Someone asked me if I had managed to get T-Mobile working on My Sony UX180P once I had got it unlocked from Cingular.

I had been using Orange as I was taking advantage of their ?1 a day unlimited Data but that has now come to a close for 3G Data so I am now using my T-Mobile pay as you go card. They only charge ?1 a day for unlimited data too on their pay as you go scheme and the good thing with this is you don’t have to order as an extra and they will simply keep billing you per kb until you have spent £1 and then cap the charge.

I am in the UK so this process with be different in other countries but I set it up to work with the T-Mobile sim card by doing the following:

1: Pretty obvious but you have to unlock the data card from Cingular
2: Put the T-Mobile sim card into the card slot and switch on WWAN.
3: Load the Cingular Connection Manager
4: Go to profiles then click add new profile and choose “Create Custom Profile”
5: Choose service type “Packet”
6: Leave the dial up number as shown on the screen “*99***1#
7: Enter “general.t-mobile.uk” as the Access Point Name
8: Enter “user” as username, password “wap” then click next,
9: Leave all the ip settings alone and click next. Name the profile, I chose “T-Mobile” and finish.

Then on the Cingular Connection Manager main screen click “Connect Using” and choose your T-Mobile profile. If you are in service it should come up with Ready “T-Mobile”, click connect and that’s it.

There may be other ways to do this but this is what worked for me.

I love living by the lake but at times it really does have it’s downside too. Over the last few days there seems to be a couple of hundred Canadian Geese arrive to add the ones that were already here and boy are they noisy.

When your laying in bed at 3 am and all your hear is them squawking (if that’s what they do) its no fun I can tell you.

The ducks quaking I can handle as they are not so loud and I find them quite soothing but these Geese are something else.

If only they came with a volume control!

Ringtones are still big business and a multi-billion dollar industry but how long will it be before this dies down?

Mobile phones have come a long way since the days of beep beep monophonic ringtones. Mono ringtones due to their basic nature were relatively easy to compose as well and most monophonic ringtone phones towards the end would include a composer that allowed you to compose your own ringtones.

A big boost to the ringtone industry was the introduction of polyphonic ringtones. These were much more believable and a lot of the professionally recorded ringtones actually sounded like the song they were based on. Being multi-toned ringtones they were much more difficult to compose for the average mobile phone user and the only option open to you if you wanted your favourite song as a ringtone was to buy it. This usually involved calling a premium rate telephone to place your order and a download link would then be sent to your phone for you to get your chosen ringtone.

As the market grew so did the options for payment and the introduction of reverse sms billing and the subscription model.

The trouble with the subscription system was that it was often miss-sold with the lure of “Free Ringtones” and aimed mainly at kids who didn’t know any better and before you knew it you could have been charged a £100 or so before you realised. You only have to look at the complaints at Grumbletext to see the underlying problem. Naturally as this problem gained more and more press attention people have become wiser to these so called “Free Ringtones” offers often with a negative effect. Are they becoming too scared to order ringtones just in case they end up on a subscription?

This may all become irrelevant soon as more and more mobile phones now have the capability to play MP3 files. It’s a simple enough process now to transfer an MP3 to your phone that you may already have on your iPod and use that as your ringtone.

Ringtones sales I’m sure will peak and start to decline now but it’s not all bad news for the suppliers. There is a constantly growing market for other mobile phone content including games, videos, wallpapers, screensavers and mobile TV and who knows what else in the future.

Well I haven’t bought a new mobile phone for a while and saw a BenQ-Siemens EF81 on Ebay and decided to get it.

It’s virtually the same size as my trusty Motorola V3 but is a lot more up to date in what it can do. The advert on Ebay said:

The BenQ-Siemens EF81 is a premium handset with premium features. With a magnesium and brushed stainless steel exterior the BenQ-Siemens EF81 packs a lot of technology into an extremely slim handset.

2.0 Megapixel Digital Camera
262,000 colour screen
bluetooth technology
clock, alarm & calendar

Boasting a 2.0 megapixel digital camera with 5x zoom, the BenQ-Siemens EF81 turns mobile snapshots into stunning photographs perfect for viewing on the large 262k colour TFT screen made from hardened mineral glass to ensure durability.

The BenQ-Siemens EF81 also has 3G functionality allowing you to enjoy such features as live video calling from your mobile together with super-fast data download or just simply audio and video streaming.

It does a lot more than that in reality and you can also put a memory card in it so it will store more ringtones, mp3’s and pictures than my old Motorola will.

The only disappointing thing I have found so far is the camera. It’s only got the one and it is fixed to point at you when the phone is open presumably for the video calling so people can see you. That means you have to rely on the small screen on the front of the phone when you are taking pictures which is really too small for that.

Yes, 6 days to go until I get my Sky broadband. I have to say I am impressed with Sky. Since signing up for broadband with them I have received 3 updates by letter, 1 by phone and my free wireless router has already arrived.

The wireless router they gave me is a Sky branded Netgear DG834GT and on opening the box it seems Sky have pre-programmed certain features and give you a network key that has been pre-installed to enter if you are using the wireless connection.

The router also came with an installation CD. I don’t think Sky are leaving anything to chance. I can’t be sure for certain but I think this CD once you are connected will handle all your router settings for you as there are no other instructions with it on how to log into your router. In fact I had to telephone Sky to ask what the username and password is. Usually it would be username “admin” and password “password” but Sky have changed the password to “Sky”.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when I called their Broadband Support department. After going through the usual menu system asking which department you want I was put straight through to a human being who was able to deal with my query straight away! No waiting on the phone for over an hour like some other companies.

There are a lot of broadband providers out there that should take note of that!