It's Skype, and it's for free. Plus, it works.

Skype sells itself with the line "Internet telephony that just works". That's not really an original line, except for the fact, it's actually true. I have been trying Skype for several times now, calling people online and -- here is the thing that makes the biggest difference -- also calling people in real life. Yes, that is land lines, cell phones, you know, the real world. Forget AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, iChat, Jabber and what else. You may have been fooled for some time, but come on, that was never really chatting! That was typing, dammit. And for every little 'oh!' and 'ah!', for every moan and smile, every blink of our eyes and the grumble in our bellies we had to come up with new incarnations of these ubiquitous smileys. They were never meant to go beyond the tee, you know. All of a sudden, you could find them in email, for christs sake, and an asterisk after an 's' meant something more than just a snake that spits, or something.

Yeah, I'm pushing it a little. I must admit I have been chatting too, or attempted it at least, but it didn't really work for me. Except if I really wanted to talk to someone and I just couldn't do it over the phone. Then it worked, as a beta version of real talking. It worked, but oh how clumsy.

So thank god, someone found out what people have been missing. Someone smart counted one and one together and came up with that little program called Skype. It rhymes with 'hype' -- almost scary how good they are in marketing, isn't it, and then the app even actually works! What an achievement. Hey, Microsofts and Apples across the planet, if you're listening, they did it, and they didn't ask you guys first. They just did what they thought was right, and it turns out more and more people don't think about who did it, if it just works.

Skype is available for all major platforms, it's a free download, and it's connecting to the real world. That's the summary formula of its success. Can you read that, Apple and big Micro, or do I have to repeat myself?

So how good is Skype, you're asking? Well, it works. It's like the first phone. It worked. It didn't look elegantly; it didn't work smoothly, sound was low, far and thin. It was not really amazing as an experience. But hey, the simple fact it worked at all, wasn't that something? That was at least the breakthrough of the century of that time. With Skype, well, I wouldn't go that far. But as long as it works, who cares if it's the breakthrough of the century. What matters is, people will start using it. And the last time that happened, we ended up with something we couldn't live anymore without these days. If you haven't guessed it, it's what you're looking at.