There's a single-use application for which firstbits would be ideal:  brainwallets.
That is:  if you knew firstbits would be around to use when you spend the brainwallet, you would only have to memorize about six characters of the private key.  And the private key could be totally random, no passphrase necessary, no rainbow table vulnerability.
How come nobody ever published firstbits code -- or did I just not look in the right place?  What else is there besides github?

Can't find a site that works -- firstbits.net, bitcoinfirstbits.com, blockchain.info, none of them works.
Searched for "firstbits" on github and found nothing.
Is firstbits dead?

update:

I was able to do the transaction using brainwallet.org instead of the strongcoin page.
Because it was a small, experimental transaction I went ahead and did it online -- I entered my private key in the brainwallet transactions page.  It worked.  It was I who made the transaction you saw on the blockchain, so all's well.
In the future I will be doing larger transactions, and I want to generate and sign the transaction offline, which ought to be possible.  I have the  brainwallet page saved and can run it offline.  But it will take an extra step, retrieving the transaction history and pasting it in.  This is more complicated than just pasting the private key.  So I have to test the process on brainwallet.  If I can do offline transactions with brainwallet, all the pieces of the puzzle will be filled in.
I've been doing all this on a netbook running ubuntu.
This process will consume fewer computing resources than using Armory.  In fact, I won't have to use a wallet at all to store and retrieve bulk funds.  For the smaller, day-to-day transactions I will probably use coinbase.

I'm trying to follow the instructions in this reddit post:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bhffb/how_to_create_and_use_an_offlineonly_wallet/
I generated an address and deposited some bitcoin in it.  I checked on blockchain.info and it worked.
I made two deposits of .001 btc each to the address, so it has .002 btc in it.
When I tried to spend from that address following the instructions I couldn't get it to work.
I pasted in the transaction history and private key in base58 and clicked parse.
The I pasted in the target address, amount .0019 and fee .0001 and clicked generate, but nothing happened.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.  If somebody would help me troubleshoot I'd appreciate it.
Here is the blockexplorer page which shows the transaction history of the adress I deposited the .002 btc in:
http://blockexplorer.com/q/mytransactions/15r9bTpKPwLbL4FKUJfsqEN5g3EAMV9676
I pasted the entire text into the offlineTransactions transaction history box.  Is that the right way to do it?

Bernanke's ok with bitcoin because he sees it's a good thing.  It's not going to make the world financial ecosystem collapse.
The posts in this thread exhibit too much manichaeism.

Very simply put, the price has dropped because it was much too high.
Until October, the price was fairly stable and less than $150.  Let me say that again, just in case you missed it: Until October, bitcoin cost less than a hundred fifty dollars.
What happened then?  A bubble.  A bubble is something full of air.  The huge price increase in bitcoin was nothing but a lot of air; it means nothing. 
Bitcoin is still subject to economics and the natural law of the market. 
Yes it will most likely go to $1k sometime not too far in the future, but I think it might take until late summer or early fall.  I also think that, before the bitcoin price rises, a further drop in price is very much within the realm of possibility.

I know this is off topic, but will the blockchain ever get faster?

Right, but don't expect another rocket ride for a while either.

Let's look at historical prices charted on a log scale:
http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgTzm1g10zm2g25zl
Pretty revealing about bitcoin's behavior. That chart shows baseline support that's almost a straight line.  The humps and spikes are bubbles, in effect.
If the logarithm of bitcoin's price rises linearly, that means bitcoin has been going up exponentially.
Google logistic curve.  Bitcoin is the classic case.  A period of exponential increase, followed by a leveling off.
The trillion dollar question, of course, is when will it level off?
For the sake of argument let's say the party's just getting started.  To get back to its historic price support (which is not static or even linear, it's exponential with time), bitcoin needs to do one of two things.  It needs to drop, or trade sideways long enough until the rising support baseline catches up with it.
I don't think it's going into a drastic vertical crash the way it did in April.  As time goes by and bitcoin's price gradually drifts downward, that baseline of support will continue its exponential rise, and at some point they will meet.
That's when btc's price will start rising again.

I think we're in a bear market which will go on for months.  700 is still much too high.  Remember the last time bitcoin had a reasonably stable price in Sept., no more than about 130.  Historically, bitcoin has gone up by a factor of ten every year.  It has shot up nearly that much in three months to reach the recent highs.  Even after "correcting" to 700, the price is far too high.  It's really worth about a third of that.

If you don't say where, nobody will be able to help!
I attended the Buenos Aires conference.  Alan Safahi said his company zipzap is building out a worldwide exchange infrastructure for remittances.  Maybe you should email him:   alan.safahi@ezipzap.com
Coin4ce.com is also expanding in Latin America.

What about somebody like me with no utility bills, no fixed address, no nothing  -- just a post office box?  Even my driver's license lists the po box on it as my address.

Chrome and firefox beta both give the error message.

Dolphin Mini browser gives same error and says
Organizational unit:  positiveSSL
Issued by: positiveSSL CA2
Organization:  COMODO CA Limited
Validity:  
Issued on:  2013-09-07 21:00:00-0300
Expires on:  2014-09-08  20:59:59-0300

I'm guessing it's legit after googling comodo.
Anydody can issue a more definitive opinion?
Not my expertise, this.

I got the SSL error message.
How can I find out whether it's safe to use?

When I click the square on the upper right ( next to the search symbol), a box opens with "new tweet" at the top, and an empty space to type in.  So you're saying I type @coinbase, with maybe just a space following it and then my message, or how do I format it?  Put a colon after @coinbase, or type @coinbase by itself on the first line and start my tweet on a new line?
Also, I read somewhere that if you send a tweet @someone, they won' t see it unless they are following you.
Anyway, I sent the tweet.  I don't see it though.  Here is the text of my tweet:
@coinbase
I had 104.34 btc until Dec 6, now I only have 80.34. Please give them back or pay me

Here is a link to a reddit discussion
http://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/1ssywh/account_balance_completely_screwed_up_no_response/

How do you post on a company's twitter?  I am new to twitter.

I tried to sell 12 btc on Dec 6.  The sale wouldn't go through and I logged off. Later, I saw that coinbase had entered multiple sells and buys at 12 btc.  In the following days they kept fiddling with my account, andnow I am down 24 btc below what I had before Dec 6, but they have not sent me any money.  I can't get through to their support.  I' ve sent more than one message, and they have not even assigned an agent to my case.  They are screwing me out of a giant crapload of money.  I need your help.

$2000 in 2014, probably so; stable, maybe not so much.

Alarmism of the sort we have seen before.  Bitcoin does have fundamentals, and even now it is trading at two or three times fundamentals.  It will be volatile until the market matures.  This Wall Street story is just more of the same.  Yes, it could lead to a bubble and crash, but that happens at least once a year anyway.  Every time, doomsayers call down the gods' wrath.

Giletto, I have to say your last post is just funny as hell.
Do you know what "take a life" means?
ROFLMAO