An exciting day it truly is. I have just taken deliver of a T-Mobile Web and Walk USB 3G badass modem, which theoretically should mean near constant Internet connectivity. The whole experience of getting the modem has been relatively painless – I ordered it last Wednesday and it was delivered the next Saturday. Between Wednesday and Saturday I had prove my identity to T-Mobile – presumably the Electoral Register isn’t good enough. The unit itself is a sleek white Huwaei USB modem. Installation on and Intel Mac was easy enough and I was up and runing in around 5 minutes. For £29 per month you get unlimited (subject to reasonable use of 5GB, so not unlimited at all) internet usage but no VOIP/Skype. They don’t seem to block you from using Skype, but as you are ‘allowed’ to use Skype with teh £39 per month package, my guess is that they will up your subscription if they catch you using it.
Another breakthough has been signing up for Streetcar. I recently sold my car to some sucker and I am now carless. Streetcar is a car rental service thats been around for a coupe of years, but recently seem to have been on an advetising spree. The idea is that you register with them online, and then book cars on an hourly basis. Their VW Golfs are distributed around London, parked on the street. You turn up, enter a PIN and drive off – all for pretty reasonable rates.
The catch is that because my driving license is from the Isle of Man, I have to send in the usual torrent of proofs of identity. Someone at Streetcar has done their homework and figured out that finding a fax machin/photocopier is one step too far for the bussy or the lazy. To compensate for this, they offer you 5 hours free rental if you send in your documents within 7 days. Clever. Whats more, within 2 hours of signing up, I had a welcome call (to my mobile, a real person).
To whoever has invested in Streetcar – your money is being well spent.
Finally, check out the Wordpress Dashboard Widget from Panaris Web Development which lets you post to your wordpress blog from your dashboard. There are a few character encoding issues, but hopefully they’ll be sorted out before too lobg.