Gizmo Call - Make Free Calls Worldwide Everyday

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
by George Appiah

Gizmo Call is a new web-based telephony service from the team behind the Gizmo Project voice and IM software, as well as the SIPphone VoIP platform.

The new service offers up to 10 minutes of free worldwide calls to registered users daily. Unregistered users get half of this, while users with Gizmo Call Out accounts get more.

Users can also put a “Call Me” button or link on their web pages or e-mail signature file for others to call them for free.

To make a call, you visit http://www.gizmocall.com and type in the telephone number you want to call. Currently you can call mobile phones, landlines, Jabber/Gmail users, and Gizmo Project users. If you’re a first time user, you’ll need to install the Gizmo Call flash plugin before you can use the service.

Installing the plugin is a breeze: simply download it (about 1MB in size) and run the executable file. A pop-up appears a few seconds later to confirm installation is complete. After installation, simply reload the Gizmo Call page and make your call. But this is where the fun ended for me.

For some reason, the application worked only once for me, and won’t work again. The flash plugin won’t initialize. I re-installed the plugin several times, but no luck. Heck, I even switched to o’l Internet Explorer just to see if it’s a browser issue … but no luck either.

If this works out, that’ll be the closest I’ve ever come to making free calls to standard telephones (mobiles and landlines) in Ghana. Sure 10 minutes a day is not that much … but hey … it’s free. So give it a try, and let’s see if it works for you.