“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” - Albert Einstein
8th November 2019 / Issue #343
giffgaff Happenings
by bluemoonbaz
Q&A with the CTO - Nov 12th @6pm
All you need to do is pop your question in the widget. Whether it's live at 6pm on Tuesday or ahead of time, @steve__mc our Chief Operating and Technology Officer will get to as many of them as he can. Head over here for more info.
Be part of testing our new beta app
giffgaff have been working to rebuild our app. The new app is now available as a beta for the members to install and start testing. You can find the links to download here.
In case you haven't come across me already... I'm Ikhra- Another new Junior Ed!
Please say hello to a new member of the team @ikhra_h who popped on to the community to introduce themselves to the members. It's nice to meet you! Head over here and say hello.
We've got a community project winner update: The Cowshed
Our members voted and chose The Cowshed to receive £5,000 funding. Since then the Berkshire-based charity has announced its latest initiative, ‘Prom at The Cowshed’. The initiative allows 16-18 year-olds, in schools. To find out all about this fantastic community project, head over here.
Our Members' Discussions
Here are a few of our fellow members' recent discussion threads, head over and give your views:
Say Hello!
by kathleen414
Please give our new member @leigh38600 a big giffgaff welcome to the community. It's fab to have you on board the good ship giffgaff. Say hello here.
Our new community friend @barlo57 says: "I'm new on the community and thought I'd have a nosey, to see what goes on. Looks interesting". Let's give our new giffgaffer a big hug and welcome here.
Our new member entered the giffgaff world recently, out of curiosity. Well, that's a good enough reason and one you won't regret. Please welcome @acurt00 to the community here.
On This Day In History
by jammydodge
1605 The real ringleader of the Gunpowder Plot, Robert Catesby was shot alongside other conspirators Holbeche House. He was buried thereafter but later exhumed along with co-conspirator Percy, who were both decapitated and placed on the side of the Houses of Parliament.
1923 Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party stage the Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch, ambushing prominent German officials at a meeting. They were highly unsuccessful with many of the officials escaping and raising the alarm to which a standoff between Nazi’s and the police ensued. Hitler was arrested and faced trial, where a sympathetic judge gave him 5 years for treason of which he subsequently only served 9 months.
1974 Covent Garden ceased to be London’s famous flower and vegetable market when it moved to Nine Elms across the Thames due to increased congestion around Central London. The remaining central hall was converted into a now very popular shopping centre and tourist destination.
Photo Of The Week
by brulaw
This week's featured photo is Random chap on the street allowed me to take his photo by @thesepticpheasant. Some of the comments included:
- "Nice photo" (benfman)
- "Great result too, he looks full of character" (frenchielove)
- "Great photo. It says a thousand words... Nice one" (jeanlk)
- "What an amazing pic" (netes81)
- "Impressive and impressive nerve!" (stephenpperry)
- "That is a really powerful portrait his face has such character" (sarahjardine)
- "[...] Black/white photos really bring out the details [...]" (bobrobinson)
More rain and the prospect of some snow, but that hasn't stopped any of you from going out and grabbing yet more excellent pictures. As always, thank you for sharing them and please keep them coming.
Amazon Black Friday Tips
by toxiic
Hello everyone, in this week’s gaff I’m going to be covering some tips centred around getting a ‘good deal’ on Amazon this Black Friday. I’ll be continuing this list in the 22nd of November’s gaff, too. And, if you’re wondering, Black Friday is on the 29th of November.
1) CamelCamelCamel is a website that records the prices of products on Amazon at different times. All you do is jump onto the website, type in the product you’re looking at (or Copy and Paste!), hit the search icon and click on the item you were looking. This will then bring up a host of different graphs of the price, so you can see exactly when the price of the product decreased and by how much. You can also set price notifications where if I price drops to a price of your choice, you’ll receive an email.
2) If you’re not a Prime member and have a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime waiting for you, it may be worth activating the trial close to the 29th of November (remember to cancel it before the 30 days) as it’ll cover Black Friday and most of December (AKA Xmas deals!).
3) Amazon Warehouse can be a great place to buy from if you’re lucky. Amazon Warehouse sells what people have returned to Amazon and Amazon are now selling at a reduced cost (as it’s technically pre-owned). These reduced costs can actually be very good alternatives if you don’t want the brand new version of the product. Usually, there’s 20% off of Amazon Warehouse products on Black Friday - but be careful, Amazon Warehouse items get sold very quickly, especially if there’s 20% off!
Hopefully, some of you can use the tips above. These were mostly taken from the previous content on the giffgaff forum but I’ve tweaked them a bit (and added a few more tips) to improve coherency.
Disclaimer: All of the aforementioned websites and tips haven’t been chosen in return for a reward or incentive - they were chosen purely due to their usefulness. giffgaff nor the gaff Team will be held responsible for any repercussions as a result of their use.
If you’re interested, check out my content hub from the giffgaff forum here.
Tech Developments
by revilo10
Exclusive - giffgaff’s upcoming advertising campaign
Straying away from the usual technology news this week, I thought I would use this week’s Tech Developments to share some exciting news on something I’ve been involved with within giffgaff. A few of you may remember that back in late August/early September I shared my experience of going to giffgaff HQ in Uxbridge, and how awesome it was. From there I was able to connect with loads of different staff, and soon after I was invited to come and be involved with the filming of giffgaff’s upcoming advertising campaign in Salford, Manchester a few weeks ago. You may remember that it was advertised on the forums, along with the opportunity to get tickets to see The Voice filming live. Thanks to the opportunities that the wonderful giffgaff staff have given me, today I can give you the first look at the upcoming giffgaff advertising campaign.
If you didn’t know, giffgaff sponsors The Voice, which is a singing competition run on ITV, and it has done for quite a while now. Here's a clip from giffgaff’s 2019 The Voice advertising campaign. Anyway, it all started on a sunny, but cold Saturday afternoon, the last day of filming with the giffgaff crew in MediaCityUK, Salford.
There were two giffgaff crews on-site filming, one was the social team, who would use their adverts for the social media side of the campaign, and the TV advertising crew that I was with for the day, whose adverts will end up being shown before and after The Voice, and during the breaks. The concept for the campaign is made up of a few elements. All filming on the day took place on refurbished mobile phones, part of a new campaign to boost giffgaff’s refurbished phones.
The adverts themselves consisted of people standing on the pink box you can see in the middle of the image above, and answering questions about The Voice (what they liked about it, favourite coaches, what they would sing etc), giffgaff and what their least favourite vegetable is!? We were also recorded saying phrases like “giffgaff, the mobile network run by you” and various other clips which would be put onto the adverts. As soon as I arrived that morning, I was invited to hop on the box and answer a few questions,
Then I stood back for the rest of the day, chatting with the crew, other people who were being filmed and doing a few small tasks here and there. We had such a diverse and cool range of people drop by for filming, many of whom blew me away with their singing talent, facts about their life, where they’d travelled and what brought them to Salford on that day. All in all, it was a fantastic and fun day, and I am really excited for this campaign - after seeing a few of the final edits post-filming last week, I can’t wait for these to go live!
Huge thanks to Abi, and the rest of the giffgaff crew who let me come down and see what it was all about. If you were filmed or saw any of the crews at any point during that week in Manchester, let me know!
Thanks for reading!
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