Category: android

Pick n Pay Happy Hour

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Once you’ve read this post, please share it so that everyone can benefit.

Pick n Pay Happy Hour??!!??

I thought that it was a bit of a gimmick, but there were a lot of signs in the local supermarket, so I updated my app, allowed notifications, and…

…then I forgot all about it.

But this morning: PING!

Happy Hour between 2pm and 3pm this afternoon. Get R250 off when you spend more than R500.

Seriously?

Well, there are two parts to this. Firstly, I needed some stuff from Pick n Pay anyway, and secondly, who turns down the chance of R250 off in this sort of economic climate? Or indeed in any economic climate?

The timing of the Happy Hour wasn’t ideal, but it was certainly doable, and so I thought I’d give it a go.

And… it worked:

R250 off, just for doing the shopping I was going to do anyway, but checking out at 2:06pm instead of a couple of hours earlier.
R250 is comfortably two meals for a family of 4. It’s 7.5kg of washing powder. It’s 10½ loaves of bread. It’s 14 litres of milk. Or slightly less of each of them if you share it about a bit, obviously.

I’m not sure how Pick n Pay gains from this, but for a family like us, who always have something on the shopping list, and usually have room in the freezer, this might actually be a bit of a gamechanger.

Add in the R115 of Smart Shopper points that I used, and that’s 46% off my R800 shop this afternoon.

That’s pretty amazing.

Note: This isn’t an ad. I’m fully transparent, and I tell you when I’m doing ads. But please share this post. Everyone needs all the help that they can get at the moment, and this offer is certainly helpful.

Day 553 – Fire layer

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Good news for Cape Town and the surrounding area is that we will apparently soon be able to visualise wildfires on Google Maps. Just like traffic, terrain and satellite have their own map layers, starting this week, the rollout of a “fire” layer will begin.

Wildfire boundaries should be updated on an hourly basis, and Google says you’ll be able to tap on a fire to see information from local governments, like “emergency websites, phone numbers for help and information, and evacuation details. When available, you can also see important details about the fire, such as its containment, how many acres have burned, and when all this information was last reported.”

That additional level of detailed information will begin in Australia and the US, but as a city which suffers from veldfires every single year, Cape Town will surely not be far behind. At which point, this feature turns into a service and actually becomes interesting and useful, as opposed to just interesting.

Phone tracking

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I read this very interesting NYT article and thought that I should share it with my readership.

Obviously, I have many apps on my phone that use my location to offer me better, more accurate services. Indeed, some apps rely solely on tracking my location and sharing it with others. And for me, that’s really not a problem: the benefits far outweigh any potential negatives.

If I was in a job where that sort of information could compromise my security, then yes, I would be concerned.

But if anyone can weaponise my weekly visit to Pick n Pay by hacking into the logs of my location pings, then good luck to them.

Sony ad

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Sony are advertising their Xperia cellphone range with a photo of an Xperia cellphone taking a photo of an incoming beagle and for the first time since 2005, I’m considering switching brand.

While the Xperia is undoubtedly brilliant at taking photos (and videos) of approaching beagles, the happy-go-lucky, blue sky, not-a-care-in-the-world imagery portrayed by this advert masks the dark reality, continuous hassle and huge expense of actually owning a beagle.

So very misleading.

On a more serious note, I love my Xperias and it would take more than a beagle on one of their ads to get me to move. I’m getting the XZ Premium next month, and I can’t wait.

Reject call with message

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I was on a (landline) conference call the other day when my cellphone began to ring. I couldn’t take the call, so I rejected it with a message by clicking the “Reject call with message” button on my phone. It sent a message to the caller which read:

Sorry, I can’t take your call at the moment.

Which wasn’t actually very useful, since they already knew that I couldn’t take their call at the moment, as I hadn’t taken their call.

So I spent some of the rest of the conference call (the boring bit about costings for the new project) editing the pre-written messages* on my phone, so that I could be more helpful when rejecting calls with messages in the future. I could think of loads of useful, informative options, but there was only space for six messages so I had to be selective and choose the most important ones, each of which can now be selected and sent at the push of a single button.

I’m hoping that these new, improved messages will give more clarity as to why I’m not answering people’s calls in the future. I can think of several occasions where I would have used each of these over the past fortnight alone. Especially the one about the beagles [involuntary shudder].

 

* for my Sony: Phone > Menu > Settings > Calls > Manage reject messages