Up until today, the rest of that sentence was “…and nowhere to go.”
I’ve been experimenting with various VOIP providers recently.
I’ve been using Vonage for a few years now and it has been giving me a bit of grief with technical issues. Several months ago, I was horrified at the prospect of calling their technical support department. I’ve spent way to much time on hold in the past. But, the problems were too serious, and I picked up the phone to call. to my surprise, I got an istant answer. The guy on the other end was Indian, according to his strong accent, and I wondered to myself if I was actually talking to an outsourced tech support rep. in India.
Those problems, plus my casual interest in podcasting has me investigating other solutions. Recording a telephone conversation becomes quite easy with a VOIP solution if you use a “soft-phone”. Vonage offers a soft-line for 9.99/month, but I already have two lines with them. Don’t want another. Likewise, you can use Skype or another pure software-based VOIP telephone service, like Gizmo Project to record a telephone conversation for, say, publishing a telephone interview as a podcast.
I purchased a USB headset/mic and installed Skype. Problem is, I didn’t actually know anyone with Skype to call. So I purchased $10 in SkypeOut minutes so I could call a land-line for a test. Of course I called my wife in the next room for $.02/minute. I was able to record a conversation using Ambrosia Software’s WireTap Pro. Easy breezy as my daughter would say. It worked great.
What prompted this entry today, however, is that Skype just announced that you can make free calls to any land or mobile telephone in the US and Canada for free. Now I can call almost anyone from my PC for free. Pretty cool. But what am I going to do with that $9.98 SkypeOut balance?
Too bad I hate talking on the phone.
