From the category archives:
Our friends over at Coolest Gadgets pinged me today to tell me about a contest they are holding to give away 5 digital photo frames.
The frames have all been donated by Redsave and you just have to leave a comment to be in with a chance of winning.
Read more for full details about the digital photo frames or for some reviews on other frames.
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The great thing about the internet is that every now and again you come across a fantastic specialist company selling something truly unique, that you simply wouldn’t find in your neck of the woods.
The kind folks at Sumo Lounge have sent me giant bean bag chair. They are an American company that do to home furnishings what Alienware do to computers. This isn’t furniture, this is Urban Lounge Gear!
Essentially they’re beanbags, but these are no ordinary beanbags, these are beanbags with attitude. Think of a beanbag that would double as a sofa bed, and you’re getting close.
There are different styles to cater for the different types of bean bag customer as well. Sumo Gamer for upright, square-on video game playing, Sumo Couple for two person action, and Sumo Giganator for the ultimate in comfort lounging.
The thing I like best about the website though is the video they helpfully provide to help you get the best out of your sumo chair!
Remember, this isn’t a toy, this is a serious piece of lounging equipment. Check these guys out!
This is a guest post by Nick who blogs about mobile phones at Mobile Shop
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From time to time we buy gadgets ourselves and it’s always nice to review them in case other people are interested in buying the same thing. Last year digital photo frames were the top selling electronic item for Christmas so there are probably a few of you thinking of getting one this year.
The model I’ve just had delivered) is a “7 Inch Digital Photo Frame Black” and in short I’m pretty impressed with it.
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The covers are interchangeable so if you don’t like black you can change it for white or grey which is a nice feature. In terms of memory it includes a 2GB SD card so you can fit a load of photos on it. The internal memory is good for a few photos as well.
This particular frame was a present but to get one for myself I’m thinking of going for one of the more expensive WiFi digital frames at RedSave so I can update remotely.
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Over at our other blog, BlogStorm we have just hit 1000 RSS subscribers after 3 months.
The success of the blog was mainly due to linkbaiting so we put together guide on how to market your websites and blogs using the same methods.
Click here to read the guide. You might like to subscribe to the RSS feed as we have lots of similar posts coming soon.
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Although this doesn’t have anything to do with mobile phones, the service provided by BlogStorm is very interesting to bloggers so we thought it worthwhile mentioning.
BlogStorm keeps track of all your blog posts using your RSS feed and calculates how many websites are linking to each post.
As you can see from the chart below we are doing quite well but are still way behind Engadget which gets thousands of links to every post.
Stats for mad4mobilephones are here and you can sign up here.
The best thing about the charts is that you can click on the points to drill down into the data.
Disclosure: We helped design BlogStorm.
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A number of people have been emailing to ask why we don’t offer subscriptions to our news feeds by email. I didn’t have a good answer so we are now offering a daily dose of mobile phone news by email.
Simply add your email address to the box on the right of this page and we will send you an email once a day with all of that days posts in.
Your email will only be used for this purpose and will not be sold or used for anything else.
If you have any problems then please let me know in the comments.
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During a research project we were investigating how certain websites displayed on different mobile phones. While compiling stats on whether older, arguably uglier sites performed better than newer CSS sites we ended up with a list of what our testers believed to be the worst looking web sites.
If your website is on this list please don’t be offended, although you may wish to consider a redesign.
Top of our list and probably the worst of the bunch is this UK marine insurance company. Not content with using yellow and pale green on the same page they have made the page refresh every single second just so you don’t miss it. Also check out the quality pages such as this one with more html errors (check the title tag) than you can count. Extra points granted due to the waste of a good domain name.
Its not really clear what (or who) Franz is but you won’t miss that “Home” button. The title is nice and descriptive as well.
MSY is an Australian technology company boasting “more than 10 years in the computer industry”. Unfortunately their definition of “computer industry” clearly doesn’t encompass web design as pages such as this one selling Flash memory and other assorted products demonstrates.
Seriously this is painful to watch. Would you hire VF Designer?
This online ministry website seems to think that making people blind will help spread the faith. They even helpfully provide a series of well designed banners for you to use when you link to them.
This image heavy Norwegian gadget site has more pictures than flickr and takes an age to load thanks to the html image resizing. It didn’t seem to render properly in any of my browsers.
Forgiving even the dodgy ads at the top of the page the Hotel Mance website made our list thanks to the fantastic map which the designers have helpfully annotated and scanned in.
Another site wasting a great domain name is 00.com which utilises the least user friendly Flash navigation system we have had the pleasure to use.
Web Wizz have been given the dubious honour of having designed two sites on the list. Lets hope www.posture.co.uk is suitably pleased with the design work. Helpfully Web Wizz will register a domain name for just £89.99 initially, plus £2 per month.
Aside from the dubious clip art we weren’t sure whether this site really merited inclusion on the list. However once we tested the “Experience an Earthquake” button it was a certainty. Why would you do that to your precious visitors?
Ling was featured recently on the BBC’s Dragons Den program and really tries hard to provide a personal touch to her car leasing website. Unfortunately this means ignoring a few of the user friendly features on more conventional sites. Just try navigating round a few pages and you will see that the mass of information at the top isn’t just on the homepage, its on all the pages.
Helpfully Ling has created a nice guide on how you should be building your site:
Most business make mistake of paying a company to build page, without learning. Learn! Modify, change. Don’t pay the idiots to do this, do it yourself. Treat webpage like business office or shop. If you want to move a desk in office you move it. Put calendar on wall, you put. Do the same on website. Do every day. So simple. All your customers can see this. They get “feeling” from it.
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Channel 4 is about to launch a mobile blogging site called “Big Art Mob” with contributions from around the country. According to the press release users will be able to send pictures of public artwork from their phones and have them appear on the website in real time.
The Big Art Mob invites people to help make the first comprehensive map of public art across the UK by sending photos, text, video and audio to do with public art from their mobile phones. Using a combination of Google Maps, a geo-coding facility and ‘tags’ (i.e. labels/keywords) created by the senders and viewers alike, these photos and moblog ‘posts’ will collectively form an interactive map to celebrate and preserve the country’s wealth of public art.
This is the first use of mobile blogging technology by a major UK broadcaster and could help the technology become more mainstream.
Adam Gee, Channel 4’s commissioning editor, New Media, says:
There’s no comprehensive map of the UK’s public art, simply because there’s so much of it. But now, with a combination of networked media and people power, for the first time it’s an achievable public challenge. As well as documenting the richness and diversity of our public art, the Big Art Mob will highlight the fun of moblogging and provide the base for a lively, visually-oriented, UK-centred arts community.
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Anybody who has watched an episode of Top Gear in the last few years will be familiar with the Cool Wall. Check the video below if you have no idea what we are talking about.
We are pleased to announce a new addition to this website: the Mobile Phone Cool Wall. Simply drag the phones around to show us how cool you think they are. Results are stored in a database and your votes help build the wall for the future.
The script behind the wall is available to download for free to use on your website.
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A few readers have been asking recently if we can upgrade the RSS feed to show the full content of the post rather than just a snippet.
In the past there wasn’t so much demand for full feeds so we didn’t take the time to offer them.
Anyway, the RSS feed is now showing the full content of the post. If you are not yet a subscriber please use the links at the bottom left of this page or click here to subscribe to our feed.
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