a new mobile network – giffgaff

I don’t use a mobile much so have always been on a PAYG package but was getting a little fed up of paying 20p a min for calls and 10p for a text, so I looked around for an alternative. I quickly moved to a new community driven network called giffgaff. Not only are the PAYG rates just 8p a min to any number or 4p for a text, but you also get free calls and texts to anyone else on the giffgaff network. There are also ‘goody bags’ which give you a monthly package of minutes and texts etc for heavy users. You can keep your old number and do all the other things you’d expect from a mobile network, and giffgaff runs off the O2 network so is covered wherever you are in the UK or world.

It works via word of mouth and is driven my it’s customer community so  just thought I’d mention it in case others want to explore a cheaper network. You can order a free SIM card here. By ordering through that page you’ll also get £5 extra credit for free when you activate your SIM (they also give me some credit to, so we all get something). Happy Friday!

Information Is Beautiful

The Information Is Beautiful site is great – ideas, information and data creatively visulaised… brilliant.

The True Size Of Africa via The True Size Of Africa.

Redesign – do be do be do

Some time back I took to start redesigning my blog, so that it reflected me better, looked more interesting and also connected people to my various online presences… quite a lot of time later here it is!

I’ve completely overhauled the way the blog looks, but more importantly than the design/theme change, is the way blog posts are now categorised. The new categories better reflect where I am coming from and who I am. In particular they indicate the pondering I’ve been doing over the past 18 months regarding the ‘doing’ nature of ‘mission’ and church, and the tension of Doing vs. Being. So the new main categories are based around Outward (the Activist in me) and Inward (the Contemplative in me), as well as Community, Creative (I think there is a creative person in me some days) and Inspiration (a place for the stuff that inspires me).

I think, and hope, these are more than just technical changes. Language plays an important part in who we are and the way we do things… that’s why I believe our talk of ‘Doing’ sometimes leads to a compulsion to ‘do’ to others, rather than ‘being’ with others. Perhaps I’ll expand on that some time soon… I’m hoping that having done a redesign, I’ll even blog more regularly and that Twitter won’t completely kill my blog!

On the technical side of things I’m still using WordPress.com (which I think is still the best and simplest, and free, blogging platform out there – it’s got an iPhone app, loads of designs/themes, and, with a new Posterous style ‘Email to post’ feature, you can write a post by just sending an email)… And did I say it’s free!

WordPress.com have also developed a new ‘Subscribe by email’ service, which allows people not to just sign-up to get new blog posts by email, but also to choose when and how they get them, which has led me to ditch the similar Feedburner.com ‘Subscribe by email’ service I used to use – so now if you want to sign-up to get emails click here.

And then there’s all those online presences that have been changing the way we communicate and use the internet…