Combine a modern computer with the Internet and you can stay in touch with your family and friends, regardless of distance. Email is by far the most popular form of long-distance communication: it’s highly-reliable, it’s virtually free to use, and capable email applications come bundled with every operating system (or you can just go to the web and access any number of free email portals).
But very quickly, other, much more dynamic ways to communicate via computer are emerging — all the while with the same great price tag and ubiquity as email. Based on open or de facto standards, you can now talk (literally) and “chat” (via instant messaging) to your far flung chums just as easily as clicking Compose.
Gizmo (pictured), while not open source, utilizes open standards such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Jabber/XMPP to keep you connected. Available from http://www.gizmoproject.com/, Gizmo currently supports Linspire, Debian, Fedora, and SUSE Linux. (Support for other distributions should be coming soon.) Gizmo is provided in standard package formats (either RPM or DEB), so installation is a snap.
The first time you start Gizmo, it gives you the option to create an account. Each Gizmo account has a traditional username, but is also assigned a SIP “phone” number that enables you to communicate with other networks that support SIP. Specifically, you can make a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) call to any…
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