Been trying out Skype - it's a cross platform internet telephony application which seems to kick arse!

Available for free on Windows (2000/XP), Linux (RedHat, Suse, Fedora, Mandrake etc), Mac OS X and Pocket PC, it allows users with Skype installed to voice communicate for free - and calls to landlines in Europe, USA and Australia are flat rate 1.7 euro cents per minute, any time (I made a 25 minute call to the midwestern USA and it cost me 32p. Sweet.)

There are minimum system specs and you ideally need broadband (it will allegedly work over dialup but the sound quality will be lower), you obviously need some kind of speakers/headphones and a microphone - combined headsets normally used for PC gaming seem to work really well but I know that Matt has been able to use it with the speaker and mic built into his laptop (although he got some funny looks from a couple of his sisters while talking animatedly to his laptop. I am of course assuming that it's noteworthy and unusual for them think he's odd. Possibly not.)

You can't receive incoming calls from normal phones (you can of course receive incoming from other Skype users), calls to mobiles cost more, calls to land lines outside of the flat rate zone cost more (list of tarrifs available on the site) and I think I read somewhere that you can't call emergency numbers (999,911 etc) - not sure why.

All in all I think it's pretty cool - if you want to try it out go ahead and call me - my Skype username is 'jameswelford' (cunning eh)