P2P Internet Phone Software for the Home

Getting in touch with friends and family is easy and free with Internet telephone software. Of the many apps available, Skype is our favorite tool for making free computer-to-computer phone calls. It's also a no-brainer solution for long-distance international phone call bills.

Just download Skype, plug in a headset, and call your friends right from your computer. Check out these tools that let you take Skype on the road and into the board room:

  • Skype (home use)
  • PrettyMay Call Center for Skype (office use)
  • iSkoot (Skype for mobile phones)


Skype

From Skype: We all love something for nothing. With Skype's free software – by the way, it works seamlessly with your internet connection – you can chat away with free Skype-to-Skype calls and never worry about cost, time or distance. Share the love and get your friends to download Skype so you can talk, chat or make video calls for nothing. You can also make local, long distance and international calls to phones and cell phones at great rates too.

Getting started is simple. There are many ways Skype can help you connect:

  • Finding people. Adding friends and family to your contact list is simple – search, select, add.
  • Making a call. Calling is easy – select the Call Phones tab, enter a number and click the green button.
  • Free video calls. See who you're talking to for free. Also, be sure to check out our new High Quality Video feature.
  • Great call quality. Get a headset for superior sound quality. Much better than in-built speakers and microphones.

Skype is jam-packed with great features to help you stay in touch with friends, family and co-workers, share your thoughts and views and find the information you need. You can use it on your computer and on both WiFi and cordless phones.

Just for starters you can instant message with anyone on your contact list or even use group chat to chat with up to a hundred people. You could hold a conference call with up to nine other people to organize a get-together and then use SkypeFind™ to search for the perfect venue to hold it.

There are also really cool video features. All you need is a webcam to make free video calls or even take photos of yourself to personalise Skype.

Finding friends

If you use Microsoft Outlook®, Outlook Express®, GMail™, Hotmail® or your mail account with Yahoo! then it's a simple task to import contacts and get them all onto your Skype. If they don't have Skype yet you can send them invite to download it – then you can talk for free (and maybe you'll even get a nice bouquet of flowers and a chocolate bar from your them to say thanks for getting them onto Skype? We'd like to think that's in order).

Adding someone to your contact list is easy. But you can also add people who are not yet on Skype and call them on their phones and mobiles at pretty cheap rates wherever they are.

Also, if your Microsoft Outlook® contacts have phone numbers, you can have them show up on your contact list so you can call them. You'll need Skype Credit or Skype Pro™ to make calls to phones and mobiles.

Download Skype for free from Download.com


PrettyMay Call Center for Skype

From PrettyMay System: PrettyMay Call Center for Skype (PMCCS) is a 100% software-based call center solution for Skype. It allows small or medium sized businesses to quickly and affordably implement a Skype PBX (aka PABX) system with auto-attendant, interactive voice response (IVR), extension transferring, call recording and personalized voicemail capabilities - and a lot more as well.

Your customers contact you by calling your Skype Name, a Skype Button displayed on your website, or a SkypeIn number , PMCCS automatically answers the call, and leads the caller into the built-in IVR system, then transfers the call to the appropriate agent or staff member depending on the button the caller pressed.

You can have up to 30 simultaneous Skype or SkypeIn lines supported with the PrettyMay Call Center for Skype. The diagram below shows how the system works for inbound calling.

Business-friendly features:

  • Skype calling – skype-to-skype are free. Remove the cost of internal calling.
  • Call phones and mobiles- make a low-cost call to landlines and mobiles
  • SMS – send text messages from your computer instead of your mobile
  • Business Control Panel – manage Skype Credit for your company/allocate online numbers
  • Conference calling- 3-10 people
  • Group chats- discuss ideas with customers or colleagues
  • Video calls – see the person you are talking to with a webcam
  • Voicemail – takes your calls and you can check them wherever you have internet access
  • View Outlook contacts – all your Microsoft Outlook contacts directly from the contact list
  • Shared groups – set up so it's easy to add new contacts to a group
  • Chat History – keeps a record of all chat messages so you can easily search through
  • Call forwarding – away from your computer? Forward to your cell phone.

Security:

Windows installer package – MSI installer makes it easy to deploy the Skype software to many computers in your networkSkype calling. Skype-to-Skype calls are absolutely free. By switching your employees to Skype you remove the cost of internal calling. If clients or business contacts are using Skype you can call them for free as well.Call phones and mobiles. An easy way to make low-cost calls to landlines and mobiles directly from Skype at nice, cheap rates.

  • Secure. Information transferred over the Skype network is secure from unauthorized eavesdropping.
  • Works with antivirus software. Inbound and outbound Skype file transfers are scanned by the major antivirus products.
  • Protects privacy. Skype's encryption and authentication may help you meet enterprise and national privacy mandates.
  • Firewalls stay secure. Skype doesn't require any inbound openings in your firewalls; often no change is needed at all.
  • Skype puts you in control. You can turn off or configure a variety of Skype's functionality or settings, including file transfer and the API.
  • Users are protected from spam. Permission-based communication settings prevents most unwanted communications.
  • No adware or spyware. Neither the Skype software nor the Skype installer installs any software without the user's consent.
  • Easy to deploy. The Skype for Windows - Business version download includes Windows Installer Package (commonly known as MSI). Making it easy for IT administrators to deploy Skype software within an enterprise network.
  • Easy to manage. IT administrators can control how Skype behaves on their network. See the Network Administrators guide and group policy template file for more details.Skype documents for IT administrators

Download a free trial of PrettyMay Call Center for Skype from Download.com


iSkoot

From ITwire: Skype has taken another small but not insignificant step toward enabling it to become a user's primary telephone service: by signing a co-marketing agreement with iSkoot, a company that has developed software for mobile phones that enables them to be used to make and receive Skype calls. The software will be promoted to handset manufacturers for possible pre-loading onto new handsets and to cellular service providers.

iSkoot software enables users to receive and make Skype calls on their mobile phone via the cellular networks. Skype voicemail, however, must be de-activated.

Once a cellphone has the iSkoot software installed on it, the user can see their Skype contact lists and call them just as they do from a PC. They can also place outgoing calls to PSTN numbers at SkypeOut rates and receive Skype-to Skype calls from other Skype users.

The downside is that the final link in the communications chain uses the normal cellular network voice channel, so for every call they make users must pay their normal cellular charges. For SkypeOut calls, this is in addition to the normal SkypeOut charge. They also require GPRS or another packet data service to enable their buddy list to be kept up to datee.

The cost of the cellular hop on an incoming call, which is paid to the cellular operator by iSkoot, is recouped by iSkoot from the user's SkypeOut account.

This software has been available, but without Skype certification, for some time. Users can install it on their own compatible cell phones, register with ISkoot and start using it. iSkoot launched its service, independent of Skype in February, by making use of the Skype API.

iSkoot presently works on Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones that run J2ME, The company says it intends to add support for other J2ME phones including Treo and BlackBerry. The service is presently available only on US cellular networks. iSkoot also intends to support other free PC-PC VoIP services such as Google Talk.

Download iSkoot free from Download.com