I participated in
a Skypecast yesterday. Easton Ellsworth, from Know More Media, invited several
fellow bloggers to join him on Skype and have a
discussion about blogging: What were we learning? What did we think we needed to know? What’s next?
While the sound
quality was, at some points, challenging (Skypecast is in beta), I couldn’t get over how Skype was
such a great idea. Of course, to join
the call, I had to join Skype (joining is free). And in typical fashion for me (hey, what’s
the point of standing in the shallow water when you can dive into the deep
end?), I went out and bought a USB phone for the occasion.
Since last night
I have found several of my friends and colleagues on Skype (one accidentally
called me at 11:30pm trying to add me to his contact list!). A few of them were international – people I
don’t talk to nearly enough. Now I can,
whenever I want to, for free – nothing – nada!
You can connect
with other Skype members for free. If
you want to call people that are not on Skype, then you sign up for that
service (SkypeIn or SkypeOut) and only pay for the time you use at a very low rate (most calls I’ll make will cost about 2 cents a minute). They have
chats, im, voicemail, and other services as well. You only need headphones and a microphone to
use Skype with your existing computer and internet connection.
What’s the point? Here is a great tool that makes connecting
with people easier and cheaper.
Look me up on
Skype!
(P.S. The sound quality on all the other one-on-one calls I made has been great!)
Ann, thanks for mentioning the fun experimental Skypecast we had on Friday. I plan to do another one this week – I’ll announce it at BusinessBlogWire.
I’m happy that you’re enjoying your initial experiences with Skype and I hope the Skypecast’s questionable overall sound quality won’t deter you.
By the way, I just read that Skype is now offering FREE calls to ANY phone in the U.S. and Canada till the end of 2006 – that’s how I understand it, anyway. Awesome!
I actually use Vonage too. I left Verizon a while ago. I’m still going to keep Vonage, but Skype is great because it will go with me where ever I (and my laptop) go and I can call my international friends for nothing. Thanks for stopping by – I loved your blog!
Skype is great from what I hear. I just haven’t had a chance to try to switch from Vonage which I’m happy with. What I don’t understand is why people just don’t use the audio feature of IM, and you can use video if you like.
Atul