Commercial VOIP services like Vontage seem to be more visible and commercially available now, at least here in stores like Radio Shack and Best Buy in Lubbock, Texas. Just search Google News for “VOIP” to see what a hot news topic this is. At some point in the not too distant future, I am considering dropping our traditional home land line (POTS) and relying on both cellular phones and a cost-effective VOIP solution that uses regular phone handsets. Not doing this yet, however. Vontage’s own comparison chart reveals that people like me, who don’t use POTS for long distance (we use cell phones for those calls), may be wasting money if we’re paying more than $25 per month just to make local phone calls. For people using landlines for long distance, they may be wasting even more $$$.
I have loved using Skype on several different occasions in the past several months, making phone calls to others using their computers as well as “skyping-out” to others talking on their cell phones and land-line phones. My podcast for October 6, 2005 on “Defining and Measuring Digital Literacy” was a skypecast conversation with Dr. Chris Moersch. Other skypecasts were September’s “Open Source in Educational IT Environments” with Afan Ottenhemier and August’s “Open Source in Education” dialog with Miguel Guhlin.
Currently, I am aware of the following VOIP software solutions which are not IM clients “adding on” VOIP:
- Skype: Most popular program world-wide, cross-platform, has excellent audio quality, supports conference calls with up to 4 people
- Gizmo: Cross-platform, audio quality not as good as Skype, but supports call recording within the software program as well as conference calling
- Google Talk: Windows-only (boo to you Google)
Lots of folks (especially in Asia I am told) use Yahoo messenger for VOIP as well as IM, and increasingly for videoconferencing. AIM and iChat support VOIP, as does MSN Messenger (which is in the process of being wedded to Yahoo IM.) I am not sure what the global marketshare breakdown for VOIP looks like currently, but I would wager a majority of it is owned by Skype and the major IM players.
Interestingly, the “hold” feature of Gizmo plays a musical loop that sounds remarkably similar to the great.wav Garageband masterpiece my son created at age 7, which I use on my podcast! (I am wondering if the Gizmoproject authors use Garageband too?!)
Gizmo Project’s “call in service” looks intriguing, but the available service area is limited currently to just larger cities. For $3 a month you have a phone number others can use to call you, wherever you might be, and if you’re at home you can use a SIP Phone to talk with a “normal” phone handset.
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On this day..
- Family New Years Green Screen Video – 2016
- Why National Geographic on the iPad is Amazing – 2013
- Free 1 Year Bible on YouVersion – 2011
- Learning from Angela, Kern and Konrad – 2010
- Netbooks or eBook Readers for Students? – 2010
- Skype Virtual Guest Speakers and Collaboration wiki – 2009
- Resurrecting old conference notes before the days of blogging – 2009
- Podcast298: An Interview on Manitoba Morning Radio with Darren Kuropatwa about Numeracy, Literacy, Student Summary Blogging, Digital Learning and the K-12 Online Conference – 2009
- Paraphrased quotations from today’s radio interviews in Winnipeg, Manitoba – 2009
- Encourage hands-on science inquiry! – 2008