Skype

Skype can be downloaded for free, and it works with a web camera attached to your computer. Through that, the two callers can see each other and speak as if they were both in the room. If you want to contact a faraway relative or friend, or even just have late night chats with someone who’s already headed home for the evening, Skype is a great way to be able to talk to them as if you were both in the same room. What’s more, if one or both of you has other people in the room, you can all talk to each other easily, rather than a phone having to be passed around the room and people taking their turn to speak to each other.

Skype offers a fee-based service, but is mostly free. You can set up an account and screen name like any other chat service out there, using whatever e-mail you have available, and set a password as well. Once logged in, you can even do text chat, much like AOL Instant Messenger or any of the other popular chat services, and it comes with its own funny “smiley” images that you can use in your conversation. For the fee-based services, you can charge money on to Skype for the right amount of “credits” that you need, and then you can use Skype to call any home, work, or cellular phone you want to call all around the world. Just make sure you tell the person you’re calling beforehand if they have to worry about long distance! Either way, it’s a cheaper alternative than many other services, and it’s convenient if you need to talk to someone that is not at a computer.