Category: Website news

So the time has come for us all to take a long earned rest after what has been a manic year. We have had some big changes here at the site and you will have noticed that we have not been as on top of things as we …

Dear readers just a quick service announcement as you are aware we lost our editor Leigh and we miss him dearly, he was the heart and sole of this site, and myself and the other writers are determined to keep this site going but we have come across …

Hi guy’s and girl’s this going to be a difficult piece to write but it is time that we cover it. Some of you may have noticed that the site went a bit quiet over the last few weeks. This has been due to a unforseen and devastating …

Running a website is hard going at times. I don’t pretend to understand what Gears does to keep this whole ship running but making these stories more visible in search engine responses is key. Over the years, we’ve been approached by a number of companies who want to …

Hello everybody, after a brief period of time where I was being swamped by the other things going on in my life I have now returned to the site. I have unfortunately been one of the many victims of the unemployment caused by the “virus”. So I have …

I mentioned a rather important thing that happened in my life just lately, but parts of it were still a little “fuzzy” in my head when I wrote it. After speaking to my wife on the phone I’ve gathered a bit more info on how I got to …

Just over two weeks ago I was my normal self. I had a bit of bloatedness, but nothing more. A bit more walking, it’s just some constipation. I always eat well, I exercise, I cycle lots and it’s the first time I’ve bought constipation relief. Boy, that worked. …

Not many are aware of the simply massive change that has happened on the web in recent years. It’s not too long ago that most sites has a completely separate mobile website. It was a cut-down version of the desktop version, with less functionality. Not only that, but …

Have you spent the lockdown thinking about starting your own business? You’ll have several ways of doing it. For many, you can start easily and sell on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Gumtree, or Shpock. That’s simple enough, and, during the lockdown, that’s what our local cake shop has been …

It’s one of those awards again, and they want us to include a link to their site – definitely not for SEO ranking. Oh no. This one comes from Vuelio, who describe Coolsmartphone as follows… Both cool and also very smart is Leigh Geary’s blog Coolsmartphone, which has …

Following the revelation that he’s taking the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine, and after calling nearly every verifiable fact a “hoax”, man-baby Donald Trump has now threatened to close down social media platforms. It came after Twitter dared to question the accuracy of the raging orange mentalist, as shown below… …

Fancy a beer? Fancy a holiday? With Beavertown Brewery you can do just that… sort-of. Instead of heading down to the beach when you should be social distancing, you just take a rest on your own sofa with a can of their new Staycation beer. I offered to …

We’re now getting more and more emails from music and movie PR teams. Not sure why, but today Lionsgate got in touch to let you guys know that, over the next four Saturdays, they will be making four of their movies available for absolutely nothing on YouTube. Whilst …

We’ve now been online for over 18 years and, it’s fair to say, we’ve seen quite a few things during that time. In the last few months we’ve seen our traffic increase dramatically – properly off-the-chart and like nothing we’ve ever seen before. This has led us to …

Writing about smartphones and covering everything relating to them has been part of my life since 2002. This site first appeared way back then and it’s about the time I first met Paul O’Brien. A lot has changed over the years – big mobile companies have come and …

If you’re looking to shop online right now, you can either put on some padding and go to the insane scrums at the local supermarket or try and get an online delivery slot. The latter is becoming an incredibly rare thing, and until the delivery capabilities are boosted, …

Just a few short days ago I doubt we knew quite how life-changing this situation would be. The coronavirus outbreak has become a massive health and economic emergency across the globe. Now, today, we’re coming to terms with the hard realisation that nothing will be the same for …

Following our look at the various coronavirus conspiracy theories, we’ve received a number of quite angry emails. Angry emails aren’t new to us, believe me. We’ve been online since 2002 and, in that time, we’ve had swearing, takedown notices and all manner of threats and criticism. The internet …

Some of you may have noticed that I have been less active on the site lately and now it is time to fill you in on the reason. I have taken on new employment and, with the demands of the job and learning new skills, it’s been all-consuming. …

You’ll have probably seen us mention Ofcom quite a bit here. They are the communications regulator in the UK and currently cover TV, radio, video, telecoms, mobiles and postal services to name just a few. Today the government here will add social media to that list, as they’re …

There’s no big IT team behind this site. We don’t have SEO specialists, marketing teams or designers. So, it usually falls to me to do all that. In addition to writing the stories, the server setup and the database back-end is something I’ve constructed. In the last few …

Over the last week I’ve been playing with the next phase of Remote Desktop Services. What is that exactly? Well, for those of you who have used a “SaS” (Software as a Service), you might already know. It’s the way of delivering desktop applications to your machine via …

Websites, as you have most probably noticed, have changed immensely over the last decade or two. For us here at Coolsmartphone it’s been quite a transition. We had a separate website for mobile phone users, which was a slimmed down and low-tech version. To get the full experience, …

Since 2002, when things looked like this, I’ve written about smartphones. I’ve seen the rise and fall of Microsoft and the rise and rise and rise of Android, iPhone, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The biggest driver for me is the tweets and the emails from you guys. The …

If you’re old enough, you’ll have seen me writing on this site for some 17 years now. Back then there was no social media, no iPhones and no Android phones either. A lot has happened in that time and blogging has become more mainstream. I sometimes get asked …

A VPN is something that we’ve written about numerous times here. They’re great and they will anonymise your browsing whilst also changing your location and getting around and location restrictions which may have been applied by streaming providers. However, if you’re using a VPN to access things like …

After my post on Friday I kinda took a walk down memory lane and ended up in the 90s. A time when there were no smartphones and, if you wanted to get on the internet, you had to block the phone line and crank up a modem that …

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 …

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 …

Are you heading up the social media part of your company? Gone are the days of just casually putting some posts on Facebook. Now you have to come up with really innovative ideas to promote your brand name. In addition to Facebook, there’s also Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and …

We published our first ever podcast, unbelievably, way back in 2012. On Tuesday we’ll be publishing Episode 244. The number 244, as you may be aware, is the dialling code for Angola. It’s also the year that Philip the Arab became the new Roman Emperor. So… ermm.. to …

This is a post I was holding off for a while, but feel today is the right day to make it official. After an incredible 9 years at CoolSmartPhone, today is the final post by me and it seems only fitting that it be a thank you and …

I’ll jump into this once more, but in reality I’m fighting a losing battle. As we’ve seen in recent years, people have started to believe any old crap. Facebook and other social media sites now seem to be the font of all knowledge, despite them usually being a …

Mobile phones have made it easier than ever to browse and buy things. Amazon and eBay are the most well-known, but you’ll regularly find my wife on Next, Very or another clothing website. They’re big, they’re well-designed and they’re full of choice. Not only that, but they look …

This weekend I heard a tune which I really wanted to listen to properly. It was on the radio but it’s nowhere to be found on platforms like Spotify or Deezer. It wasn’t released, but it was all over places like Mixcloud and YouTube. That, then, is where …

Hey you lovely reader. How do you fancy a challenge eh? How do you fancy writing for us? You’d love that. Spewing your inner-most thoughts out onto screens everywhere, getting into the workings of the mobile industry, reviewing kit, checking out the latest phones and covering anything and …

This particular newspaper seems to have perfected something that many want to emulate. Newspapers are struggling. The traditional printing presses are getting quieter and newspaper circulation figures are falling through the floor. Recent figures show some double-digit declines in the actual physical newspaper sales figures. The Sun is …

There is, without doubt, a lot of competition out there when it comes to gaming. The truth is, if you’re watching TV after 9PM, you’re going to see a lot of casino ads and they will target the fact that you can use your smartphone. Your phone is …

Since May 14th 2018, seven US States have entered the sports betting market. For such a long time, Las Vegas has been inextricably linked to gaming, but after the US Supreme Court overturned the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, there’s about to be a big rise …

In the most recent report from Ofcom, we found that now, in 2018, the traditional desktop is a rare beast. In terms of devices accessing the internet, a PC takes just 9% of the pie. Whilst a further 24% is laptops, there’s an obvious and continued decline for …