Skype Hack..... Keeping in touch is easy & cheap.

Skype is nothing new, well, to tech geeks anyway. But with a little work and a little money even average Joes like me can use it to make communications with the "folks back home" a little easier. First, sign up for a Skype account (it's free) and download / install the software. Then buy a year's Skypein access for around $40. Skypein allows you to reserve a real honest-to-goodness telephone number "back home", pretty much wherever back home is in the world. So if your family mostly lives in, say, Chicago, pick a phone number with a local area code for Chicago so when family and friends call it's a local charge. Skypein works like this - if your connected to the Internet in Japan and logged into Skype, when your Mom calls your local Skypein number in Chicago your computer "rings" here in Japan. Skypein also comes with Skype Voicemail, so when your family and friends call your Skypein number and you're not connected they can leave a voice mail that you can easily retrieve and play they next time you log in to Skype. Lastly, buy $15 or so of Skypeout credits. Skypeout allows you use your computer to call any regular or mobile phone almost anywhere in the world dirt cheap (calls from Japan to a landline in the US are around $.03 per minute). So here's the hack..... Set your Skype account for Call Forwarding to your phone number here in Japan. So now when Mom calls your "local" number in Chicago the call is automatically forwarded to your phone here in Japan. For landlines it will cost around $.03 per minute, to mobiles it'll run around $.15 per minute. For the average user $15 of Skypeout credits will last a long time for this quick, easy and relatively cheap way for your family and friends back home to reach out and keep in touch with you.