The trouble is “almost all of the time.” So for Googlers benefit, here are three problems I’ve had with Skype voicemail over the last couple of years that aren’t answered by Skype’s FAQ and unlikely to get a straight answer from tech support in the first response.

These solutions are for the Mac client, but can probably be adapted to Windows. I doubt the files are different, but the paths to them will be.

Can’t hear any audio when you listen to a voicemail?

Calls go to voicemail immediately, without ringing?

For both of these, quit Skype, then delete the file ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/shared.xml.

Unanswered calls not going to voicemail?

Quit Skype. Open ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/your-user-name/config.xml in a text editor. Look for:

<Call>
  ...
  <NoAnswerTimeout>10</NoAnswerTimeout>
  ...
</Call>

The number is the delay, in seconds, before Skype will do something with the call. If this is missing, Skype won’t send the call to voicemail.

The pros and cons of the switch have been reported enough already, so I want to talk about something I think will be a big deal to almost everyone that gets their TV over an antenna.

The way a digital converter box works is to take the place of the analog tuner in your TV or VCR. In a way, it’s helpful to think of it sort of like a VCR. When you play a tape, you tune your TV to channel 3, then do everything on the VCR. The converter box works the same way. It comes with its own remote and you tune the TV channel on the box, not the TV. So, first annoyance: new remote.

Here’s the worst part, though: taping shows. I think the people most likely to be affected by the transition are the people who still record shows using timed recordings on an old VCR. This won’t work any more. The VCR can’t tune the channel because it has an analog tuner inside it. That means it needs a converter box, but the VCR can’t tell the converter box to change the channel. You’d need to do that, by hand, before walking away. Forget taping two shows on the same night, back-to-back, on different channels. The original TiVo had a little IR transmitter you hung in front of your cable or satellite box to solve this problem (it transmitted the remote codes to change the channel), but no VCR I know of has one.

Want to watch one show while taping another (assuming you can live with the above problem)? Get two converter boxes: the VCR needs one for the show it’s taping and you’ll need a second one for the channel you want to watch on your TV. They better be different brands, too, or else you need a way to tell converter box #1 to ignore the remote for box #2.

My mom recently bought a Panasonic VCR/DVD-R combo unit with a digital tuner, but it refuses to record digital channels on the VCR side, so it’s not a great solution for people used to tapes.

February or June? I’m not sure it matters. The full impact of the transition won’t be known until people are forced to live in a digital-only world and they discover what doesn’t work anymore.

If you’ve never tried a WebKit nightly build before, it is easy (on a Mac, anyway) to run it side-by-side with Safari. You don’t have to give up your stable, released browser to check out these new features. Still, it will be very nice when these improvements make it into an official release.

For Firefox users, YSlow is a very nice extension built on top of Firebug that provides a detailed report card on page load performance, including suggestions for improving it.