Over the years I’ve had more mobile phones than I care to remember. Most of them I’ve either sold on or given away to friends and family but I still have a pretty large collection. Hey, who knows, they might be worth some money one day.

The first mobile phone I had was bigger than a brick, probably heavier as well and with a battery life of a whopping 4 hours! Thankfully things have changed a lot and improvements unimaginable before are now a reality.

One of my most favourite phones was the Siemens SL55.

A triband phone with colour screen and polyphonic ringtones and a really tactile feel to it. It was so small you could lose it in your pocket and I used this phone for many months before continuing on my quest to find “The perfect mobile phone“.

The trouble with mobile phones is the technology moves on at a tremendous pace that within weeks of you getting your brand new phone it no longer cuts in anymore. This is what I found with the Siemens SL55. Great when I got it but lacking in a camera and bluetooth it just had to go.

I’m currently using a Motorola V3i that I’ve had for a while which I’m pretty much happy with but want to change soon. The only problem is looking around there isn’t much on offer that appeals to me. It seems we have gone past the days of miniaturization and phones seem to be getting bigger all the time.

It seems the Inland Revenue are constantly in the press nowadays highlighting their errors and mistakes and how the tax payer is soaking up the burden for their own mistakes.

For 2 years in a row they have got their Tax Credits wrong overpaying countless numbers of people and have written off millions of pounds as they have been unable to collect the overpayments from everybody.

Who pays for this? We do. As tax payers we are now paying for their mistakes which leads me to the question, are they trying to raise extra taxes by other means?

This year I received a fine of £100 for supposedly not filing my tax return by the 31st January 2006 deadline. Now I know this wasn’t true as it was hand delivered to the tax office and when I queried this they confirmed they had received it on the 31st January 2006. “So why was I fined” I asked, “don’t know” was the reply and the fine was duly written off.

My girlfriend was also fined for not paying over stamp duty to the Inland Revenue in time when she purchased a house. She was fuming as this is all dealt with by the solicitors. She had to take the time to get proof that the cheque was sent in time and indeed cashed before they would write off the charge which they did.

Now how many people would bother to query these instances and simply pay up because they have been told to. Is this a ploy for them to generate more revenue or just another case of their incompetence?

I don’t know how unusual my surname is but I’ve never personally met anyone apart from family with the surname “Nicosia“.

I remember years ago going on a trip to Cyprus and when I got to passport control, the official checking my passport commented on my surname and asked me “Did I know that my surname was the same as their capital city?”.

Like I’m not going to know that! The embarrassing thing was there were at least 150 people who had just got off the plane queuing behind me and he called his 3 colleagues from the other queues to come and have a look at my passport. Quite why they were all so excited about this I don’t know. Maybe it’s an uncommon name over there?

My father originates from Sicily so I doubt there is any connection between that and Cyprus. Who knows, maybe I’ll look it up one day?

Well I am pleased to say that I have finally left TalkTalk Broadband and I definitely won’t be going back to them anytime soon. I could have got my broadband for free with them but I’d rather pay for something and get a good service that I can rely on.

Talking to TalkTalk support has been a waste of time and money and the people I have got to speak to either don’t know what they are doing, don’t understand their own systems or simply don’t care. Even yesterday when I called them to say my broadband wasn’t working they couldn’t tell me whether or not I was still connected to them  and suggested I report it as a fault.

It turns out I had been disconnected and BT hadn’t emailed PlusNet to tell them my migration had gone through. Entering my new login details to my router got me connected straight away.

The first thing I noticed is the speed. Although I have still to get an increase of my connection from 1Mb to 8Mb the whole internet just seems to have come back to life. Surfing the internet is so much faster with PlusNet even at these low speeds and I can’t wait to see the further improvements when I’m on 8Mb.

I chose PlusNet over others as I noticed they had topped the customer satisfaction charts at uSwitch with 92% and they didn’t tie you into any long term contracts. Who wants to be stuck into 18 month contract with anyone?

Any company who is also prepared to do a no cost 30 day trial have to be confident of their own services too and that was the point that finally clinched the deal. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

If you’re fed up with your broadband provider then check out PlusNet for yourself. They do up to 8Mb connections from only £9.99 a month. Although there are free deals around, the saying “You get what you pay for” springs to mind.

Just when you thought ringtones couldn’t get any more ridiculous than the pesky Crazy Frog, enter the silent ringtones.

A silent ringtone has been invented that produces a sound outside of the hearing range of most adults. Kids can now have a silent ringtone on their mobiles that they can use at school to alert them of a call or text message without the teachers hearing it.

Silent ringtones also know as ultrasonic ringtones or the Mosquito ringtone are constructed of sounds above a certain frequency usually 16kHz but go as high as 18kHz. The idea being that kids should choose the highest frequency they can hear as they are less likely to be detected by adults.

The other option for them was to have their phones on vibrate but when your phone vibrates it makes a noise that everyone can hear.

Can you hear it? Try it here.

Now I can’t hear the silent ringtone, I guess I’m too old and whilst I don’t agree with kids having mobile phones in classrooms the silent ringtone could go a long way to solving the noise pollution of other annoying ringtones that they may have on their phones instead.

So I for one am all for silent ringtones so all you kids out there, go get one now!