About Skype and the “Call Me” button
As a person who loves his friends and family very much, I want to make it easy and inexpensive to communicate with them. I also want to make it easy and inexpensive for potential employers to contact me any where in the world. To this end I have signed up for and implemented many of the features made available with the Skype service. I would like to briefly, without too much “techno-mumbo-jumbo” explain Skype and how you can use it to contact me. For those who are interested, later on I will attempt to explain how you can do this sort of thing too.
“What is Skype?”
Skype (www.skype.com) is an Internet based telephony service. That means that using your computer and Internet connection you can make “phone calls” to other people, be they down the street or in my case in Prague, Czech Republic. Skype services are free to use if you are calling from your computer to another Skype user at their computer. This is a great (and free) way to call friends all over the globe or across town.
“That sounds cool. How can I do it?”
You need to start first by installing skype. It’s available for both Macintosh, Windows and Linux. You can go to the download page by clicking here:
Like other software installations, you will need to select your operating system and then click the “get it now” button. This should start the download. You will then install it like any other application. Instructions on installing in Windows can be found here:
Instructions for installing on a Macintosh can be found here:
Macintosh install instructions
Once installed, you start the program. It will ask you set up an account etc. Follow the on screen instructions. It’s pretty easy.
“I have it installed and have set up my account. Now what do I do?”
This is where the fun begins. To call me you type in my screen name, which is:
kencameron1971
Then, you guessed it, click the call button. At this point you call will go over the Internet to the Skype computers. The Skype computers will then figure out if I am online. If I am online the call will go through to my computer. If I do not answer the call at my computer, your phone call will be forwarded to the cell phone I carry with me at all times.
“How do you set up call forwarding with Skype?”
Skype offers a lot of cool features. One of the coolest is call forwarding. If I don’t answer your call at my computer I pay skype to forward the call to my cell phone. The cost depends on where the phone call is delivered to. Here in the Czech republic it costs about 18 cents per minute ( $ .18 USD). If you do this in the USA it only costs 2 cents a minute ($ .02 USD). Believe me if it gets to the point that I don’t think the expense is worth getting these calls I will turn off the call forwarding. On a Macintosh, you go to Skype menu, click Preferences, the click Calls. Here you will put a check in the box to forward unanswered calls, and then type in the number to forward them to. Be sure to put a “+” and the country code infront of the number (i.e. +1-555-800-1212). The USA country code is “1″. The Czech country code is “420″. Instructions for a windows computer can be found here:
Call forwarding with Skype and Windows
“What else can I do with Skype?”
Other features that Skype offers include: receiving voice-mails, being able to call normal phones, allowing normal phones to call you on Skype using a local phone number that they create for you, Video Calls, etc. To get a good grasp on if Skype will charge for a service, just ask yourself: “Does skype have to pay any one to do this?” to call a normal phone line skype has to pay the local Tel-Co for using their phone lines. To set up a local number for people to call yo on Skype pays for the phone number to be set up for you. Skype can tell you more about it here:
“So what is this Call Me button for?”
Skype and others makes available little snippets of HTML code that allow you to embed one of their buttons on to a web site. What follows is an example of one of these buttons:
With the “Call Me” button, if some one has Skype installed they can just click the button and the Skype program will place a call to the Skype user that set up the button. You can get one of you own Skype buttons by going here:
If you look at the top fight hand corner of this page you will see another Skype button that gives you several options on how to contact me or add me to you Skype contact list. If you want to find out how to use it in a WordPress powered website, the following link will get you the info you need:
The above web site does not specify if this button is compatible with the newest version of WordPress (As of Jan 16, 2006 current version is 2.0) I can say that if you follow the instructions it works well with WordPress 1.5
One other thing that I should point out is If you have a laptop computer but no Internet, you can often go to a coffee shop or Internet cafe and use their Internet connection to make free phone calls. Some coffee shops require you to use a WI-FI card, others allow you to plug in with an ethernet cable. In the Austin, Texas area it seems that most good coffee shops (Read: not Starbucks) offer free WI-FI. I believe this to be true of most large US cities. In Prague this is a lot less common.
Thanks for reading this. I hope that is useful. If you find any factual errors please feel free to let me know.
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