Rudd-O.com

I’ve been trying a new Web service that my brother shared with me. It’s called jaxtr, and it’s about bypassing international phone call prices. Kind of useful to me, since my brother and my sister live abroad.

The premise is simple:

1. you sign up
2. you get a personalized widget and a Web page at jaxtr.com where people can call you
3. people that want to talk to you hit the Call button on your page
4. jaxtr calls them back and calls you, hooking you both up in the process
5. for subsequent calls, your callers get a local phone number to call you anytime, at local prices

This is an example of a widget you may post on your Web site for people to call you:

You don’t need to be a brainiac to post the widget to a Web site — the site will help you post the widget in the most popular blogging and social networking communities. But, since I am a brainiac, I posted it manually anyway.

Disadvantages

Regrettably, for my home country, I get U.S.-based phone numbers, but my brother and sister both get local numbers for them to call me.

Texting doesn’t work either.

Finally, it’s not all roses and peaches. Receiving calls cost you a certain amount of jax — jaxtr currency. For me, it’s about 19 jax a minute. They’re still working to set up an infrastructure for everyone to buy jax, but you get 100 jax for free each month.

Privacy

The service is good with privacy. You can instruct jaxtr to send all unknown phone callers to voicemail directly, after which you can decide (on a phone-by-phone basis) whether to allow or refuse future calls directly.

You can also make jaxtr route incoming calls to any number you own.

Give it a shot. You can also try calling me at this URL.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 8:51 and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.