Tag: charity

Cancer. An update.

In the last two or three weeks I’ve had a massive life event which I cannot even try to make light of. I know you’re not here to read about cancer. If I was you, I’d be pretty apprehensive about even thinking about it. Nobody wants to think …

I’m on my bike. Watch live!

Each year, in order to stop my belly hanging over my trousers and to help a very worthy cause, I get on my bike for a lengthy and very exhausting ride. It’s all to help a charity called Edwards Trust. They provide bereavement support to parents and children …

It’s that time of year again folks..

Each year, me and a group of other idiots do a “big ride” for charity. It’s also used as a yearly goal to stop us all getting fat. This time it’s the “Way Of The Roses” route on July 27th. This is a 170 mile journey with 8,085 …

And another £1000 !

In my earlier article I should’ve also mentioned that Bournemouth Hospital Charity have also been awarded a £1,000 from Vodafone. Their Bournemouth store team chose the deserving cause. Bournemouth Hospital Charity helps with care and treatment for patients in the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals. Through their charity …

And the Vodafone Community Connection Award goes to…

Vodafone is dishing out cash to worthy causes via their “Community Connection Awards”. It’s designed to support and highlight worthy causes in the communities surrounding the Vodafone stores across the land. The network has invited clubs, causes and groups to apply to win an award. All they need …

Hey. I’m back and I’m doing another cycling thing.

I’ll give you the short version of this blog post so that you can basically do a “tweet read”. I’ve just been on holiday. I ate too much. I sat around too much. I got all chubby and fat. On Sunday I’m going to squeeze all that blubber …

Buy a phone, run a speed test, give to charity!

Wanna donate some cash easily? Well, there’s a couple of ways we’ve found of doing it. First, the Tesco Mobile guys are donating a crisp £5 for every single pink phone which is sold until June 26th. The money goes direct to Cancer Research UK and ties in …

Morning everyone, I’m back again

My job involves a lot of sitting down. Sometimes I get up for coffee, but then the snack machine starts looking at me and I end up with a chocolate bar too. A few years back I ran up the stairs and was a bit surprised to be …

A quick update on that bike ride

Yes, we did it. Thanks to everyone who supported us ! We made it all the way from Lichfield to Edinburgh in just 3 days. Amazingly I didn’t use a portable charger once during the entire trip and the HTC U11 I have on test traveled the entire …

Scotland Charity Special – Watch me live!

Last week I asked our 10,000 Twitter followers and 40,000 weekly readers to help by donating a bit of cash to Edwards Trust. They help parents and carers bereaved, or about to be bereaved, of their son or daughter. They also support children and young people who are …

Good morning all. Yes, it’s that time of year again.

My day job involves a lot of sitting down. A lot of tea drinking and a lot of mouse moving. It is not, let me tell you, the most strenuous job in the world. A few years ago I had to register with a new doctor. He wanted …

Three provides power for The Breakfast in A Bag team

Let’s be honest we all often knock Mobile Networks, sometimes a little quickly, so it’s great to be able to report on a Network making a positive move to support a community. Breakfast in A Bag are a team who support the homeless in London by providing free …

Charity update

Hello all, hope you’re well. For the last few days I’ve been up on the Lake District. Not for a holiday, but for a rather grueling bike ride up 30% hills and a lot of very rugged mountains. It was a combined 20,000 foot climb in wind and …

A quick break in our regular programming

Yes, it’s that time again. Another one of my bike rides and another attempt by me to relate it to mobile phones or something. No. I’m not going to do that this time. Yes, I’m doing a bike ride. Yes, it’s even more insane this year. We’re basically …

A quick break in regular programming

A very quick mention for a couple of charity things. Firstly, Simon Allum (you know him, he’s written a few articles for us) is doing an insane thing – the Three Peaks Challenge. He’ll be part of a small team walking Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon in …

In the middle of no-where, blogging with just a phone. Day 1.

Good morning. Today I’m in a place called Kirkby Stephen. It’s roughly around that small silver pin and is small market town in Cumbria, near the Lake District. I’m on my mountain bike, and have a 170-something-mile journey using the Pennine Bridleway. We’ll be heading to Harlington, in the …

I’m riding a bike again. Help me. Help me.

A quick break in regular programming while I royally abuse my position and ask you for donations. If you don’t want to read all the details but would like to help, just pick up a phone and text the phrase NAZG69 followed by a space and then £2 …

A big thank-you

Remember earlier in the summer when I kept posting about my charity bike riding? If you missed it, I basically had too much to drink and kinda agreed to get fitter and do some mental rides to raise a bit of cash for charity. After riding a mountain …

Right, I’m off

OK, I’m going to take some airtime and abuse my position just one last time. Don’t turn off just yet. I’ll make this brief for you. Later today I’ll be heading for London. I’m not attending a fancy press launch with miniature food, no. I’m going to get …

Turtle Rock iOS review – it’s all for charity folks

Here’s a novel twist.  A developer who makes games who, wait for it, wants to donate the proceeds to charity. How unusual I hear you cry, but how refreshing. BeepCloud is a new company who’s mission statement is to ‘build creative new sources of revenue to help fund charities …

Quick cycle-related news update

Was my previous post just a cheap way to get donations to the Douglas Macmillan Hospice? Well yes, it probably was a bit, but they provide care for those with progressive diseases and a limited life expectancy. It’s a bloody good cause and I’ve only had 11 donations, …

How much tech can you put into cycling?

In just a few days time I’m planning to do a cycle ride for charity. It’s in aid of the the Douglas Macmillan Hospice. I have a grand total of £0 in sponsorship on my JustGiving page. I’m dedicating it and doing it in memory of my father. …

Co-founder of Wikipedia invigorating charitable MVNO

Continuing very much with what appears to be his personal modus operandum, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has recently taken a strategic stake in The Peoples Operator mobile virtual network operator business and been appointed to the board of the company as Co-Chair. This should mean he will ignite the fledgling companies …

I’ve gone mad, and I need your help

I could just dress this up and tug on your heart-strings like those daytime TV adverts asking for “just £2 per month” but I won’t. I’ll instead tell you a story. A few months ago I’d visited a friends house. It was just after Bonfire Night and I …

Just give me five minutes..

Hello. I’m going to borrow your eyes for a minute. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it brief, but today it’s Children in Need. If you’re not aware, this is the BBC’s big charity event and it supports disadvantaged children all across the UK. As an example, just up the …

Help For Heroes: Hero Bears

The word hero is bandied around to cover anything from a footballer scoring a last minute goal to someone that helps an old lady to cross the street.  Whilst some may view these people as heroes, the reality is that heroes are few and far between in today’s …

Humble Bundle 2 out now

The idea of a Humble Bundle is that you can buy 4 games for however much you want and choose how to split the money between the developers and charity. If you donate more than the average (currently $4.52) then you get 2 free games as well. The …

Charity MVNO – Donate Mobile

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a type of MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) that we had not covered before; Charity MVNO’s. I have since been contacted by Donate Mobile, pointing out that I had missed them from my article. I’ve updated my original post but …

[UPDATED] A lot of work for charity, don’t like to talk about it…

Don’t worry, this is not a cry for help from the impoverished staff here at CoolSmartPhone! Continuing in our irregular series of articles about MVNO’s (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) we turn our gaze to charities. There has been such a large uptake of mobile phone usage in the …

Humble Indie Bundle for Android 4 now available

Indeed folks, a new Humble Bundle is out! This time it’s for Android, Mac, PC and Linux. This month, the Bundle contains: Splice – an experimental microbal puzzler, making an Android debut; Eufloria – take to space, conquer astroids and grow an army of seedlings! Eufloria is a real-time …

iPhone 5 – The queues have already started

Sure, you could just pre-order an iPhone. Just a couple of clicks, then you’re free to sit in front of your favourite TV show or perhaps pop to the pub. However, down in Regent Street, there’s people waiting for the new iPhone 5. It’ll be available to buy …

Help stick a red nose on Mount Everest

Daniel Hughes will be heading up Mount Everest to try and place a red nose on the summit next May. He’s asking a million people to donate £1 each to raise £1 million for Comic Relief. HTC are the lead sponsor, and will be provideding equipment to help …

Save Coolsmartphone – The winners

OK, short version. About a week ago we found out that this very site was going to be taken off-line. It all revolved around a rather substantial excess bandwidth charge. Thankfully, you guys cam to our rescue and generously donarted your own hard-earned cash to keep the ship …

UPDATE – The biggest Coolsmartphone giveaway

Three days ago we had a rather huge problem. Some very unexpected charges were added onto our monthly hosting costs for one of our servers. It seemed that we’d breached some “fair use” policy regarding “unlimited” bandwidth. Either way, we had until Friday to pay an unbelievable amount …

A status update, and a massive competition.

Morning all. I’ve been writing on this site for 10 years now and, I’ve got to confess, the last few hours has been amazing and shocking in equal measures. Our main problem is that our “unlimited” bandwidth didn’t turn out to be quite so “unlimited” after all. We’ll …