Fear of commitment
We’ve been using Skype lately. We installed it and played around with it several months ago, but it never really went anywhere. Now they’ve made some improvements and we’re very impressed. If you have a broadband connection you can use VOIP (voice-over-internet protocol) to replicate phone service anywhere. But free. In the past this worked only if your friend was also running Skype on a broadband computer, but now they’ve expanded it so that for a very small amount of money you can dial in to any telephone, including mobiles, and for another modest fee you can get a number your friends can dial that rings your computer (or phone) or takes voice mail. Dial-into numbers are available in 11 countries, and your caller pays only their regular rate to that number. So, for example, we got a New Hampshire number that rings in Slovenia.
It was through this modern magic that over the weekend I was able to hear an old friend give the following restaurant review:
“But this pizza was a commitment…it wasn’t good from a social standpoint…but I’d like to revisit that pizza, knowing what I was getting into…”
Based on this I can recommend Skype, not to mention whatever Boston pizza joint he was rambling on about.
Did you also try Spontania with Skype? I have been using Skype for more than a year now and I love it. Before Spontania I was combining it with Windows media player and media encoder to send and receive video simultaneously, but with Spontania it is easy. It is not always perfect…sometimes it doesn’t start automatically with your Skype call as it should,and sometimes it gets “congested” and doesn’t work at all, but at the moment it is , at least in my opinion not perfect but good enough!. So, if you had a webcam and the friends/family you are talking to had it too, give it a try! It is a great way to see your loved ones on the other side of the world!
It is free, easy to download and install at this site
http://www.dialcom.com/
Comment by ka-ma — Monday 12 December 05 @ 01.03 MST+2.00