Have just enjoyed the 60 day trial of Mobile Me. Having a house full of Macs which will be joined, I do not doubt, at some time by an iPad all that syncing and sharing stuff is just the job. Mostly I was using the picture gallery which, combined with a dinky WordPress plugin, provided a quick link from here to there.

The trial expired but no payment was charged. Instead an email complaining that something was wrong with my card details…

…which was strange. I checked the details and all seemed, as far as I could see, to be correct but still it was rejected…

…which was strange because the details of the same card are stored at the Apple Store where it is used (far too) frequently…

One of their suggestions was to purchase a box from the Apple Store, have that delivered by snail mail, discard the disc and packaging into the recycle bin, and type in the included activation key. [W:Cloud computing] eh! It’s the future!

In the past I have purchased QuickTime Pro and Aperture activation keys from the Apple Store but alas a Mobile Me activation key is not availabe.

So, for now, I have given up and rolled my own using the Gallery software.. Perhaps not as pretty as Apple’s but it does the job. A bit of PHP in the widgets over there (->) adds an image and a link. A bit of FTP adds a straight through connection.

The email said they would keep the account active until the 12th June which is just after WWDC and some rumours say… that Mobile Me will be free anyway. Hmmm!