We've recently set up a new business, and moved into a new office. This involves buying lots of stuff – servers, computers, software, cables. And also phones. We have fifteen people who need phone numbers, and many of them need to make a load of calls around the world.

So, we thought, why set up a clunky old PABX when we could use Skype? The technology is great – they have business subscriptions*, cheap calling plans, multi-way calling, smartphone apps so we can call from anywhere – all we have to do is pay them a chunk of money.

Right?

No. Instead, I have now spent six days attempting to persuade Skype to take about £500 per month from my pocket. They have refused. Just in case anyone reading this is thinking of trying something similar, here's how it all works, and why you might want to really, really consider an alternative service.

In preparation for launch we added a bunch of accounts, set up a business control panel, and made initial payments of  a few hundred quid from a credit card. After moving into the office, we attempted to add another £300, but the options are all blocked – the only payment Skype will accept  was £30. And then with that paid, for £5. Which won't even cover a single user.

There are a few other ways to get credit into an account. We signed up with Moneybookers, which should allow higher payments, and registered and verified a credit card there. Once the card was verified (three days), we attempted another payment of £300 – Moneybookers claim this was rejected by Amex, while Amex tell us they were never aware of the attempt. Two more attempts made later managed only to persuade Moneybookers to block the card. Excellent.

Next up – cold hard cash. Skype accepts UKash for up to £600, and by strange coincidence I had £200 in cash – £201.25 will buy £175 of Skype credit, which isn't really enough but better than nothing. On getting to a UKash shop, though, we found out that the service has a maximum of £200 – so the most you could pay Skype via this method is £100. So in order to use this method we'd have to ferry three to five cash payments of £100 around Soho every month. Fun.

Of course, we asked Skype what to do. Several times. On every occasion we were told that there was nothing we could do other than 'make smaller payments' – presumably of £5 a time, in the hope that a computer will choose to lift our limits. This for a £6,000/yr account.

So, there you go. Thinking of a business Skype account? Maybe consider setting fire to your hair instead. It'll be quicker, less painful, and will result in exactly the same level of telecommunications service.

* Few other things to watch out for: many plans are available to personal customers only, and 'Europe' calling packages don't really correspond to any sane definition of Europe.

One of the best things found during our move to the new Apptitude Media offices – some old copies of the British Journal of Photography. This one's from December '33 – excuse the iPhone photo.

Today I'm sad to announce that I'm leaving Computeractive - a great magazine that's brilliantly focused on the needs of its readers, produced by a fantastic team with whom I've enjoyed working immensely. However, I'm also excited to announce my new role as CTO* at the brand-new Apptitude Media.

Apptitude is a new company that we've created following a management buyout of the British Journal of Photography, Popular Science UK, and the team that I've been working on for almost two years, producing digital magazines for the iPad and iPhone. We will continue to publish both magazines, while expanding to build on our work helping other publishers – such as 125 Magazine – make the leap from print onto touchscreen devices.

More details are in our press release, here.

If you're a reader of one of our titles, rest assured that publication will continue without interruption. If you write for me, and I've been unable to warn you in advance – apologies – it's business as usual and I'll be in touch to talk commissions soon. And if you know me, and I've been slightly distant or evasive when discussing work in the last few months, then apologies: I've been unable to talk about any of this stuff until today – lawyers, etc. Sorry.

So, that's my exciting news for the day: new company, new start. Watch this space.

You can reach me at: tom -at- apptitudemedia.co.uk

* Cats, Tea and, er, other stuff. No?

I'm putting this online to preempt the inevitable Evening Standard headlines claiming that Jeremy Hunt has today spared Lewisham Hospital's A&E department.

From his statement today:

On the emergency care proposals, Sir Bruce was concerned that the recommendation for a non-admitting Urgent Care Centre at Lewisham may not lead, in all cases, to improved patient care. While those with serious injury or illness would be better served by a concentration of specialist A&E services, this would not be the case for those patients requiring short, relatively uncomplicated treatments or a temporary period of supervision. To better serve these patients, who would often be frail and elderly and arrive by non-blue light ambulances, Sir Bruce recommends that Lewisham hospital should retain a smaller A&E service with 24/7 senior emergency medical cover. With these additional clinical safeguards, and the impact that this is likely to have on patient and clinician behaviour, Sir Bruce estimates that the new service could continue to see up to three quarters of those currently attending the Lewisham A&E.

So, the new 'smaller A&E' would serve up to 75% of existing A&E visitors.

From the TSA's report:

54) Urgent care services are well established at Guy’s Hospital and Queen mary’s Hospital Sidcup. The TSA recommends university Hospital Lewisham provide these services also, with a view to treating at least 50% of the people currently attending the A&E and urgent care services at the site. This would mean that urgent care services will continue to be available locally and it will also help to minimise the impact on the four remaining A&E departments in south east London.

55) Analysis included in the TSA’s draft report suggested around 77% of university Hospital Lewisham’s current A&E activity would remain at the hospital under this scenario. However, a number of responses to the consultation suggested that this estimate was too high. Therefore, further analysis was undertaken and, based on practice elsewhere in London, a revised figure of 50% has been used for the modelling that underpins the TSA’s recommendation.

So, the TSA's proposal – to keep Lewisham's Urgent Care Centre – was estimated to serve somewhere between 50 and 77% of existing A&E visitors, depending on who you ask. The UCC is, according to the hospital website, designed to "see and treat patients with non-threatening illnesses and injuries".

In addition:

It is proposed that a paediatric ambulatory service is developed as part of the urgent care service at university Hospital Lewisham.

And also:

Older people are also relatively frequent users of A&E services and are more than twice as likely as others to be admitted to hospital following an A&E attendance. Therefore, the proposed changes have significant implications for the continuity of care for these patients. However, older people who would currently present with problems at university Hospital Lewisham could benefit from being admitted to a step-up facility

So: the TSA's recommendation was for the UCC to be retained at Lewisham, with provisions for the elderly and the development of a service for admitting some patients.

What Jeremy Hunt is proposing, however he chooses to dress it up, appears to be just that.

A note before anything else: I'm no fan of the EDL. I'd be happy to see them disappear entirely from the UK's political discourse, because I think they add nothing of any benefit. But I firmly believe that facts, and fact-checking, are important. So, here's something we should discuss.

The other night, screengrabs started circulating of a pretty disgusting tweet from the EDL about the Newtown attack. The EDL claims that it was faked, and a video was posted online in support of its veracity. Here's a grab:

The video shows a tweet ID of 241922092158143412 in the address bar. If you try to call up that tweet, either via the web or the API, you'll get a not found error.

But here's the thing: tweet IDs are not random or sequential – they're generated by a tool called Snowflake, based on a timestamp. So, in theory, you could decode an ID back to a timestamp. And there's code, here (created by @NGalbreath),that allows you to do just that.

So I decoded the ID. You can see the results here.

The first decode is a test, using my own tweet here. You'll note that the decoded time is two hours out, but with the correct date – I'm assuming this is a time zone issue, as my server is not in the UK.

The second decode is tweet ID 241922092158143412. You'll note that it's from September sometime.

So, this suggests to me one of three possibilities:

A) I've read the tweet ID incorrectly – as I did, in fact, the first time I tried. If so, please let me know (though I see that the Bartholemew's Notes blog has read the same ID), or

B) Either the Snowflake to UTC converter, or my implementation of it, is incorrect*, or

C) The tweet was faked

I'd be very pleased if somebody could reassure me that the correct answer is either 1 or 2, because we really shouldn't have to resort to option 3 when it comes to idiots like the EDL.

* Geeks – I used: echo(gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s', (snowflake2utc(241922092158143412))));