Author: Olly

  • Hacking the Verismo from Starbucks

    I’ve been wanting a home pod coffee machine for a while now, but everyone you speak to has a different opinion on which is better, and to be honest its all based on whichever one they’ve owned so ive taken most reviews with a pinch of salt.

    I had been eyeing up the Tassimo machines as they had Costa coffees and lots of hot chocolate flavours but they were very bulky and for anything that looked half decent you bloody paid for it! Then i kind of lost a bit of steam for the whole thing as I looked into it all more and more and there were lots more machines coming on to the market – it got swamped and I got bored!

    A few months later we were visiting a customer of ours who specialise in domestic appliances and noticed they had started selling the Verismo from Starbucks, a Pod coffee machine licensed by K-FEE and that boasted lots of different types of coffees which all looked great! We walked out with 3 machines – each with 90 delicious pods to use!

    $_12One of the Verismo machines took a spot in my kitchen at home and we very quickly used the initial 90 drinks we got with it so i started shopping around for more pods for it and found myself on eBay and was presented with some very interesting finds.

    I found some “Espresto” pods for sale, they are made by the same company behind the Verismo machine – K-FEE and from the encouraging description on the eBay listing it seemed like these pods may fit my machine and I may have just found a way of stocking it without breaking the bank!

    The pods arrived, I held one next to a Starbucks one – and guess what? They are identical! This means that things like milk pods can be sourced cheaper, and also you can get hot chocolate pods which are something Starbucks dont offer for the Verismo system – they taste great too!

    I instantly ordered loads of milk and chocolate and even one of their coffees to try and its all good quality stuff – the range of pods available to me had opened up!

    On one of the listings for the Espresto pods it also mentioned “PodPronto” which turns out to be a machine sold by Tesco and – again – licenced by K-FEE – so low and behold, the pods from that fit too!

    Tesco_Podpronto_Latte_Coffee_Pods_157.6G_8_Serving__76528_stdSo now, not only can i buy cheaper milk and coffee pods on eBay i can also walk down to my local Tesco and buy their pods – even cheaper!

    I’m investigating if any other machines have pods we can use, and i’ll keep this post updated – im sure they make other machines for other people so shouldn’t be hard to track down.

    [UPDATE] I have been informed that Tesco are discontinuing their PodPronto machine  – so get all the pods from your local store before its too late!

  • Chill the hell out about “Your Data”

    Every single day I hear a news report about how some new app is stealin your interwebz or how some new “thing” poses a danger to information stored about you on the web, and within offline systems like the NHS.

    This morning on the radio they were talking about a new scheme that the NHS are starting to roll out that allows the data from GP’s (your data! :P) to be used to improve healthcare and help improve medical research.

    Its worth noting at this point that your personal identity information IS NOT part of this data – only anonymous info about your medical history that is presented to them without being tied to you or any person.

    The radio presenter interviewed a few people who said that due to their “unusual” medical history, anyone looking at their data would be able to identify them without the need for it to have their name or anything next to it.

    I’m genuinely amazed people put up a fight with stuff like this. Why wouldn’t you want the info from your doctors being shared with the hospital? And shared with researchers that might be able to tell you you are going to get cancer at a certain age as they’ve been able to build amazing algorithms that analyze your family medical history, spot trends and report things before they happen?

    Its being able to harvest, analyse and utilise “data” that has brought us into the amazing technological age that we live in today. Google can assist you in your day-to-day life just because of the data you give them when you use their services. They’re not spying on you for sh!ts and grins, they are trying to make your experience of using their services mind blowing so you tell your friends and keep using them!

    It may just be me, but when I search Google on my laptop for a company that i’m going to visit – then get my phone out and Google Now has already loaded a tile up so that with one click, I can load navigation to the place I just searched for – my mind is blown every time. This is an example of Google “spying on you” and as you can see, its not scary at all 🙂

    Don’t get me wrong, there are bad guys out there that do want to trick you but if you stick to well known apps and websites and ensure you have virus protection and scan for malware on your PC – and only install apps on your phone from the Google Play store you should be OK.

    The next time you hear a news story about some big company stealing info, texting adverts to your mates behind your back or recording your private conversations without you even realising (Facebook messenger!) get in touch with someone who is in the know before you start ditching amazing services and products from awesome companies.

    PS Facebook Messenger is fine too – stop being dingbats!

  • 2014 Yahoo! Email Lottery SCAM

    Wow. I find the constant “evolving” methods used by scammers to extract money out people a continued source of major LOLs.

    The most recent Style of 419/email scam i’ve encountered is this beauty, from mr.swart.johan@outlook.com (nice to see Microsoft are still providing these knobheads with email addresses to use, first Hotmail and now Outlook.com – when will you clamp down, MS?)

    Anyway, it appeared like this – all official lookin’ heh;

    Email Lottery Scam

    And the attachment was quite clearly a word document (no threat on its own) so i opened it;

    wow_yahoo_lottery

    It definitely looks  authentic, don’t you think? 😛

    Its a sad state of affairs when such a badly designed POS like this can actually scam money out of people – but the fact is it WILL!

    If you get anything through on your email like this, first remember

    “If its too good to be true THEN IT PROBABLY IS”

    Secondly, remember branding guidelines – no multi million/billion dollar empire would allow their main logo to be SQUASHED like at the top of this document! Also Yahoo’s logo changed from that about a year ago!

    I know all these things because I’m in this industry, i keep up to date with changing branding and stuff as its an interest of mine, and also i have a tiny degree of common sense that looks at something like this and, without question, files it under B.

    If you are unsure or would like something looking into then please contact me either through here or through work and the team and I will happily advise and assist you in being able to spot these scam and how to officially report them.

  • Struggling to decide on direction

    My head is literally bursting with opinions and conversations that I feel I need to unload somewhere and I figured it would help me to write some of them down on my faithful blog, but when I start to write I just go on and on and on and on and before long I realise what I’m writing no longer reflects the initial subject I was writing about – and I just save it as a draft and forget about it.

    I just read two of them now and they both end up sounding like the beginnings of some new age scripture written by some crazed anti-society nut.

    Maybe that’s what I am. Hah.

    Anyway, I’m going to attempt to pull bits of them together pretty soon, I probably won’t include so much of the crazy stuff, maybe I’ll post them in the future when my opinions don’t get me into trouble as much.