Free conference calls are not that difficult to come by, but a free conference calling service with an easy to use administrative interface and tons of features is difficult to come by. One of the things we’re trying over at /live is a way to have listeners call in and talk directly to Chris. Chris’s live cam can regularly push over 100 viewers, which means the conference call could push upwards of 100 or more callers.

Finding a free conference calling solution, and making it work for our needs, just isn’t going to be easy.

Gaboogie

Gaboogie is a pretty unique system: instead of a classic setup where users call in at a certain time, Gaboogie actually calls out to users when the conference is going to start. They also offer a decent web management panel which makes managing large conferences easier than having to do it via a telephone pad.

The biggest problem we found with Gaboogie is that it can be fairly quirky (as of this writing, May 2007). As with every new service, Gaboogie has several problems that need to be ironed out, namely bandwidth and accidental tone offsets.

A minor problem with Gaboogie is that sometimes a voice will be interpreted as a DTMF tone. Since users don’t really have any control over their voice, an accidental DTMF tone could cause Gaboogie to adjust the volume gain or mute the entire conference. I’m told that Gaboogie is close to fixing this problem, so it may not be an issue by the time you read this.

Another big problem that Gaboogie faces is bandwidth. This isn’t a Gaboogie specific problem, but it’s something they need a solution for. Since most of the bandwidth in America is asymmetrical (that is uploading and downloading doesn’t happen at the same time) a big problem occurs when two users are speaking at the same time: they seem to cancel each other out.

One other drawback is that Gaboogie limits you to 100 free minutes, after that you need to pay: $30 for 250 minutes.

But, for the administrative features, scheduled conferencing, and user call out features, Gaboogie is pretty damn good.

[tags]free conference calling, gaboogie, conference call services[/tags]