[Chandler-dev] Alternative to Skype for meetings - TalkShoe?

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 07:55 AM 3/26/2007 -0700, D John Anderson wrote:

>On Mar 25, 2007, at 8:30 PM, Reid Ellis wrote:
>
>>Ah, never mind, it seems that the way TalkShoe works, you have to dial 
>>their long-distance number. No direct VOIP. You can use Skype, but you 
>>have to Skype Out to their phone #.
>>
>>Reid
>
>There seems to be some confusion on the number of callers you can include 
>in a Skype conference call.
>
>According to macnn: Using Skype for Mac v2.5: Mac users can use Skype to 
>hold conference calls with up to nine other people.
>
><http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/01/31/skype.for.mac.25.released/>http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/01/31/skype.for.mac.25.released/
>
>You can also use highspeedconferencing.com to allow more than 5 (but no 
>more than 500) people in a conference call. regular telephone users are 
>charged. If everyone uses Skype the service is free:
>
><http://www.highspeedconferencing.com/faq.htm>http://www.highspeedconferencing.com/faq.htm

I've used highspeedconferencing.com's paid premium service to give talks 
for around 45 people at a time.  Sometimes the quality is excellent -- 
other times, not so much.  Recently, I had enough of a problem with them 
that I had to find an alternative:

    http://dirtsimple.org/2007/03/voip-sip-asterisk-huh.html

As it works out, I'm now doing my conferences using FreeSwitch software on 
a Linux box.  It supports Google Talk (you just need a Jabber ID for the 
conference) as well as any number of SIP phone programs (of which there are 
many free ones, for all platforms).  And, my clients can call in to 
conferences using any of these free SIPBroker numbers:

    http://www.sipbroker.com/sipbroker/action/pstnNumbers

by just dialing *010 and a six-digit code (assigned free by VoxALot).

It's also possible to buy your own direct local numbers anywhere in the 
world, with varying monthly cost.  For example, a 415 area code local 
number can be had for $5/month.  One provider offers numbers with three 
channels (i.e., you can have three people called in via the same local 
number at a time) for $8.95 a month.

And of course there are no per-minute charges for any of this, and your 
quality is dependent only on how much CPU and bandwidth you dedicate to the 
thing.

I chose FreeSwitch because it seemed to have a much simpler configuration 
system than Asterisk, and I needed something I could learn *fast* in my 
spare time.  But it doesn't have as nice of a conferencing feature set as 
Asterisk, so I may eventually switch to using Asterisk for conferencing and 
just running FreeSwitch as a Google Talk bridge.  Right now, to use 
moderator controls in a FreeSwitch conference, I literally type commands 
like "conference list" and "conference mute all" into FreeSwitch's operator 
console.  :)