Hands-on Technical Tips

iPad 2 prices have gone up in South Africa… but who’s still selling at the old prices?

2012-01-12T17:50:00.001+02:00

I was just about to buy an iPad under extreme pressure from the wider family… “get one so you can give handy tips on the iPad please!” they said. So, I decided to see what the prices were like… then I saw the mybroadband article that the prices were going up due to the Rand Dollar exchange rate: “iPad 2 prices hiked again South Africa's iPad 2 pricing finally succumbs to higher exchange rate” Prices were hiked by between R500 and R1,000.

New prices:

Here’s my analysis of who’s selling iPads and their prices (correct as on 12Jan2012):

This morning I happened to browse into a store that was selling iPads at the old prices – their signs showed the old prices… I asked if they had stock, and I expected the “sorry, out of stock” response, or “those signs are not correct, the prices have gone up” – instead, I got the response “Yes, sir, we have stock. Which one do you want?”

I picked myself off the floor and asked for the 32GB, 3G, and quietly added “in black if possible”. He checked on the stock list and said he had 12 available in store!
Wow, can I have 1 please? I walked out with an old-price iPad saving R900.

To make things even better, the store is a Discovery partner store, and I’m on Diamond – that’s an additional 20% off!

Sorry, 1 more cherry-on-the-top: I’m a Discovery Insure member on Engaged level… that’s another 7.5% off.

So, I got an iPad2 32GB with 3G black for R6,700 less 27.5% = R4,860 – a lot of money but a great deal methinks! Stay tuned for HandyTechTips on iPads!

Ok, so which store is this? Well, you are going to have write a comment and email me – then I’ll send you the name of the store… BTW: they have an online store as well.

What’s the cheapest way of calling Israeli cell phones from South Africa?

2012-01-12T11:33:00.001+02:00

A reader asked this question so I did a bit of research:
I would recommend using your computer (with mic and headset via your PC’s ADSL Internet connection) to dial out using software called: Rynga
See here for the rates: http://www.rynga.com/en/calling-rates.html#leti

Calls to Israeli landlines are free for the 1^st 120 days after buying 10Euros of airtime – after the 120 days is up, it’s cheaper than using SkypeOut.
Israel (Landline)         FREE for 120 days: then 0.21 ZAR cents per minute
Israel (Mobile)           0.43 ZAR cents per minute.

VOIPbuster software is also an option, but they don’t offer free calls to Israel landlines:
http://www.voipbuster.com/en/calling-rates.html#leti
Israel (Landline)         0.12       ZAR cents per minute
Israel (Mobile)            0.83       ZAR cents per minute

If you have Skype then you can use their SkypeOut service (more expensive than the above)
ie: call from your PC to Israeli cell phone: http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/prices/payg-rates/?currency=ZAR#cc=IL
Destination: Price:
Israel ZAR 0.20 per minute
Israel - Mobile ZAR 1.15 per minute

You can also call from your cell phone (obviously more expensive than above using your PC:
This one you pay VAS (Value Added Service) call rates: http://www.3g.co.za/content/view/90/51

See here for other and more detailed info:
http://handytechtips.blogspot.com/2010/09/120-free-days-of-calls-to-major-cities.html
http://handytechtips.blogspot.com/2009/08/voipbuster-over-skypeout-verdict-read.html

Calling cards: http://handytechtips.blogspot.com/2010/01/cheap-international-calls-from-south.html
http://handytechtips.blogspot.com/search?q=dect

Ratanga Junction, Cape Town not a good ride :(

2012-01-10T21:08:00.001+02:00

We were very disappointed by our trip to Ratanga Junction Theme Park in Cape Town yesterday. I took our tourist friends on a day trip – they had 2 children aged 12 and 9. The kids were taller than 1.3m in height so they needed to buy the “Adventurer Rider” tickets at R152 each. (The “Mini Adventurer Rider” Tickets were R75 each).
HTT note: If you have children older than about 7, then expect to have to pay the “Adventurer Rider” tickets.
The adults also decided that they would also try some rides so they also purchased 2 “Adventurer Rider” tickets.

Note: The account below was for the trip that we went on and was based on the perceptions that we had before entering the park – we did not do any homework by going to the Ratanga Junction web site before visiting. If you are reading this article, then please also go to their web site – so as to make your visit more enjoyable than ours!

So, 2 adults and 2 children entry cost a total of R608 (excl. R15 parking) – no complaints… pay and let’s have a full day of fun on all the rides! Let the fun begin!


But not so fast! The ticket office wanted more Rands… we asked for a map to figure out where the rides are – “That’s an extra R3 please.”
We replied with something like: “Ummm, did we hear you right?   Can you repeat? We have just paid R608 for tickets and that doesn’t include a park map?”
“That’s correct – R3 please.”
So, we paid the measly R3… but really!

Dear Ratanga Junction, please add R1 to the ticket prices and give the park map out for free.

OK, now to follow the map and get onto all those rides for free… Again, not so fast! We expected (perhaps wrongly so) that all the rides and fun events were included in the R600 entry fee… wrong!
We needed to pay extra for Putt-Putt and Sling shot and others (see list below for the “extras”).
We expected to only have to pay extra for food and drinks… oh, and wait, the security personnel at the entrance searched through our bags and forced us to throw away all food and drinks that were in our bags!
When we wanted to buy drinks they were over-the-top expensive! eg: R17.50 for an appletiser (no glass, no ice – just the tin), iced water for R14

I said “perhaps wrongly so” above because the web site does say “All prices exclude the Slingshot and other separately ticketed attractions” – but we didn’t go to the web site before paying our R600, nor did the ticket salesperson tell us of any additional charges :(

Free rides ie: included in the R152 Adventurer Rider entry fee: Nashua Mobile Cape Cobras Thrill Ride (formerly the Cobra), Crocodile Gorge, Monkey Falls, Congo Queen, Diamond Devil Run, Bushwacker, Stargazer, Bangers

‘Pay extra’ rides: The Slingshot (R50, and can be closed due to winds), Animal Petting Zoo (R10), The Simulator (R20), Mini-Golf (Putt-putt) (R15 for only 9 holes), Rock climbing (R20), Paddle boats (R40 for 4 people).
Note: Sling Shot was not working (probably due to the wind) :( Ride Photography: R50 each.

Note: expect long queues in peak season: up to 50 minutes for each of the big rides.
Just noticed that the Twitter account has useful info like the wait for each ride:

In retrospect, our 2 adults should have taken the non-rider tickets for R50.

I hope the above helps others to enjoy their visit more – and now they definitely won’t go into the park expecting to buy the “Adventurer Rider” tickets and pay nothing more for all the rides.

At last! A virtual credit card for South Africans with No monthly subscription nor other fees!

2011-12-31T13:18:00.001+02:00

Wow, wow, wow, wow, EasyPay has come up with the payment solution that I have been waiting for for a very long time. I’ve always been nervous about exposing my real credit card’s full credit to the “wild” of the Internet. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to create a virtual card that has a limited amount of money on it – then the card’s numbers become useless to fraudsters?
Well, that’s what EasyPay’s product called VCpay™ can do for you (seems like it was launched on 15 November 2011)– and what sweetens the deal even more is that there is no monthly subscription and no other charges. In fact they even give you a cashback reward of 0.5% per transaction. That’s not a whole lot of cash, but it’s better than nothing!

From the EasyPay web site:
“
VCpay™ is a mobile phone application (BlackBerry only for now), that allows you to create, on demand, a unique virtual credit card that is intrinsically linked to the transaction you are effecting or intending to effect. This means that only you can create such a virtual card for an amount you specify in an off line manner using your mobile phone anywhere and anytime.

VCpay™ works off-line and it is therefore not reliant on mobile network coverage or its reliability, signal strength or availability.

As a result, VCpay™ provides you with 100% guaranteed service delivery and eliminates the frustration and embarrassment we have all experienced when our traditional card products fail to work due the failure of communication networks and/or the non-receipt of confirmation SMS messages from our issuing banks.

VCpay™ works off line and thus does not expose your account information or your identity, so it is impossible for your personal and financial information to be compromised, intercepted, phished or hacked – making VCpay™ the most secure, simplest and fastest way to pay.
”

It can be used in PrePaid or PostPaid mode, and funds can be transferred into your VCpay account in 3 ways: 1) EasyPay locations, 2) EasyPay kiosks, 3) EFTs. See here for more details: https://www.vcpay.co.za/depositFUNDS.aspx
(HTT note: I notice that you can’t charge the VCpay amount to your real credit card… so, all those loyalty miles etc. from your real credit card will be lost - at the expense of peace of mind through more security – but you will get 0.5% cashback ;) ) Although their terms and conditions clause 6.3 hints that this might be possible for a fee – later?)
HTT note: When adding the VCpay beneficiary to my FNB account it picked it up as a pre-loaded “Public Recipient: Net1 Applied Technologies“

You can then create a virtual card on demand using the cell phone app and then use the Virtual cards on the Internet anywhere a MasterCard "card not present" transaction is accepted, such as the majority of websites, telephone orders or purchases and/or bookings for airline tickets, rental cars or concert tickets.

Both Prepaid and Postpaid Virtual Cards are accepted on the EasyPay website for any product. This includes prepaid airtime, prepaid electricity and bill payments to over 400 institutions, such as municipalities (e.g. rates and taxes), traffic fines, SABC TV Licences, retailers, doctors, insurance companies, school fees, etc.

See here for more information on how the system works and info on the 2 registration steps (download the app,then Link the VCpay™ app to an EasyPay Wallet): https://www.vcpay.co.za/Default.aspx
HTT Note: when the BB app asks you for your “EP Wallet PIN” then that’s where you enter your login password that you use for the easypay.co.za web site.
HTT Note: I tried to link my EasyPay wallet to the VCpay account but the app hung…. “linking to wallet”. I then closed the app and when I restarted the app I logged in using my VCpay password and it seemed to be working :)

I transferred a small amount of Rands (just to try it out) from FNB to my EasyPay wallet and it arrived in about 10 minutes :)
and I could then start creating my virtual credit card on my cell phone!:I then had to enter my VCpay password but got an error creating the Virtual Credit Card :(
Update on Wed4Jan: I unlinked my wallet then linked it again and the Virtual Credit Card (with *very* low limit, valid until May 2015) was created. I used it to pay one of my online bills and it worked perfectly. Well done EasyPay for an awesome product that I will most definitely use for my (now safe) online shopping.

You can also see a list of virtual cards that you have already created and the ones that are used up:

For more info on how to download the BB app [980KB]: https://www.vcpay.co.za/downloadAPP.aspx or just go to http://vcpay.mobi to download the app.

Here’s a list of currently supported BB devices:
Blackberry OS5 or greater
8300 | 8310 | 8320 | 8330 | 8330m | 8350i | 8520 | 8530 | 8800 | 8820 | 8830 | 8830m | 8900 | 8910 | 8980 | 9000 | 9300 | 9330 | 9350 | 9360 | 9370 | 9630 | 9650 | 9700 | 9780 | 9788 | 9800 | 9900 | 9930 | 9981
Blackberry OS4
8300 | 8310 | 8320 | 8330 | 8330m | 8350i | 8520 | 8530 | 8800 | 8820 | 8830 | 8830m | 8900 | 8910 | 8980 | 9000 | 9300 | 9330 | 9350 | 9360 | 9370 | 9630 | 9650 | 9700 | 9780 | 9788

When 1st running the app you need to accept the terms and conditions… I have pasted them below for all you legal eagles to peruse… Interesting are clauses 5.1 (risks) and 6.3 (fees if linked to a credit card… but I didn’t see that option ):

”
VCPAY TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE Last updated 09/11/2011

Please ensure that you have read, understood and are happy with the terms and conditions governing the use of the VCpay mobile application before acceptance as acceptance constitutes a legally binding agreement between yourself and EasyPay.

1. PARTIES AND DEFINITIONS
1.1. “Application” or “App” means “VCpay”.
1.2. “EasyPay” means EasyPay (Pty) Ltd registration number 1983/008/597/07 hereafter referred to as “we”, “us” or EasyPay.
1.3. “EP Wallet” refers to a virtual wallet into which prepaid value funds can be placed to facilitate web or mobi based transactions at some future date.
1.4 “I, “you” and “yourself” refer to the client.
1.5 “VCpay” is a virtual credit card application that allows to create once of virtual credit card number for one transaction for an exact value and is brought to you by EasyPay.

2. AUTHORITY
2.1. By downloading and using the VCpay application, I authorize EasyPay to transact on my behalf in accordance with instructions I have given to them.
2.2. The creation of a virtual credit card coupled with the use of such a card will be deemed to be an instruction by me to EasyPay to transact on my behalf.
2.3. I hereby confirm and accept that EasyPay will not be liable for any loss or damage of whatsoever nature that I may suffer as a result of creating a virtual card for an incorrect amount and/or for the selection of an incorrect beneficiary.

3. CHANGES AND UPDATES TO TERMS AND CONDITIONS
3.1. Any material changes to the terms and conditions of use will be communicated to you via e-mail, SMS or updates on the VCpay website, continued use of the application after such changes have been communicated will be deemed to be an unconditional acceptance of the updated terms and conditions.
3.2. You agree to ensure that your details will be kept up to date in order to be enable us to communicate any changes to you timeously.
3.3. As Easypay is required by law to communicate changes and updates to the terms and conditions of use to you, any communication in this regard will not be subject to any opt out clause you may have exercised either through EasyPay or through a third party database.
3.4. Further, you agree that EasyPay will not be held liable for any loss or damage of whatsoever nature, except to the extent permitted by law, which may arise due to your failure to update your information.

4. SECURITY
4.1. You agree that it remains your responsibility to ensure that the PIN you have selected will be kept safe and is not disclosed to anyone in order to minimise the risk of fraudulent transactions.

5. RISK AND LIABILITY
5.1. NOT WITHSTANDING ANY OTHER CLAUSE IN THIS AGREEMENT TO THE CONTRARY, EASYPAY MAKES NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND IN RELATION TO THE VCPAY APPLICATION AND CONSEQUENTLY WILL NOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE OF WHATSOEVER NATURE SUFFERED AS A RESULT OF USING THE APPLICATION EXCEPT IN SO FAR AS THE LOSS OR DAMAGE AROSE DUE TO EASYPAY’S GROSS NEGLIGENCE OR MISCONDUCT.
5.2. YOU ACCEPT THAT THE USE OF THE APPLICATION IS AT YOUR OWN RISK EXCEPT IN SO FAR AS THE EXEMPTION IN 5.1 APPLIES.
5.3. EASYPAY ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE OF WHATSOEVER NATURE THAT IS LINKED TO THE SERVICE PROVIDED TO YOU BY YOUR NETWORK OPERATOR.
5.4. EASYPAY ACCEPTS NO LIABILITY FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE OF WHATSOEVER NATURE SUFFERED DUE TO ANY MALFUNCTION OR FAILURE OF THIRD PARTY SYSTEMS OR COMMUNICATION DEVICES.
5.5. EASYPAY ACCEPTS NO LIABILITY FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE OF WHATSOEVER NATURE SUFFERED DUE TO THE SERVICE BEING UNAVAILABLE FOR USE.

6. PRICING,FEES AND CHARGES
6.1. EasyPay levies no charges for downloading of the VCpay mobile application; however such download may be subject to fees levied by your network operator.
6.2. No fees are charged for the generation of virtual credit cards through the application.
6.3. You may only link your EP Wallet or your Credit Card to the application; if the application has been linked to a Credit Card, processing of transactions will be subject to either a fee per transaction or a monthly fee with unlimited transactions, you can choose the option most suitable for you at signup.
6.4. The ‘per transaction” option ensures that fees are charged upon the completion of every VCpay transaction.
6.5. The “monthly fee” option means that you will be charged a fixed fee every month, regardless of how many VCpay transactions you complete in that month.
6.6. If the application has been linked to an EP wallet, no service charges will be levied.
6.7. In order to effect security checks, during signup EasyPay will deduct a small charge from your linked account, due to security reasons this fee cannot be disclosed upfront however it will not exceed R5.00 (Five South African Rands).
6.8. The amount mentioned in 6.7 above will be reserved for your first VCpay transaction.

7. TERMINATION OF THE SERVICE
7.1. EasyPay reserves the right to cancel your usage of the service at anytime, without prior written notification if you have violated any of the terms and conditions of this agreement or in the event that we reasonably suspect that you have used the service to commit fraud/have engaged in fraudulent conduct with the use of the service.
7.2. EasyPay may, at its sole discretion and without prior notice to any user, permanently terminate or withdraw the service, in whole or in part.
7.3. EasyPay may, at its sole discretion and without prior notice to any user, temporarily suspend, in whole or in part; the use of the application in order to perform any maintenance or repair work or for any other reason that requires the temporary suspension of the service.
7.4. Should you no longer wish to make use of the VCpay application, you can simply delete the application from your mobile device.
7.5. Notwithstanding the termination of the service, you will remain liable for any transactions requested and/or processed prior to such cancellation.
”

My BlackBerry Bold 9700 was hanging more than 3 times per day [Solved]

2011-12-27T10:33:00.001+02:00

So, my Blackberry Bold 9700 was hanging with the dreaded clock in the middle of the screen. It has 256MB of onboard memory where the OS and apps are installed and I know I was running low (down to 10MB). But the OS6 version of the operating system didn’t leave much room for new apps.
I uninstalled all the apps that I didn’t really use but still couldn’t get more than 10MB free. It seemed like the deletes weren’t really adding to the free memory :(

After about 6 hours of use, my BB hung and showed the “please wait forever clock”! A reboot was the only way – that means a battery pull, before I found out the quicker way of: holding “alt+Right_Shift+del” trick!
So, I was reduced to restarting the phone every 6 hours or so - #FAIL
I even scheduled a daily reboot using QuickPull
At the worst possible time eg: using the GPS to navigate, the phone would hang… I wanted to throw it away and get that Android phone which was next on the “which-phone-should-I-get” list.

I decided to take the plunge and start again – in other words: wipe the phone and all its contents – for the sake of my sanity.

I found a great blog that explained the process: BlackBerry 302: A complete wipe and clean install of your BlackBerry OS and listed tools to get the job done easily:
BlackBerry Desktop Manager (DM)
BlackBerry Swiss Army Knife (BBSAK)
I also found BBHTool and BlackBerry Master Control Program (MCP)

BBHtool is great in that it has a feature called “Shrink-a-OS” where you can choose which parts of the OS’s apps you don’t want to include on your phone – and so saves precious memory space!

I backed my phone up using BB DM and then followed the instructions and landed up with 122MB free before restoring all data and 3^rd party apps.
Then 76MB free (as indicated on phone’s My World)
I then restored the 3^rd party apps using BBHtool
I then added 20MB of 3^rd party apps.
Then upgraded all my BB apps to the latest version
I now have 16MB free and I haven’t needed to restart the phone in over 24 hours… so far so good… I just wish the phone had more memory! Or the OS used up less.

Things to note:
*) when restoring a version of the OS, then the versions of the BB apps are the old ones that were shipped with the OS – so next time I will try to backup even the BB apps for restoration after the OS install. Obviously, the workaround is to upgrade each app after the reinstall.
*) after the reinstall, you will need to accept each app’s terms and conditions and some will need you to re-enter the usernames and passwords
*) Setting up email accounts needed to be redone – but just entering of the passwords: I got an error "Sorry Unable to continue your session. Please login again". To solve a problem like this can try the following tips. Sign in to mobile.blackberry.com from your Blackberry browser, then select the state, on the page that appears scrolls down until it finds Communicate - Email, then follow the data requested.
*) All info on my 2GB memory card was not deleted (whew)
*) My TelMap navigation software survived the reinstallation, but I lost the “My Places” list – that was the biggest casualty :(

Dec2011: Here's how to get you and 11 friends into Cape Point or Boulders for R7 each - no jokes, no catches... just bring along your SA ID book proof of residence and R80

2011-12-12T10:16:00.000+02:00

Here’s an update to my article on “Here's how to get you and 11 friends into Cape Point for R5 each”. Inflation has moved the price of the “My Green Card” up to R80, but it’s still an awesome deal. Read further to see how you can get a family of 4 on to Table Mountain for R308 on your birthday.
Here’s the URL: http://www.sanparks.org/parks/table_mountain/tourism/wildcard.php#green

Where can I buy the TMNP Activity Permit?
- Shop A1, Westlake Square, Cnr Westlake Drive & Steenberg Road, Westlake (Mondays to Fridays from 08:00-16:00)
- Buffelsfontein Visitor Centre, Cape of Good Hope Section of TMNP (Mondays to Sundays from 08:00-16:00).
- Boulders, Kleintuin Road, Sea Forth, Simonstown (Mondays to Sundays from 08:00-17:00)
- Tokai Forest, Tokai Road, Tokai (Mondays to Fridays 08:00-16:00 closed between 13:00-14:00)

So, if you want to take your family of 4 (2 adults, and 2 kids under 18) up Table Mountain then instead of paying R580, you can buy the “My Green Card” for R80 and it will cost an additional R464.
Note: “My Green Card” reduced tickets can only be bought at the ticket office (not online): So, the ticket office price would have been R580 - that’s a saving of 20% (=R116). If you buy tickets online, then it would have cost you R520.

To save more… go up on your birthday for free: then the family trip for 4 will cost only R388 (incl. the R80 for the Green Card) [R308+R80]. That’s a saving of R192 if you had paid at the ticket office and R132 if you had paid online.
Download calculator: http://www.mediafire.com/file/86426ccb1paob6e/TableMountain.xls

Birthday special: Celebrate your birthday on the top of Table Mountain, taking the cable car up and back (=return ticket) free of charge courtesy of Table Mountain Cableway. Remember to take your South African Identity Document with you on the day and present it at the ticket office before departure. Valid for adult (18 years+) return trips only.
Should the Cableway be closed due to adverse weather conditions on the day of your birthday, you will still have to collect your ticket on that day. This Birthday Special ticket issued on a closed day is valid for 7 days from the date of your birthday.

See here for webcams on Table Mountain: http://tablemountain.net/visitor_info/weather_and_webcam

Note: Children under 4 travel for free.

Updated on 12Dec2011: I have just got my Green Card and the cost has gone up to R85 (still a gr8 deal)

Finding emails with large attachments from your GMail account, then deleting them

2011-12-11T21:50:00.001+02:00

If you haven’t noticed by now, one of GMail web client’s missing features is the ability to show the size of an attachment in the email list. Sure, you can see which emails have an attachment but if you want to search for the ones with large attachments and then delete those you will need to download all the emails to your local email client then delete them. This is a waste of bandwidth so I have tried to find a solution.

I started with the free program ImapSize which can be found here [1.8MB]: http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/download.php
I wanted to use the program to identify all large emails and keep the email but remove the attachments (which I already had on my local PC’s HDD).

Here are the instructions of how to delete the attachments: http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/imap-delete-attachments.php
BUT, when I followed the instructions I could see that a new email was created without the attachments – BUT the original email was not deleted as I thought the program would do. I see other people in the forums also had similar problems.

So, I proceeded to use ImapSize to remove all large attachments and use a workaround using my email client (see below) to delete the emails with the large attachments.

I noted that ImapSize hasn’t been updated for a looong while: Version 0.3.7 released (February 19th, 2009), and I also see that the author (Ivan ivecanski) hasn’t got any time to update it and has started making it OpenSource – but the files are still not available :(

Due to the above problems I resorted to using my Outlook email client (as a workaround):
I configured it to use IMAP although on second thoughts pop3 would have been fine.
The main “trick” being that you need to configure the email client to only download headers – and not the attachments nor the body of the emails.
First, setup GMail to allow downloading POP or IMAP: http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=12103
Here’s the instructions on how to set up your email client to fetch the emails:
POP3: (preferred): http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=12103
IMAP: http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75726&ctx=mail

The above steps will tell Outlook where your GMail emails are and what the passwords and ports are.

Outlook will then start downloading all your emails and attachments… but, hold on – we do NOT want to download any emails – we JUST want to download the list of emails (headers).
So, before telling your email client to go fetch the emails – we need to configure the client to only download the headers:
* Select Tools | Send/Receive | Send/Receive Settings | Define Send/Receive Groups... from the menu.
* Highlight the desired group.
* Click Edit....
* Go to the desired account in the Accounts list.
* Under “Folder options”, select ‘Download headers only’.

* Click OK.
Now, when you click Send/Receive, Outlook will only download the headers information for messages exceeding your threshold size. But getting the full emails is easy, as is deleting messages right at the server without downloading them in full ever.

Once you have all the headers then you can use Outlook’s search functionality to find the emails that are larger than nMB:

Or type the following in the search bar: messagesize:>2MB received:<Oct 2011

This will search through the current folder’s headers and list only the emails that are larger that 2MB and received earlier than Oct 2011.

Select the emails (Ctrl-A) and delete them.

Outlook will then tell GMail to send those messages into the ‘Trash’ folder.

Go to GMail’s web client and “delete them forever” from the Trash folder – check the “%full” reading on the bottom of the mail list.

There you have it – all large emails identified and deleted without actually downloading them to your local computer.

If you have any better methods, then please share them in the comments below.

Here’s why you need to get to Diamond on Discovery’s Vitality program (with living proof of cashbacks)

2011-11-27T00:29:00.001+02:00

As I’ve said in previous articles, that clock is ticking and many people say that it’s too complicated to take advantage of Discovery Vitality’s (and other) products. If you take each “advantage” one at a time, then it all adds up to some pretty big numbers! Here is some proof of some of the cashbacks, and they are awesome. It is also quite a nice summary of all my articles on Discovery.
I hope that these real life examples will push you to understand each of the products better so that you too can benefit.

Disclaimer: I am in no way employed nor paid by Discovery to write these articles – I am a client of Discovery Health, Life and I have a Discovery Credit Card, and recently took out a VitalityDrive insurance policy. I have Diamond status in the Vitality program.

OK, let’s start with the big cashback items and show that there’s “Living Proof” of big cashbacks:
(screen shots of actual statements/emails from Discovery)

This is what your DiscoveryCard statement will look like when you reach Diamond to receive 20% off at partner stores (and an additional 15% if you are on Advanced level with DiscoveryInsure):

Here’s an example of over R1,100 cashback in a month:
(actual figures blanked for anonymity reasons)

Here’s an exceptional cashback month (over R2,100):

Did you notice the R1,000 discount from the iStore? That’s a discount on a R5,000 spend – so the Mac cost R4,000 instead of R5,000. See here for more info: How to get an iPad2 for R3,519 (= less 20%) using your Discovery Credit Card

Every 5 years on Discovery Life policy you will get a portion of your contributions back in cash (could be over R20,000 every 5 years):
See here for more details: Discovery Life – I’m getting a surprise ‘cheque’ in the mail after 5 years of contributions

DiscoveryInsure:
Apart from getting a free tracking device and lower excess, you can also earn points to get cashback on BP fuel (up to 40%) plus increase your partner discount when using your Discovery card.
For little effort, my insurance premium of R450 per month will be offset by getting R400 cashback per month on my BP fuel spend of R1,000 (that’s by buying 94 litres of petrol (at today’s petrol price of R10.60 per litre) which means I travel about 1,100 Kms per month.
So, my insurance is now costing me only R50 per month! Oh, but what about the additional 5% (up to 15%) discount at partner stores – OK, so I might break even then… insurance for free - Wow!
See here for more details: Discovery Insure and VitalityDrive:

For every R12 spent you get 1 Discovery Mile to spend at the Vitality Mall – so there’s more free stuff that you get by spending your miles – that’s usually all you get with all the other “normal” credit cards out there. The variety of stuff in the mall is amazing – admittedly, slightly over-priced, but what the hell, it’s free miles.
See here Vitality Mall products on offer: all products at Vitality Mall
An example, get subscriptions for up to 70% off magazine subscriptions:

Here’s an example of some men’s magazines:

Some women’s magazines:
Some kids’ magazines:

Clicks cashback: 15%
Ster-Kinekor: discounted movies eg: R13 at a Junction movie house. Kids under 16 go free
Vitality PrePaid: get 5% discount from GotPrePaid no matter what your Vitality status and pay with your credit card.
Vitality Broadband: Examples of prices: R22 per GB, R188 for uncapped on a 384kbps line.

Free travel insurance: By activating the Discovery Miles benefit, you also qualify for free international travel insurance when you use your DiscoveryCard to pay for part of your international travel ticket. The DiscoveryCard travel insurance benefit covers non-medical claims such as baggage loss or delay, personal accident, cancellation and curtailment, travel delays, personal liability and much more. Click here for more

Travel rewards: Enjoy your leisure time with added savings on flights, car hire and accommodation. Your discount depends on your Discovery Vitality status or VitalityDrive status or both.

The Discovery Vitality program is incredibly useful if you have attained enough points to reach Diamond status. You start at Blue status and have to work yourself up to bronze, silver, then gold and eventually, Diamond status.
Remember, too that you need to earn points each year to retain your status - if you're on Gold and want to retain Gold for next year, then earn the points this year.

You need to get to Vitality’s Diamond level which means that you need to get to Gold each year for three consecutive years – then on the 4th year you will be on Diamond. See here for instructions on how to get to Gold.

This is what your Vitality dashboard will look like when you’ve achieved Diamond Vitality level:

Here’s an updated Vitality points calculator for 2011 to keep track of your vitality points for the year: 2011VitalityPointsChecker.xls
which shows you what you can do to earn those Vitality points, and assists in planning your path to Gold (or even Diamond) Vitality status.

Note: for every year after that you need to earn Vitality points to stay on Gold otherwise you will lose the Diamond status… but don’t worry – the longer you are on Vitality, then the more points you carry over to the next year.

Remember, if you're on Blue level then you're not getting the most from your Vitality subscription
eg. comparing Blue vs Gold benefits:
British Airways: 5% vs 20%
Kulula: 15% vs 30%
Southern Sun: 30% vs 45%
Magazine subscriptions: 1 vs 6
Discovery credit card: 10% vs 15% [20% if you're on Diamond]
Pick 'n Pay: 5% vs 8% [10% if you're on Diamond]
Contiki: 15% vs 20%

See here for some tips: It's easy to get to GOLD on Discovery Vitality
How to get an iPad2 for R3,519 (= less 20%) using your Discovery Credit Card

Here’s info to help you understand the DiscoveryCreditCard cashback small print: Discovery Credit Card calculator updated to include Max Allowable Spend at partner stores
Remember to push up your discountable spend by using your Credit card to pay for your fuel purchases: Paying for petrol using your Discovery credit card

DiscoveryInsure:
Apart from getting a free tracking device you can also earn points to get cashback on BP fuel (up to 40%) plus increase your partner discount when using your Discovery card. See here for more details: Discovery Insure and VitalityDrive: Another HTT calculator to see how much cashback you get on your short term insurance

Well, if that’s not enough incentive to start to understand the products in earnest and start getting to gold... then I don’t know what will spur you on.
The above might not apply in the same way as it did for me – but if you don’t start investigating and understanding, then you might be wasting time and money. As always, please add comments (or email me) if you see any mistakes or errors in my logic.

See here for more of my blog’s articles on the Discovery product suite: http://handytechtips.blogspot.com/search?q=discovery

Download South African postal codes list for free

2011-11-19T08:14:00.001+02:00

I’ve seen various requests for the postal codes of South Africa (or zip codes) to be made available in a downloadable format but couldn’t find any available for free.
There’s the official South African Post Office (SAPO) page that allows you to only search for the one you are looking for: Search by location name or by post code
As well as the listings on SouthAfrica.co.za

So, I decided to create my own and make it available to all for free download here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/201gi68niys161n/SapoPostalCodesSouthAfrica19Nov2011.xls

Did you know that there are 16,740 postal codes in South Africa?

Please post comments if you notice any errors or omissions.

Compare airline tickets online in South Africa

2011-11-16T23:11:00.000+02:00

So, Tweeple were looking for online sites to book air tickets in South Africa – probably now planning their end of year Christmas holidays in Cape Town or Durban.

These are the main airlines in South Africa – you can either click on each link and manually compare prices one-by-one or scroll down to an aggregator that does the fetching of the prices and you can compare all on one page
(Note: that some aggregators add a lot to the price… so, I usually use the aggregator to get an indication of price, then go to the direct site to do the booking):

List of airlines (in no specific order):
South African Airways (SAA): www.flysaa.com
Kulula: https://www.kulula.com (get up to 50% off if you have a Discovery Vitality card)
1Time Airlines: https://www.1time.aero/aqueduct/1time/Booking
Mango Air: http://www.flymango.com (get 10% off if you have an Edgars Club card)
Velvet Sky: http://www.flyvelvetsky.com
Virgin Atlantic: http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/za/index.jsp
British Airways (BA): http://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_za
Comair: http://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_za
South African Express: http://www.flysax.com

Aggregator sites:
http://www.travelstart.co.za
http://www.domesticflights.co.za
http://www.flightsite.co.za/flights
http://fares.travelonline.co.za/travel/index.php
http://www.travelsupermarket.co.za/bookings.html

A lot of these aggregators are “skinned” which means that they all query the same search engine disguised as different sites – the main search engine seems to be the TravelStart one. Each “skinned” site gets a commission for the bookings.

International travel flights:
Check where you are sitting on the plane: http://www.seatguru.com

Update on 16Nov2011: Register for ExpertFlyer Seat Alerts feature, and be notified when the exact seat you want becomes available! See here for a list of supported airlines (South African ones are listed): http://www.expertflyer.com/sessionlessSeatMapList.do Free for 1 alert at a time.

Looking for a hotel?:
If you are looking for hotels, then this is a great site: http://www.octopustravel.com/hotels/za

How to add subtitles to an avi file and burn it to DVD

2011-11-06T19:12:00.001+02:00

I have been battling to find instructions on how to add subtitles to an avi file so that I could make a DVD and watch it from a DVD player. This forum on VideoHelp.com put me on the right track and I found another way of doing it with free software that I already had installed on my computer.

I used FormatFactory and its embedded help gave the instructions as follows:

Launch FormatFactory and drag and drop your file into the FormatFactory window. A window will appear where you can select the output format of the “conversion”.
I left it at avi (‘All to AVI’) since I want the output to still be avi but with subtitles:

Next, click the “Setting” button:

Go down to the “Additional Subtitle” section and then click on the Ellipsis (3 dots) which will allow you to navigate to the subtitle (.srt) file.
Click ‘OK’ ‘OK’; then “Start” button to start the conversion.
Wait for a long time…

Then the converted avi file with subtitles is created and can then be burnt to DVD using your favourite burning software eg: ‘Nero Vision’

Here is HTT’s calculator for the 2012 Discovery Health plans

2011-10-29T20:15:00.001+02:00

Yes, it’s that time of the year again – time to choose your Discovery Health plan….all those options and all that paperwork to read and understand…
If you are already on a Discovery Health plan you don't have to do anything if you want to stay on the same plan for 2012.
If, however, you would like to change to another plan, please let your employer know as soon as possible as they must send us your new health plan details by 9 December 2011.

This article might save you a lot of reading and paging through all the web pages on the Discovery web site.

The www.discovery.co.za web site contains detailed information about each plan and the costs.
The new plans can be seen by clicking on the panels on the left hand side of the page: ‘Discovery Health->2012 Plans we offer’, and then select the plan that you’re interested in.
Unfortunately, the new pages describing the plans have accordion-like sections that expand and collapse so you can’t print the pages :( That means you need to read them online and keep on clicking to expand and collapse, which is rather irritating!

But, don’t despair when HTT is near ;) I’ve managed to turn off the accordion scripting (using an add on for Firefox called NoScript) and here are the documents for offline reading for your convenience…
[700KB]: DiscoveryHealthPlans2012.zip

{Thanks to www.mediafire.com for hosting the file for free!}

So, how much does each plan cost?

Get more info from the Discovery web site’s “Compare our plans link”.

HTT’s Discovery Health Plan 2012 calculator:
I have collated all the information on the various plans into a spreadsheet (calculator) and you can fill in the number of people in your family and allows you to compare the costs of each plan (in a table and in a chart).

Download HTT’s calculator that will assist you in costing the various options [1.2MB]: DiscoveryHealthOptions2012calculator.xls

Open the calculator to assist with narrowing your choice of plan as follows:
Use the Discovery web site’s “Compare our plans link” (and the pyramids in each plan’s pdf) to compare the plans - note the missing parts of the pyramids to see "what's missing" from each plan.
Note too, that the size of each segment shows smaller ATBs and larger SPGs.

So, if you want a plan with "out of hospital" cover, then you need a plan that has an MSA (Medical Savings Account) - so don't choose the Core plans (since Core plans don't provide MSA).
See this posting for explanations of these terms: Are you MSA, ATB, SPG‘ed out with Discovery Health – here’s a brief explanation of these terms
To summarise: If you need that "parachute" to kick in when out of hospital expenses get too much then you need a plan that offers the ATB facility (Above Threshold Benefit): so select from the Executive, Comprehensive or Priority plans (either: Executive, Classic Comprehensive, Essential Comprehensive, Classic Priority or Essential Priority).
Note: Priority plan has "limited ATB"
The Self Payment Gap is the amount that you need to pay once you have run out of MSA.
If you want a small SPG (Self Payment Gap) then you need to select one of the Comprehensive plans. If you want zero SPG (Self Payment Gap) then you need to select the Executive plan (as you can see the smaller the gap, the more expensive the plan becomes).

The DeltaSaver plans are similar to the Saver plans; and
the DeltaCore plans are similar to the Core plans except (mainly) that you are limited to the Delta network of hospitals (and you pay about 25% less)

Using the spreadsheet (using the 'Figures2012' worksheet):
[Please read the disclaimer at the top of the spreadsheet :) ]
Modify the following “purple” cells to suit your situation i.e. number of dependants, Vitality, Discovery card.

Compiling the spreadsheet has highlighted some points which I did not understand previously and I am sure the following pointers will assist you in choosing which plan is best for you:
· There are 8 categories of cover: Executive, Comprehensive, Priority, Saver, Delta Saver, Core, Delta Core and KeyCare.
· Each of these categories sometimes have sub-categories: Classic, Classic Delta, Essential, Essential Delta, and Coastal.
The above 2 statements are very important in understanding how Discovery health plans have been organised… so read them and understand how categories have been split into sub-categories.
· The "Saver" and “Core” plans are cheaper mainly because they have no ATB (Above Threshold Benefit) which means when your out-of-hospital expenses have used up your MSA (Medical Savings Account) then you will need to pay all out of hospital costs out of your (after tax) pocket. All the other plans have an ATB which kicks in as soon as you have paid a certain amount (the “gap”).
· The “Priority” plans are cheaper mainly because they have co-payments for some hospital procedures (see 'PrioritySeries2011.pdf' for details)
· If you only need a ‘hospital plan’, then the “core” or "saver" plans are for you… "Core" have no MSA nor ATB and "Saver" plans have a small MSA - remember that out of hospital expenses can add up very quickly e.g. MRI scans etc. and can wipe out the monthly savings of being on a cheaper plan (although a maximum of R1,800 will be paid out of your MSA (or out of your pocket if you're on the "Core" plan), the remainder comes out of your in-hospital benefit)
· “Classic” and “Essential” plans have almost the same in-hospital cover except for the rate paid: Classic pays up to 300% of the Discovery Health rate while Essential pays up to the Discovery Health rate. [In my experience, the doctors will charge the maximum that they can! So, if you have cover for the 300% then that’s what they’ll charge. It is no indication of their “rate”]
· The MSA amount is fixed according to the plan you're on (25% or 15% of your contribution).
· The “prescribed medicine” sub-limit has some widely differing benefits so study these carefully when selecting your plan.
· Check this year’s benefit usage by logging in on the Discovery web site: http://www.discovery.co.za –> Discovery Health » Benefits and cover » Benefits used. This will give you an idea of what cover you have used this year (Note: the past usage is no indication of next year’s needs).

Bottom line: nobody can tell you which plan you need to take – it’s your decision based on i) how much you can afford vs ii) how much you think you will need cover vs iii) how much you think you can cover yourself from your own emergency funds.

Use the calculator to compare the pyramids (cover differences) and graphs to compare costs and pdf’s to compare each plan’s detail.

If you see any errors in this article, or in the calculator, or suggestions for improvement, then please let me know so that everyone can benefit) by leaving a comment or emailing me: HandyTechTipper at gmail.com

See here for other HTT (HandyTechTipper) calculators:
http://handytechtips.blogspot.com/search?q=calculator

See here for more info on Discovery:
http://handytechtips.blogspot.com/search?q=discovery

Buying electricity via mobile cell phone or online [Solved]

2011-10-19T23:22:00.001+02:00

There’s only one thing that I hate doing more than putting petrol in my car – that’s buying electricity… the pain of drawing cash, then going to the local cafe or garage to get that electricity token is sooo painful! But that was until I found other ways of buying electricity without even getting into my car :)

You still get your free units per month and there are no extra costs.

Most of these sites allow you to purchase using your credit card.

After registering I can now purchase electricity (for no extra charge) using my credit card. I can use my PC or my cell phone's browser or use SMS to purchase.
Using my credit card is much more convenient (no more queuing for cash, and for purchasing the electricity), and so it's safer too! [those ATMs are becoming dangerous]
Additionally, if I run out of electricity in the middle of the night then I can purchase more by sending an SMS from home.
Oh, and the cherry on the top is that the bill comes at the end of the month along with "reward points" and even cash back discount.

Here is a list of sites that I’ve found that cater for City of Cape Town electricity:
FNB mobile: dial *120*321# from your cell phone and navigate thru the menus.

https://new.easypay.co.za/bmeter.aspx

www.energy.co.za   (not accepting new registrations)

www.paycity.co.za
(Via SMS: SMS "secret code cvv amount" to 41658 to buy electricity)

www.powertime.co.za [currently offline for Cape Town electricity purchases] register meter number and pay by credit card.

http://www.cellpower.co.za/consumer No credit card purchases, but EFTs are processed under 5 minutes (24/7). Also offers airtime.

www.ibuy.co.za you can save your setting so that you can easily buy from your phone

http://www.prepaid24.com/index.php?comp=content2&page=electricity
There’s even a lucky draw and you could win your electricity for free (PowerWinna)

Outside Cape Town:
http://www.prepaidelectricitymeters.co.za/#
http://www.prepaidmobionline.co.za/municipalities.html

Polycom IP SoundStation IP 5000 call lasts exactly 20 seconds and then disconnected [SOLVED]

2011-10-15T14:51:00.001+02:00

A colleague had this nasty problem that he managed to solve – he found lots (hundreds) of people on the Internet had the same problem but there were no solutions out there – so I convinced him to share how he solved the nasty problem:

The problem:
Polycom IP SoundStation IP 5000 - calls last exactly 20 seconds and then they are disconnected.

The logs on the SwitchVox PABX showed the following error when tracing the SIP messages passing between PBX and Polycom IP 5000. This is the error code that I suspected was causing the issue:

(Critical Response) -- See doc/sip-retransmit.txt

It took a while, but changing the protocol that IP5000 uses to connect to the PABX from TCP/IP to UDP seems to have fixed the problem - now the calls work properly :)
It now also connects to the SwitchVox PABX immediately compared to previously when using TCP/IP it took at least 10 seconds.
So now, once the phone is plugged in and boots up, it immediately connects and calls longer than 10 seconds are now no problem!

For others trying to figure out how to log onto the phone’s web page to change the settings:
use username (upper case ‘P’): Polycom
and
password: 456
(This is the default username and password)

Error Code : 1062 Duplicate entry '' for key 1 auto_increment [SOLVED]

2011-09-30T00:33:00.001+02:00

I am using mySQL and Fabrik and Joomla for my web app and out of the blue it started giving errors:
Duplicate entry '' for key 1 SQL=INSERT INTO `main_table` (`field1`,`field2`,`field3`) VALUES ( 'Value1','Value2','','Value3')
This meant that no data was being successfully entered into that database table :(

After Googling a bit (no, a lot) I stumbled into this blog which helped me a lot (thanks Vinu Thomas):
http://blogs.vinuthomas.com/2008/06/18/mysql-error-1062-duplicate-entry-0-for-key-1
“
The important sentences: “Mysql throws this error because the field type of the auto increment field is not large enough to hold the next value, so it tries to wraps the count back to ’0′ where the is already a record with that value.
We changed the field from int to unsigned bigint which fixed the problem for us. So if you face the same problem, check if your auto-increment field has maxed the datatype for that field.
”

That’s exactly what I did and saw that my table definition was this – where field1 was the PK and of type varchar(255):
table_name CREATE TABLE `table_name` (
`field1` varchar(255) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`field2` varchar(15) default NULL,
`field3` varchar(255) default NULL,
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=843 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

I altered the table to this and the problem was solved!:
table_name CREATE TABLE `table_name` (
`field1` bigint(255) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
`field2` varchar(15) default NULL,
`field3` varchar(255) default NULL,
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=843 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

Using this sql statement:
alter table `dbname`.`table_name` change `field1` `field1` bigint(255) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT

Tree fell across Doordrift Road, Constantia in Cape Town

2011-09-25T22:35:00.001+02:00

A colleague’s friend told of a story that she was driving on Doordrift Road last night (Saturday) and about 21h00 (after sunset – so it was already quite dark) when they heard a load creaking sound then suddenly this HUGE tree fell about 20m in front of their car (which was travelling at about 60km/h).

They got the fright of their lives and luckily they managed to stop in time – they also were sooo, lucky that the tree didn’t fall on top of their car!

This is what they saw last night:

They got out and tried to manage the traffic as best as they could – including cyclists who couldn’t see the tree across the road.

They notified ADT (security company) and the local authorities who managed to close the road and start working on clearing the tree.

This morning we decided to go and see if the tree was cleared. I was very surprised to see that the road was still closed and the chain saw was still hard at work to removed the HUGE tree.

Here are some photos of what we saw this morning:

This is the damage to the townhouses across the road:

So, now, who pays for the clearing of the tree and for the damage to the wall, wrought iron fence and electric fence?

Seems like the construction workers “trimmed” the roots of the tree. These construction workers were building a pathway along the road and dug quite deeply to lay the foundations for this cobble pathway.

Oh well – at least nobody got killed and we will need to see who wins the fight for these material items. Those people in the car were really lucky it didn’t land on them!

Twitter fake page: http://ltwltter.com/timed_out/ Beware it will steal your password (phishing)

2011-08-29T22:27:00.001+02:00

If you get a Direct message that looks like this:
”
ROFLMAO i can't stop laughing at this pic of you ppfr.it/434
Direct message sent by YourFriend (@yourFriend) to you (@YourName)
”

The first reaction is to click on the short link ppfr.it/434 which will take you to http://t.co/tIdsrtv which will resolve to http://ltwltter.com/timed_out/ (notice the ‘l’ before the ‘t’ of twitter) which will present a FAKE Twitter login page that looks exactly like the Twitter web site with username and password screen:

Please beware – since this is a FAKE login screen – So do NOT enter your login details!

If you do enter your username and password – then the fake page will steal your username and password and then redirect you to another fake page:
http://ltwltter.com/status/error/ (notice the ‘l’ before the ‘t’ of twitter)

Once the phishers have harvested your login details then they will send DMs to all of your followers and send them the same “ROFLMAO” message and hope that they fall into the same trap and log in to the fake Twitter page.

Be careful out there and remember to ALWAYS check the URL of the page that you are logging in to.

Walkie Talkie on your phone: Push To Talk (PTT) using data channel on any network in South Africa

2011-08-29T01:50:00.001+02:00

Use your BlackBerry or Android phone or PC to instantly talk to a group of users – just like using walkie talkie radios! All of this for free (just pay for the bandwidth)! I suppose you could call it a VOIP app, since the voice does get converted to IP packets – but what’s different with this app is that the voice gets transmitted to a group of people and it comes over their phones’ speakers – like an intercom system!

This app is available for download from here: http://loudtalks.com/download and best of all it’s FREE. This allows public groups of up to 100 people – if you want to create private groups, then there’s the “Loudtalks Mesh or “Loudtalks Cloud” products.

The Cloud product is free to try out for up to 10 users, then there’s payment options to go larger groups up to 1,000 people.
In short, if you have your own server, then go for the Loudtalks Mesh option – else Loudtalks Cloud – which doesn’t require a server and is very quick to set up.
See here for a comparison: http://loudtalks.com/compare_products

Some of the features of the app are:
Loudtalks conversations are nearly as fast as face-to-face and possibly the fastest way to communicate online.
With Loudtalks you can voice message two, three or even a hundred people simultaneously.
Re-play your conversations when you want from the voice history.
Unlike traditional VoIP applications you don't have to use a headset with Loudtalks.
Loudtalks works over WiFi and 3G, and can be used on GPRS and EDGE.
Touchscreen-friendly
Real-time, low latency
Public channels
Voice-activated transmission (VOX) support

Currently, the app is available for BlackBerry and Android phones as well as PC (Windows and Linux using Wine):
BlackBerry - point your phone to: http://loudtalks.com/bb Note: that it does not use BIS – so if you are not using WiFi, then you will pay for the bandwidth used. Depending on your wireless provider and service plan using the app may cause data charges even if you have "unlimited email and browsing" BIS data plan. The app uses 110kB per minute talking, and 20kB per hour when idle. Regardless of your service plan you can always use the app on WiFi for free.
Android: http://market.android.com/details?id=com.loudtalks
PC: http://loudtalks.com/download
iPhone: iOS version will be released later this year (2011)

How to get going?:
Install the app then create an account and username,
then add contacts – once approved,
then you can try talking by pressing the PTT button (for BlackBerry it’s the convenience button on the LHS of the phone; for Windows it is F7) – keep that button down to talk, and release it to listen.

You can also create your own public channels that other people can search for and join.

I’ve tested the application with Vodacom in South Africa and has worked with WiFi and the Vodacom network on BlackBerry 9700 Bold and 8520 Curve.
Users with 3G handsets should enable the WAP2SR in the Options->Connection menu – this will reduce the high battery consumption.

If you get stuck, here’s a FAQ for BlackBerry users: http://loudtalks.com/bb_faq

Let me know if you have managed to successfully use the app – and for what purpose. I am going to suggest this for the local neighbourhood watch in my area.

Follow LoudTalks on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/loudtalks

Other similar apps that I’ve found are:
http://hipvoice.com/pricing Blackberry and other “rugged devices”, and not free
http://blabbelon.com Windows and iPhone
http://heytell.com Android and iPhone
http://voxer.com iPhone (soon Android)
http://www.itikl.com Android and iPhone (free)

More hidden Skype emoticons in Skype 5.5 release: summarised list (updated)

2011-08-28T13:07:00.001+02:00

Following the release of Skype version 5.5 in July 2011, I thought that I should update my blog article on “Secret Skype emoticons”. I have found some other interesting blog articles listing the new emoticons or smileys and collated the info and added more info too – so anyone that’s looking for the Easter Eggs, then continue reading…:
http://www.skypehelp.com/skype-emoticons
http://www.emoticonsskype.com
http://www.emoticonsskype.com/all-hidden-skype-emoticons

New Skype emoticons available only in Skype 5.5:
(download Skype offline installer here [22MB]: http://download.skype.com/SkypeSetup.msi)
(Thanks to http://www.emoticonsskype.com for listing them)
(Facepalm) (fail) Face palm
(wfh) Working From Home
(fingers)   (fingerscrossed)   (yn) Fingers Crossed
(tumbleweed) Tumbleweed
(lalala) (lala) (notlistening) Lalala
(waiting)   (forever)   (impatience) Waiting
(highfive)   (hifive)   (h5) Hi-five

There are also 2 more hidden ones (Easter eggs).

Of course Skype users can click on the Emoticon button and use the standard emoticons
Skype 5.5: Compared to the older version:

or type in the following:
{paste them into your Skype chat to see the emoticons}

{note: the duplicate smileys show that there's more than 1 way to type the smiley}
(emoticons with text in red are the secret ones)

angel (angel)
angry :@ :-@ :=@ x( x-( X( X-( x=( X=( (angry)
bear hug (bear) (hug)

beer (beer) (bricklayers)

:D :=D :-D :d :=d :-d
blush (blush) :$ :-$ :=$

brokenheart (u) (U) (brokenheart)

Masked bandit (bandit)
bow (bow)

bug (bug)

bum (mooning)

bye (hi)

bye (bye)
cake (^) (cake)
call (call)

callme (mp) (ph) (phone)
pizza (pi) (pizza)
cash (cash) (mo) ($)
clap (clap)

clock (time) (o) (O)
coffee (coffee)
cool 8-) 8=) B-) B=) (cool)
cry ;( ;-( ;=( (cry)
dance (dance) \o/ \:D/ \:d/
devil (devil)
doh (doh)
drink (d) (D) (drink)
drunk (drunk)
dull -( ( =( (dull)

email
emo (emo)
envy (envy)

evil grin (grin)
finger (finger)
flower (F) (f) (flower)
fubar (fubar)
giggle (chuckle) (giggle)
handshake (handshake)
happy (happy)
headbang (headbang) (banghead)
heart (h) (H) (l) (L) (heart)
brokenheart (u) (U) (brokenheart)

Heidy squirrel (heidy)

happy (happy)
hi (wave) (hi) (bye)
hug (hug) (bear)
inlove (inlove) (love)
kiss :* :-* :=* (kiss)
laugh :D :-D :=D :d :-d :=d (laugh)
lips sealed :x :-x :X :-X :# :-# :=x :=X :=#
lunch (pi) (pizza)

mail (e) (m) (mail)
makeup (makeup) (kate)
mmm (mm) (mmm) (mmmm)

money (cash) (mo) ($)
mooning (mooning)
movie (~) (film) (movie)
muscle (flex) (muscle)
music (music)
myspace (myspace)
nerdy 8- B- 8 B 8= B= (nerd)
ninja (ninja)
no (n) (N) (no)
nod (nod)
party (party)

OK (y) (ok)
phone (mp) (ph) (phone)
pizza (pi) (pizza)
poolparty (poolparty) (hrv) {in version 5.5 the duck drops}
puke (puke) :& :-& :=&
punch (punch)
rain (rain) (london)
rock (rock)
Rolling on the floor laughing (rofl)
sad :( :-( :=( (sad)
shake (shake)
skype (skype) (ss)
sleepy -) I-) I=) (snooze)
smile :) :-) :=) (smile)
smirk (smirk)
smoke (smoking) (smoke) (ci)

squirrel (heidy)
star (*) (star)
sun (sun)
surprised :O :-O :=O :o :-o :=o (surprised)
swear (swear)
sweat (sweat) (:
speechless : :- := (speechless)
talk (talk)
think (think) :-? :? :=?
time (o) (O) (time) (clock)
Too much information (tmi)
A guy and his dog toivo (toivo)
tongueout :P :-P :=P :p :-p :=p (tongueout)
wait (wait)
wasntme (wasntme)

well done (clap)

WTF (wtf)
whew (whew)
wink ;) ;-) ;=) (wink)
wondering :^) (wonder)
worry :S :s :-s :-S :=s :=S (worry)
yawn (yawn)
yes (y) (Y) (ok) (yes)

Here are the more hidden (secret) keyboard keystrokes in one place:
{paste them into your Skype chat to see the emoticons}

bandit (bandit)
bug (bug)
call (call)
finger (finger)
fubar (fubar)
headbang (headbang) (banghead)
heidy (heidy)
mooning (mooning)
myspace (myspace)
poolparty (poolparty) (hrv)
rock (rock)
smoke (smoking) (smoke) (ci)
swear (swear)
tmi (tmi)
toivo (toivo)

WTF (wtf)
Face palm (fail)
Working From Home (wfh)
Fingers Crossed (fingers)   (fingerscrossed) (yn)
Tumbleweed (tumbleweed)
Lalala (lalala) (lala) (notlistening)
Waiting (waiting)   (forever)   (impatience)
Hi-five (highfive)   (hifive)   (h5)
Bye (bye)

Updated on 5Sept2011:
For you avid readers that got this far, here’s another hidden Easter Egg: The disappearing cat: In an active chat session: hold down (ie: press and don’t release any keys) the keys c then a then t – in other words, type cattttttttttttttttttt then release all keys.
A gray cat appears holding out its paw and eventually disappears.

For more details go here: http://bluescreensolutions.blogspot.com/2011/02/skypes-disappearing-cat-and-other.html

From http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/skype/54999/

Display flags of the world in your chats:

(flag:AF) Afghanistan
(flag:AL) Albania, People’s Socialist Republic of
(flag:DZ) Algeria, People’s Democratic Republic of
(flag:AS) American Samoa
(flag:AD) Andorra, Principality of
(flag:AO) Angola, Republic of
(flag:AI) Anguilla
(flag:AQ) Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S)
(flag:AG) Antigua and Barbuda
(flag:AR) Argentina, Argentine Republic
(flag:AM) Armenia
(flag:AW) Aruba
(flag:AU) Australia, Commonwealth of
(flag:AT) Austria, Republic of
(flag:AZ) Azerbaijan, Republic of
(flag:BS) Bahamas, Commonwealth of the
(flag:BH) Bahrain, Kingdom of
(flag:BD) Bangladesh, People’s Republic of
(flag:BB) Barbados
(flag:BY) Belarus
(flag:BE) Belgium, Kingdom of
(flag:BZ) Belize
(flag:BJ) Benin (was Dahomey), People’s Republic of
(flag:BM) Bermuda
(flag:BT) Bhutan, Kingdom of
(flag:BO) Bolivia, Republic of
(flag:BA) Bosnia and Herzegovina
(flag:BW) Botswana, Republic of
(flag:BR) Brazil, Federative Republic of
(flag:IO) British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago)
(flag:VG) British Virgin Islands
(flag:BN) Brunei Darussalam
(flag:BG) Bulgaria, People’s Republic of
(flag:BF) Burkina Faso (was Upper Volta)
(flag:BI) Burundi, Republic of
(flag:KH) Cambodia, Kingdom of (was Khmer Republic/Kampuchea, Democratic)
(flag:CM) Cameroon, United Republic of
(flag:CA) Canada
(flag:CV) Cape Verde, Republic of
(flag:KY) Cayman Islands
(flag:CF) Central African Republic
(flag:TD) Chad, Republic of
(flag:CL) Chile, Republic of
(flag:CN) China, People’s Republic of
(flag:CX) Christmas Island
(flag:CC) Cocos (Keeling) Islands
(flag:CO) Colombia, Republic of
(flag:KM) Comoros, Union of the
(flag:CD) Congo, Democratic Republic of (was Zaire)
(flag:CG) Congo, People’s Republic of
(flag:CK) Cook Islands
(flag:CR) Costa Rica, Republic of
(flag:CI) Cote D’Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the
(flag:CU) Cuba, Republic of
(flag:CY) Cyprus, Republic of
(flag:CZ) Czech Republic
(flag:DK) Denmark, Kingdom of
(flag:DJ) Djibouti, Republic of (was French Afars and Issas)
(flag:DM) Dominica, Commonwealth of
(flag:DO) Dominican Republic
(flag:EC) Ecuador, Republic of
(flag:EG) Egypt, Arab Republic of
(flag:SV) El Salvador, Republic of
(flag:GQ) Equatorial Guinea, Republic of
(flag:ER) Eritrea
(flag:EE) Estonia
(flag:ET) Ethiopia
(flag:FO) Faeroe Islands
(flag:FK) Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
(flag:FJ) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands
(flag:FI) Finland, Republic of
(flag:FR) France, French Republic
(flag:GF) French Guiana
(flag:PF) French Polynesia
(flag:TF) French Southern Territories
(flag:GA) Gabon, Gabonese Republic
(flag:GM) Gambia, Republic of the
(flag:GE) Georgia
(flag:DE) Germany
(flag:GH) Ghana, Republic of
(flag:GI) Gibraltar
(flag:GR) Greece, Hellenic Republic
(flag:GL) Greenland
(flag:GD) Grenada
(flag:GP) Guadaloupe
(flag:GU) Guam
(flag:GT) Guatemala, Republic of
(flag:GN) Guinea, Revolutionary People’s Rep’c of
(flag:GW) Guinea-Bissau, Republic of (was Portuguese Guinea)
(flag:GY) Guyana, Republic of
(flag:HT) Haiti, Republic of
(flag:HM) Heard and McDonald Islands
(flag:VA) Holy See (Vatican City State)
(flag:HN) Honduras, Republic of
(flag:HK) Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China
(flag:HR) Hrvatska (Croatia)
(flag:HU) Hungary, Hungarian People’s Republic
(flag:IS) Iceland, Republic of
(flag:IN) India, Republic of
(flag:ID) Indonesia, Republic of
(flag:IR) Iran, Islamic Republic of
(flag:IQ) Iraq, Republic of
(flag:IE) Ireland
(flag:IL) Israel, State of
(flag:IT) Italy, Italian Republic
(flag:JM) Jamaica
(flag:JP) apan
(flag:JO) Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of
(flag:KZ) Kazakhstan, Republic of
(flag:KE) Kenya, Republic of
(flag:KI) Kiribati, Republic of (was Gilbert Islands)
(flag:KP) Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of
(flag:KR) Korea, Republic of
(flag:KW) uwait, State of
(flag:KG) Kyrgyz Republic
(flag:LA) Lao People’s Democratic Republic
(flag:LV) Latvia
(flag:LB) Lebanon, Lebanese Republic
(flag:LS) Lesotho, Kingdom of
(flag:LR) Liberia, Republic of
(flag:LY) Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
(flag:LI) Liechtenstein, Principality of
(flag:LT) Lithuania
(flag:LU) Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of
(flag:MO) Macao, Special Administrative Region of China
(flag:MK) Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of
(flag:MG) Madagascar, Republic of
(flag:MW) Malawi, Republic of
(flag:MY) Malaysia
(flag:MV) Maldives, Republic of
(flag:ML) Mali, Republic of
(flag:MT) Malta, Republic of
(flag:MH) Marshall Islands
(flag:MQ) Martinique
(flag:MR) Mauritania, Islamic Republic of
(flag:MU) Mauritius
(flag:YT) Mayotte
(flag:MX) Mexico, United Mexican States
(flag:FM) Micronesia, Federated States of
(flag:MD) Moldova, Republic of
(flag:MC) Monaco, Principality of
(flag:MN) Mongolia, Mongolian People’s Republic
(flag:MS) Montserrat
(flag:MA) Morocco, Kingdom of
(flag:MZ) Mozambique, People’s Republic of
(flag:MM) Myanmar (was Burma)
(flag:NA) Namibia
(flag:NR) Nauru, Republic of
(flag:NP) Nepal, Kingdom of
(flag:AN) Netherlands Antilles
(flag:NL) Netherlands, Kingdom of the
(flag:NC) New Caledonia
(flag:NZ) New Zealand
(flag:NI) Nicaragua, Republic of
(flag:NE) Niger, Republic of the
(flag:NG) Nigeria, Federal Republic of
(flag:NU) Niue, Republic of
(flag:NF) Norfolk Island
(flag:MP) Northern Mariana Islands
(flag:NO) Norway, Kingdom of
(flag:OM) Oman, Sultanate of (was Muscat and Oman)
(flag:PK) Pakistan, Islamic Republic of
(flag:PW) Palau
(flag:PS) Palestinian Territory, Occupied
(flag:PA) Panama, Republic of
(flag:PG) Papua New Guinea
(flag:PY) Paraguay, Republic of
(flag:PE) Peru, Republic of
(flag:PH) Philippines, Republic of the
(flag:PN) Pitcairn Island
(flag:PL) Poland, Polish People’s Republic
(flag:PT) Portugal, Portuguese Republic
(flag:PR) Puerto Rico
(flag:QA) Qatar, State of
(flag:RE) Reunion
(flag:RO) Romania, Socialist Republic of
(flag:RU) Russian Federation
(flag:RW) Rwanda, Rwandese Republic
(flag:SH) St. Helena
(flag:KN) St. Kitts and Nevis
(flag:LC) St. Lucia
(flag:PM) St. Pierre and Miquelon
(flag:VC) St. Vincent and the Grenadines
(flag:WS) Samoa, Independent State of (was Western Samoa)
(flag:SM) San Marino, Republic of
(flag:ST) Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of
(flag:SA) Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of
(flag:SN) Senegal, Republic of
(flag:CS) Serbia and Montenegro
(flag:SC) Seychelles, Republic of
(flag:SL) Sierra Leone, Republic of
(flag:SG) Singapore, Republic of
(flag:SK) Slovakia (Slovak Republic)
(flag:SI) Slovenia
(flag:SB) Solomon Islands (was British Solomon Islands)
(flag:SO) Somalia, Somali Republic
(flag:ZA) South Africa, Republic of
(flag:GS) South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
(flag:ES) Spain, Spanish State
(flag:LK) Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of (was Ceylon)
(flag:SD) Sudan, Democratic Republic of the
(flag:SR) Suriname, Republic of
(flag:SZ) Swaziland, Kingdom of
(flag:SE) Sweden, Kingdom of
(flag:CH) Switzerland, Swiss Confederation
(flag:SY) Syrian Arab Republic
(flag:TW) Taiwan, Province of China
(flag:TJ) Tajikistan
(flag:TZ) Tanzania, United Republic of
(flag:TH) Thailand, Kingdom of
(flag:TL) Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of
(flag:TG) Togo, Togolese Republic
(flag:TK) Tokelau (Tokelau Islands)
(flag:TO) Tonga, Kingdom of
(flag:TT) Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of
(flag:TN) Tunisia, Republic of
(flag:TR) Turkey, Republic of
(flag:TM) Turkmenistan
(flag:TC) Turks and Caicos Islands
(flag:TV) Tuvalu (was part of Gilbert & Ellice Islands)
(flag:VI) US Virgin Islands
(flag:UG) Uganda, Republic of
(flag:UA) Ukraine
(flag:AE) United Arab Emirates (was Trucial States)
(flag:GB) United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland
(flag:UM) United States Minor Outlying Islands
(flag:US) United States of America
(flag:UY) Uruguay, Eastern Republic of
(flag:UZ) Uzbekistan
(flag:VU) Vanuatu (was New Hebrides)
(flag:VE) Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of
(flag:VN) Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of (was Democratic Republic of & Republic of)
(flag:WF) Wallis and Futuna Islands
(flag:EH) Western Sahara (was Spanish Sahara)
(flag:YE) Yemen
(flag:ZM) Zambia, Republic of
(flag:ZW) Zimbabwe (was Southern Rhodesia)
From here: http://www.emoticonsskype.com/flags.html

See here for more posts on Skype:
http://handytechtips.blogspot.com/search?q=skype
Beware when editing Skype messages to Linux users…
Skype chat: taking control of the group chat session

Original postings:
Secret Skype emoticons: summarised list
http://handytechtips.blogspot.com/2008/08/skype-more-emoticons-that-you-can-type.html

Calculator: Cost comparison of Incandescent vs CFL vs LED globes

2011-08-21T21:25:00.001+02:00

Thanks to Chris from MapaWatt.com and Mitra Ardron for extending the analysis by taking inflation into account – I have modified the calculator for South African (Cape Town) conditions: price of electricity, the price of the globes, and the inflation rate of power costs.

LED (Light Emitting Diode) globe, CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamps), and the bad old fashioned incandescent globe

To quote Mitra:
”
The spreadsheet tracks the cost curves for Incandescent, CFL and LED globes so you can see at what point you would break even.
“

HTT has changed the figures for South Africans: electricity cost per kWh, and prices for the different types of bulbs
Based on a set of assumptions (that I got from Mapawatt), it shows (at 4 hours/day usage):
* CFL's are better than all of them from year 1, it takes 17 years for LED's to beat CFL's but then need replacing after year 35.
* LED's beat Incandescent globes after 3-and-a-bit years.

To quote Mitra again:
”
Obviously this depends on assumptions about inflation in electricity prices, so I've added a second tab, where I assume electricity inflates at 7% more than general inflation.
”
HTT has changed the inflation figures for South Africans: electricity is due to go up 25% for the next 3 years (and probably beyond that too).

Don’t give up on the LED globes - in the near future, I’m sure that their prices will drop drastically and will replace CFLs.

Here are the screen shots of the charts showing the results: no inflation, and with inflation (note: horizontal axis have different scales)

Is it just me, or do you also think that the power guzzling little incandescent globes should be banned!

To see the actual formulae and data download the calculator here: HTT_Calculator_Lighting_cost_analysis_SouthAfricaAug2011.xls

The electricity rates for Cape Town for 2011 are here: http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/electricity/tariffs/Pages/default.aspx

If you have a pre-payment meter, then you can save 31.3% on your electricity if you buy now, only 3 days to go!

2011-08-09T10:44:00.000+02:00

Eskom electricity tariffs will go up by 31.3% on 01July - that leaves 3 days for you to stock up on cheaper electricity:
I'm going to save that 31.3% by pre-purchasing as much electricity as I can afford before 01July2009.
Once I've purchased all that electricity, I'll want to make it last as loooong as possible - I'll do that by checking where the biggest savings can be made by re-analysing my household's usage and cut down on the most expensive appliances: Saving electricity tips

See here for last year's posting (still relevant) for all the answers and the "Electricity Tariff Calculator tool": Beat Eskom price increases

This year's increase details:
When are the tariffs going up? @ 23h59 on Tues night 30 June 2009.
How much will the increases be? 2009's increase is 31.3%

The posting answers questions like:
How full can your pre-payment meter go?
How much can I purchase on my credit card?
Which tariff plan am I on?
If I fill my meter up too much will I lose my free 50 kWh per month?

And while you're saving money, why not ready the blog "Why pay cash for pre-paid electricity when you can use your credit card?" and earn cash back and "reward points".

How to save electricity:
*) turn down the temperature setting on your thermostat - here's where and how: Where is my geyser's thermostat? How do I turn it down?
*) use less hot water (ie. Install a low‑flow shower head). See here to purchase RST Profilence (RST contact details) and here for a report on savings (water and electricity
*) Shower, don't bath: see here for report on how much less power a shower uses than a bath
*) Install a geyser blanket to insulate your geyser and pipes. See here for a report on savings when using a geyser blanket (30% improvement)
*) use the ‘Electricity Usage Calculator’ to see where you ‘spend’ your electricity.
*) Reduce your pool pump's ON time per day
*) Install ceiling insulation. See here for more info and suppliers
*) Lastly, use solar power to heat your geyser: install solar panels. If you are building a new house or if you replace your geyser, then install solar panels and a time switch. See here for non-savings installing a time switch if you don't have a solar geyser: non-savings report

Update on 16June2010:

Watch out or, at least, be aware: #WTF Geyser's element has just blown <3 years after installation... 5 year geyser warranty, but only 3 months on the element! #FFS #RipOff

http://www.xstream.co.za/warranty.htm

Update on 09Aug2011:
I see the XStream warranty page has moved.... http://www.xstream.co.za/warrenty_document.html (and they can't even spell "warranty"!)

Group buying schemes in Cape Town all in one place

2011-07-24T17:34:00.001+02:00

If you aren’t taking advantage of the discount coupon sites around then maybe now’s a good time to start.

I have created a list of all the ones that I could find for Cape Town… just hold down the ‘Ctrl’ button and click to open each of the following links in separate browser windows and then wait for them to download:

http://www.cityslicker.co.za
http://citymob.co.za/cape-town
https://www.daddysdeals.co.za
http://www.dealify.com/cape-town-central
http://www.dealify.com/cape-town-north
http://www.dealify.com/cape-town-south
http://www.dealio.co.za
http://hot-deals.co.za
Twangoo/Groupon/MyCityDeal: http://www.mycitydeal.co.za/deals/cape-town
http://onedayonly.co.za
http://www.skoop.co.za/deals
http://ubuntudeal.co.za
http://ucit.co.za/cape-town
http://wicount.co.za
http://www.youdeal.co.za/deals/cape-town
http://www.zappon.co.za/cape-town
http://www.justhenga.com/capetown
http://www.mobstir.co.za/Cape+Town

There’s also this aggregator site that will list all the deals on one page: http://www.dealchecker.co.za
(See below for more aggregator sites)

If you use a browser like Opera or FireFox that allows you to save your browser sessions then keep the above sites open and then save the session for reopening later… or just bookmark this page and click on each link every day.

Updated on 25 July 2011:
More after a more extensive Bing search:
http://salewine.co.za
http://www.collectivecow.com (Pretoria and Johannesburg only)
http://www.vuvuplaza.com/capetown
http://www.bangoo.co.za/cape-town
http://www.dealson.co.za/ZA/cape-town
http://www.garethcliffdeals.com
http://www.sacoupons.co.za
http://247deals.co.za/index.php?city=Cape Town

http://www.todaysdeals.co.za (aggregator)

http://www.24hoursonly.co.za

http://alldeals.co.za/category/cape-town-deals (aggregator)
http://www.dealspade.com/cities/cape-town (aggregator)
http://safindit.co.za/specials (aggregator)

http://www.dealzela.com/Daily-Deals/Cape-Town (aggregator)

http://www.buywithus.co.za/deals/western-cape (aggregator)
http://yadda.co.za/search?region=cape-town (aggregator)

http://www.dealafrica.co.za (aggregator) new, in beta still, very nice layout

http://www.fooddeals.co.za (no deals yet)
http://www.dealison.co.za (no deals yet)

Discovery Credit Card calculator updated to include Max Allowable Spend at partner stores

2011-07-16T16:50:00.001+02:00

Ok, so I’m using my Discovery Credit Card quite a lot now and getting up to 20% cashback on partner stores but I’ve recently hit my limits – what with all those purchases of iPad 2’s and MacBook Pro laptops!
I knew about the 30% rule which meant that I needed to make the Discovery Credit Card my primary card that I use (“Your maximum discountable spend at partner stores is limited to 30% of your total DiscoveryCard spend in that statement period”).
But, I got a surprise when reading the details about the total limit per month: “the total cash back is limited to R10 000 spend at all DiscoveryCard partner stores”.
Now that wasn’t at all clear to me! What did that mean? I figured that if I totalled up the spend at Pick ‘n Pay, Nando’s, Apple iStore, (you get the idea), then this was limited to a total of R10,000 per month.
But I had to be sure… so I sent off an email to the Discovery Card email address.
A few days later a detailed response arrived with an example #BrandPlus.

Example (actual calculations can be found in HTT’s updated calculator):
Total spend on Discovery card is R30,000 in the month
Discount depends on Vitality level and number of years on that level

That makes the maximum discountable spend at a partner stores: R9,000 [=30% of R30,000]

If you spend:

	% off	Discount:
R5,000 at the iStore	20%	1,000
R300 at Nando's	20%	60
R11,000 at Pick 'n Pay	10%	1,100
		2,160	which is R160 over the maximum allowed R2,000

Max discount per statement:
Depending on Vitality level and number of years on that level

Say you have been on Diamond for more than 5 years, then maximum is R2,000 per month

If the sum of the discount at all partner stores is greater than the maximum discount calculated in the table, then the scaling down factor is applied to bring the total discount in line with the maximum discount.

Scaling Down Factor = 2,000/2,160 = 0.925925926

Then multiply each of the cash back amounts by this ratio which results in proportion value. The proportion value is what is reflected on your statement:

If you spend:	% off	Discount:	Scaled down discount
R5,000 at the iStore	20%	1,000	925.93
R300 at Nando's	20%	60	55.56
R11,000 at Pick 'n Pay	10%	1,100	1,018.52
		2,160	R 2,000.00	which is now equal to the maximum allowed R2,000

These calculations are available in HTT’s updated “Discovery Credit Card Calculator 2011” and can be downloaded here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/2nc22i2jb4wd1qg/DiscoveryCardCalculator2011.xls

I look forward to your comments to help me make it more understandable and usable.

Paying for petrol using your Discovery Credit Card: questions answered

2011-07-07T00:33:00.001+02:00

I have seen numerous signs at petrol stations saying that credit cards can now be used to pay for fuel in South Africa – but I’ve often said to myself: “Yeah, right – they just want to charge you for the transaction and hit you with heavy interest charges – I’m not going to fall for that one!”
But then I got thinking – maybe I can earn cashback on my Discovery Credit Card and points to use at the Vitality Mall…. Yes, now that’s appealing.

What if the fees and interest charges were much less than the cashbacks – well, it’s worth an email or two to the discovery card people to get some answers.

I first investigated by going to the web site and there I discovered some other vague-to-me rules that needed clarification.

Here are the questions that I asked and the answers from Discovery Card:

Q: Can you tell me if there are any fees or interest charged if I were to use my Discovery Credit Card for fuel purchases?
A: Interest and fuel transaction fees on Discovery Platinum Card: We confirm that there are no transactions fees when using the Discovery Platinum card for fuel purchases. Furthermore fuel transactions done using the Discovery Platinum card will not be subject to interest if you settle the account in full monthly.

Q: Would the spend on fuel be eligible for Discovery Miles and be counted as part of the total monthly Discovery Card spend?
A: Fuel transactions done with the Discovery Platinum card will also earn you Discovery Miles as well as count towards your monthly card spend.
Note from HTT: Don’t confuse this with the DiscoveryMotor card: using this for fuel purchases will not earn you Discovery Miles. The spend on your DiscoveryMotor card for fuel purchases will not add up to the total Discovery card spend.

Q: Why don't I get cash back for payment at Pick ‘n Pay clothing stores? [as stated here: http://www.discovery.co.za/portal/loggedout-individual/shop-save-card]
A: A purchase at a Pick ‘n Pay clothing store using your DiscoveryPlatinum card is considered an in-store account payment similar to paying your municipal bill at a Pick ‘n Pay money market desk and is therefore ineligible for cash backs. It is important to note that such a transaction will still contribute towards total card spend as well as earning you Discovery Miles.

So, to summarise: I will from now on pay for fuel using my credit card to earn Discovery miles and cashback :)

To re-iterate/highlight to HTT’s readers (from the web page):
You cannot get cash back for payment of in-store accounts or when you make third party payments (for example a telephone account) at partner stores and at Pick ‘n Pay express stores, Pick ‘n Pay pharmacies, Pick ‘n Pay liquor and Pick ‘n Pay clothing stores with your DiscoveryCard. However, these transactions do count towards your total monthly DiscoveryCard spend.

The following DiscoveryCard transactions do not count towards your total monthly spend:
* Cash withdrawals
* Traveller’s cheque purchases
* Electronic funds transfers
* Budget facility transfers
* Fuel or fuel-related transactions on the DiscoveryMotor card
* Foreign transactions
* Transfers between straight and the Medical Savings Booster

Also note that DiscoveryCard cash back does not apply at duty free partner stores.

Telmap 5 maps were not showing [Solved]

2011-07-03T21:45:00.001+02:00

I was extremely happy with the beta version of Telmap 5 on my Blackberry Bold (9700) until the maps disappeared at the end of June 2011 and I was wondering what was going on. A colleague even emailed Telmap support and got a response to call Vodacom support as they were contractually not allowed to deal with clients directly (#Fail).

I kept on opening the maps to see if they were back. I read on the Internet somewhere that the Telmap servers were undergoing an upgrade so I was hoping…

Until last week the maps were blank. Funnily enough the maps of Europe were displaying fine – so I then suspected that perhaps Vodacom were blocking the maps for some reason – perhaps to force users to use the Vodafone Sat Nav software :(
Luckily (for Vodacom) that wasn’t the case :)

I was quite a happy user and excited when I eventually found an app that provided turn by turn navigation! – and I certainly didn’t want to be forced to use the SatNav software. It shows weather at my locations and other widgets too.

Last week, I opened the Telmap software and it wouldn’t open saying that the software had expired! I pressed the BB button and there was a link to “upgrade”…
I took a deep breath and thought that if I upgraded then I would lose “My places” – and wondered how I could extract these from the BB backups that I had made.
Another deep breath accompanied by a click on the “Upgrade” link and I started downloading the new software…

A short while and a reboot later the software started up; the maps were visible again, and I didn’t even lose “My Places”! :) :)
Navigation working again too :)

I am now upgraded to version 5.41 build 49

Now if only this software would show traffic info and tell me where the speed traps are…

Similar posts:
Update your Blackberry Bold 9700 Vodafone Sat Nav GPS Navigator