The ScooterBlog

Hey … along with commenting on the blog, why not send me a message! I bet the kid who left me all those nasty comments would love to leave me a phone message instead … oh wait … that would imply that he puts his real voice to his real thoughts. Doubt that would happen.

Anyways, here it is.

(614) 796-7025

Just leave me a message anytime, I’ll check it and get back with you. Preferably, let me know if you use a voice IM type setup, I’d like to test that more and more.

I’m on a new kick. It’s that my broadband line needs to get used for as much stuff as possible. Sure, I use it to build upload credit on a couple of pimp sites, and to grab down pretty much anything that looks like it might be cool. BUT, it can do so much more.

Enter, the world of Internet Calling.

My Skype Credit the other day, which magically went from $10 to $50 due to some fortuitous offers, and I used it for like 50 cents of phone calls back when I thought it would work well as a cell phone alternative to call Danielle. I got an e-mail saying that the credit was close to expiration recently, so instead of letting it go to waste, I decided instead to use it to buy SkypeIn for the next year! This means, I have a 614 phone number for both in and out calls for the next year, which is great now that I am living in Columbus. And renewing it next year is $40 for the entire year, and hopefully US calls will remain free, or pretty close to it.

This brings up another possible problem. What’s the best way to make calls? While I knew I could use a headset of some kind, the solution didn’t seem like the best for me, especially for taking the headset with me on the road. So, I went looking for a good cheap USB phone, and I found one. The US Robotics 9601A Internet Phone. For $30, it looked far nicer then the model $5 cheaper at Wal-Mart, and when I got it home, I found it had OSX compatibility too, a major plus.

So now, when I use Skype, I just put this phone in my bag, and I can use my work PC, or my home PC, or my iBook Laptop to make phone calls with a phone that feels real. And, I’m working on getting it setup in Yahoo! Messenger, AIM Triton, and any other utility that I feel would be helpful for keeping in touch with people (Gizmo Project maybe?) I’m open to suggestions for the programs that people are using for this purpose right now.

The other thing that I’m posting this for is that I want to find friends to test this with. Text chat is nice, but darnit, now I can do real voice chat, so send me a message and let me know if you have a headset or phone and want to try this cool feature.