We buy laptops, tablets and smartphones. But maybe one day we’ll be offering up our sell for cash service to buy space-safe pocket cameras, rehydrating guns (watch Megamind!) and… iPhones will probably still top our books, too!

For now, though, let’s say we’ve had a bit of a space-themed day filled with astronomical factlets, celestial info and a few chuckles at some of the least credible space missions ever to be attempted. And then there’s the Mars Rover project.

In 2004 the latest vessels – twins – touched down on the red planet. Since then they’ve weathered four Martian winters (there’s something funny about writing “Martian” in a real-world applicable sense!) and provided the most exceptional studies of Mars ever recorded.

Five Rovers have been sent to Mars, but only the current Rover – Opportunity – is still trundling around on the planet’s surface. The first two were sent in 1971 by Russia. They crashed and/or failed to move (although the second did survive the landing). The third – Sojourner – landed in July 1997. Communications were lost in September 1997. The fourth and fifth – our twins, Spirit and Opportunity – landed in 2004. Around six years after landing, Spirit got stuck in sand. Although still in working order, communication was lost some time in 2010. But the venerable Opportunity still soldiers on!

Right now, while you eat toast and watch telly with your old iPad on your lap, Opportunity is travelling slowly around the surface of Mars gathering data. The aim of the Mars Rover project is to characterise the climate of Mars, establish whether life has existed, record the geology of Mars and prepare the planet for human exploration. So WITHIN OUR LIFETIME there will likely be a successful manned mission to explore the fourth rock from the sun!

So why should we be impressed by the Mars Rovers? While we potter away in our sunny office helping you sell your consoles for cash, Mars’s temperature is never below water freezing point and its surface contains some of the biggest volcanoes in our solar system. Humankind managed to build a vessel to withstand the horrors of space travel, then build one that could do that for the year and a bit it takes to GET to Mars, then build a little car-rover that could record data and lumber about on the surface of a very, very hostile dust storm ravaged planet whilst continually relaying data to earth and charging itself using solar panels. Impressed yet?

We’re alive at a pretty good time for space exploration. There are still thousands of amazing things to be explored and recorded, but instead of being the original pipe dreams, we might actually live to see some of them come true!  The Curiosity Mars Rover is scheduled to land in August 2012, so we’ll keep you posted!

We’ve got a lot to thank the modern age of technology for. Let’s pick something out of the air – 3D printers. Rapid prototyping is one of brilliant modern innovations that helps make the leap from idea to thing-in-your-hand. Getting things off the drawing board (or even old iPad sketch app!), that’s what we love about 3D printer technology! Plus, we’re secretly convinced they bring us a step closer to light sabres being an actual thing.

Getting off topic, that’s another thing we love. But let’s get back to the business of Vergence Labs doing their bit to topple Google off a tech specs throne that still only exists in prototype form!

Google’s Project Glass glasses, and we admit this with a little sadness, do look like the wire frame of an umbrella has been transplanted onto the wearers face. We reckon they’ll still top our sell for cash service when they finally hit stores in some form! So along comes Vergence Labs with this little geek chic gem!

The glasses predominantly record video with the capability of sharing on social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They also convert into sunglasses. The idea behind them is to set aside the whole glasses-as-a-smartphone idea for the time being in favour of standard point-of-view recording. Remember that episode of Black Mirror where everyone has a microchip in their head that records every second of their lives from the perspective of their eyes? These specs are exactly like that but without any painful invasive surgery or the involvement of Charlie Brooker.

We buy laptops, smartphones and cameras, and we can’t wait until the first pair of Google Project Glass specs and Vergence Labs geek glasses arrive in our U.K office!

Lists! The beginning of all great organisation!

Lots of our blog entries are meant to bring a healthy balance of humour, tech news and advice to our readers. But since nobody slapped Joffrey Baratheon in Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode and we moved offices this week, we’re not in the most jubilant of moods!

Sure, we love the new office. There’s heaps more space to store your old iPads and old Kindles, Office Cat has plenty of sunny spots to nap in, and we’re closer to Dominos. But the move itself? Let’s just say we’ve only moved once and hope NOT to do so again for a good long while!

In keeping with certain personal habits of pointing out glaringly obvious things with retrospect, here are four tips our office team advise for moving your company to new premises.

1. Plan early (even if it’s against your personal habits!)

Moving a business isn’t like moving house. You can’t fling those old iPads into a box and bundle them into the corner for unpacking sometime over the next eighteen months (we did a quick survey in-house – most of our team took eighteen months to unpack boxes they still considered “necessary items”!) You need to take time to make lists, finalise schedules, collect quotes etc.

2. DELIGATE!

Some folks just can’t do it. They NEED to be in control of everything at all times. But the problem with office relocation is that there is simply too much for one person to adequately handle. You need to put together an efficient office moving team to take care of preparation/the move itself. Each of these folks needs to have clear tasks (like making sure Office Cat has her goofy toy and favourite blanket on moving day!)

3. Who’s not involved?

Just because we were moving didn’t mean your sell my mobile orders politely stopped for a few days. We set aside a super efficient team to keep the sell my mobile train rolling. The rest of us got on packing away old Kindles, tripping over wires and enjoying the nice slog up the stairs in the lift-free new office building! Establishing early on who’s not going to be involved in the move helps create a nice orderly little system that’ll keep flowing through all the chaos of the move!

4. Use the move to review and upgrade.

We hated our office furniture and the fact there were always wires trailing across the floor. So we made good use of the move to upgrade and invest in some shiny new desks, efficient storage cabinets and the odd bit of perky foliage!

One person's trash is another's... cauldron... on wheels?

We can’t pop into your home and sort the trash from the treasure for you, but we can help you sell cameras, old iPads, laptops and other unwanted gadgets that are just taking up space!

While you’re visiting us to use our sell my iPad London service, here are a few moneymaking tips to help you make the most of unused parking spaces, a great imagination and bags of free time!

Your Home

Do you live somewhere interesting or unique? Media producers are always on the lookout for locations. There are plenty of online directories where you can register your home (along with plenty of photos and a thorough description) and maybe pique the interest of a location scout. Locations around London and Manchester are typically top of the queue.

Your Parking Space

Again, London and surrounding areas are going to be high on the list (it’s estimated around a million people commute into the city each day) If you’ve got a driveway in Greater London that’s vacant during the day, you can rent it out to commuters. Websites like www.yourparkingspace.co.uk and www.parkatmyhouse.com can help you find someone to rent on a short or long-term basis.

Your Mind

How’s your imagination? Feel like maybe you’ve got a book locked away in there? Mills & Boone novels number amongst the most read in the world, and nearly all of them are now sourced freelance on single novel contracts. Fiercely competitive but a great way to nab a few thousand quid if you’re successful.

Your Time

Mystery shopping doesn’t need to take up your entire weekend. Every retailer, restaurant, travel company and hotel wants to know what it’s like to shop, eat, travel and sleep under their brand. Register with an online company and just accept a few jobs when you’ve got the time. (You could even get a free weekend trip out of it!)

Your Junk

We buy gadgets in London and around the U.K, including folks wanting to sell cameras, iPads etc. But we bet gadgets aren’t the only worthy bits and bobs in your home that could make a bit of cash. One of our office team recently found out the book they’ve been using to make their staircase look more rustic is actually a 120-year-old biography of a famous minister and worth just over £100! The whole one-person’s-trash-is-another’s-treasure thing is true, especially at the moment when most folks are a bit strapped for cash.

A recent survey by AXA revealed the glorious wonders of the internet have now overtaken gardening and DIY as the preferred hobby of U.K seniors. 41% of those quizzed listed the internet as their preferred pastime, logging an average of around six hours of weekly browsing, email, life admin etc.

So the U.K is a nation of silver surfers. When anyone mentions the idea of helping others, most of us automatically assume the unspoken target demographic of old people. To be frank, it looks like lots of seniors have got themselves covered when it comes to internet access, but there are still heaps of folks out there who could probably use a little assistance finding a sell my mobile service like ours. We buy consoles, laptops, mobile phones, cameras and heaps of other gadget goodies, meaning you can offer a superb lifeline to anyone floundering in the sea of unwanted gadgets!

A huge part of what we do is about access. We do our best to make our blog nice and informative, our ads very clear and our marketing campaigns as far reaching as possible. The problem is that we’re very much internet-based, so folks will always slip through the net. Can you help? Our aim for 2012 is to encourage lovely folks like you to spread the word of our sell for cash gadget service. You’ve probably got mates, family members or even the odd employer who doesn’t know that they can get money for their unwanted gadgets, so why not help them sell computers, tablets, mobiles and cameras for cash?