First look at jaxtr
This whole web 2.0 phenomena sure brings out some cool services — with all the beta’s you can sign up for these days I’ve become pretty selective which ones I subscribe to, just to make sure I do get a couple of hours of work done.
Something I recently signed up for is jaxtr, a really cool service that I believe will take off “skype-style” once it is publicly released. What it allows you to do is a couple of things. You can put up a badge on your site that allows people to call you on one of your phone numbers without actual having to publish that number.
When someone clicks your badge they get a local number that they can call (currently supports 29 countries) and it then redirects to your phone. The services gives you 100 minutes of free talk time a month, after that runs out it jumps to voicemail mode which has no limitations. You can also set it up to go directly to voicemail rather than call you which I find an even cooler feature, particularly for something like podcasts.
What happens when you get a voicemail message is you get sent an email with a link to an MP3 you can listen to or download. In your account you also get an overview of all voicemail messages and can set it up filters to block certain numbers.
If you think about it, this service basically gives you the equivalent of local skype-in numbers to 29 countries, 100 minutes of free talk time and a free unlimited voicemail service. Not entirely sure about the business model around this but bring it on… I’m not complaining!
I might just have to write a WordPress plugin to get jaxtr to enable audio comments on a blog post. Shouldn’t be too difficult to hack together.
Feel free to leave me a voicemail: http://www.jaxtr.com/peterelst
P.S. If someone has an invite to Joost, thats something else I wouldn’t mind giving a whirl 
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Jaxtr is nice indeed. And yes , paid services need to be aware of these newcomers. Check out Jahjah as well.
But how long will it last? Free is never good. It is good for a while. It is good to get things started. But after that, you need to charge something, even if it it is 1 cent. Else you get a lot of people signing up and drop you like dirt after a while.
About Joost. I signed up and I am still waiting for my test account. They sent uout a mail that they will release a public beta soon.
Enjoy.
I have a Joost account and not using it, you can use mine if you want just email me and Ill give you access.
so is this jaxtr thing really free or are there hidden subscription charges somewhere?
I recieved a link to try out Jaxtr and unknown to me something in the message took over my whole address book and sent out invitations in my name. These people seem to be a bunch of cowboys with no scrupples. Be careful.
Very Strange!!
It did not happen to me. Jaxtr widget gives you a choice: who do you want to invite from your address list. It is very possible that you invited everone in your address list, it has a “select all/none” link.
I subscribed to jaxtr and sent an sms to another jaxtr user - it cost me Rs. 5.=10 times then normal charge!!
This service appears to be a fraud…
Oh, no actually it is 50 times more!