One problem bothers me a lot when I leaving comments on other people’s blog is that I can’t see that blogger’s or other people’ responds. But now you can simply receive any replies to your comment in your email by tick the box “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail”. This is a WP plugin called “Subscribe To Comments” (thanks to siuyee). I think this is one of the most useful plugins I have been used and I will recommend my friends who use WP to use this one.

There is a site called coComment which allows you to install a small plugin in your Firefox for IE, and collect all the comments you made in other people’s blogs. I had tried it before but I always forgot to press to active that function before posting comments. It doesn’t work quite well in some blog system. Also when you want to have auto responds to your comments, other poeple have to be a coComment users too. Too many limitations and too complicated to use, so I gave up at the end.

I like Livejournal’s replying system. It informs you by email when the author replies to your comment and you can just reply to that in your email. It’s convenient and efficient. But you have to be a LJ member first and this only to LJ blogs.

It’s Chinese option I exam tomorrow, so today I had been asking questions on Chinese for the whole day. Some called me to ask over the phone, some on MSN and some face to face. I think I become a Chinese hotline here now. So when I talked to Megan about that, she said you should have a “Ask Richard” page or something like that, just like Ask Jeeves. Just for fun, I actually make such a page and give a proper name “Ask.RichardHong.com“. So if you have questions regarding Chinese, well, or anything, just give me a message there. The service is 24-7, haha!

Most of my classmates are taking Chinese as their optional module this year. It’s easier if you have learned Japanese because it’s quicker to get used to the Chinese characters (kanji/hanzi). But since I am the only Chinese in my Japanese class, I kind of became a live dictionary to ask their questions, but I am happy to do so. If they are going to take Chinese options II next year, make a good use of Ask.RichardHong.com!

Good luck to them for the exam tomorrow.

When I just updated my Skype now, the first line came out in their new features page is “Free calls within the US and Canada to all phones until the end of the year.”

This is pretty revolutionary! Imaging all the American and Canadian business men can call their headquarters for free, or hold an online meeting with other colleagues and clients. Also think of people within the State and Canada. I guess this would save a lot of bills when you call some customer services and be put in a queue for hours.

Skype’s move is ambitious, basically I think what they are trying to do is trying to take over most Net-to-Phone market share before any stronger rivals appears. But I am more willing to see whether the call quality can be as good as they promise when people trying free calls. If it’s positive, then Skype will be the next generation, otherwise it would be a very bad lose, because people are unlikely to try something again if they experiences the first failures, even though it’s free.

Since my last updated, it works ok so far. Occasionally the voice quality went a bit weird and a feedback page will pop up after the calls. But the video quality are very good, the best I have seen so far.

I would like to see the data after this free calls promotion. Also I might try to call some friends in US to see how the quality is really like.

I think my blog is mentioned by one BBC journalist blogger, because when I checked my traffic stat. today there were 21 visitors come from a link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/ these two days.

It’s a password projected page but I can tell this is a blog by the link address. So I am wondering does BBC have their internal communication network, like blogs or forums. The answer is yes, and here is an article about their internal network communication, sounds very efficient.

I am wondering what did that blogger write about my blog though, but guess must be something to do with the last post.