I saw a post on Shoemoney this morning where a kid has started a site LinkExperiment which is a spin-off idea from the Million Dollar Homepage.

Although I doubt he will make a million he will earn well out of it. In the 4 months since he started the site he was up to $3251 last time I looked and this is climbing at a rate of about $300 a day and will probably climb higher than that.

The idea is that people bid to get onto the front page. The top bid is currently $250.01 and the lowest you can bid is $6.01.

It’s a great idea and I hope he does well out of it. Lookout for the copycat sites that are sure to follow.

Update:

It’s been less than 24 hours since I wrote this post. The top bid on his site is now $251 and the minimum bid is $10.01.

The total now raised is $4266 and it doesn’t take much of a brain to figure out that he has made more than $1000 in the last 24 hours.

Well I’m now connected to Sky Broadband. Everything went smooth enough from ordering, giving them my MAC code, receiving the router, migrating over to them on the day they told me and connecting.

Connecting to Sky with their router was a piece of cake. You just connect the router to your PC and run there software which they supply that is pictorial and written for complete dummies. A five year old child could do this as they make it so easy.

The first thing I checked was the speed they had connected me on. Before when I moved broadband supplier my speed remained at the same as my existing supplier even though I paid extra to have the speed upgraded but there was no such problem with Sky.

The only disappointment I have is that you have to use Sky’s supplied wireless router to connect to them. You can’t use your own as far as I can tell. The router they supply is made by Netgear and I’m not a big fan of these. I have found in the past the wireless coverage with Netgear routers not to be as good as they reckon. I even bought one of their RangeMax routers which quickly got confined to a cupboard as the coverage was worse than the 2 year old router I had already got.

The other thing that annoys me about them is that I can’t see the webcam on my site at home as they block the port if you access it locally. It works everywhere else just not in my house.

Anyway for £5.00 a month for a 8Mb connection with a 40 GB download limit it’s a steal. I’ve seen all sorts of mentions on the web good and bad about Sky Broadband and I’m sure they are having teething problems but at least with Sky they have the backing and money to address these problems so I’m sure they will get better.

Someone asked me if I had managed to get T-Mobile working on My Sony UX180P once I had got it unlocked from Cingular.

I had been using Orange as I was taking advantage of their ?1 a day unlimited Data but that has now come to a close for 3G Data so I am now using my T-Mobile pay as you go card. They only charge ?1 a day for unlimited data too on their pay as you go scheme and the good thing with this is you don’t have to order as an extra and they will simply keep billing you per kb until you have spent £1 and then cap the charge.

I am in the UK so this process with be different in other countries but I set it up to work with the T-Mobile sim card by doing the following:

1: Pretty obvious but you have to unlock the data card from Cingular
2: Put the T-Mobile sim card into the card slot and switch on WWAN.
3: Load the Cingular Connection Manager
4: Go to profiles then click add new profile and choose “Create Custom Profile”
5: Choose service type “Packet”
6: Leave the dial up number as shown on the screen “*99***1#
7: Enter “general.t-mobile.uk” as the Access Point Name
8: Enter “user” as username, password “wap” then click next,
9: Leave all the ip settings alone and click next. Name the profile, I chose “T-Mobile” and finish.

Then on the Cingular Connection Manager main screen click “Connect Using” and choose your T-Mobile profile. If you are in service it should come up with Ready “T-Mobile”, click connect and that’s it.

There may be other ways to do this but this is what worked for me.

Yes, 6 days to go until I get my Sky broadband. I have to say I am impressed with Sky. Since signing up for broadband with them I have received 3 updates by letter, 1 by phone and my free wireless router has already arrived.

The wireless router they gave me is a Sky branded Netgear DG834GT and on opening the box it seems Sky have pre-programmed certain features and give you a network key that has been pre-installed to enter if you are using the wireless connection.

The router also came with an installation CD. I don’t think Sky are leaving anything to chance. I can’t be sure for certain but I think this CD once you are connected will handle all your router settings for you as there are no other instructions with it on how to log into your router. In fact I had to telephone Sky to ask what the username and password is. Usually it would be username “admin” and password “password” but Sky have changed the password to “Sky”.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when I called their Broadband Support department. After going through the usual menu system asking which department you want I was put straight through to a human being who was able to deal with my query straight away! No waiting on the phone for over an hour like some other companies.

There are a lot of broadband providers out there that should take note of that!

Well it seams that my love affair with PlusNet didn’t last long. When they connected me it was at my old speed of 1Mb instead of the 8Mb that I had ordered. Bearing in mind that I had paid upfront £14.99 when I originally ordered it to have the speed upgraded to 8Mb I assumed that would have been carried out at the time of migrating.

Trying to get an answer from them was frustrating to say the least. Sales didn’t want to know now that I had placed my order and put me into the queue for customer support. This is where I got the recorded message saying “Your call will be answered in ……… excess of 1 hour”. 1 hour! I’ve got better things to do with my time than hang on a phone being charged for more than an hour.

So I decided to use their online help system. Luckily I did have an internet connection but imagine if you didn’t then your only option would have been to wait in excess of an hour to speak to someone. So I filled out my request for support which meant going through their menu system none of which really applied to my situation to get a reply telling me the average time of response is 17+ hours. I was fuming. How can a company expect to survive in these competitive times with response times like these?

Out of the blue I received an email from Sky saying they could now supply me with broadband. I telephoned them to ask what packages were available in my area and decided to go with their Sky Mid package which is up to 8Mb download speed with a 40GB monthly usage for £5.00 a month. I wanted Sky Max with the 16Mb speed but that’s not available for me yet. I have to say I was impressed with their sales staff. They gave me all the details I needed to make a decision and even told me that what speed I could expect from their service after doing a quick line check which turns out to be 4Mb.

I contacted PlusNet and told them I wasn’t comfortable with their after sales service and asked for my MAC code so I could migrate to Sky. In fairness to PlusNet they didn’t argue the point and supplied me with a MAC in a matter of hours.

I rang the MAC code through to Sky and the next day Sky Broadband contacted me by telephone to tell me my activation date for their Sky Mid Broadband package has been set for 19th September. They are also sending me out a free wireless router to use with their broadband. That’s someting that PlusNet don’t offer and Sky’s service is almost a third of the price too.

So its goodbye to PlusNet and hello to Sky Broadband.