As is the norm with me on a lazy Friday afternoon, I was thumbing through the local (free) newspaper yesterday when I came across this ad for a pizza place. The HSBC Celebration of Light — an annual fireworks competition/festival here in Vancouver — has been going on since last Wednesday and concludes today with the grand finale. Thousands of people flock to a number of beaches to watch these fireworks, which are blown out from a barge in the middle of the water. This creates a huge business opportunity for restaurants and eateries in the area and they know it. As such, they want to capture that audience and make sure they dine there before heading out to the beach for the fireworks.

So, as I was saying, I was reading through the paper when I saw a very strange ad:

Sorry for the crappy camera phone quality, but I’m pretty sure you can make out those numbers. I wasn’t a math major at university, but I’m reasonably confident with my basic arithmetic. For $3.49, you can get yourself two slices of pizza and a single serving (can?) of pop. Alternatively, you can pony up $1.50 to get one slice of pizza and a pop… so, why wouldn’t you just do the one slice + pop deal twice instead of getting the two slice + pop deal?

I’m still trying to wrap my head around this, but would you not save yourself fifty cents in the process and get an extra can of pop? I understand that math can be difficult for some people, but if you’re running a business, you had better have a basic grasp of these figures. Can you imagine if their cheese suppliers offered them one pound of mozzarella for $5 or two pounds for $12? Looking at their fireworks pizza special, I have a feeling they’d pick the latter.

Some people love the Apple iPhone and others hate it, but everyone can enjoy a rowdy session of Will It Blend. Having a video of an iPhone going through a blender is pretty fun already, but now you can buy yourself a piece of blending history, because the crazy kook has put the blended iPhone up for auction on eBay. And yes, there have been bids. Many of them. As an added bonus, you also get a $400 blender, an autographed Tom Dickson (the blender guy) t-shirt, and a “Will It Blend?” DVD.

Click here to view the blended Apple iPhone auction on eBay

Because I write for Mobile Magazine, I get exposed to a lot of crazy cell phones, most of which are not directly available in North America. The specs on some of these mobile phones are absolutely astounding and are completely unheard of around these parts. The Nokia N95, for example, comes equipped with built-in GPS and an incredible five megapixel camera… you’d be pretty hard pressed to find something like that offered by Sprint or Fido.

Perhaps they saw that I have a certain level of expertise in the area, but I’m still a little confused as to why The Phone Spot ordered this paid review from me. Why am I confused? Because they cater specifically to the UK market, and the UK market only.

Dem Brits Got A Lot of Choices

The first thing that hits you about The Phone Spot is that there are many, many cheap mobile phones available from a wide range of manufacturers. They’ve got slim flip phones from Motorola — like the ubiquitous RAZR — as well as fashionable musicphones from Sony Ericssson, trendy handsets from LG, and multimedia powerhouses from Nokia. All in all, you will be bombarded with no fewer 84 different phones. That’s a lot of choice.

The selection of wireless providers is also fairly impressive. If you’re a resident of London, you’re probably already pretty familiar with names like Orange, 3, and O2. They’ve also got T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile, not to be confused with their American counterparts.

Finding each of these cell phones is fairly easy, because you can search by mobile operator or cell phone manufacturer, and they’ll list off the different models available (complete with pictures, of course). If you’re not quite familiar with each of the phones and can’t tell the difference between a SLVR L6 and a SLVR L7, you’re also in luck. The handy Phone Finder tool recommends a phone and plan based on the criteria you select (like whether the phone is dual-, tri-, or quad-band). Yes, plans too.

Non-UK Residents Need Not Apply

This is easily the biggest weakness of The Phone Spot. While the selection is huge, navigation is easy, and the Phone Finder tool is useful, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a handset from them without signing some sort of contract with a local cellular service provider. I find this very strange, because here in Canada (as well as in the United States), it is at least possible for you to buy a cellular phone from any mobile operator without signing any sort of contract. The price is usually very inflated — $300 for a phone that is free with a 3-year contract — but it is at least within the realm of possibility. With The Phone Spot, this doesn’t appear to be the case. They also don’t sell unlocked phones, as far as I can tell, so you’d be stuck with that particular operator unless you get the handset unlocked yourself.

Naturally, an issue like this is very frustrating for any international customer. Because of this policy and the way the store is run, The Phone Spot is limiting themselves only to UK customers, and not only that, they’re limiting themselves to UK customers who are willing to sign some sort of contract.

The Spot to Buy UK Cell Phones

I can’t knock the people at The Phone Spot on very many things. The site layout is exactly what it needs to be, nothing more, nothing less. You can choose your handset based on the carrier, manufacturer, and feature set, and then it’s up to you to select the voice and data plan that best suits your needs. After agreeing to a contract of a certain length, you’ll find a lot of cheap phones to choose from, many of which can be had for free (assuming you sign an appropriate service agreement).

My biggest suggestion, if they would like to expand their business, is to open up shop to customers outside of the United Kingdom. There is a huge market for unlocked world phones — in the Vancouver area, a lot of people are interested in international handsets not available through the local providers — so they can rack in quite a bit of dough.

Who knows, if The Phone Spot started selling unlocked phones, I might get something from them. The high need for novelty is one of my greatest faults, after all.

I really should get a business card designed sooner rather than later, since I’ve been in the freelance writing business for a while now. Because the majority of my work is online, so are the interactions with many of my clients. I interact primarily through IM and email, so there is very little face-to-face time involved. After all, Mobile Magazine is based out of Victoria, LoveToKnow is based out of California, and so on. But, as luck would have it, I’m slowly developing a more local client base as well, and I’m actually meeting these people in real life.

For example, I’ve started writing product reviews for TheTechZone and blog posts for BlueFur. Both of these guys — John Chow and Gary Jones, respectively — live in the Greater Vancouver area. As my freelance writing business continues to grow (I recently registered for GST… it’s like I’m legitimate or something), I’m confident that I will start to get more and more local clients. As such, it’s about time that I get myself a business card. I have a few ideas in mind, but my gut is telling me that it is probably smarter to get a professional to draft up a design for me.

With that, I turn to you. Have you had any particularly positive experiences with a business card designer? Following in the same line of thought, I’d like to know what business card printers you recommend as well. I would heavily prefer a local (Vancouver) business, but I’m up for getting it shipped as well. Quality is important of course, but it is also imperative that they allow custom designs for a reasonable price. I’ve already looked into Vista Print and I’m not a fan of the “template” designs.

Thanks in advance!

Father’s Day is only one week away, so for any of you last minute people out there (myself included), here is a gift guide for daddy day. Because I write for a couple of tech sites, these gift ideas have a slight geeky slant to them, but that’s only because those are the Father’s Day presents that come to mind.

Free Gifts
Can’t beat the price, right? Just because you want to show your appreciation to daddy dearest doesn’t mean that you need to break the bank. In fact, you don’t even need to access the ATM or your VISA account whatsoever. This is particularly suitable for people who have parents in another part of the country or world, because the cost of shipping a physical gift can sometimes be more than the gift itself, especially if you want the present to arrive in an expedient manner. Paper might be obsolete, so why not just send ecards for free? Email it over with a message from the heart and I’m sure your dad will love it.

Gifts For Under $50
It seems like every these days is rocking an MP3 player of some kind, but it can be quite expensive to get into the market, especially if you’re looking for all the latest features and oodles of storage capacity. Thankfully, the people at Creative have just announced a very affordable entry into the portable music industry. The Creative Zen Stone is squarely targeting the same market as the clip-tastic second-generation iPod shuffle, but the Zen Stone has an MSRP that’s about half as much! Like the shuffle, the Zen Stone lacks a display, but it’s about as compact (and attractive) as it gets. Better still, it comes in all sorts of different colors.

Gifts For Poker Geeks
Admittedly, poker is one of my obsessions. I typically play a home tournament with my friends on the weekends, and while there is a tiny bit of money on the line, it’s more about bragging rights than anything else. If I want to make money playing poker, then I do that with a cash game at the casino. In between these real-life sessions, however, players can learn a lot by playing online or on the computer. There are a variety of different software programs out there that not only give you some valuable experience at a virtual poker table — playing Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Seven Card Stud, and so on — but some even offer useful tips and insider tricks. The most entertaining are the licensed games that feature the likeness of poker celebrities like Johnny Chan, Daniel Negreanu, and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson. From poker sets to poker tables, poker software to poker accessories, there really is no shortage of possibilities in terms of gifts for card-obsessed daddies.

Gifts for the Gaming Daddy
Video games used to be the realm of kids and teenagers, but guess what… the Space Invaders and Pac-Man generation is all grown up and many of them have families of their own. Even folks that played Atari and NES as children are now old enough to have children of their own. Just because they’re older, however, doesn’t mean that they’re ready to abandon their gaming obsession. As such, getting a video game system for dad can be a very welcome and good idea. Nostalgic players will appreciate the Wii, for example. If the father in question is more of a first-person shooter fan, however, the Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite is a fantastic option. There’s a huge library of games already available, including the now legendary Gears of War. Fragging on that plasma TV has never been more fun.

Other Great Father’s Day Gifts
Other technological-inclined presents that you might want to consider for Father’s Day include digital cameras, digital camcorders, big screen TVs (if you have the budget), DivX-capable DVD players, car audio, and old school DVDs. Some items that I can personally recommend are the following:

• Canon PowerShot S3 IS digital camera with 6.0 megapixels and 12x optical zoom (around $300)
• Logitech VX Revolution wireless notebook gaming mouse (about $70)
• Digital photo frames, especially WiFi-capable ones, take picture-showing to the next generation ($100-$300)
• V-Moda Vibe Modaphones: noise-canceling ear buds with exceptional audio quality (less than $100)

Choice is always a good thing. Although it can be a little overwhelming to have too many options, I’d rather be in that scenario than being in a scenario where there is only one choice. It used to be that if you were in the market to buy a new computer, there were two possible operating systems that you could get from the big box retailers. You could either buy an Apple MacBook (or iMac or Mac Mini) and use Mac OS X, or you could opt for a different manufacturer and end up with a computer than ran on Windows Vista. Thankfully, Dell is opening the door to more options.

Following in the same line of thought that lets you custom configure your computer machine, upgrading the hard drive, RAM, display and so on to fit your needs, Dell will soon be giving you a choice when it comes to operating system. Apparently following a backlash of negative comments from current customers who were displeased with Windows Vista Home Premium, the world’s largest computer maker is now offering several of their mainstream systems with the tried and true Windows XP. You won’t be able to plop Mac OS X on a Dell, but it’s good to have a choice between two Microsoft operating systems.

But wait. There’s more.

Word on the street has it that Dell will soon be giving you the option to have a computer pre-installed with Ubuntu, the most user-friendly build of Linux currently available. Because Linux is free, this may lower prices on equivalently-equipped machines. Choice is good.