continue to harass you, tell them that you are considering legal action against them under European directives on misleading advertising.

Please keep me informed of any further developments.

Best wishes

Glenis Willmott MEP

Update 28th February 2011

There’s also a UK Action Fraud helpline which has been setup, which has been getting some airtime recently which I thought that I would include in this article. For more information take a look at http://www.actionfraud.org.uk/report_fraud

Update 2nd March 2011

Joselyne Reid very kindly contacted me, after contacting her MEP about this scam, and has very kindly offered the letter that she received for posting. You can this here. Thanks Jo!

I have recently bolstered the services that I can offer through my web hosting company (www.community-hosts.co.uk) so things are now a lot faster, and functional. As much as I love the free hosting that I can provide at Community Hosts, it’s only when you put things on a unrestricted server that you notice the difference.

What is interesting though is the shear amount of information that people display about themselves on their Facebook pages. Names, locations, birthdates, religious beliefs, who your married to or currently dating. We share photos, stories and information with hundreds of people every day – and in many cases we actually know very little about the people that we are sharing this private information with.

It’s like a stranger arriving at your door, and asking you for your name, date of birth, photos of your kids, and a few other personal details! I’m not sure about you but if a stranger knocked on my door, they get approximately 2 seconds to give me good reason to keep the door open before I slam it! So what’s different with Facebook?

In an age of identity theft we have never been so open with our information – that is one of the disadvantages of the Internet!

So if you are a facebook user, then stop, and look at what you are sharing – and more importantly who you are sharing it with!

Here are my top tips to start protecting yourself within Facebook.

1. Hide your year of birth.

Displaying your year of birth to all is pretty dangerous in my opinion – not just because to tells everyone exactly how old you are; but it’s also a good security question that you would normally be asked, and sometimes incorporated into people passwords. Not showing it also helps to protect yourself against identity fraud – and let’s face it Facebook is the identify thieves’ greatest tool if they want to know anything about you!

How: On your facebook profile, click on the ‘Info’ tab and then select ‘Edit Information’ and then under ‘Basic Information’ change the option to either, “Don’t show my birthday in my profile” or “Show only day and month in my Profile”.

2. Maintain a ‘’Private Life’!

Just remember that anything that you or your kids/family put up onto facebook is potentially public – to others. For example if you upload an embarrassing photo and I am not your friend, I wouldn’t normal know about it – however if one of MY friends make a comment on one of your photos (because they are your friends) then I can see that action; and then also see the photo. Be warned!

3. Use your friends list

Friends lists in facebook is not only useful but also important – it essentially allows you to ‘Group’ your friends into different lists. Once you’ve done that you can start to manage them better. To access your Friends  list – hover over the ‘Friends’ menu at the top, and then select ‘All Friends’.

Now you will see all your friends, and to the left side of the screen, you will see you have one list. called ‘Friends’ – which means that everyone is treated the same as your friend.

What you need to do now is start create different lists and places your friends in one or more of those lists. So for example you might have a ‘Friend List’ called, ‘Family’ and another called, ‘Close Friends’ and potentially some like ‘Friends, but never met!’

To create a new list simply click on ‘Create new list’, give it a name and then start selecting which of your friends should be in that list.

For me I have lists such as Family, Close Friends, Friends of Friends, School Friends, and Business Contacts to name a few.

3. Adjust your privacy settings to control who see what

By default in facebook you share all your information, photos, wall posts to all of your friends (and their friends in many cases). This is something that you need to think about carefully. Whilst my family members are indeed my friends (most of the time!) and I am happy to share my embarrassing photos with them – ‘Bob’ who I have never met, nor actually know but is in my friends list – do I really want him to see those photos as well?

So the best way is to change your privacy settings. To do this simply select ‘Privacy Settings’ from under the ‘Settings’ menu on your facebook page.

Then you will want to click on ‘Profile’ to change the privacy settings of who can see various elements of your profile.

Firstly select ‘Profile’ and you will see that you can define who can see your profile. Personally, I would select ‘Friends’ Only’ here.

Now continue down the list selecting different settings for different areas of your profile.

4. Avoid the embarrassing tagged photos

It only takes an embarrassing situation, a camera, Facebook and a ‘tagged image’ and all your friends, family, colleagues and half the world suddenly can laugh at you. Not great at the best at times, but what if the photo that you were tagged in was not actually you? That’s both embarrassing and potentially hurtful.

The best way to protect against this is to restrict which of your ‘friends list’ can see the photos that you have been tagged in. Under ‘Photos Tagged of You’ in your privacy settings, select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.

I would suggest that you did the same for ‘Video Tagged of You’ to remove the video nastys as well.

5. Protect your photo albums

The previous section only protects photos for which you are tagged in – however what about all the photos that you upload and store in your own albums? Do you really want all those photos shared amongst everyone?

“If anyone called Jason Micheal White, Jason White, James Ryan White, Phil Gibson, Shelly White, Daniel White, Hayley Omalley or Hayley White try to add u, dont accept!! They copy pics of ur kids & sell them to perverts, they’re fake! Please copy paste & inform all ur friends, we need to put a stop to them, police R informed, plz take it seriously .. I’ve been told to pass the message, Please do the same too!” – Taken from a Facebook posting today.

Well, there is a way to protect your photo albums as well. Firstly click on your ‘Profile’ and then  click on ‘See All’. You will then see an option for ‘Album Privacy’;

From here you will be able to select who can and who cannot see each one of your albums.

6. Don’t be afraid to remove friends

Every once in a while take a look at who your friends are – and ask yourself, “Am I still OK with this person seeing what I am doing?”. If not then remove then – or place them in a group that only sees a small amount of your information. It could be an ex-boyfriend or a complete stranger. Nothing feels better than culling a few people off your friends list!

7. Be careful when mixing work and play

If you are like a lot of people you will have both friends, family and work colleagues in your friends list. If you do, then think carefully in what you share. Is your boss, or one of your work colleagues privy to what you are saying? People have been sacked for posting a defamatory comment about their employer on Facebook – or updating their status saying that they are pulling a ‘sicky’!

If you do have work colleagues on your friends list then consider placing them all in a separate friends list (as mentioned above) and restricting what they can and cannot see.

If in any doubt – check it out!

There is a great way to ACTUALLY see what another person can see from your profile on Facebook. Use it to check up on yourself through another’s eye – and use it to check your security settings. To access this gold nugget go back to your Privacy settings page – and at the top there is an option to, “See how a friend sees your profile”.

Enter in one of your friends names and spend a few minutes in their shoes looking at your profile!

When people have asked me about broadband providers in the past my replies have always evolved around one simple policy, “Stay away from the Sub-ISPs and stick with the main providers”.

This has kept me going well, with no outages, a decent service and no problems. I signed up with Pipex Broadband years ago and have been with them ever since. However at the point at which they were swallowed by Tiscali I was concerned; as  Tiscali’s reputation was not great to say the least. I thought, “providing my service remains consistent then I am OK – and as long as I do not get messed about I will stay”

Several weeks ago I contacted Pipex for the first time to request; quite explicitly “please cancel my Home Call phone package – BUT LEAVE MY BROADBAND ALONE”. A simple request. However yesterday I suddenly had a complete and utter lack of broadband – which was a complete nightmare for someone who works at home a lot. Broadband to me is just as important as electricity!

So I phoned Pipex immediately on the support line (0871 66 333 00) and went straight to query my bill, and discovered that the only thing active on my account was the Home Call Phone package – and no Broadband.

Numerous calls then to the terminations team left me even more confused and angry. Apparently they had cancelled the wrong service with no notification, no customer communication and with no remorse. Problem was that it was going to take 10 days to reconnect me. Oh, I could have a £10 credit to my account as a ‘Sorry!’ – and that just upset me even more as I was probably losing that on the time and calls alone!

You know this part of the tale – lots more phone calls, lots more departments! Long story made slightly shorter – I was told it would still take up to 10 days to reconnect me and there was nothing that could be done – unbelievable. More phone calls and more frustration. Surprisingly one person did say that he would get it reconnected within a few days – but that was a false claim.

After a while I took a different tack – and a bit of searching on Google came up with a few names, namely the CEO, and several of the PR team.

My advice is to keep an email like this factual, calm and to the point. A letter that simply rants and raves and makes false claims will not get you anywhere.

I later saw this letter to Pipex (http://pipexcommunicationsplc.com/emails-to-pipex-march-2009.html) and thought, “That’s not how to do it!”. It’s from a MSN email address with no identity, it rants, it makes false claims and the grammar is terrible.

Remarkable (and credit does need to be given at this point) within 2 hours I received a call from Tiscali’s High Level Complaints Department trying to sort out the mess. By the end of the call we had agreed a temporary free and unlimited dial-up service to keep me going and a direct contact with someone who’s surname I actually knew, not to mention an email address and contact telephone number!

Bottom line is that Pipex screwed up majorly. There was no communication, and what communication I did have was simply lip-service; with no backed up actions. Unless I had taken it to a high level – I would still be phoning premium rate numbers; going round in circles and getting nowhere.

Helpful Hint: When facing repeated calls to premium call centres try look at the following site to alternative numbers instead of paying the full price – saved me some money! http://www.saynoto0870.com/ is a great resource provide alternative numbers to common high-rate and premium support centres.

Granted I am still considerable upset with Pipex, and would never recommend them to anyone I have to; in this instance give some credit to Tiscali for stepping in and taking some action on an individual level – and not hiding behind a call centre. If only this could happen more often.

What bugs me now is that at some point soon I will get my broadband back – with Pipex. The problem is that I do not really want to be with Pipex; but what’s the alternative?

We shall see; as this story is not over yet