Ever since I blogged about losing my mobile phone about 25 people have emailed personally (mainly for India) asking me if I can help them find their phone or block it (no, I'm not joking). Clearly they think my personal website gives the impression that I am able to do this. Either that or they're neither reading nor looking at what this site offers. Right, so I just received this:

 Hi ,
      I was at yoga yesterday at the lochend community center in edinburgh with  
 my friend samantha,my friends mum doreen and her son and 2 cleaners.Before yoga 
 i had put my phone next to my friends phone on top of a cupboard.Ater yoga i 
 took my phone and put it in my pocket,me and my friend and my friends mum's son 
 all went through int oa little room and played hide and seek in the dark.A 
 little while later about 20 mins i realized that my phone was not in my pocket 
 :(. i only got it for christmas this year :O

 Everyone looked high and low but couldn't find it.
 What shall i do ?
 Can you replace it with a new one?

 Email me back on Dancingdizzy13@aol.com

 Please hurry !!!! x

So, if anybody has seen a mobile somewhere in the Scotland area that belongs to Dancingdizzy13 then let me know. Perhaps I can replace it.

UPDATE

You'd think by writing this it'd put off people from contacting me about lost mobile phones but this arrived a few seconds ago:

 my mobile phone NOKIA N73 was stolen.how to find my mobile phone?please help me
 Imeino:353641013194935
 Name:Yuvraj.D.Sisodiya
 Contact no:09879531575,09725041575
   i am live in india(gujarat)  pls sent me your mobile no.pls quickly your email.

UPDATE 2

It doesn't stop. Today's harvest of stupidity:

 Subject: my nokia mobile 2310 thefted

 Name:p. vishnu vardhan babu
 adress:6-8-9,ravindranagar,nalgonda,a.p,india.
 mobile no:9966519774
 IMEI NO.:355532010272527
 missed date:22/2/08
 model:2310 nokia

I've been using ZYB for a couple of days now. The reason is that since I lost my Palm Treo 650 I've had to use a Sony Ericsson i810w as a replacement which means I can't import my old contacts from Palm Desktop.

ZYB does two things: sync your contacts and sync your calendar between the zyb web app and your phone.

They support loads of different/popular phones (sadly not the Palm Treo) and if your phone is supported you download a little Java app that deals with the synchronization. Now I can add/edit/remove contacts and calendar events using the ZYB web app which is much more convenient than the tiny screen tiny keyboard phone.

Do you love Emacs (or Jed) and you have a Palm PDA or a Treo 650 or something else cool that runs Palm OS; then you're in luck: install pssh

pssh is a SSH client for Palm OS that makes it possible to log in to a server running a SSH daemon and obviously the server will have Emacs.

Haven't had the time to install it myself yet but I will I hope. The only problem for me is that I don't have a WiFi card for my Treo so I'll have to try this stuff via GPRS which sucks.

Finally I got my phone working. This time it's a Sony-Ericsson T610.

Fortunately I get to keep my old number but I've lost all my contacts so I probably don't have your number anymore, so please text me and I'll be able to save it to my new baby-fresh phone book.

I haven't explored the phone very much yet but actually I haven't been able to figure out how to send text messages. When I click the Messaging menu item and then select Text I get three options: Inbox, Options, SMS Memory. Inbox can't be pressed because there's nothing in there. When I pressed Options nothing happens and it seems to stall a little bit. SMS Memory just shows how much space I have left on the memory.

On Sunday I had my mobile phone stolen and yesterday I went to pick up my replacement phone in Liverpool street station (bus travel from my home). What I lost was a Nokia 7250i.

So yesterday, after lunch I went down to the Carphone warehouse at Liverpool st. station to pick up my replacement phone because the shop here in Barbican told me that the Liverpool st shop is the only one who has it in stock (this happened on Monday). Finally there they explain to me that it's out of stock everywhere and that I had to choose a different phone for the same or less value. After endless haggling with the lady in the shop and someone on the phone I caved in and had to settle with an Ericsson T610. The only other decent option was a Nokia 6100 which was worth £80 less than my previous phone. A difference I would NOT cash in on. Even the Ericsson was worth £10 less.

So, in conclusion; just because they didn't have any decent phones in anywhere I had to degrade to a phone I didn't want PLUS pay liability charge of £29.50!!! In other words I lost out on this deal a lot even though it wasn't my fault the phone was stolen in the first place.

The guy in the other shop I had to walk to wouldn't give the phone to me in the box but rather as phone, battery and new SIM in a paper bag (which I had to ask for!). Finally back home I realised that they forgot to give me a charger.

This whole mess cost me two hours and I had to talk to two shop assistants and three people on the phone in the two shops. I confirmed my address twice and had to say loud my password three times.

Needless to say I'm very dissatisfied about this whole thing. I should have read the 3-page-small-print policy more carefully in which it apparently says that they are not liable for any loss of value :) Apparently I have to suffer for their lack of compensation even though I pay for the insurance. What they should have done was to be flexible and "suck up" to me to avoid the bad publicity. Speard the URL of this page so they get what they deserve.

UPDATE II

Because of threats from CPW's Legal Department of defamation comments published on this page I've decided to remove all the comments since according to the Defamatory Defence act I'll have to comply and act as I'm having the power to do so. It's been a hectic two days of studying the legal material on defamation, a lot thanks to some lawyer friends who pointed me in the right direction of reading material and general advice. However, it appears that they've acted on my site a bit late since the already got a £245,000 fine from the FSA

To all the people who've posted comments on this page: thanks for sharing your thoughts even though some of them were pretty vulgar :)

Today as I was lying in Regents Park when two young girls approached me and my friend pretending to sell something when in fact they just distracted me from protecting my mobile phone which I had bluntly left open. As soon as they left and we check that nothing was stolen I realised that they had stole my mobile phone. I started running after them but very near from where we were there was a road crossing and from there they would have been able to run any direction so it would be impossible for me to catch them.

I have now reported it to the police and I will now shortly phone Orange to render the phone useless and claim my insurance. Hopefully I'll get a new phone from the insurance company but I'm not sure that I can keep the old number. So for a little while now I won't be reachable on my mobile number. Until then use: mail_AT_peterbe_dot_com

Today I finally got the phone I wanted. The Nokia 7250i. My old Nokia 8210 has been broken for a while so I haven't been able to talk to people. Only to send messages.

I decided to get a contract phone. So now I'm stuck with Orange for 12 months. However, in the insurance plan I bought into, there's an option to opt-out of the contract after 3 months completely free! I bet there's a catch to that that I have missed because otherwise I would be able to get a free phone and without be stuck to the contract for another 9 months.

My first impression with this phone is that it's clear and crisp. Got a lovely bright screen and easy to use keypad. Some of the buttons, like the 4-directional pointer, were too small for my big fingers. Hopefully I will grow into it and get better precision.

It's got a built-in camera but I don't have an infrared port on my computers to receive the images. Where can I buy an external infrared port or other USB simple device to connect the phone with my PC?

Another nuisance is that there is no predictive text in Swedish! Gahh!! Every second message I send is in Swedish. Does anybody out there know how I can get a Swedish dictionary onto the phone?

The number is the same as before. However, to make that transfer cost me £29.99!! Why? They should be happy that I don't use up another number and that I stay with Orange. Bad Orange!