Conference calls have been around for a long time, but they aren’t that great. You have pin codes to enter, the controls are hard to use, not sure who’s all on the call. They are often confusing and most of them I played with in the past I just gave up on due to having a hard time to work them.
Well, ÜberConference aims to make us love conference calls, and so far I like it. It has a web interface where you can create conferences and invite people. As a bonus feature you can record calls to MP3 and download them. Conferences calls can be private or public, when made public a pin code is given for people who’s not invited. I can import contacts from LinkedIn, Google(I use these) and a few others.
People who’s in contacts show up with their name and some other details about them. It also seems to show social networks people have added if they have an account also.
The service was invented by the same people who invented Grand Central, which Google acquired and turned it in to Google Voice. Currently the service is free, but I think in the future they will charge for add-ons or maybe the whole service with different plans(Max people in the call, max call recording time, etc) but this is just speculation.
https://twitter.com/Keverw/status/205017720893345792
https://twitter.com/Keverw/status/205020310381146112
I never wanted to host a conference call before, but ÜberConference wonderful UX made me want to try it so I tweeted it out and a few people called in :). The call quality was excellent.
I think this service is worth checking out. Currently you have to ask for an invite, but I got it the next day, but you may not get the same results. I think this could be a real nice alternative to using Skype to conference a bunch of numbers together. So far this and Skype are the best conferencing products I’ve used, but ÜberConference is more aimed at phones so this could make a good replacement for businesses who do phone conference calls.
Disclosure: The ÜberConference link up top is my affiliate link. Each new user that signs up via this link will give me credit towards future features.
