That’s now been corrected with new sites which offer directory and review services for such bingo sites. Yes, like everything else we now have a way of comparing and commenting on the options!

For instance, WTGbingo is an online bingo directory that gives you information about UK bingo sites – new sites, promotions, special deals, etc. Each site can be searched and there are reviews from those that run the site. The one thing currently lacking, at the moment anyway, is the ability for visitors to the site to review the individual companies. In the meantime they’re making good use of Social media “like” features, such as Facebook Like, Google +1, Digg, etc.

It’s been an eye opener too. I didn’t realise, for instance, that there were different types of online bingo sites – no deposit bingo sites, for example.

As the bingo sites all jostle to be the best the inevitable flashy websites and advertisements give way to the inevitable – search engines, comparison sites and social sharing, to make the whole experience easier. Welcome to the 21st century, bingo!

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Starting in the US, it spread quickly to other countries. Google offered $5.3 billion for it last year but were turned down. Instead, Google are launching their own equivalent, “Google Offers”, as is Facebook. Indeed, there are 500 similar sites already offering a similar offer. However, what Groupon has that the others don’t is the number of customers and the number of companies queueing up to use them.

So, using Groupon is simple – sign up, specify your nearest city and they’ll email you each day with their current offer (or, alternatively, visit their website – there’s no requirement to receive emails from them). If you decide to accept it, and enough other people do, you have your deal. Most of these offers are usually around dining out and health & beauty products and services, but you’ll usually save over 50% if not a lot more.

When you have signed up, and assuming you like their service, if you recommend a product to a  friend (and they buy the product) you’ll receive £6 credit to your account!

At the very least, it’s worth a try – you really do have nothing to lose!

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And, after much searching, she settled on the Sony Ericsson Elm.

Looking remarkably like the K800i, this is a much slimmer version with the latest Sony Ericsson operating system and an improved camera. This phone is part of the GreenHeart range which uses reduced packaging and recycled parts on.

Packaging wise, the phone comes in a simple cloth sleeve within a small box. The box also contains a simple charger (Sony Ericsson continue to use their own connection format – however the charger that came with the K800i had a “through port” allowing other peripherals to be plugged in at the same time. The Elm charger doesn’t have this), earphones (with microphone) and a small paper safety manual. And that’s it. The full manual is installed on the phone.

Features wise, it’s actually quite good, including GPS, wi-fi, 5MP camera with Xenon flash and various installed apps (including Facebook and SatNav). Many of the apps will display directly onto the home screen as well as in standby (allowing you to read your Facebook updates without having to unlock the phone).

Battery life was always good with the K800i but with wi-fi and the Facebook app switched on the Elm my wife  found it only lasted a day. Switching these off extended it to a more acceptable week.

The Elm uses Micro SD cards rather than the Memory Stick Micro that the K800i did.

The clear screen is a simple 240 x 320 resolution and the rear of the phone sports a 5 MP camera with flash. The pictures are excellent – I’ve always like the cameras, and the camera software, on Sony Ericsson phone and this is no exception.

As I said before, it has various built in apps and more are downloadable (many at quite a hefty price though). Text messaging and surfing the internet is quick and easy and, well, it’s simplicity itself to use.

My wife got this free on a £15 a month contract but you can buy it, unlocked, from Amazon for £118.

Summary of Sony Ericsson Elm

If you’re not after an all-singing and dancing smartphone and don’t get on with touch-screens this is an ideal phone at an ideal price. It’s good to know that phones like this are still being made, and at a reasonable price.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 24th March 2011.

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In it, he provides not only a piece of SQL that you can run to see how your site is affected, but even provided a PHP script that you can upload to your website to graph the results. Mine is to the right. I have my spam cleared out quite regularly, so the results are only recent ones.

As you can see, one of my posts was generating nearly 47% of all the spam. This is usually due to keywords within the article – the fact that it’s about a forum is possible a key. The second place “magnet” is a my review of  a Microsoft keyboard. I have no idea why, maybe because of it being Microsoft related.

I’ve resolved the first post by simply closing off comments (it was an old post and I think everything that needs to be said has been). The review, well, I’m not sure what to do there. I want to keep comments open on reviews. Others are mainly WordPress pages, which I need comments available for feedback and support. However, the fact that the plugins are related to PayPal, Facebook, AdSense, etc, I’m sure is no coincidence, and probably help to attract the spam.

So, not a huge amount I can do (having said that, I’ve reduced my potential spam input by 47% – assuming they don’t just target another one of my posts!), but interesting to know none-the-less.

Having said that, I’ve never really thought about closing comments on posts before and it’s something I will do in future – especially when I announce new or changed plugins, as comments can be placed on the main page itself.

Update: A WordPress plugin has been released of the code to produce the spam charts.

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Bit.ly Bookmarklet In Use

A bookmarklet is a browser shortcut that runs a small JavaScript script, adding useful and immediate functionality to whatever page you might be browsing at the time.

There are many, many to be found on the internet – the site marklets.com is a rather complete collection of around 1000 that you can use. Equally, the site centricle.com produces its own (mainly web development related) bookmarklets for people to freely use.

However, one of the most useful bookmarklet related sites is the Bookmarklet Combiner, which lets you generate your own Bookmarklet, consisting of links to others that you specify.

But, to save you the hassle of searching, here are 21 I’ve found to be the most useful. To use any of them, simply drag the name to your Bookmark list at the top of the browser.

Modify Page

1. PageZipper
This appends multiple pages together to form one, continuous page. Useful on blogs, for instance, where a post may be over divided into multiple pages. [Homepage]

2. PrintWhatYouLike
If you wish to print a page, this lets you modify exactly what you want – turn off background printing and images, for instance. You can even mark which part of this screen requires printing. [Homepage]

3. Readability
This lets you strip everything on a website you are viewing but the content of the article itself. Again, useful for blog reading. [Homepage]

4. Remove Bloat
This eliminates all occurrences of Flash, Java, music, and third-party iframes from a page. This can be particularly useful on those sites where browsing is reduced to a chore thanks to an over abundance of Flash animations!

Downloading

5. Bitlet
Click on the BitLet Bookmarklet when you want to add a “download by bitlet” link near a torrent you want to download. [Homepage]

6. ClipNabber
Download almost any video from any video sharing site. [Homepage]

Passwords

7. View Passwords
Display all passwords on the page that are otherwise not visible – e.g. those displaying as asterisks. [Homepage]

8. BugMeNot
Many sites often free access, but only after signing up to an account. BugMeNot is a service that provides shared signins to popular sites, saving you the hassle of having to sign up first. [Homepage]

9. SuperGenPass
SuperGenPass uses a hash algorithm to transform a master password into unique, complex passwords for the Web sites you visit. And because it’s a bookmarklet it never stores or transmits your passwords. [Homepage]

Web Development & Design

10. Design
Design is a suite of web-design and development assistive tools, encompassing utilities for grid layout, measurement and alignment. [Homepage]

11. Firebug Lite
This is a cut-down version of the well-known Web Development tool, designed to work on other browsers other than Firefox. [Homepage]

12. Ruler
Displays an on-screen ruler which you can use to identify the current pointer position and measure between two points. [Homepage]

13. WP Toolbar
Appends the default WordPress admin menu to whatever page you’re currently on (assuming you’re on a site that’s running WordPress) and styles it with CSS, fixing it to the top right corner. [Homepage]

URL Sharing

14. Email This
Email details of the current page to others. This doesn’t use your own email client, but the email is sent via its own site – simply provide your own email address. [Homepage]

15. Facebook Share
Send details of the current page to your Facebook account, read to share. [Homepage]

16. GmailThis!
Like Email This but uses your own Gmail account – a “Send” window appears with the site details pre-filled in. [Homepage]

Bookmark

17. TheThingsIWant
Save online product pages to the TheThingsIWant website, where you can share, view and buy. [Homepage]

18. Read It Later
Allows you to save the current URL to a special Read It Later account, which you can then view later. [Homepage]

Miscellaneous

19. FreezePage
Stores a copy of the web page that you’re looking at on their servers, for you to access later. [Homepage]

20. Translate
Use Google to translate the current page. [Homepage]

21. Bit.ly
The popular URL shortening service provides a neat sidebar where you can quickly create a short URL and even share it on Twitter [Homepage]

In both cases, I have added the ability to pass an API key, user name or password to the URL shortening service.

Simple Social Bookmarks also has new default options and user specific icons are now stored in the theme folder, rather than the plugin folder¹. If you have used either of these options, please review the instructions for potential changes that you’ll need to make.

1. this is because automatic plugin updates were removing these folders

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I haven’t linked to any of the apps, as they should all be searchable in the Android Marketplace.

Oh, and I haven’t listed games (they’re a lot more of a personal choice, I find).

Information

The BBC news widget is particularly useful, providing easy access to the various BBC news feeds.

Movies, by Flixster, uses GPS to good use by displaying nearby cinemas and listing for their current shows. However, when viewing other information, such as trailers, it does appear to have constant network issues and this feature therefore doesn’t appear to work. A shame.

Google Sky Map is a fascinating educational tool that lets you point your phone heavenward and view the stars and planets whilst moving around.

ShopSavvy is a barcode scanner that will then look the product up to try and find prices. Useful for when you’re out shopping.

WikiMobile provides a mobile interface to Wikipedia.

Media

Until an official BBC iPlayer app appears, beebPlayer will help – it will let you view iPlayer TV content, along with listening to live Radio. Sadly, there’s no iPlayer radio content available.

Amazon MP3 provides access and purchasing capabilities for MP3 tracks from the Amazon website. They also have free tracks, although it’s best to look these up on the main Amazon site and then search for them on the app, as there’s no option on the app to list free tracks.

Last.fm is a streaming music player for the popular website, whereas Simple Last.fm Scrobbler will send details of all the music you’ve listened to, to the very same site for statistics purposes.

And for those who haven’t come across Shazam before, it may come as a bit of a revelation. The next time you’re at the pub and can’t identify a piece of music, simply use this app and it will work it out for you.

Lastly, I come to Podcasts. I initially used Google’s own Listen app but that simply failed to pick up new episodes of subscribed “shows”. I’m now trying out BeyondPod, which is only free for the first week. So far, it seems to work nicely.

Messaging

Meebo is a good, all-purpose instant messaging client.

And, if you find the default text messaging software a little bland, you could try Handcent, which includes speech bubble style conversation threads and is generally, well, a little more inspiring.

By default, reminders on Android are a bit lacking – you get a text or a missed call and you don’t get to hear about it after the initial reminder. Missed Reminder will keep nagging you and has a plethora of options, from LED colours to flashing the trackball.

Network

3G Watchdog is an excellent way of monitoring your data usage (you just need to know what your data usage  limit is and when it runs to/from).

In an attempt to preserve battery power, the phone will automatically drop wi-fi connection when the phone is in standby. This option can be changed via the settings, but you may want to be able to switch this on/off as required. Wi-Fi Lock is a useful widget to do just that.

Office

AK Notepad is, well, just that – a useful note facility. However, if you want to stick a note on your screen, then I’d recommend Sticky Note.

Integrating with my existing online services, Quick Save will add a facility to quickly add links to Read it Later, and Astrid will synchronise and allow me to update my Remember the Milk to-do lists.

A more recent find is cloudList which allows you to create “tick lists” which can be accessed on both your phone and on their website.

WordPress have released their own app, WordPress for Android, which allows the quick editing of posts.

Sadly lacking is an app for Google Reader.

Social Networks

Facebook have their own App and, for eBay, Pocket Auctions works well.

I’m not mentioning a Twitter client right now, as I’m in the middle of reviewing a number – more on that in a later post!

Tools

Advanced Task Manager provides quick lists of running apps and ways to quickly “kill” them. There’s even a widget to perform an instant kill.

For file management, I’d turn to ASTRO which, erm, does just that.

Profilechanger is not very pretty but does exactly what I want – allows me to change profiles at certain times of the day – in my case, it goes silent overnight.

One the facilities sadly lacking in Android is the ability to backup your data and your apps. MyBackup Pro does just that – both onto your SD card and online. However, unlike most of my other recommendations, this isn’t a freebie. Give the trial a go though!

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It now makes use of the Simple URL Shortener plugin to provide, erm, URL shortening. And various bug fixes and general tidyness have been implemented.

Oh, and you can also now override the default URL.

Full details on the plugins official page.

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You can view more details and download it from the official WordPress site, or from it’s official page on this site.

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This update adds bit.ly to the list of URL shortening services that the plugin can make use of. Thanks to Helgi Hrafn Halldórsson for the suggestion.

Full details can be found on the plugin’s dedicated page.

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