Free conference calling

I was dismayed the other week when I received my phone bill for phoning into an overseas conference call and was smacked upside the head with a $120 bill for a half-hour call. (I haven't been able to get Skype to work, though I'll be trying again this week.)

That was before I heard about Freeconferencecall.com. We've been using it frequently for the Ourmedia project, getting groups of us in farflung locations to pow-wow by phone -- for free.

We just dial into the same number for up to 120 days. As the site says, "Your new conference line is available to you 24/7and there is no need to schedule or make reservations. Each account accommodates 96 callers on an unlimited number of 6 hour conference calls."

It's not a Voice Over IP service but a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) conferencing service that utilizes your regular telephone. Pretty nifty.