The application adds management of multiple lines (as in a PBX), Interactive voice response (IVR) , auto attendant and voice mail facilities to Skype phone facility.

Pros: The facilities provided combine the features of a fairly sophisticated private branch exchange with auto attendant and individual customized voice mail solution. Additionally it also has IVR solution. Call transfers between extensions and call recording is possible. It can handle up to 30 lines and thus is a solution that fits a small or a medium business quite well. Inbound calls and outbound call flows can be defined easily to configure this as a complete inbound/outbound or a mixed one. Skill based routing of calls to operators make routing of calls to appropriate operators.

Inbound call flow can be totally customized depending on the requirements of the organization. That includes the greetings and the sequence as well as actual options to be available to the caller. A visual call flow menu builder helps build these facilities.

Being a software solution it communicates with user PC’s through their sound cards, only. A range of records are maintained and reports provided. These cover line management, inbound calls management, call records management and historical data.

Cons: When used as a PBX solution for a small or a medium business, support for the crop of VoIP phones available in the market would be a good feature as not everyone in the organization in need for phone communication needs to have a PC.

A second issue that can have a major impact on the performance of the complete system is the power of main machine on which the software runs. Since the whole thing has to be real time, a high performance machine which handles the PABX and IVR facilities has to be used. This would be a very critical factor when configured as a call center solution.

Overall: Performance is a big factor in business use, particularly as a call center application. How well things will work is difficult to predict. Other than that this application is fairly well designed and reasonably easy to use.

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Skype 1.4 Alpha for Linux has been released, with quality improvements:

• Audio quality improvements, on par with Windows 3.2 and Mac 2.6;
• More reliable code, thanks to a major rewrite building on Trolltech’s Qt 4.2;
• Better device detection;
• ALSA plugins support;
• UI improvements for file transfer and general layout.

Also there’re still some problems with this Alpha release:

• There are no contact list groups;
• You can’t create new accounts;
• There’s no alert message if your chat message is undelivered.

 So you can try it here, but if you to use Skype on Linux without any problems get the October 2006 gold build. (more…)

SightSpeed is a free video and voice call program that allows you to make free pc to pc voice and video calls over your broadband Internet connection.

It also allows you to make calls to regular landline phones and cell phones (similar to what you can already do in programs like Skype). Those calls do cost you money, but the costs are still lower than from a regular home phone. You can buy “phone out” credits quickly by credit card. These credits are prepaid, so you need to purchase them in advance if you plan to use SightSpeed to make calls to regular phones.

At this time you can only make video calls to other SightSpeed users, pc to pc (also supports Mac).

Its a useful tool for anyone who needs to videochat with colleagues or friends and the set up is easy, but they even have video tutorials in case you need them. Check it out at the website here, for the download and more details.

So you’re wondering what Pamela for Skype is? Well, its a digital personal assistant for Skype. For example when you start a call on Skype it asks if you want to record the call. It then says “this call is not being recorded”, but that message can also be heard by the person you are talking too! So be careful!

It’s relatively easy to navigate, with a simple to understand interface. The message center is great as it allows you to see at a glance how many voicemails, skype voice mails, skype recordings, custom recordings or birthday notifications you have. It’s available in 4 versions, each with its own set of unique features, one version even supports Skype video.

Some of the features it adds to Skype include:

• Call Recording
• Video Recording
• Answering Machine
• VideoMail
• Emotion Sounds
• Auto Chat Reply
• Birthday Reminders
• Skype Status Change
• Chat Recording
• Email Forwarding
• Contact Personalization
• Auto Start Applications
• Skype Blogging
• Skype Podcasting

Compare the free and paid versions and download it.