Anyone heard of Skype? I just downloaded it, it's free, it allows you to use the mike and speakers on your sound card to talk live to friends over the net for free. I think they have a pay-program available as well that lets you dial directly to a standard telephone, I haven't checked that out yet so I don't know if it's cheaper than some of these long-distance plans, but it probably is. As for the free program, it's sort of like IM but with actual voice, and you can conference-call with up to 5 people at once. If anyone's interested, it's at:

http://www.skype.com/ -TD

 

There are a number of these services available on the net.

 

Skype is pretty good, I've also used TeamSpeak, and iParty. Teamspeak as far as I remember allows you to have upto 32 people talk which is nice.

 

I like Skype. I use it for playing Halo with others over Xbox Connect, which doesn't have any sort of voice chat. It's nice to be able to talk to your teammates... (ya, I'm sorta really IN to Halo... a lot). I tried Teamspeak once, but couldn't figure out how to work it.

 

My son uses this place when he is playing CS and other games:
http://www.hurricanehost.com/