Skype introduced public chats in November, and it didn’t take long for my colleague Jaanus to set up a Skype blog chat. To get involved, click the ‘join now’ link in the box at the top-right of Jaanus’s Share Skype blog.

Once you’ve got the taste for this public chatting wheeze, why not create a chat of your own? Public chats are basically Skype text chats that anyone can create, host and join, and they’re not much different from private text chats, except that anyone can join without being “added”. You can choose for the chat to be as open or private as you like.

Here’s a top money-saving tip: set up your own New Year’s Eve public chat, post a link to it in an email, whizz it off to friends, loved ones and distant relatives, and stage an en-masse babble with all your favourite people this Sunday night. It’s much cheaper than pretty much anything else you can do on 31 December (the most overpriced night of the year), and it’s a far more original way to see in 2007 than freezing your pants off in the town square and waking up the next morning with a sore head.

Happy New Year, Skypers!