Voice Conferencing With Yahoo Messenger

When I try to convince people to switch to the Mac, a lot of them ask if there’s Yahoo Messenger for the Mac. Yes. That’s my reply. Then they ask can we also do voice conferencing. Sadly, the answer is no. Yahoo Messenger for Mac does not have audio capabilities. It’s odd though since it has video. You can broadcast and view web cam feeds but not hear any audio. I’d always thought that audio capabilities were always implemented ahead of video. Apparently not.

So some people are disappointed and don’t switch to Macs because of this. Most Mac users use it for digital life. In this day and age a big part of digital life is communication. Either via email, instant messaging, voice conferencing or video conferencing. People want to stay in touch with family and friends. Moreso this is evident in our (Filipino) culture. Since majority of families here have one or more members that live abroad. So communication is all the more important.

Voice conferencing via the internet is one of the cheapest ways of talking to another person who’s far away. One of the most popular applications that does this is Yahoo Messenger.

Now there’s a way for Mac users to call their family and friends who are on Yahoo Messenger. Enter Gizmo Project. It’s an internet telephone that the maker’s claim is as easy as instant messaging.

Gizmo is similar to Skype in the sense that appart from talking to other Gizmo users, you can also use it to call landline and mobile phones with its Call Out feature. People can also call you if you subscribe to the paid Call In service. For $35 a year you get your own US or UK number where people can call you.

But what sets this apart from Skype and other software like this is that it allows you to call other IM services like Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live User or Gtalk. Now ain’t that something?

Now you can enjoy voice conferencing on the Mac all the better. One caveat though, you still can’t call Yahoo Messenger for Mac users. Since the Mac version of YM still doesn’t have voice. For Mac to Mac calls it’s best you do it via Gizmo to Gizmo, Skype to Skype or iChat AV.

For more details about Gizmo’s features check it out here.