Voipally

Many podcasters use Skype to do Podcasts. The benefits of PC-based voice calling are obvious compared to trying to record telephone conversations, and the free nature of them has allowed many long-distance podcast teams to collaborate. However, there are some good reasons why podcasters should look at other non-Skype tools to use when podcasting. In particular, Gizmo has some very compelling features for podcasters whne compared to Skype:

1. Voice Quality
   While Skype is rightly know for it’s good voice quality in most circumstances, Gizmo’s quality is just as good. Some people even find it better especially for Mac to PC or PC to Mac communication.
2. Free Recording
   While Skype has a number of add-ons to enable recording of conversations (eg, Skylook, Hotrecorder) recording is a built-in feature of Gizmo.
3. More people in conference calls
   Skype allows up to 10 people per conference call (if you have the correct hardware). Gizmo’s only limit is the power of your hardware – while 10 people may be the limit in many circumstances, a simple work-around can allow up to 28 people in a call at once.
4. Easier to use
   While ease-of-use is often subjective, and increasing number of people are saying they find the Gizmo GUI better laid out and more intuitive. This is very useful when podcasting with someone who is unfamiliar with either Skype or Gizmo, as they will be able to use it quicker – a podcast filled with where much of the time is spent trying to explain how to use the software is likely to annoy the listeners.

If you’d like to use a traditional telephone device to call other phones using Skype Oldskoolphreak has documented the process at http://www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/voip/skypeout_via_ata.txt

It’s not exactly a simple process, and required a virtual PBX installed. The instructions use the Axon Virtual PBX, but note that:

I’m probably sure you can substitute the Axon PBX for Asterisk, seeing as Uplink isn’t hardcoded to use Axon. It’ll require some tweaking though. I didn’t have much luck with it. If anyone wants to give it a go with Asterisk and succeeds, let me know, and I’ll add it to this text file with full credit given.

The process also requires a SIP-to-Skype bridge, so it might be possible to make this work using a SIP Softphone like Gizmo.