![]() Skype fires up and dials his number for me. I hit the right arrow and then select his phone number (work or cell), then hit Return. His name is displayed in LaunchBar from his Address Book entry. Since LaunchBar can pull names out of my Address Book it makes looking up phone numbers and calling people very simple.Īs an example, if I wanted to call my buddy Stuart I activate LaunchBar (Command-Space) and enter "stu". ![]() When you combine LaunchBar with Skype you get some great integration and the ability to call people very easily. I've mentioned before that I'm a big LaunchBar fan. On my Mac Pro with a USB based microphone (and no video camera), the sound quality is excellent. On my MacBook Pro I will occasionally get some very mild feedback if the volume is cranked up too high but it's very minor a headset solves that problem. The calls to people through Skype-both to other Skype users or to people on land lines-are very clear. Don't have it running? The call rolls to voice mail, which you can see the next time you fire up Skype. By doing this people with land lines can dial directly into your computer if you are running Skype. The other option available with Skype is purchasing your own local phone number and having it tied to your Skype account. That's what I set up - unlimited calls to the US and Canada. While you can't use it to place calls to 911, it's excellent for making a call wherever you happen to have a decent internet connection. For access here in the US to any number in the US or Canada the cost is $2.95 / month. Skype doesn't allow you to call a land line for free though for that you can pay as you go or set up a monthly account that gives you voicemail and unlimited calls (10K minutes) to various parts of the world. The nice part about using Skype this way is that it's completely free. ![]() All was good and Skype became my occasional use tool for chatting with the family and a few Skype enabled friends. My family members in California running Windows never seemed to be able to get their video based AIM tools to work, yet once they installed Skype we were able to hook up quickly and easily. Though I started playing with Skype a couple of months ago I did it primarily as an alternate video conferencing option to iChat.
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