I woke up one day (yesterday) and all of a sudden I’m using Skype all the time (including SkypeOut). What changed? First, I’m at my house in Alaska and my habits got shaken up. Second, I installed my Vonage phone so I could have a 303 area code while I’m up here (and just to play around with Vonage) so I decided that while I was at it, I should try Skype as a phone and see how it compared. But – most importantly – the Skype for Outlook plug-in hit beta.
Holy shit – this is cool. It works exactly as you’d want it to. I hate talking on the phone, but it’s a side effect of being a VC. I live in two apps – Outlook (on the left monitor) and Firefox (on the right monitor). Suddenly I’ve got a little magic toolbar that lets me call people via Skype by looking up their info in Outlook. Perfect. And – it works. $12 from Paypal (10 euros) and I’m set with long distance for a long time.
Now – all I need is a headset with a microphone that integrates with my fancy speakers.