00110102… WTF?!?

I’ve been reading about these ’subscriptions’ for Skype lately. Basically you select a country and pay a monthly fee, you then get ‘unlimited’ (subject to fair use policy which is 10,000 minutes a month) seems like a great deal doesn’t it? So after a few days of thinking about it I decide to get a subscription for Australia. When I get to the payment options I choose PaPal. The most convenient option for me seeing as I don’t have a credit card and it is the easiest option for me… Or so I thought.

Once I chose PayPal as my payment option and filled in my details I was presented with a screen asking me to enter my credit card details. Credit card details? What do they need my credit card details for? I have AU$28 in my PayPal account and Skype should only be charging me about $6. I canceled the payment and tried again only to get the same problem. I did some research and it seems you can no longer use your PayPal balance to pay for anything on Skype, or if you can you need to enter your credit card details first (some even saying then needed to add multiple credit cards to their account).

So what is someone like me supposed to do? Someone who has no credit card. Here are all the options for people in Australia:

• Paypal – don’t have a credit card so I cant use it.
• Visa – don’t have a visa card.
• mastercard – don’t have a mastercard.
• POLi – never heard of it so I wouldn’t want to use it. some kind of internet banking thing though
• Diners – what is ‘Diners’? Isn’t that what I’m called when I go to a restaurant? Or do they mean Diners club? Why don’t they just say that? (and I don’t have one anyway)
• Moneybrookers – same reason as POLi
• Regulat bank transfer – Sure I would but this would be too much hassle for me.

So goodbye Skype you just lost a customer. Maybe you can e-mail me when you let me use my PayPal balance.

Firefox download day has already started to head on over to the Firefox website and download your copy of Firefox 3 today!

MySpace will undergo a major makeover tomorrow in the attempt to attract more casual users and fight the competition of the rival social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo. The changes should make the website easier to use.

Heath Tully at Project182 plans to travel the entire Melbourne train network tomorrow. The trip will take over 18 hours to complete with the first train departing at 4:32am and the last train arriving at 10:50 assuming everything goes to plan. I can only say goodluck to Heath and I hope that delayed/cancled trains and other passengers dont get in your way.

See the post on his website here.

So I had this lone blog post typed up in notepad a few days ago and I went to bed only to wake up with my computer off and my blog post not saved. yes I am one of those people who say save every 15 minutes, and yet I didnt to it. Furthermore last week 4 keys on my keyboard stopped working.

Today I also decided to take a look at my blogs stats only to find a massive jump in viewers on May 13th. 356 Visits on that day, 120 on may 19th, 75 on may 24th, less than 10 most other days. Yet on may 13th I didn’t post anything new. At first I thought it was the day Google indexed my blog but it turns out only 39 hits were referred from Google. Turns out Stumble Upon caused the jump.

I also found my blog is the third Google search result when searching for “firefox 3 easter egg”.

Thank you to all my readers for making my day.

PS. Forgot to mention this above but ive also had 5 spam comments so far

Microsoft and Mitsubishi are working together to create a new way to use touch screens called “Lucid Touch”. This method uses a touch screen on both sides of a device allowing you to use your fingers on the back screen, and your thumbs on the front screen. While your fingers are near the back screen theya re shown on the front screen so you can see where you are touching.

More information can be found here.

Facebook just added a new feature to their website. You can now have a live  chat with other people on your friends list, they just have to be on facebook at the same time.

The chat is added with a small bar at the bottom of the page (it floats above everything and follows you when you scroll down). This bar also inclused a notifications button so that you can check on new notifications

Just a short post today. My blog is turning into a blog all about Firefox!

Anyway, if you are using firefox 3 (I’m using Beta 5) and type “about:credits” in the address bar, it showsyou a list of people that have contributed to firefox.

If you look through the list there is someone for every letter of the alphabet!

My earlier post (Link) was about the kitchen sink Easter egg, there was one more Easter egg in Firefox 3. I actually found this one a little while after I found the kitchen sink.

Firefox 3 users can type “about:robots” into their address bar to be taken to the other Easter egg. For everyone else this is what it says:

Welcome Humans!

We have come to visit you in peace and with goodwill!

• Robots may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
• Robots have seen things you people wouldn’t believe.
• Robots are Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun To Be With.
• Robots have shiny metal posteriors which should not be bitten.

And they have a plan.

An old bug report (12241) brought one thing to the attention of many, Mozilla was missing a kitchen sink. Many people have debated weather or not the kitchen sink should be added and an extention was made for people who would like a kitchen sink in their browser (Kitchen Sink Plugin). The new version of Firefox however, DOES contain the kitchen sink. People using Firefox 3 can type “about:kitchensink” into their address bar to be taken to the kitchen sink.

People not using Firefox 3 can view the kitchen sink here.