I manage a couple of projects in Europe. I work in San Francisco. The organizations in Europe don’t have much money. My organization doesn’t have much money. I had to find a way to communicate with everyone cheaply and easily, so of course I looked to open source solutions. Let me tell you about two I found and how they helped me overcome my communication challenges.

Skype

You’ve heard about it quite a bit recently. EBay bought the company (it’s based in Luxembourg) so buyers and sellers on the EBay site could talk to one another.

I didn’t have to buy the company, though, I just showed up at http://www.skype.com and downloaded their (then) Beta version, and I was ready to go. Here are the features that sold me on Skype.