My wife, Jacqui, went to Canada recently on family business. Keeping in touch with the kids with regular communication back home was absolutely paramount. The B&B that Jacqui was booked to stay at had no phone available but did provide an internet connection, so taking a laptop was an obvious choice for staying in touch.

With Skype installed and headset on, calling home was not only completely free, but was as simple as a single click and the sound quality was good enough to fool you into thinking that you were in the same room chatting. Our six year old had no problems calling mum “on the computer”!

Problem solved? Not quite! While Jacqui was on her first flight, before even leaving the country, I took a call for a job interview for her. The interviews had to go ahead, so she organised to call via Skype to do the interview.

Sorted? Almost! The night before the arranged interview Skype had a massive and unprecedented worldwide system failure. Now, my work phone is a VoIP service, so I emailed Jacqui my connection details and a link to some softphone software. This was installed and a test call made back to home with 15 minutes to spare! The entire 50 minute interview cost a total of just 9c, at the fixed VoIP rate … from Canada!

Technology to make life easier and cheaper is right here right now!

Here are some ways to stay in touch, both at home and work