Firstbits has been disabled temporarily to reduce database load. At the moment I am not sure when it will be available again.
Thank you so kindly, piuk, for your timely and informable reply. Ironically, the last online wallet entity of which I thanked its principle for clearing up an issue went dark about a week later. Please till me that a near future hack is not iminent.
I guess that also makes FirstBits dead in the water, since they use BC's API to generate FBs, as I've already tried to do to no success.
~TMI
BTCITW