With versions prior to 0.2.3 and WordPress 2.1, problems arose with the links menu and category clouds. This was basically down to the deprecated category functions and back-end changes to the way categories work in WordPress 2.1.

Anyway, all is fixed, I’d like to go into it more, but it’s late and I’m off to bed.

Anyone using WordPress 2.1 or thinking about upgrading should definitely download this version. It’s backwards compatible with WordPress versions lower than 2.1, you just won’t see any difference.

Download Durable v0.2.3

Update: Durable v0.2.5 has been released to address some unforseen errors in the menu.

Joost is the new name for “The Venice Project” which is an upcoming internet based tv service from the makers of Skype (currently in private beta).

For more information, check out Joost’s FAQ’s. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out on this!

The main change was fixing up the theme to work correctly in Internet Explorer 7. I’ve also introduced a couple of small features including built in gravatar support, admin menu access and two new configuration menu items.

Here is a full list of changes:

• Fixed a small persistant javascript bug on page load.
• Fixed “last comment was posted” dates.
• Fixed IE7 rendering issues.
• Fixed positioning issues for images within a post.
• Fixed category cloud font sizes when there is only one month of archives or one category.
• Fixed header rendering issues when the blog does not have a one line description.
• Added login/admin link in the menu bar for easy access to the administration section.
• Added “posted by” item to article meta data column.
• Added significant javascript compression to all JS files reducing load times.
• Added configuration menu options for auto image position handling and admin link toggling.

For more information on Durable, check out the project page. If you’re feeling lucky, you can download Durable right here.

Since using it, I now have my whole family using Skype. Some are on Macs, others on PCs, making video conferencing platform independent with Skype has been a great help.

Anyway, video conferencing wasn’t supposed to be the focus of this article. Instead I want to talk about my experience using Skype as a fully fledged office phone line.

Calling Regular Phones

Calling between computers using Skype is completely free, lets get that one clear to start with.

However, Skype also offers the ability to call mobile or land lines with a service called “SkypeOut“. If you are based in USA or Canada, then this service is a flat $14.95 US for a whole year ($29.95 after January 31, 2007). The flat fee gives you unlimited calling to anywhere in the United States and Canada.

Yep, you read that right. Let me repeat; $14.95 for a full year of free calls to anywhere in USA and Canada.

For someone whose business is primarily operated in Canada with clients dotted all over the States, paying $14.95 for a year of phone service is going to save me hundreds of dollars.

Outside of North America you can load up your Skype account with SkypeOut credit, and then call from as little as 0.02c a minute.

What About People Calling You?

Now, there is one catch. With SkypeOut you can make calls to anyone, but it doesn’t let you receive any calls. You won’t get an incoming phone number unless you subscribe to the “SkypeIn” service. SkypeIn is a one time yearly fee that gives you a dedicated phone number from one of 14 different countries. Interestingly Canada is not currently one of the countries that you can get a phone number from. If anyone knows why, then I’d be interested. I suspect it something to do with Telus or Bell.

Considering most of my clients were in the States, opting for a US number instead of a Canadian number was not a big issue for me. Canadian numbers are formatted identically to US numbers, all that changes is the area code.

The Skype in service costs around $40 US after conversion from euros. You even get the option to pick the number you want, or search for specific number combinations.

What’s The Call Quality Like?

That’s the big question. It’s all very good paying much less for a phone service, but if you end up getting choppy or dropped calls frequently, then it’s not going to be worth it.

My experience with voice quality on Skype so far has been superb. The audio is clear, it hasn’t dropped any calls and the audio has only become choppy in a few isolated cases. Even if a call was choppy in parts it was still better than most cell phone calls and didn’t affect the conversation at all.

As long as you are on a broadband connection and you’re not tying up your bandwidth by downloading large files all day, you can expect to get call quality at least as good as your regular phone line. Using a Wi-Fi connection doesn’t seem to cause any problems either.

I also configured my router’s firewall to allow Skype to make and receive calls directly to my computer without it having to use clever techniques to bypass firewalls. This is supposed to improve call quality and call reliability. It’s dead simple to do, check out these instructions on setting up port forwarding for Skype.

So, You Talk Into Your Computer?

No. If you are serious about using Skype for making and receiving important calls then it’s definitely worth picking up an actual handset. I picked up a USB desktop phone from Ebay for about $35 US. By using an actual phone with Skype you almost completely forget that it’s running through your computer. You can dial and accept calls all through the handset, and it even rings like a normal phone.

What If My Computer Is Turned Off?

Unless you decide to buy a Skype Wi-Fi Phone that doesn’t need a computer, then you’ll need one to use the Skype service.

This works just fine for me as it’s an office phone, and I’ll have my computer turned on the whole time anyway. However, Skype also offers the ability to forward calls when you are away or have your computer turned off. So if I pop out for a coffee, or even decide to do some work away from an internet connection, I can still get my calls forwarded to my cell phone. I believe this only costs around 1c per minute (you get around an hour of call forwarding credit with SkypeOut).

If you buy a SkypeIn number then you also get free voicemail with Skype. The application will alert you when you have any voice messages as well as the number of missed calls. Without SkypeIn you can get voicemail for around $20 US a year.

Totaling It Up

Overall $14.95 for SkypeOut and $40 for SkypeIn gives me a years worth of calling for just under $55 dollars. That’s basically less than one month of my cell phone service (which charges me 30c a minute long distance).

Even if you don’t want to buy a USB phone to use on top of that, there are some cheap standard phone to USB phone converters available that will let you use your regular phone with Skype.

Skype is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Windows Mobile.

By using PHP, it’s quite simple to write less than one line of code in your footer and then never have to worry about updating that footer date ever again.

What we’ll do is fetch a timestamp of the current date and time from the server using the PHP “date” function. We can then parse this timestamp using the same function allowing us to print only the full year.

Here’s the code:

<?php echo date("Y"); ?>

Yup, that’s it. If you wanted to show more than just the year you might what to check the PHP documentation for the date function. There are a whole boatload of possible ways to format a date for display.

Your final footer might look something like this:

<p id="footer">
 &copy; <?php echo date("Y"); ?> Blaze New Media.
</p>

Stick with something like that and you’ll never be outdated again.

Previously on this site I was using some javascript to detect your browser window size. If it was below 1024×768 then the left hand column would collapse and the site would shrink to fit in an 800×600 resolution.

I’ve decided to remove this and stick with a 1024 width for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’ve been checking my logs, and less than 5% of visitors run a resolution smaller than 1024×768. It seems as though most people have decided to dump that aging monitor in the past couple of years. Even global numbers for people running 800×600 are only around 1.2 people out of every 10.

The second reason for sticking to 1024×768 and above is that it seems a lot of people who view this site are running widescreen displays. People with widescreen displays rarely maximize their windows so that they can utilize the extra width to show two windows side by side. So even if their resolution is high, their actual window size may be much smaller, which would give them the low resolution design still.

Sticking with 1024 seems to be the best solution for everyone. It makes me feel better knowing that everyone is seeing the full design as intended and not a simplified design because their browser window is sized too small.

Finally, I’ve updated my portfolio page with some new work and greater detail. I can also now show my role on each project whether it be design, development or both. Go take a look when you get a chance!