Skype Beta 3.0.0.106

A quick one about another beta - the new skype beta is out, available for anyone to download, from here. Again, haven't played much with it, but 3 things I noticed & liked:

1. Browser extensions that recognise phone numbers in your browser (works in Firefox, can't see it working in IE6 & Opera at the moment - not sure why) and turn them into clickable links with a little flag showing what country code Skype thinks it should use - Nice! Except that I wish voipcheap (more later) had this instead of skypeout!
2. Skypecasts & the Live tab... seems like cast-fever & Live-fever is catching on here. Welcome to the next big thing :-) But they're pretty interesting features, and I can see them being of some use, even if in just limited ways as free radio stations or free conference calls! But I actually caught a bit of one yesterday and immediately saw something interesting .. see the Wireless Electricity Becomes a Reality article. Most I've looked briefly at since have all been crap, noise and weird noises & heavy breathing. No thanks.
3. Auto updates: maor releases & hotfixes both. Finally. I always wondered why they didn't do this a long time ago. As with Apple for their software. Maybe they (apple) argue that unlike Microsoft software their's didn't break & need a patch every 30 seconds, but they do have a steady stream of updates, why not automate it (or provide the option) years ago? I would have been using newer versions of iTunes much quicker if the bloody thing didn't ask me to spend half an hour on it. A new version is available - would you like to download? Click yes. Get taken to the Apple site where it looks like you have to give them your email address, but you don't. Click iPod+iTunes and download about 3 times, choose where to save the file, wait for it to come down (massive bloody bloated files, too - I want a media player that's no more than a 5mb download). Double-click setup.exe or whatever and then follow the damn installshield wizard. Man oh man. Couldn't we have just left it at the first time I said YES??? Anyway, this isn't about Apple... this is Skype. So anyway, apparently Skype will do it's thing on it's own now and not ask me to follow a similar apple-esque waste-of-time mind-numbing hair-tearing cringe-making crappily thought out process that makes me wonder how these guys ever came up with a whole piece of software, if they couldn't even think this through. Funnily enough, the major-version update option was set to automatic on my installation, but the hotfix (for patches, bugfixes etc) was set to "Ask". That's a bit weird isn't it?

Oh yeah and about voipcheap... for those who don't know it, it was one of the best VoIP apps around for a while, with great quality service, free calls to landlines AND mobiles all over the world, and a client app that updated IN ONE CLICK. Since the time I started using it, they've started charging for calls to a lot of the places that were free, but I've got free calls to all of Europe and the U.S. on my mobile now, so I don't mind that much! As you may have guessed, it's at www.voipcheap.co.uk and also at www.voipcheap.com ... and they've just announced that credit you buy for calls to traditional networks will no longer expire - so that's another reason, apart from the main one - which is that it's a fair bit cheaper than SkypeOut, and you get a complimentary local number. Huh.