So bored of writing out content, but hey these sites are now live!

24hrplumbing.co.uk
affordableaccomodation.co.uk
aircon.org.uk
alevels.org.uk
anuities.co.uk
armysingles.co.uk
asiantattoos.co.uk
associationfootball.co.uk
auctioneers.org.uk
beatrice.co.uk
belgiumbeer.co.uk
betterhair.co.uk
biochemistry.co.uk
biohazard.co.uk
bizloan.co.uk
blenders.org.uk
boutiquebeer.co.uk
bridalboutiques.co.uk
broadbandready.co.uk
burgervan.co.uk
bus-tickets.co.uk
businessmergers.co.uk
buycars.co.uk
calibrator.co.uk
capricorns.co.uk
carbonbalance.co.uk
careerfocus.co.uk
carfinancefinder.co.uk
cashcarry.co.uk
chapatis.co.uk
cheesemaker.co.uk
cheshirecheese.co.uk
civilwedding.co.uk
climbinginstructor.co.uk
coachrugby.co.uk
cocktail.org.uk
companyblogs.co.uk
companycreation.co.uk
companymaker.co.uk
companyseals.co.uk
compare-loan.co.uk
compare-mortgage.co.uk
comparephone.co.uk
comparescooters.co.uk
comprehensive.co.uk
computercoaching.co.uk
contentfilters.co.uk
cosmeticsurgeryinfo.co.uk
countryflags.co.uk
creditcardsexperts.co.uk
creditmend.co.uk
custommobile.co.uk
cyberflowers.co.uk
czar.co.uk
datacenter.co.uk
debtfix.co.uk
deice.co.uk
digitalswitchboard.co.uk
discountair.co.uk
divorcemediators.co.uk
islamicloan.co.uk
islamicmoney.co.uk
islamicstudies.co.uk
islamicteaching.co.uk
horseweb.co.uk
housepainters.co.uk
tully.co.uk
merricks.co.uk

I am shocking when it comes to what appears to be procrastination, but is really more relevant distractions. This often takes the form of sorting emails, helping people on forums or giving my time to people on MSN/Skype or the like.

Dont get me wrong, I love helping people and seeing a project or deal come together due to either small or large input from me is awesome. This does however take a toll on my own work, meaning I have to play ‘catch up’ quite abit.

I noticed on Twitter a week or two ago someone referring to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique . Yes, a couple of weeks ago! It has sat in one of my open tabs since then…!

In summary you use one of those cheesy red tomato ‘pomodoro’ devices (Pomodoro is Italian for tomato, and the device is a spinning tomato) to set the timeframe for a task to be completed and follow the process below:

1. Find a task to be completed.
2. Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes.
3. Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings.
4. Take a short break.
5. Start the next task, or keep going at the task in hand.
6. Every 4 ‘pomodoros’ take a longer break than 5 mins.

As I have a HTC Desire at the moment I downloaded the ‘Pomodoro Widget’ for Android. This simply places a large tomato on one of your home screens which you tap to start and 25mins later it goes nuts – buzzing and ringing.

Lets see if this works for today…!

As promised Vodafone Web Team have replied – the business team have not incidently. Likewise no word on why the ‘systems were down for 2 hours’ yet an instant ringback had someone deal with my query… ah well.

On to the reply:

“Hi Robert,
It’s frustrating to hear of the problems that you are having with your handsets. Although more than one HTC Desire appears to be having a similar issue to you, this is not something that is happening with all of these handsets. The best way to go forward with this is to get this handset sent away for repair via one of our Vodafone stores, so we can get the software re installed onto the handset. This should resolve the issue for you.
If you have any further questions, please let us know.
Many Thanks,
Andy
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK”

Ok its a reply and an offer to try and ‘do something’ however is it being seen to do something, or is it solving the problem?

“Hi Andy,
Will this software fix the known issue, or just be a the same software being placed back on it?
The bug is in the firmware itself, so I cannot see how replacing it with the same would help. Likewise if its a bug fix, why isnt it being deployed to all users?
Cheers,
Rob”

If it is a proper bug fix then I am happy to get the phone sorted, ideally via a local firmware flash rather than sending the phone away for days. If that is the case then why not offer this bugfix to all users?

However, if it is as I suspect a ‘we cant fix that lets do whats on the script’ style reply, then its a waste of everyones time and effort to suggest it.

Which one is it Vodafone?

I have had an issue this morning with my HTC Desire losing all my text messages. I tried to speak to Vodafone via twitter, however was passed to the contact page and webforum. I rang 191 to get the business support, however first call was fobbed off with saying ‘ring back in an hour our systems are down’. I rang back straight away and was told:

1 – Its not a known problem.
2 – Vodafone have not had a report of this ever.
3 – Vodafone cannot offer a different handset as I have had mine for X months
4 – A replacement HTC Desire is an option. However this seems a fault with the handset/firmware itself so it would not solve anything.

Below is a copy of the email sent to Vodafone:

“Hi,

As per my phonecall my HTC Desire had around 3500 SMS & MMS messages in its inbox as of last night. Upon waking up this morning the inbox had one single message which was recieved that morning.

There is a setting to auto delete messages once it his 200, however as you can guess with having a few thousand in there that was not ticked.

On a quick googling of the issue of disappearing SMS messages and the like there was several reports of this happening :

http://androidforums.com/htc-desire/79499-htc-desire-disappearing-sms.html 78 messages lost

http://androidforums.com/htc-desire/85678-sms-deleted.html – several people reporting the same problem.

http://androidforums.com/htc-desire/115360-my-htc-desire-deleting-my-text-messages.html – Same issue, orange network, Norwegian network etc several other people.

http://androidforums.com/htc-desire/136064-txt-messages-lost-htc-desire.html five people lost all messages.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=7791511 – another HTC Desire report.

http://www.htcdesireforum.com/htc-desire-troubleshooting/how-do-you-deal-with-the-messages-application-force-quitting/ – amazing thread, with someone even telling HTC about it.

As for Vodafone having ‘no reports’ of this – http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/topic/72284-htc-desire-sms-messages-all-gone/

“All of my SMS messages have disappeared, I have had my HTC Desire since the end of May and suddenly today all my SMS messages are gone without warning.” 22nd August.

As I said on the phone, its not a business phone if you cannot rely on it to store data.

I hope this helps and can be forwarded on to HTC so they can fix this problem, and I look forward to feedback from Vodafone Business.

Cheers,

Rob”

I simply cannot say the HTC Desire is a valid business phone with random data loss like this. I dont think Vodafone should be selling it as one due to this.