It seems that O2-UK is down for the pay-as-you-go service. I tried ringing work earlier on and I couldn’t make an outside call to anyone, nor could my friend ring me. Thank God for landlines eh

O2 have told me that “they are working on the technical difficulty and affects the majority of Pay-As-You-Go users in the UK.”

Ask.com’s recent relaunch seems to have built upon a prototype called Ask X.

If you look at the Ask X’s search field it is shockingly similar to Microsoft’s Live Search.

Mirroring the Search (Zoom) glass the other way round doesn’t really count as original design now does it?

“Ask.com launches a new search site today which is more beautiful than it is functional. The slick new look offers dynamic suggestions as you type on the search box page. The results page includes different types of results in one shot, like Wikipedia items, images, videos and feeds. Rollover the video results to preview them on the spot, subscribe to feed results, or use the “narrow your search” suggestions on the left hand side to explore further. Overall Ask.com’s facelift is slick and impressive, but the results themselves still aren’t up to par with Google.”

Via Lifehacker

Liveandbeyond says:

Love the new interface and it is super quick. Kudos to the ask.com team for this excellent relaunch but as mentioned above, the results aren’t up to par with Google. So all the millions they spent on the ‘Algorithm…’ ads that we saw all across US and the UK, was it justified? It did get people to talk about it but there seems to be more work done on the looks and layout rather than the algorithm itself as I don’t really see much difference in that!

Oh, this new relaunched site cannot be seen by default if you are in the UK. You will have to go to Ask.com US.

The Windows Live Jewel button that is found across all Windows Live Services seems to have problems with the Internet Explorer 7 zoom functionality.

(IE7 Zoom at 50%)

When I zoomed out to 50% on IE7, the Jewel button did not scale back like the rest of the website and it was all pixelated. I hope Microsoft fixes this, although it is a minor annoyance it is still something they should look into as it developed both of these products.

Update:

This only occurs when you zoom from normal to 125% or higher and then zoom to 50%.

Another interesting thing…

When you zoom from normal (100%) to 50%, the button scales down as it should like the rest of the website. Then when you try to zoom to something more than the 100%, say 150% , the button does not scale and remains at the 50% zoom level.

(Zoom from 50% to 150%)

As earlier mentioned, Facebook was placing restrictions on it’s Poll feature. They now seem to have removed the restriction.

Matt Hick from Facebook’s Corporate Communications had this to say:

“We made a mistake, and we’ve fixed it. Facebook did not intend to block the names of competitors from the new Polls product. Now researchers can ask questions with any company’s name. I’d encourage you to give it another try.”

When pointed out that is was obvious that they were blocking the competition he replied:

“Some outdated code was used that should not have been. When we learned it was blocking those words, we fixed it. We regret the mistake.”

So there you go folks, it seems like a genuine mistake or not? I am still not convinced by the given explanation as it seems like PR talk to me but what the hell they have rectified it, end of chapter!

TechCrunch reported that Facebook blocks and prevents you from posting any Polls that contain terms such as MySpace, Orkut, etc. So if you mention the competition it will not allow you to post your Poll giving the following error, “The poll question contains restricted text.”

To bypass this, there is an easy hack…

Create a new poll and Type in your Poll Question with a restricted term.

Hold down on the Alt key and press 0173. This creates a blank character. Carry this out multiple times in the restricted term (Before, in-between and after) that is banned, in our case, MySpace.

e.g. Is Facebook better than M(alt+0173)ySp(alt + 0173)ace(alt + 0173)(alt + 0173)

The Facebook algorithm reads it as shown above and lets you publish your Poll. While to the human eye it will be Is Facebook better than MySpace.

Easy? For proof see the screenshot below…

Know problems:

• You might have to try this a few times, for some reason it rejects it at times and allows it after a few tries.
• Also try placing the Alt 0173 in more random places in the restricted term
• I tired placing a ? at the end of the Poll question and did this hack, for some reason Facebook manages to catch the term despite the hack and will not let you publish the poll.

Do you know of any suggestions or hacks? Comment below or Contact us!

When you punch ‘Popfly’ into Google this is what the first result comes up as…

Or is it the other way round?

I came across http://www.jakkass.com and saw that they offer free SMS text service. You can send free text messages to any number, anywhere!

At first I was a bit skeptical thinking it was a scam but I gave it a go and it works flawlessly! I don’t know how they can afford to keep up such a service but enjoy it while it lasts.

So if you can’t find your phone, or want to save money on the pay as you go… Use jakkass, it is simple, there is no sign-up required and it gets the work done.