A couple of weeks ago I ordered some earbuds from a what look to be a reputable local company (Flog Gadgets of Portsmouth) and got conned out of £20.  I should have known better really, looking in the small print they  operate from a PO Box and the PayPal button is disabled, the only payment option being SagePay which  just protects your card details .

Just for the record the holding company trading address is listed as:

Gadget Distribution
19 Victory Business Cntr Somers Rd Nth, Portsmouth, PO1 1PJ

Tel: 02392 816550 (no answer of course)

and registered office is

Wellesley House, 204 London Road, Waterlooville, Hampshire, Po7 7an.   ( Looks to be a private house according to Google Streetview)

I’m making this post as I know my posts get page-ranked quite highly with Google, this post is currently coming up as the 5th hit if you Google “Flog Gadgets” in quotes !

Anyhow, if you’ve been burnt by this mob too leave a comment and so we can raise awareness of unscrupulous outfits like this who give e-retailing a bad name.

Update 27th August

Had a very useful email from Trisha Brown at SagePay explaing how they differ from PayPal..

“Hi Phil,

Any company that has a SagePay account needs to firstly obtain a trading Merchant Number from a major bank. The banking procedure’s and law’s mean in order to get a merchant Number strict checks are made on the company applying and they will be vetted vigorously before a bank will allow them to trade online.

So when a company takes out an account with us and they have a valid merchant number with a major UK based Bank we see this as a form of security that the company is valid and reputable.

I apologise about the service you have received from this Company and if you give me the website URL and your transaction details I can certainly try and contact them for you.

We act as their payment service provider which means we never handle your funds we just simply make sure that your payment gets authorised securely and that your card details are not tampered with when you are purchasing online.

I hope this helps get back to me if you need anything else at all.”

Update 28th August

Seems the lady from SagePay was true to her word,  half of my original order arrived in the mail today, though the packing note had it marked as all of my order, presumably  so the sender had proof of postage?

Back in May I mentioned about how I was tracking commercial airliners by direct reception of the mode-S transmissions used in many (but not all) aircraft. I’ve since discovered that you can now track many aircraft online using a free site called planefinder.net.  I have no idea if the tracks are time delayed (I hope they are for security reasons!) and the site is dependant on mode-S hobbyists sharing their data to all (so expect the odd gap), but chances are if you are about to whizz on your hols or business trip you’ll be able to track your flight.

Just for good measure iPhone and iPad versions are also available….

I especially like the mooning scenes in this clip, Mario is clearly  a man after my own heart.. .

If you are looking for a freebie quick and simple way to capture both the screen and audio output from a Windows PC have a look at oRTipa . It lacks the bells and whistles of the paid for screen capture software but is absurdly simple to use and will output to most popular video standards.

Probably the  best flash demo you’ll ever see in your life.  Click here to view it, turning your sound on will enhance the experience further

If you’re a fan of the Pink Floyd Tribute band Perfect Alibi singer/Acoustic Guitarist Rick Gauntlett is playing his last ever gig with the bank at the Brook in Southampton tomorrow evening.

See you there…

I find it quite baffling that many organisations (including the UK Government) are still using Internet Explorer 6 despite the howling security gaps and support dropping by the day.   I could understand it if was because people wanted to use it with their internal intranets to retain compatibility ….  but to allow IE6 to be used for external Internet access too?

On a more positive note a funeral service for Internet Explorer 6 was held last week which was well attended, see  http://ie6funeral.com ,  flicker photos here

Recently I did some work for a friend that involved capturing the whole of a web page as an image rather than just the visible section inside the browser window.  Along the way I stumbled across a great Firefox add-on called Screengrab which makes this a doodle and is platform agnostic.  Click the example below to get  an idea what a captured page is saved as..

Turn away now if you are a vegetarian otherwise this Australian TV ad promoting red meat might just might raise a smile…