By far the best one of the three and I’ll admit (as have others), I cried at the end.

The app I’m reviewing today is: Balance Alert for T-Mobile, also known as TMobNotify.

As its name suggests, it won’t be much use to you if you don’t use T-Mobile! However if you’re lucky enough to have a contract with them, then this app is definitely worth a look.

Let’s get to the thorny issue of the price first. It’s 79p. There, that wasn’t so bad was it?

What you get for this paltry sum is an app that will periodically log you into your T-Mobile account and monitor your usage (or Flext balance if you’re so inclined), unbilled costs, and alert if you if you hit the limits you have set in the configuration:

Configuration itself is a doddle, simply enter your “My T-Mobile” login details, choose whether you have a Combi or Flext plan, and set the relevant allowance alerts:

Once enabled, the service checks your account balance at intervals you specify (the default is every 3 hours).

The overview screen now provides all the information at-a-glance:

For those who love their information however, there’s a handy “Get Non-Allowance Breakdown” button which shows you any calls/texts that have been billed outside your normal allowance (for example text short codes like Radio 1′s 81199 etc), and also gives you the total data you’ve used this month, useful if you’re on a cap, or want to avoid hitting a fair-usage policy!

All-in-all, this is a super handy app for anyone on T-Mobile that wants to get a quick look at their account on their phone, without having to go through the rigmarole of logging into T-Mobiles site on your phone, or texting BA or AL to 150 and getting a very concise and rather useless text back!

The only two things I think that would make this app perfect right now would be:

• Some sort of homescreen widget that displayed your balance and minutes/texts remaining.
• Balance of boosters, for example a text or data booster.

Overview

Application Name:
Balance Alert for T-Mobile

Price:
£0.79

Official Site:
http://sites.google.com/site/tmobnotify/

App information link:
http://www.cyrket.com/p/android/cx.ath.tom3030.TMN/

Permissions:
INTERNET, READ_CONTACTS, RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED, WAKE_LOCK

Rating

I thought I’d add these here. I get 2 a month for being on Premium, these are for Spotify Free, simply paste in the invite code on that page!

NB: These will only work in countries where Spotify is available, currently: Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France, Spain or The Netherlands.

If it doesn’t work, try the next one in the list. I’ll add more as I get them each month and cross out the used ones!

• dGnbudxmugu3yYVX
• b4W95Dd3W4FYHBGt
• aNsRyhfVgJghkchw
• ceGx8DSDSNYWTPz6
• e4bdXPyMqCChcs57
• fAkn4BdqB9HPgEL8

All gone (01/06/2010).

Enjoy!

James.

Seeing as there doesn’t seem to be much relating to this error on Google. Well, there does, but never a resolution (or people are unwilling to share the solution they received from CoPilot).

I had the notorious “Google Checkout number invalid” error, and after re-installing the app, then received this error when trying to log in to my CoPilot account (on the phone): Sorry! Your CoPilot Trial Has Expired – Error 703

So, for the benefit of those of you out there who encounter this problem, here’s the email I received from CoPilot regarding this problem.

Thank you for contacting CoPilot Technical Support. It may be your maps are corrupted. What I would suggest is to

1) Uninstall CoPilot in SETTINGS | APPLICATIONS | COPILOT.
2) Connect your device to your PC over USB
3) Delete the CoPilot folder
4) Now unplug your device from the PC
5) Download CoPilot from the Market Place again (you will not be charged for this)
6) Then follow the Central instructions below to download maps again

Download Central 2.0
1) Please download Central from

http://www.copilotlive.com/central

Getting the device Connected
1) Launch Central 2.0
2) Log in with your CoPilot Live ID (this is required in order to download maps or purchase upgrades)
3) Connect your android device to your PC through a USB cable
4) On the device, drag the top bar down to the bottom of the screen and tap on USB connected
5) Select “Mount”
6) You will see in Central at the top left of the screen your Device model (for android devices we just show “Android Device”) and CoPilot 8 version number.

Downloading Maps
1) Select Download maps – this is an icon in the center of the welcome screen (currently only for android customers) or go to CoPiltot store and select Maps.
2) Select the region to download. You can only download maps for the region you previously selected on your device. These regions will be shown in blue in Central. For all other regions that you have not purchased, the text will appear in black signifying you need to purchase these.
3) Once you click on download, the data will be transferred to your PC, unpacked and sent to the storage card on the device. Please remember to keep the device connected at all times.

Ready? Okay!

This weekend sees my flatmate Andy and myself visiting the mph show at Earl’s Court in London. They are platinum tickets very kindly bought for me by my mum as an early Christmas present.

The mph show certainly looks like it’s going to be excellent, I hear there are going to be 250 exotic cars, including the world’s most expensive Bugatti Veyron and a mirror effect McLaren Mercedes SLR. The platinum tickets also entitle us to 2 free drinks, a free meal and dessert, access to “the platinum enclosure” and “The bumper book of Top Gear”!

But I think the most exciting bit of the whole day will be the Top Gear Live show, of which we’ve managed to get front row seats to! They seem to have a lot of things planned for it, but don’t listen to me, see what Jezza and the team have to say about it.

I shall be back on here (I promise) next week with photos and hopefully videos!

Well, the day has come – Invicta FM (by name at least) ceases to be.  I thought I would come out of hiding in my blog to share my memories of what was once Kent’s best ILR station.

Now, I’m not going to discuss the reasons why I disagree with the name change, there’s already a 64 page thread on Digital Spy that contains plenty of my opinions, I want this to be more centred on the good times I had with Invicta!

Background

I first moved to the county in 1990 with my mum and step dad. Being 4 years old I don’t actually remember much of the first few years. Although I do remember my hearing Invicta Supergold coming from my parent’s bedroom on a few occasions!

My Early Days

My first vivid memory was laying in bed listening to the launch of the Morning Zoo with Neil Francis and Simon Beale (Nealy and Bealy!). I remember Simon Beale running late for the first ever show and Neil ringing him up periodically to ask how he was getting on!

After that, I listened more and more to Invicta, and I do remember at one point when I was making my own ‘fake’ radio shows, I used to cross to Invicta the top of the hour for their news! Hence why I have these Invicta news bulletins from a while back:

http://www.calamityjames.co.uk/stuff/invicta/toth-news.mp3

http://www.calamityjames.co.uk/stuff/invicta/paul-deacon-6-jun-99.mp3

School Days

Invicta also got me through my school homework, I remember listening to The Fridge with Stephen Sullivan (and Taz!)  religiously every night. The ‘Raid the Fridge’ feature comes to mind there too

Towards the end of my listening history with Invicta (people are going to see this one a bit more controversial methinks) was the networked Steve Penk show. Although it was networked, they made no effort hiding this fact, unlike most networking these days! Regardless of what people say about him, his ability to make me laugh with his windups and general on-air presence is one of the things I’m going to remember most fondly.

http://www.calamityjames.co.uk/stuff/invicta/penky.mp3

My friend just reminded me of an amusing thing we did in Sixth Form when we had a few free periods. We were listening to the 10am-1pm show (I think it was with Neil Faraday) and decided on a whim to drive to Radio House in Whitstable to try and get on the air. We texted him to let him know, and got a mention jokingly. Then texted him again when we were outside the studios, he spoke about us on-air again saying his stalkers were outside the building! Then said for us to come into reception. When we got in, we asked to see him, the receptionists said unfortunately we couldn’t as he didn’t have time, but they’d said we could have some goodies, so we got a few Invicta FM T shirts, a couple of Morning Zoo Kellogg’s breakfast packs (complete with Kellogg’s mug) and umpteen stickers!

Another show I enjoyed thoroughly was Jonathan Miles’ show (maybe this was just because they’d got rid of the bloody Wind-down Zone – something as a kid I never really enjoyed). He was always up for a laugh, and his ‘bitch of a day’ feature always made you realise your day probably hadn’t been as hard as you first thought!

http://www.calamityjames.co.uk/stuff/invicta/jonathon-miles.mp3

After Penky left, I must admit I didn’t listen as often at night as I used to.

The Morning Zoo

I still listened religiously to the Morning Zoo until I moved to Surrey in 2005. I still have some old stickers on the window at my parent’s house (anyone remember the short-lived 7-day Morning Zoo?).

James Heming did a wonderful job taking the reigns for the Morning Zoo, and I think the show’s highest point was when he was at the helm. I still vividly remember the “James Heming and the Morning Zoo, Invicta FMMMMM” jingle.

My memory has a slight blank spot between Neil and Simon and James Heming so maybe someone can fill the blanks in this Morning Zoo timeline:

• Neil Francis & Simon Beale
• Neil Francis & Sam Hughes
• I can’t remember the weekend Morning Zoo presenters
• James Heming, Ant Payne, Craig (the producer?),  Andy (travel centre?),Vicky (flying eye?), Tony Shepherd (news)

If you want some Morning Zoo related nostalgia, get yourself over to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.themorningzoo.biz

…to conclude

If anyone has any jingles from my heyday of listening to Invicta (~1994-2005), I would gladly pay for a CD of as many jingles as you can fit on there! Comment to this blog post (or PM me on Digital Spy) if by some strange co-incidence someone who does finds this!

I’ll close this post, with a wonderful montage of jingles over the years of Invicta, compiled by ‘mbessex‘ on Digital Spy. I hope he doesn’t mind me posting it on here…

http://www.calamityjames.co.uk/stuff/invicta/GoodbyeInvicta.mp3

“Across the South East… 24 hours a day… this (was) Invicta FM”

Rest in Peace, Invicta Sound / Invicta Radio / Invicta FM. Missed, but not forgotten.

In my day, Invicta FM was a local radio station – A Facebook group sharing Invicta memories.

Robin Blairmes’ blog post regarding ‘South East England’s Heart Attack’ with plenty more audio clips

I finally got round to moving this site onto its brand new server (with an updated version of WordPress) so I can finally resume my ramblings!

Congratulations are due methinks to Barack Obama for becoming the next US President. I will be in Washington, DC for the inauguration in January, very much looking forward to that! 76 days and counting!

I promise I’ll keep my blog up to date this time, but then how many times have you heard that eh?

James

(Click to make bigger)

If you’re reading this message then we’re on our new server. Hooray!

Nothing but praise for BustedTees, they replied to my enquiries very quickly and were very polite (even said to have a good weekend!)

I went and bought “SHIFT Happens!!!1” and “Blow me“.

Very impressed with the T-shirts, and ‘shift happens’ particulary caused a stir at work with clients saying it was very apt.

I’d recommend them to a friend, so go forth and purchase! I think there’s some kind of sale on too!

James.

“Although I was never officially affiliated with or worked at Dirty Microbe, I’m a personal friend of the founders.

After receiving a MySpace message from someone trying to track down Christian about an order, I did a Google search and found lists of complaints on blogs and forums, including this one.

Dirty Microbe has been going though severe financial trouble for a few months and has recently gone out of business and filed for bankruptcy. The founders are scrambling to liquidate the company’s assets to repay creditors, including outstanding orders. I’d advise anyone who is missing an order to do a chargeback as soon as possible.

Dirty Microbe was a very small company and unique in that they printed all shirts in house, by hand. I mean, so small that it was rare that more than two people were working at any given time in there. You can imagine the workload. Lack of manpower was one major reason they went under and I suspect the main reason for the silence now. It’s hard to imagine how much time it takes to go through the legalese for bankruptcy plus all the other stuff that has arisen from the situation. The owners have pretty much been slammed doing that, and they were already way backed up on orders and support requests.

Tens of thousands of dollars were invested in printing equipment, web store design, signing artists, affiliates, advertising, etc… and subsequently lost. There was no scam — believe it or not, order volume was relatively low and the value of all unshipped orders tiny compared to the investment. Many recall that Dirty Microbe shipped a lot of shirts before they went down.

I feel for anyone been burned by this, I’ve been shafted by buying stuff online before and I know it sucks. I’ve tried to advise the owners to make some sort of announcement so those looking for answers have some idea what happened, but they’ve been tough to get a hold of. I’m sure they’re just trying to get past what has been the most difficult time of their lives.

I’m going to cross-post this on a few of the other blogs in hopes of getting some word out to do a chargeback ASAP, as there is a time limit on those.”

So there you have it, probably the closest we’re going to get to an official repsonse to this.

There are now posts on tcritic, HideYourArms and T-Shirts Around the Internet.

Spread the word to the blogs people! And digg the article!