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Throw away your calling cards and stop wasting money on international calls because here comes Talkster. And it’s pretty damn awesome.

Talkster is a service that allows you to place calls to your friends and family in far flung reaches of the world for free. There is no sign-up or credit cards involved and there no catches. Being an ex-pat with a lot of friends and family scattered over the globe I almost wet my pants hearing this.

What it boils down to is you submit your phone number and your friend’s number to Talkster and it will spit out a local number for you to call your friend. Your friend will receive a message with a local number in his country to call you. You then call your local number and when your friend answers you tell them to hang up and call back with their local Talkster number while you wait on the line. When your friend calls back ….oh wait I said there was no catches…you both get to listen to a localized 10 second ad and then you can talk to your heart’s content. Simple. Once you have finished chin-wagging save the number, you can use it over and over again.

Now if you’re a gossip monger and love the din of several people trying to talk at once then you might want to set up a group call. With the group call Talkster will send you one local number so you can annoy up to 5 friends at once. It’s just like own private party-line but without the pervy heavy breathing guy.
There are several ways you can start using Talkster.

• You can visit the Talkster website. Fill in the form with your name, phone number and your country then do the same for your friend details. Hit “go!” and it gives you and your friend’s local numbers to call. If you want to add another person to a group call, simply click on the “add to group” button. Talkster will also send out you a text message to remind you if you forget the number.
• From any web enabled phone you can visit http://free.talkster.com/ and enter your name and phone number into the form. Then do the same with your friend’s details and hit “Invite”. Your local numbers will be displayed and a text message will be sent to you and your friend. You can also add someone to your group from this site.
• You can also request your Talkster numbers by SMS. Send a text in this format {your name}{your friend’s number in international format}{your friend’s name} to +447624802492. Talkster will then send you and your friend containing your local numbers.

Like most things nowadays, Talkster also offers the obligatory facebook application. Being a facebook addict I had to try it. First off I had to find a fellow geek who would chat online while trying to make phone calls. Luckily my friend Sam from Prague TV. popped online, the perfect victim. After cajoling him into installing the Talkster application, I got my local number to dial and gave him a call. It doesn’t work and tells me I don’t have any friends sent up on the number. I then ask Sam to call me from his number, I wait and then wait some more. He’s frantically sending me IM’s saying “pick up, pick up, it’s ringing.” WTF? It’s at this point I realize that the fax machine in the room next door has been quite noisy for a while. Could it be? I check the Talkster facebook application and yes I’ve only gone and entered the office fax number.

That problem fixed we move on. Sam tries to call me again. Success! He gets through. He tells me to hang up and dial my local number. I hang up, I dial the number and I get a welcome message that informs me they will now try to connect me. It rings, it rings and it rings some more. I fire off an IM asking what’s going on Sam states he’s waiting. We give up. Hmmm? After much head scratching and cursing that it just doesn’t work, we walk through how Talkster is supposed to work we come to the conclusion that when you ask your friend to hang up and call back it’s probably a good idea if you stay on the line. Thanks for screwing that one up Sam I don’t feel as dumb for using my fax number now.

After our initial technical ineptitude we get Talkster working and the quality of the call is crisp and clear. I am now a convert to Talkster and I’m now on a personal crusade to talk to my far-flung friends again rather than just rely on email and instant messaging. Hooray for free!

The one compliant I have with Talkster is that it doesn’t actually give me a local number. It supplies me with a Toronto number and I’m in Guelph which is long distance. I spoke to James Wanless Co-founder and COO of Talkster and he assured me that they are constantly expanding the area codes as well adding new countries to the Talkster service. Still a long distance call to Toronto is going to cost me a lot less than a call to the Czech Republic.

Talkster is currently available in 30 countries and it will work on any kind of phone on any network.

Check it out, you won’t be disappointed.

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