While still getting to grips with the whole Meh-ness of Google TV from yesterday (or the day before – we’ve been battered into submission by the constant innovation) we’ve not got Google Instant to contend with.

If you haven’t seen or tried it yet, it’s Google searching but not as we know it. The trick is that it anticipates what you’re typing into the search box and starts giving you results before you’ve finished.

Google’s boffins reckon that the typical user spends nine seconds entering a search query and 15 seconds looking for answers. The useless, one-finger-typing bastard. They also reckon that Google Instant could shave between two and five seconds off a typical web search.

We’re not sure if it’s something that the world even needs though. We’ve had a few goes on it and it made us feel dizzy, with the vague possibility of an epileptic fit kicking in. Have a bash at it and tell us your thoughts…

Don’t forget that there’s even more of this amazingness over at HotUKDeals…

Let’s get things underway with a lovely iPhone offer that has crawled out of the woodwork in the past 24 hours like some kind of sleek, shiny, sexy cockroach. Not that we’re suggesting that iPhone users are cockroaches of course.

It’s the 16GB version of the  iPhone 4, available on a contract from 3. The handset is normally £99 but there’s £64 Quidco cashback available at the moment, making it £35. The tariff is pretty good too, although the contract is 24 months. Get on it you stinking cockroaches!

Next, we’ve got a top offer on the standard edition of Halo: Reach for the Xbox 360, whatever the hell that’s supposed to be. We’re no experts on games whatsoever, and are still getting to grips with the downhill level on Horace Goes Skiing if truth be told.

But if this so-called Halo: Reach is the one for you, it could be yours for only £27.04, AND there’s 8% Quidco to be had. There’s a couple of administrative hoops to jump through and discount codes to be inputted but is it really going to be harder than the game itself? (we don’t know)

Finally, a cheap way to upgrade your PC or laptop to run on Windows 7, if you’re not running it already. The catch is that you’ll need to be a lecture-dodging, scarf-wearing, traffic-cone-stealing student in order to be able to get it.

It could be yours for a mere £30 if you fit into that lazy category. Jesus, Horace Goes Skiing, students stealing traffic cones… we’re really up to speed with the modern world aren’t we?

(deals found by HUKD members mo.a, IKayZee and Xeijin)

A couple of months ago, CDWow! were removed from the line-up at Quidco, due to their non-payment of cashback. So in a nutshell, if you’re thinking of ordering anything from CDWow!, think very carefully indeed. More news as and when we get it…

EDIT: Scroll down to see the comment from Alex at CDWow! It seems that The company will continue to trade under new owners and outstanding orders will be fulfilled or refunds will be issued. Keep us posted if any of you have any problems with CDWow!

He then added a nice story about how the crash position we’re told to adopt is to “kill you quicker. AND it impales your head on your spine so they can identify bodies easier.” I was going on holiday the next day and puked the entire journey.

On the topic of phones on a plane, it seems that the majority of Brits actually don’t want regulations on in-flight phone usage relaxed, despite the fact that the regulations were actually relaxed ages ago.

Someone conducted a survey in an attempt to drum up some business for themselves, who we’re peevishly not crediting here (but The Reg, have), asked more than 1500 people if they “welcomed the change in legislation that allows passengers to use their mobile phones”.

Basically, a big chunk of people didn’t want their flights disturbed by people chattering away like idiots on trains. It seems that our inability to make calls in the air is a commercial issue rather than a regulatory one.

Basically, the only reason why we don’t have the ability to do it currently is because airlines can’t be arsed fitting something called a femtocell (which is a tiny base station and sounds like a treatment for female thrush) and a satellite uplink to carry the calls.

A femtocell costs airlines money every time a phone registers with the network. Airlines don’t want to induce a cost unless there’s a massive demand for it – which there isn’t as over half of people over-35 have flatly stated that they don’t want in-flight calling.

It does mean, however, that if you leave your phone on by accident, you don’t have to shit your pants with fear.

• family travel insurance for up to two adults and six children, worth around £250 a year according to Sainsbury’s
• no fees for foreign currency exchange
• interest-free cash withdrawals provided the balance is paid in full and on time
• no charges for cash advances in the UK or overseas
• no charges for balance transfers
• double Nectar points on purchases from Sainsbury’s

The card comes with an annual interest rate of 9.94 per cent on purchases and transfers. Brilliant. Sounds wonderful. Where do we sign? There’s only the matter of the devil in the detail:

• not only is comprehensive travel insurance increasingly less of an incentive due to certain bank accounts offering it as standard, but you’ve got to put substantial effort into spending £250 on it, because it usually costs far, far less

• there’s a £5 monthly fee, which adds up to £60 per year; unless you’re travelling several times a year, you’re unlikely to pay that in fees for cash while abroad or exchanging currency

Perhaps you can transfer a balance from a higher APR to Sainsbury’s lower APR, but then you’d probably try for a 0 per cent APR card first. So it looks shiny, and there are those double Nectar points, after all. Oh year, you want to shop there all the time now there’s double points. Odd that.

[MyFinances.co.uk]

This, however, involves profile pictures – those images a user can only add themselves, and are displayed in a grid if another user clicks on them – and takes a little more cunning. Needless to say, Elliott will be logging out of Facebook every time from now on, and no doubt giving somebody a severe kick in the balls.

You’ve seen the warning – this isn’t the sort of thing you want on your screen in public. If you know what BBW means, or even if you don’t and just want to see the goddamn thing anyway, click here.

[BuzzFeed]

Virgin Atlantic had been at loggerheads with the pilot’s union BALPA over the reduction of holidays for pilots, amongst other issues, but the dispute has been resolved and there’ll be no industrial action as a result.

What’s interesting is the view of the union; this is BALPA’s Jim McAuslan speaking about the negotiations:

“Both sides have conducted talks that were frank, to the point and creative. Whilst the issue has created much debate, we are now happy with both the agreement and the ground that has been laid for our future relationship with the company.”

Happy. To the point. Creative. Perhaps Virgin Atlantic really are unlike any other company, or maybe this union goes about business differently. Regardless, paid-up passengers to British Airways are no doubt hoping their dispute will be resolved in a similar fashion.

The airline and union Unite are due to meet again next week to negotiate over cabin crew pay and conditions, with further disruptions to flights threatened if the matter isn’t resolved.

A homeless person, yesterday

You’ve seen homeless people around haven’t you? You vicious swines probably shout “How’s homelessness working out for ya?” don’t you. Gits. Anyway, for those of you who give change when you can, have you ever considered handing over your credit card to them?

That would be just stupid, right? They’d run off and buy… hang on… do dealers even accept cards these days?

However, some schmaltzy report from Canada suggests that you can indeed trust a homeless person with your credit card.

There was a story recently which saw a New York advertising executive (aka a prick) handing over her American Express Platinum Card to a homeless chap who went off and bought $25 worth of deodorant, water and cigarettes before returning the card.

The Star (no, not that one) sent a reporter out with a load of prepaid credit cards and dished them out to people living on the streets. The main purchases revolved around McDonald’s, with cigarettes coming a close second. Basically, the story seems to go that, if you hand over a credit card to a homeless person, they’ll stock up on groceries and hand you your card back.

Of course, it helps if you’re a reporter and you can confidently get some cash from your bosses to conduct this little social experiment. This means that, when the card goes walkies, you can simply shrug it off and not worry about your identity being stolen.

Anyway, click that link above and read all about and, please note, the reasonably witty panhandling sign about Obama.

See, Vodafone bought a German engineering company called Mannesmann for €180bn so it could use it to avoid paying tax, claim Private Eye. This move could have fallen foul of British anti-tax avoidance laws, so to avoid any fuss, they got in touch with Her Majesty’s Purse Holder and thought everything would be just fine. However, the Inland Revenue pretty much told them to piss off.

Not that this stopped Vodafone. They went about dumping their profits into the company and… well… a rather large legal battle ensued. The result was that tax inspectors went about trying to retrieve some money to go back into our tax system. However, HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) Dave Hartnett decided to move the case from his specialists and lawyers to find nicer, gentler people to negotiate with Vodafone’s head of tax, John Connors.

What happened was that Vodafone were billed for £800m – a move that was decided without consulting HMRC’s litigators and specialists in the tax law. The best additional agreement was that these dodgy arrangements could carry on into the future with a promise of no challenge from HMRC.

Basically, this move from Hartnett seems to be encouraging tax avoidance, leaving the likes of us lot sold well short. Other big companies must be rubbing their hands with glee over this.

We don’t think there’ll be a better candidate than Ralph Lucas, whose audition tape you can see here. We don’t know if it’s his tales of bisexual Mafioso ancestors, or the part when he pretends that the soft drink he’s supposed to demonstrating is red wine – there’s just something about Ralph that we can’t get enough of.

Watch out for the mention of a pizza topping that we’ve never tried before, and hope that we never do.

[Neil Hamburger]

Due to launch in the US of America in the autumn and around the globe next year, the move makes the humble television set the new battleground between Google and Apple. Although they won’t be making their own programmes, Google are hoping to rake in a big wheelbarrow filled with advertising cash at some point following the launch.

Google say that internet browsing on your TV will be a major part of the new scheme, along with the streaming of programming that they haven’t told anyone about yet. Although it sounds as though the unusual new content delivery method will just appear on our screens overnight, that won’t be the case and Google TV will initially be delivered via a smattering of products from Logitech and Sony.

So then, internet and on-demand programming on every TV in the land by 2015? That’s a tough one…

[LiveLeak]

Our partners in seduction are the eagle-eyed bargain wizards from HotUKDeals…

Consider John West – the esteemed tinned fish man. It has come to our attention recently that West is now also all over the microwaveable pilau rice game as well. Who gave him authority to get into that? Eh? What would happen if Uncle Ben started flogging tins of tuna? West would be round there like a shot and knock his head off his shoulders wouldn’t he?

None of that has really got anything to do with the cold, hard fact that you can get 6 x 185g tins of John West tuna chunks housed in brine for only £2.79 from Thursday. That’s a cut-price fish product and no mistake.

Next, our thoughts turn towards theme parks and the rides and the candy floss and the hot dogs and the trying not to vomit all over the place when those ingredients are combined.

The theme park we have in mind is Alton Towers, deep in the belly of the heart of England. With the help of the HUKD massive, you can gain admission to this veritable garden of delights for just £17.00 (adults) and £12.00 (kids) – that’s more than 50% off the regular full price.

Finally, something to sprinkle your tuna chunks on to – if you’re into pepperoni and tuna pizzas that is. It’s the Chicago Town Deep Dish pizza, as invented by veteran house and remixing DJ duo Deep Dish. Possibly.

Weighing in at a not-too-shabby 340g, you can bang one of these together in the microwave in just three minutes from frozen, perfect if you need an emergency pizza (and who here can say they’ve never needed an emergency pizza?) Best of all, you can have a pack of two of them for just £1.00.

(deals found by HUKD members huggychair, kassy2005 and thegroutch)

Yeah. That thing.

Well, they’re being rather nice to those of you who actually spend money on downloading things (as opposed to the majority of you who are balls-deep in torrents every night).

They’re currently offering the whole first season of Spooks for a paltry 99p. However, it’s only for today, so get on it if you’re interested.

That’s not all though. This is part of a weekly thing which will happen from now on until time itself curls up into a ball and explodes… or… y’know… ’til they decide to stop doing it.

This promotion is called Tight Tuesdays where users can buy rent an entire series for the price of an episode. You get to vote on which show will be discounted the following week. That’s good isn’t it?

http://www.seesaw.com/tight-tuesday is the link you need to watch, vote and rob SeeSaw blind.

Take O2, for example – in June the network announced new tariffs to replace unlimited data, in monthly bundles of 500 MB, 750 MB and 1 GB. These new data allowances are for all new and upgrading customers that have signed up since 24 June, and who have had a period of unlimited data since.

Except, well. Maybe it won’t happen just yet. Or at all. We’ve received the following tip from an anonymous source that suggests O2 won’t be actively enforcing caps on data usage anytime soon. We’re told O2 are attempting to implement a system that will throttle a customer’s data to just 14Kbps once they exceed their data allowance. However the system won’t be ready for October, and more likely to be ready next year.

Instead, customers will be encouraged to buy a data bolt-on; at 80% customers will receive a SMS, and at 100% they will be told to check their data usage online and asked to order a bolt-on. According to our source, however, it’s unlikely O2 will take any action unless a customer hits 3GB, at which point usage may be restricted.

In addition to this, our source tells us when O2 begins actively managing and capping data usage, Blackberry customers will be exempt as the O2’s system cannot decrypt Blackberry APN data. In other words, any customer using a Blackberry will not be managed and will continue to receive unlimited data.

It sounds like O2 are keen to ensure customers are affected as little as possible, preferring to target those customers eating up massive amounts of data. Bitterwallet contacted O2 about the claims, but so far the network hasn’t confirmed or denied the information.

UPDATE – an O2 spokesperson has confirmed that “as announced in June, our unlimited data promotion will end for consumer customers in October and our new data pricing model will take effect.”

“We are introducing three tiers of data bundle that will give customers freedom to use data services as they wish (500MB, 750MB and 1GB). Customers will be notified when they have reached certain limits of their usage and will be given the option to buy an additional bolt-on if they exceed it.”