*snicker* I love all the people who came along to try to help you out with the payments thing. (For the record, the thing we've recommended in your situation is either a prepaid Visa card -- it works like a debit card, only is debiting from the amount loaded on the card at purchase -- or American Express traveler's checks. Traveler's checks only come in certain amounts, but you can buy points in that amount, then apply the points to a payment once they're added to your account.)

The question of paid vs free is a tough one. Things will almost certainly be released paid-only at first, until we see what the usage is like. We'd like to make them available to everybody down the road, and we probably will wind up giving free users a very very very small amount of space to play with so they can see how cool it is. But we're not sure yet! We'll be conservative at first.