Brad Feld

Back to Blog

My New Skype Addiction

Apr 28, 2008
Category Technology

I am newly addicted to Skype. 

Several weeks ago when I was in Keystone, I had total IP phone failure.  We use a Cisco IP phone system in our office.  My house in Eldorado Springs has a T1 line connected to the office with a Cisco IP phone set up.  My house in Keystone has Comcast business Internet connected via a VPN (running on a Linux box) to our office network with a Cisco IP phone set up.  All the phones are configured exactly the same (one number, the 24 ring tone, similar presets.)

There was one problem.  Brad and Comcast apparently weren’t having a happy karma time – some of the time when I called someone I could hear them but they couldn’t hear me.  Reset, reboot, unplug.  Random but inconsistent success.

After two days of this I fired up Skype and tried it.  I hadn’t used it in Keystone and spent a few minutes setting it up with my wireless headset (that was connected to my Cisco IP phone.)  No big deal – press a button on the headset and I am on Skype; press a different button and I am in sometimes you can hear me sometimes you can’t hear me land.

24 hours after trying Skype again it was all I was using.

I’m now on a new quest to find all the happy useful important Skype plugins for people like me that run on Outlook / Exchange / Firefox as well as additional indispensable Skype software / features.  Suggestions?