Skype

September 24, 2004

As a consequence of the need to tend to several work-related projects, the presence of a looming urge to redesign this blog, a spurt of blogging over at MemeFirst and a rather heavy post on Leopold II last week to come down from, you will now be served a few posts blissfully free of any import or presumption: A roundup of recent Mac software I've used and can recommend. Today:

A voice chat application for both PC and Mac that lets you talk to other users for free but also make cheap calls to real phones.Skype: This second beta for the Mac, out since a week ago, now works seamlessly. I actually only use one of Skype's features, SkypeOut, but what a feature it is: 2-eurocent a minute "voice chat" to real phones in the US, Europe and Australia from anywhere I can plug my PowerBook to the internet — and with the same sound quality as a normal phone call.

This changes everything. Consider my setup: Because I've been moving frequently these past few years, I haven't bothered getting landlines, relying instead on my mobile phone to make calls, even if calling out is expensive, at 1 euro per minute to the US. Today the 10 euro credit I bought on Skype will let me talk 500 minutes, as opposed to the 10 minutes I would have gotten via Telia on my mobile. That's also far cheaper than using landlines or calling cards.

Friends in New York who are all avid Vonage users have asked me why they should use Skype instead. They shouldn't. Unlike Vonage, Skype can't receive calls from real phones. But Vonage, inexplicably for the business they're in, only takes credit cards with US addresses (trust me, I tried); Skype takes all comers. And since I already have a mobile phone on which I can receive calls for free, I don't miss Skype's inability to do so.

If you live in Europe, have broadband and still initiate long distance phone calls using landlines, you are being fleeced. Help kickstart the voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) revolution and get Skype. (Did I mention it's made in Sweden?)

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