I mentioned before that I was excitedly awaiting the release of the HTC Magic. Well, it’s out! Reviews that aren’t just marketing hype are hard to come by but the Telegraph have a nice video review of the phone.

They don’t give it the top marks I’d hoped for - so I’m back to Plan A of waiting and seeing. Next up seems to be the Samsung I7500 next month. If it’s a good showing I don’t think I will be able to be patient much longer … but then again.

I for one have been really worried by the prospect of getting swine flu. Thankfully some scientist boffin types somewhere have come up with a tool that tells you quickly and easily whether you have contracted it or not.

Do I have swine flu?

The 2nd Google Android handset, the HTC Magic, is out on 5th May exclusive to Vodafone so say the Telegraph.

I was in a store at the weekend and they said 16th May, but either way it’s coming soon.

A couple of guys at work have the G1. I have been tempted but decided that I would wait for its successor to see what creases they had ironed out, seems like I may not have to wait much longer.

I’m really cross.

It’s car insurance renewal time. I had done the usual rounds at confused.com (which has improved recently) and decided to give comparethemarket.com a whirl.

Confused always used to irritate me and leave me thinking “it could be so much better”, and comparethemarket.com had amused me what with their highly amusing comparethemeerkat.com spin-off.

Anyway, off I trotted… I put my details in the first page and clicked next:

Error page on comparethemarket.com

Oh dear …

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the input which causes the error was the apostrophe in my surname (O’Neill) - I tried it with various input and they worked until I put an apostrophe in.

What a shame - spending all that money on a fantastic little advertising campaign then spoiling it all by giving an error page to a significant minority of the population as well as, now this is a great assumption, leaving yourself open to a SQL injection attack.

This article serves as a reminder that as professional web developers we should never assume a certain level of prior knowledge from our users; it also demonstrates how Windows needn’t be the first operating system we introduce our relatives to.

http://dnc.digitalunite.com/2009/03/31/shopping-delivered-by-ubuntu-linux/