Archive for the ‘skype’ tag
Lookout Skype — here comes Gizmo
Gizmo — Free Internet Calling the Open Standards Way
Free Internet calling has always been plagued by a lack of interoperability.
This was true of the startup companies of the 90’s Internet bubble era
or the more recent popular service Skype as well.
The Gizmo project plans to change that with open standards and open networks.Skype is based on proprietary technology which means that only users of the Skype software or phones can only make free Internet calls with other Skype users.
Gizmo users can potentially make free calls to any system that decides to
make use of the same open standards.Although Skype has a head start in terms of user base, this may quickly change.
Gizmo not only has open standards going for it. The free Gizmo software offers free voice mail and does not use your computer to route other calls as Skype does due to the P2P nature of the Skype service.
Just as with Skype, you can also call land-line and mobile phones with Gizmo for very low per-minute fee and receive calls to a regular telephone number by paying a small monthly fee.
Free SkypeOut dialing hack
from VoIP Blog
In my recent post on a free 411 directory assistance service I stated that in theory you could use SkypeOut to dial 800-FREE411 and then have 800-FREE411 connect your call free of charge, but you’d still use up your SkypeOut minutes. I wrote:
Too bad Skype doesn’t charge less per minute for (toll free) 800 numbers - if they did then you could save money by always dialing though Free411.com’s service. Of course, that wouldn’t be very nice to Free411.com since they pay for the call. (when you dial their 800 number and they connect the call)
I thought about checking Skype’s website to see if they did indeed discount 800 numbers, but I was too busy to check and I figured one of my blog readers would “catch me” if I was wrong. Well, Rick Hultz, a prolific commenter on my blog, did just that.
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