Happy Christmas and New Year. And if you're not much into Christmas, have a good time anyway.

I'll be nipping home to mumma Cat's place for a few days to get a few square meals, clothes washed, and myself fattened suitably. See you on the other side...

I caught Space Cadets for the first time last night. Johnny Vaughn explains that three 'ordinary people' are being put into space - or so they think. Actually, the whole thing is a hoax, and they're not going anywhere, except a disused base in Suffolk.

During the show, without noticing any particular reasons, I started to wonder if this actually was all a put-up, and that we, the audience were the ones being duped.

Slashdot have got in on the act (and see the comments - seemingly a lot of people think it's what it claims to be). However, there's a link to a (seemingly) well researched entry at coolsmartphone that indicates that indeed, the viewers are being duped.

If nothing else, it's cast a shadow of doubt over everything on the subject. Who's working for C4/Endemol by saying these things? Maybe we're all working for ITV to 'ruin' the show? Maybe we're all stupid, or maybe the experiment is a failure because we've sussed it. Either way, we'll find out soon enough...

Try these two scenarios:

Reception: "Can I ask what it's regarding?"

Me: "It's a sales call, actually"

OR:

Reception: "Can I ask what it's regarding?"

Me: "We sent him some information so we're just following up"

Both are factual and honest, yet one is what people actually want and one is a gentle deception aimed at getting past the "sales filter". I almost feel bad using the slight deception. Almost.

I've been a Nokia diehard for years, ever since I got rid of a crappy Alcatel phone werk foisted on me. I recently switched providers and got a new phone. The Mototrola Razr V3 came with a better deal than the Nokia I was looking at, and I have to say it's really good.

I'd say the Razr is about the best looking, nicest physically shaped phone around at the moment. It's super-slim, and whilst a bit wider than many phones, it incredibly pocket-friendly (and avoids unsightly bulges ;-)

The Razr has all the features you'd expect, half of which I'll almost never use. The camera is 'VGA', so pretty rubbish, but there's also bluetooth and an (included) USB cable. It's got pictures, tunes and video, although no removable memory card to put it on. Unlike the Nokias I've ever used, the Motorola has user-flashable software. That avoids having to go to the store to get your phone's software updated (if indeed you'd ever want to do such a thing).

In actual usage, I've always thought that Nokia have been the best. Their menuing system, and the things that are "one click" away from the normal screen are pretty much just what you want. The Motorola isn't bad at it though - the menus are sometimes a little deep, and the phone book isn't accessible by simply pressing "down", but it's perfectly usable. If I hadn't been spoiled by even the cheapest of Nokia phones, I'd say the Motorola was great.

That said, Motorola should work on their software a lot more. Take a simple operation like changing ring styles from your "normal" setting to a "silent" setting. On a Nokia, you click the power button, scroll down to the one you want (which you can do with the power button, or the navigation keys), click select and you're done.

On the Motorola, you can do the same thing with the phone opened or closed. Opened it's a bit too involved: Press up on the navigator (or press the menu key, and select settings->ring styles), press "change", scroll to the one you want, press "select" or middle of the navigator. Since you probably don't want to leave it there, press the red button to go back to the normal screen. The good news is that switching this way only makes keypress noises, and possibly vibrates the phone briefly if you select a vibrating ring.

Thankfully, with the phone closed, it's easier: Press the volume key, press the smart key to scroll through the options (which are hard to read because they're not written in full on the screen - how daft!) and then press the volume button to select your ring. The problem here is that the phone will make a loud beep if it's on a ringing profile when you start, and again if you select a ringing profile (and keypress noises between times). What's with that? If I'm in a meeting or something and want to quietly silence my phone, then I don't want to draw attention to myself while doing it!

This single example shows the problem with Motorola's software. Whilst it has most of the features you might want, it doesn't implement them very well. It's also not nearly as customisable as it ought to be either. You can't change the names of the ring profiles, you can't change what the four points of the navigator will take you to when pressed, and so on.

Update: Whoops! Sorry, I'm a fool - yes you can customise the four points of the navigator. You can also have the four respective icons shown on the home screen too. I'd like to have been able to select 'vibrate' and 'vibrate and ring' profiles this way, but all you can do is go to the ring styles menu. Hey, you can't have everything ;-)

On the plus side, Motorola's predictive text capability is a bit better than Nokia's, although it takes a bit of getting used to if you're used to Nokia's. It's actually a bit more intuitive, and doesn't require you switch modes to type in some unrecognised words or numbers.

So to sum up: In general use, I'd say the Motorola Razr V3 is really good. It's got a few rough edges which could be resolved in a software update (although probably won't be!). If you're looking for a phone then the Razr is definitely worth considering. I've also heard they're going to be releasing a V3i which will have iTunes compatability - that could be really neat, although if (like the Rokr) has a very limited song capacity will probably be surpassed by an iPod Shuffle.

Update 13/12/05: I've just received a "browser update" SMS message. The phone continuously vibrated (with an almost continuous cadence, unlike normal), made no sound, and didn't stop until I read the message. Lucky I had the phone nearby, otherwise it might have been vibrated for ever. Doesn't seem like a good design feature to me... ;-)

Whilst I hate all things criminal, I do have a certain respect for the social engineering that goes into much of it. Spam is no exception, but the vast majority of it is low-quality 'scattergun' selling. Every once in a while though, you get a good 'phish'; I've just received this one:

From: Mail Delivery Subsystem [noreply@[domain name]]

Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details

Dear user of [domain name],

We have detected that your e-mail account has been used to send a large amount of unsolicited commercial email during this week. Probably, your computer had been compromised and now contains a hidden proxy server.

Please follow instructions in order to keep your computer safe.

Best wishes,

[domain name] support team.

(attachment: message.scr)

See! Clever stuff. For once it's a well written, credible email. However they chose to send it to the administrator of the domain, so of course I knew it was fake. We all know that the message.scr attachment is going to quietly install the proxy server, and is then going to send oodles of mail (although unlikely it'll appear to be from my account).