Hey guys,
I'm currently serving overseas and was wondering what apps or programs there may be that work decently in a location that is just as void of a strong connection as it is of lively looking foliage. Currently, the only applications I have tried are MagicJack and Tango, but neither of these two seem to be ideal, with Tango requiring you to have people using it on the other end and MagicJack being as static-filled in an audible way as an old 80's TV is visually with mauled up antennas and bad wiring. Any suggestions for possible apps that I may have overlooked? or even perhaps a program that is like skype? Minus the part where it sucks of course.
All the best,
Cinematic Koncept
I hate to say it as you have already dismissed it as an option, but I used Skype when I was overseas for the simple expedient that I could call land lines/cells directly. I don't know if you had Skype on a subscription, but my experience was that it was clearer, and more reliable when I was paying 2.99 a month for calls to land lines. There is also Vonage, since they allow landline/cell calls and they have apps for android and iOS devices. Another option is Google hangouts, but that requires that everyone you want to talk to has a Google account and doesn't have the guaranteed always on nature of a land line/cell call. Everything else I know of requires the recipient to also be running the same client.
This probably isn't the answer you were looking for, but if you haven't tried the paid version of Skype yet, I would give it a try.
My experience overseas was that email, and even snail mail was more reliable than any internet option. By the way what country are you in? I assume its Afghanistan. If you cant say, I understand, operational security and all that jazz was a pain when I was overseas too. I was in Iraq/Kuwait myself.
Thanks for the input, I guess I was at the right place at the right time though because there was a decent amount of work done on the inferastructure shortly after I posted so magicjack and free Skype worked. As for places, I kind of had a world tour of sorts. Afghanistan, Kuwait, iraq, then back to Kuwait, haha
Thanks again for the help :)
You can try Mumble or Teamspeak, both support text and voice communications, all you need is a server on one side (probably back home) and have it running 24/7. I believe that both allow you to change the audio settings allowing you to tune it to sound less junky and still stay inside your bandwidth. There are also (kinda) community servers that you can just join and use, possibly at the loss of privacy
Something I might suggest is having IRC running too, clients like Hexchat, or irssi work fine. But IRC is only text based, so there is that problem. A bad connection usually isn't an issue, unless you lag is so bad the server kicks you. IRC servers/networks are hosted all around the world, so it should be easy to connect to. It is also fully anonymous. Tek Syndicate uses EFNet, which is ok.
I used to use GrooveIP paired with my Google Voice phone number to make phone calls. It took some fiddling with the settings, but that may work.
Edit: It seems that I didn't notice this was old. I assume a welcome back is in order?