Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • Buying an iPhone 5 on contract vs buying SIM-free: there’s not much in it

    The iPhone 5’s out, but if you’re buying one can you save cash by going SIM-free? The answer’s yes, but the difference isn’t as big as you might expect.

    Take Orange: the 32GB iPhone 5 is £219, then £36 per month over two years. That’s £864, so the total cost of ownership over two years is £1,083.

    SIM-free from Apple, the same phone is £599. The pick of Three’s SIM-only deals is £12.90 a month, so that’s £309.60. Total cost, £908.60. There’s a difference, but over two years it’s not a huge amount: it’s just over £7 per month.

    Remember too that you can get some cash back by trading in your existing phone (shop around though – trade-in prices vary widely) and you might be able to wangle a discount if you upgrade with your current provider.

  • Everything you ever wanted to know about the iPhone 5

    My friends at Techradar and Tap! have been up all night covering the iPhone 5 announcement – literally all night in the case of Tap! – so if you want to know about the latest iteration of the iPhone then have I got links for you.

    First up, Tap!’s very excellent iPhone guide [iTunes link], featuring some words from me; this one is for Newsstand, so it works on iPhones, iPads and iPod touches. It’s a wonderful publication, with some great design touches. The writing ain’t bad either.

    Next, Techradar’s hands-on, me on the “meh” that greeted the iPhone 5 launch, and my esteemed colleague Gareth Beavis taking a very different view. There’s only one way to solve this. Fiiiiiiight!

  • Nokia’s Lumia 920 is lovely, so I’ll buy an iPhone 5

    Me on Techradar:

    This week, Nokia did half an Apple: it made me look at my current phone and think “hmm, it’s getting on a bit. Time for a new one”. But it didn’t do the other half, which is to actually close the sale: where Apple goes “Boom! This date! This price!” Nokia said “Hmmm! Not sure! We’ll get back to you!”

    The Lumia 920 is a really impressive and attractive phone, and if it had launched this week I may well have ordered one – not least because it’s bound to work out much, much cheaper on contract than an iPhone 5. But Apple’s powers are strong, and it’s going to be hard to resist the lure of a better iPhone.

  • Bye bye PC Plus and What Laptop, Tablet and Smartphone

    The closure of any magazine is a sad event, but I’m particularly sad to see the end of PC Plus and What Laptop, Tablet and Smartphone, and not just because they both paid me to write things. What Laptop was a great consumer champion, cutting through the bullshit to tell you what kit was worth your hard-earned cash and where you should go to get it, and PC Plus was a genuine joy to write for – not least because when I was first published in a magazine, something that as you might imagine I was absolutely overjoyed about, my extremely unimpressed and snooty colleague said “well, yeah, but it’s hardly PC Plus, is it?” Every successive PC Plus byline – and over ten years, there were quite a few – made me remember that and smirk.

    Both magazines are going to the great newsagent in the sky after their next issues, and it’s a shame: they were good magazines written, edited and designed by some of the nicest people you could ever hope to work for. The teams, I’m told, will be okay, taking their talents to other fine titles, and I hope there are many happy times ahead for them all.

    If you ever read my stuff in either magazine – or better still, if you ever read and enjoyed my stuff in either magazine – I’m very grateful for your attention.

  • Why you can’t trust user reviews: sock puppets don’t just review books

    Me, going on about the evils of the internet again…

    A big scandal’s kicked off in the world of books: big-name authors RJ Ellory and Stephen Leather have been writing fake reviews on the internet, bigging up their own titles and damning their rivals’ books.

    They’re not the only ones – John Locke appears to have forgotten to mention “paying for hundreds of fake reviews” in his “how I sold lots of ebooks” guide – and if you think it only happens with books I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.

    Online reviews are utterly broken.

     

  • More on crapware

    Me, on Techradar, writing about OEM software:

    Imagine. You’ve saved up for years, and at last you can afford the car of your dreams.

    You’ve done your homework, chosen the best specs, picked the best colour combinations and haggled for the best deal.

    It’s tasteful. Subtle. Classy. And when you turn up to collect it there are plastic eyelashes on the headlights, green fur covers on the seat and LOOK AT ME I AMS FAST down the side in luminous green letters.

     

  • “No-one cares just because you’ve made something new”

    An excellent post about apps, but it’s really about any kind of digital content.

    Making any digital product is actually about making two products:

    1.         The product itself.
    2.         The reason anyone should care about (1).

    Because no-one cares. Of course, no-one cares. There’s too much stuff, so no-one cares just because you’ve made something new.

  • Steve-E and other movies

    I love it when a daft idea turns into something good: with two Steve Jobs biopics in production, I wondered what sort of films other directors would make about the late Mr Jobs. After some spirited discussions we came up with a shortlist – Michael Bay, David Fincher, John Lasseter, the Coen Brothers and Norah Ephron – and I got to have some fun with the pitches. The result is Steve Jobs: The Movie, in the new issue of MacFormat. I love the illustrations, although it’s a shame my ending for Steve-E has been tweaked a bit: inevitably, that was the bit of the article I liked the best.

    That’s today’s top writing tip: don’t get too precious about your work, because the bits you like best are always cut first.

     

  • The perils of free smartphone and tablet games

    One of my MacFormat columns has made its way online:

    The problem with kids is that the very things that make them so sweet – their complete trust in grown-ups, their utter lack of cynicism and their lack of impulse control – make them very easy to exploit. And that’s exactly what many app developers are trying to do.

    …the App Store is packed with apps whose entire purpose is to trigger in-app purchases, whether that’s paid-for apps or expensive in-app fripperies.

    I have a particular hatred of Outfit7’s talking characters, whose apps’ screens are minefields of “buy things!” buttons, but the nadir is probably Beeline Interactive’s Smurfs’ Village, a free app that includes in-app purchases such as a “wagon of smurfberries” for just £69.99.

    How do they sleep?

    It’s not a problem for me today, mind you: an accident involving a leaky water pistol has killed my iPhone. You don’t realise how much you use your smartphone until you can’t.

  • You are the hero

    I loved Fighting Fantasy books as a kid, and this wonderful MetaFilter post collates all the FF goodness you could possibly want from the internet.

    Meanwhile, this hilarious Tumblr collates many of the ways choose-your-own-adventures could end.