To make MadBid auctions even more exciting, we have launched a new range of Mystery Box auctions. The beauty of the Mystery Box is when you win, it’s not just one item you are getting; it’s a whole box of items! Including everything from iPads to summery fragrances, the boxes range in RRP value but still maintain an amazing closing price. Let us know what is inside your Mystery Box by tweeting #MadMystery and one lucky winner will get 150 FREE MadBid Credits! If you also want to show off the content of your Mystery Box, send a photo to socialmedia@madbid.com and we will showcase the best ones on our Facebook page!
After selling the 1st car back in 2008 for under £7 you would think the prices should have increased by now. Not by much, our 18th car winner paid £42 for his brand new Skoda. The Dream Come True auction closed only 2 days after being put live. When doing the handover of the beautiful Skoda the winner was telling us that he had his autobids on and went out for dinner with his wife and friends. He said his wife could not believe it when he showed her the email, only after the paperwork came through did it really sink in that he won a brand new car for £42. We couldn’t wait to put our questions to him about the winning moments.
How does it feel winning?
I only got my driving license not long ago so this is my first car. I was really excited when I saw the email from MadBid.
What will be your first road trip?
When I take the car today I will be taking my wife for lunch but a more serious road trip will be to go to Scotland and visit family.
We are almost there! The January blues don’t seem so bad when you have your Apples, a little bit of snow and a Facebook wall full of iPhone autocorrect fails. Even when you feel down that the holidays and warmth is nowhere in sight a solution is only a Hapify App away. With the blues sorted it is time to think about what we are looking forward to in 2013. We asked the MadBid team to tell us what they were looking forward to the most in 2013. The results were nothing less than what you would expect from a company that calls itself Mad.
Evie: ‘getting some serious heat and bargain hunting in Marrakesh’
Richard: ‘I can’t wait for Christmas and the best thing is it will come early in 2013 because Apple will be releasing their first ever TV in November!’
Dave: ‘Hosting the first MadBid Eurovision, contact me when you get bored of Xfactor’
Cristina: ‘surprisingly and completely out of the blue finding a puppy in the office…..Juha [MD] is not reading this blog is he?’
William: ‘May. Reason 1: Hangover 3 is coming out Reason 2: The Iron Man 3 is coming out Reason 3:… I’m getting married I guess that counts too’
Kryz: I have designed 350 different banners that included Caprice in 2012. This has to stop; my girlfriend thinks I see more of Caprice than her.
Social networks are changing, what used to be a fun past time has now become a popular channel of communication and with increased bandwidth video offerings are becoming key. Facebook have teamed up with Skype and will soon have an icon that would allow users to have group video or a private video conversation all for free. With 750 million viewers this is a great platform to integrate into the social mix. The company is also changing the layout of their chat system so that users can decide the amount of people they want on chat so potentially the whole family could get involved from around the globe – or maybe all our customers at MadBid.com.
The extension of the communication channels have not gone unnoticed as Google has introduced their own social networking platform +circle project – with a video chat feature called ‘Hangout’ which has caused some controversy between the internet giants. With these extra add-ons MadBid.com’s popular auction product the new Dell Inspiron Duo Touchscreen would complement any social network user.
The new Dell Inspiron Duo Touchscreen can be used as a laptop or a notepad, both with a keyboard and touchscreen functions making it ideal for users on the go or in the comfort of their home. The last time we auctioned the Dell Inspiron Duo Touchscreen the ending price was an amazing bargain at £6.37! Allow yourself to enjoy Facebook’s free video chat service with this sought after stylish gadget. The notebook has been reviewed by Amazon users as ‘Innovative and well-made’ The auction will start 3pm on 22nd of July the RRP price is £449 but only the bids on the timer will show the end price. The Stuff have stated that it ‘has a “whoa” factor to it when you see it swivel’ so team it up with Facebook’s or Google’s new Video options and put it in action!
As if Facebook couldn’t be more renowned for its attempt to connect people across the globe, Mark Zuckerberg’s 2004 social networking phenomenon is now about to embark on its latest adventure, which if successful, MadBid.com reckons will revolutionise the social aspect of music sharing.
With the uprising of technology has come a huge surge in music sharing and downloading over the internet. Just look at Napster or Spotify, the biggest pioneers of music streaming. In a similar way, it appears that Facebook’s newest project is being launched in partnership with, the former, Spotify – one of the more notorious names in the online music business industry.
The new feature aims to provide a music dashboard or platform that lets you stream music, see what your friends are listening to and share your favourite tracks. When you log into your account, the music dashboard will display as an official bookmark on the site’s homepage as well as a separate tab on your profile, in which you can access and control the music you want to hear.
The music dashboard will not be tied to Spotify exclusively though, Facebook is looking to incorporate many more music streaming websites, which the music lovers among you may already be familiar with, such as: Pandora, Mog, Rdio, Last.fm, and Grooveshark amongst others. In Facebook’s attempt to create a similar service with similar functionality, the result may be a giant music library, which anyone and everyone can subscribe to.
Here’s a look at just a few of the features that will be included:
Music Notifications
Recommended Songs
Top Songs
Top Albums
Recent listens
This move will ensure that we are better connected than ever: now you will be able to see just what your friends are listening to and even light-heartedly mock them when you see them playing that Boyzone album they said they had thrown out years ago! In addition to this, Facebook’s music dashboard will help you to discover more genres and artists, making the world of music even more social and accessible than it is already.
Techno giant Apple might have brought the social to the music, but now the tables have turned and Facebook is bringing music to the social; a long-time dream its founders have sought to implement into its service. The result is a collaboration of two powerful social forces, both of which bring people together, making the world a more connected place. Keep your eyes and ears open for the potential release date of the music dashboard, which is to be announced after Facebook’s F8 conference in August.
Until then, you can visit MadBid.com for its range of Facebook and Apple friendly products, including our latest instalment, the New Apple TV which lets you stream photos and music from your PC as you please. Alternatively, there is our great range of stereo systems such as the new Samsung Home Theatre System so you can blast your music to the max!
This week at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference a new cloud based storage service was revealed: iCloud. Apple’s iCloud is a new system that will automatically synchronize and backup all of your files across all your apple wireless devices. For the multidevice lifestyle we have all embraced with Apple products, this new way of storing and sharing information will revolutionize how we communicate with each other and how we interact with our devices.
iCloud will be a free service available for users to download this fall. The user will be able to automatically synchronize all their information including music, photos, documents, apps, and books to all wireless devices within range. This will create an automatic backup system similar to Google Docs and Dropbox.
By including the user’s iTunes library in iCloud, when a song is purchased on one device it will automatically be available on up to 10 other devices. So that means you can be listening to a song in a cafe, purchase it on your iPad and then go for a run later that day and listen to it on your iPod touch or iPhone without ever connecting your devices. All of the music purchased through iTunes will be automatically saved to the user’s cloud locker. For £25 a year Apple also has iTunes Match which will scan through all your music not purchased through iTunes and find a copy in their music library of over 18 million songs to replace your song with an iTunes Plus quality copy at 256 Kbps, even if your original copy was of lower quality.
Synchronizing your playlists is just one of the new features of iCloud. All your photos will also be synchronized and updated to each device immediately. With iCloud users can easily share photos and even upload directly to Facebook and Twitter from any device. It will be easier than ever to capture baby’s first beach day and send photos and video to grandma and grandpa immediately from any device.
Music and photos can take up a lot of memory on the iPhone and iPad, but Apple’s thought of that too. There will only be a rolling stream of 1,000 photos saved directly on the smaller devices at any time; the rest of the photo stream will be accessible through the cloud locker through a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. This does pose a problem for users who frequently travel in zones with weak wireless signals. It does not appear that iCloud will be able to stream music from the iTunes library, so there may only be a limited cache of songs accessible when on airplane mode.
iCloud will protect even the laziest users from losing their data. Apple does all the work for you constantly updating and syncing your data. All documents can be easily shared and edited so you are always working on the most up-to-date version no matter what device you use. Sharing and updating calendars and email accounts is another new feature. Text messages and SMS messages are also saved in your cloud locker along with saved ringtones and apps.
We all remember Mobile Me and how that system never really lived up to our Apple expectations. We at MadBid think iCloud is a very different product and will become a formidable competitor in the cloud based storage industry.
We can’t wait to try iCloud out on our Apple products this fall. Which Apple products will you be synchronizing? The benefits of cloud storage and synchronization can only really be optimized when you have more than one device to update, so why not pick up another i-something? At MadBid.com users have picked up the iPad 2 for just £2.52 and the iPhone 4 for £2.34. Those are just a few examples of the deals our users are wining every day, see for yourself.
Mobile phones and Social Networks have fast become avenues for sharing a great deal of our private information, including feelings and photographs. Unfortunately this can cause some people to get into trouble when they share a little too much. Although this information is essentially in our control (we are not forced to send or post embarrassing texts, photos or opinions across cyber space) it hasn’t stopped many risky situations occurring.
Luckily, some tech companies are providing new services to help us save face. Facebook, Apple and Android are the latest companies to cotton onto the fact that we might need a little help avoiding embarrassing and sometimes upsetting situations, and are providing a range of services to help us steer clear of them.
Apple hit the headlines after being granted a patent for an ‘anti-sexting’ device, which aims to filter offensive and inappropriate language from text conversations between young users. Apple hopes the ‘control application’ will be used by parents, worried about their children accessing rude and suggestive messages on their iPhones.
Android have designed a ‘drunk mode’ in their latest update. This allows users to ban themselves from calling anyone work related when drunk, avoiding embarrassing conversations and messages which can land people in trouble in the morning! Users will either be able to ban calls completely throughout the night, or be prompted with a ‘Do you really want to do that?’ message.
Facebook are appealing to our sensitive side by banning any ex-partners from appearing in the ‘Photo Memory’ boxes. After negative feedback from users who did not appreciate constant reminders of past relationship or seeing their ex with a new partner, they have decided to censor photos from anyone who was previously ‘in a relationship’.
These new settings could be very handy in helping people to the avoid scandals, often caused by too sharing through technology and social networking.
If you are one of the lucky owners of an iPad or are looking to add one to your collection of gadgets. Here we list the top 4 apps that you can’t live without:
1) Facebook – With 1 in 3 people in the world registered on Facebook, the app for the iPad is a must for many. The Facebook app for the iPad offers a much more in-depth experience than the iPhone app. It is free and is much more streamlined than the iPhone.
2) Air Video – With the size of the screen coupled with the quality of the display the iPad really is a great media player. Although you can transfer movies and music to your iPad via iTunes it can be a long and complicated process. That’s where Air Video comes in, just install the free app on your iPad and then download the free server client on your PC and tell it what you want to transfer and in no time at all you will be watching your favourite movies on the go.
3) Kindle – Apples IBooks app is good but when it comes to to content selection, Amazon is still king. Kindle for the Ipad is a really good e-reader app, and makes it easy to browse through books. It seamlessly launches the web-based book store to make purchasing a snap.
4) Mondo Solitaire – Mondo solitaire comes in two varieties, a pack of the most popular games or the whole shebang. If you like card games, we recommend getting the full package and then having a blast playing through tons of your favourite games.
The HTC Wildfire will hit UK Shelves in July this year. The release of the latest HTC smartphone using Google’s Android Platform will be hot on the heels of the new iPhone 4G.
The Battle between Apple and Google for market share will heat up with the new HTC aimed at taking on the mass mobile market.
The Wildfire, with a 3.2 inch touchscreen, is smaller than the Nexus One and Desire, which have 3.7 inch screens, but has the same 5 megapixel camera. Its processor is slower than the Desire and Nexus One which include Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip.
The HTC Wildfire also allows users to recommend applications – or ‘apps’ – that they have downloaded onto their device, to their friends, either by sending them a text or email with a link to the ‘app’ on the Android marketplace, or by broadcasting details of the ‘app’ on Twitter and Facebook.
Drew Bamford, HTC’s director of user experience, said it is just the first step in making Google’s Android marketplace, which includes many thousands of downloadable programmes, easier for people to navigate.
If you are one of the lucky owners of an 
