Work At Home Communication Tools

photo from kollewin.com

As a work at home professional, the most important part of the job is communication. Without it, the powers that be that pays our salary would have no way of knowing what we're up to. This part of our work is the main thing that convinces our employers that we are worth the salaries they are paying us.

Communication can either be oral or written. Written communications pertains to emails, text messages and even twitter- if your company has a strong social media culture. Oral communications will refer to your teleconferences, your one on one with your boss/es, your daily VOIP huddles or just about anything that requires voice communication.


This article focuses on the latter.

Over the years, technology has progressed to such a degree that telecommunication companies have had to resort to other forms of revenue streams to keep afloat. When before the cost of long distance calls were so astronomical, the advent of VOIP caused those stratospheric figures to come crashing down to earth. VOIP technology alone almost singlehandedly did the damage.

A few years ago, communication through Yahoo! was all the rage. The lines were a bit fuzzy and full of static but as long as you get to hear what the other party is saying, everything was great. Compared with the alternative, high phone call costs, communicating via Yahoo! was a most cost effective option. Then came skype with its free computer to computer calls and much better quality. Not one to be left behind, Google also came up with GTalk.

But the one thing that took the cake was a little device called magic jack. If Yahoo!, Skype, and Gtalk forced people to sit in front of their computer just to have a chat, magic jack allowed people to call folks in their mobile phones or landline phones for free. Yep, you don't have to pay anything to call friends and families on their phones. There's just one catch. You can only call relatives and friends in the US, or just about anybody as long as they are in the US.

Lately however, Google came up with a more improved Gtalk. This time, you can call anybody in the US or Canada on their landline or mobile phone via Gmail for free. For the rest of the world, you will have to pay. This is actually a better proposition compared to Magic Jack except that Google's service is only free for a limited amount of time. The free US or Canada calls were supposed to end last 2010 but they decided to extend it to 2011 as well.

Nevertheless, I've found that Magic Jack's service is still better than Google's if the quality of the communication is to be the basis.

For my personal communication tools I recommend the following:

Skype for messaging if you can't get YM and Magic Jack for conference calls or calls to your employers who are based in the US.