The senior editor for Techi just told me they put a bunch of money into Skype. So I want to take this once in a lifetime chance to laugh at my boss.
HAHAHAHA!
God, that felt good.
Why is that funny? Because the folks up at Google HQ have just flicked the switch allowing us common folks to call people from our Gmail accounts. Using Gmail you can now call cellphones, home phones and bananaphones without paying a dime.
“Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?’” wrote software engineer Robin Schriebman on the Google blog. “Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.”
If you are Canadian you have to do a bit of a hack to get it working. Switch your language to “English US” and you’ll get the option.
You can make local calls across North America for free but if you want to call overseas it will cost you a little bit of money, and a lot less than it would with any other long distance company. Around 2 cents a minute. Check the video:
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I am Canadian and my language is switched to “US English” and this Gmail calling option is not available for me.