C'mon Bill, you've written for El Reg long enough.

Mines the one with death to freetards on the back and I'm not afraid of Bill Ray on the sleeves.

if this catches on. I get enough spam in my email, I really don't need it on my phone as well. The idea of people actually signing up to get spammed 24/7 is crazy, never mind having to give them your personal details to do it...because evrybody gives their personal details away to spam emailers...

So if you're going to get spammed anyway, why not get free calls out of it?

At least they are up front about it and you have to opt in, unlike those parasites at BT and phorm.

They send me an MMS.... I don't read it....... Surly this won't work with the masses, or will they cut you off if you don't buy enough things they advertise?

I wonder if there are any subscribers named Logan in the system currently, and whether there mightn't be a renewal ceremony at age 25 in the works.

Can't wait!

billg as usual, simply because he is evil.

You just have to text HELLO to 82595 for the invite

...a month?

I can't think of anyone 16-24 who wouldn't go through that in two days!

Steven R

and they seem to send me spam anyway!

Just find a way to filter the spam... And you have a free phone without any advertisement.

... It's kind of weird that companies are almost paying you to receive their ads. Maybe one day, I'll be able to watch ads all day, and stop working...

Paris, because she's not working either...

My current provider spams me and gives me nothing in return.

Of course I'm the advertisers worst nightmare.. I ignore all ads (tv / browser / phone / email) - even when there is a funny one I may have a chuckle, but couldn't care less what they are selling because I'm not buying it.

I would not mind a system that takes it a step further.

A customer should be able to go to a webpage accessible for free by your phone to ask for certain commercials. Say I am looking to buy a new laptop with some specific features (say 15inch screen XVGA, S-video out, 3 USB ports, ...). I would like to be able to tell the advertisers I am looking for that item and let them give me their best offer.

You can get paid to read email, view adds, but even if you did it all day, you would not make a living out of it ... :(

@Wim, I have thought of similar things for quite a while - what is it worth for a company to send me ads about contact lenses when my eyesight is perfect? Send me stuff I am interested in (a list of subjects/products to choose from)

A possibility to exclude brands I h8.

E.g. McDonalds, Nike, CocaCola, Pepsi, Heineken, Bud ... ads have a negative/repulsive effect on me - I don't buy that crap so spare those ads.

I don't think that advertisers would go so far as to do what you want, Wim, besides, that would mean that need a great number of adds.

Paris, because I live in wonderland, France :-)

More advertising in our lives.

But as others have already said, we view enough ads as it is with jack all in return, so a few more can't hurt.

I signed up to the service about a week ago, and now I'm just waiting to port my number out from O2. This service is perfect for people like me, I hardly ever actually phone people, and only send the occasional text, so if I can get it all for free, then woo! O2 tried to convince me they had a contract that would suit, but when they asked how much I top up, the woman balked at my reply of £10 every three months.

It's a maximum of 6 ads per day, and you don't have to reply to them, you don't even have to read them, just hit delete. If you block the ads (ie if they notice you haven't received about 50% of the ads sent) they notify you, and eventually cut you off, which is pretty fair tbh. You also get to tell them exactly what you're interested in, and they send you ads accordingly. Not hugely different from Gmail (which I also use) in my opinion.

Works for me!

They had the blyk beauties on the streets of croydon (obviously they where from out of town)... and they where targeting 18-14 yr males with thier honey pot tactics.....

sadly i am too old and grumpy looking to be targeted by pretty blondes...., unless thier chuggers from oxfam,wwf etc

mine the old mans coat

It's pretty simple in Symbian and PalmOS to latch on to the messaging API and manipulate the inbox to just drop and not notify of certain messages with a little bit of hacking. Even J2ME/MIDP on a dumbphone can do it with some effort and a little trickery, although not as easily.

Seems like a good way to get a spare SIM with a handful of minutes and SMSes to me. I wouldn't use it as any kind of a "primary" phone or anything, but as a spare it wouldn't hurt.. ^^

What I wanna know is where they come with these numbers like 247 minutes. XD Just round up, it can't cost that much ;)

Mine's the one with the smartphone in the pocket dropping texts ;)