Skype is cool.

I just had a 30 minute Skype conversation with a guy* more than 3000 miles away -- that's 5000km for those of you in modern countries.

The entire duration of the call, I was well aware that I was voice chatting on the Internet: I was using a headset, I was anticipating cut-off and sound degradation, and I was expecting it to suck mightily. Hell, I'm on a NAT and so is he: the chance of us even placing the call effectively is pretty slim, and I'm sure 99% of Voice Chat apps will barf on the idea, or try to route us through a central server in latvia.

But that never happened. The entire call was almost clear, not as clear as a telephone can be but certainly more clear than the average cellular call. In all, it was very cool. My caller was using the built-in mic and sound system on a laptop, and occasionally we got an odd Honk that I attribute completely to his system - for it is windows and it only occured when we both talked at once - but the rest of the time there were no complaints. Even the lag time - a problem with other voice-chats and with astronauts on the space station - was very short and almost hard to pick up.

I encourage anyone even remotely considering the idea to try Skype specifically. They seem to have the whole VOIP thing done and done well. Yay!

*no, the guy I was chatting with was not Pope Benedictus XVI.