This Sunday is Mother’s Day and whether you celebrate the holiday with Mom or not, today is a great time to call Mom and say, “thanks for putting up with me all these years!” AIM Call Out is giving out free calls from Saturday May 10th at 6AM EDT to Monday May 12th at 4AM EDT so that way you can give mom or even grandma a call to say Happy Mother’s Day. The catch is that you have to add $5 to your AIM Call Out account, after the weekend, all $5 will still be there for you to use. Just make sure you are using AIM 6.5 or better or if you do not have AIM installed you can use AIM Call Out Web Connect.

In other AIM Call Out news, last week we launched Open Voice APIs. Open Voice allows AIM® Call Out customers to use a third-party software client or hardware device with their AIM Call Out account by providing a generally available SIP Gateway. The AOL Voice team has successfully used the AIM Call SIP Gateway with the following devices:

Softphones:

• X-Lite (Version 3.0)
• PhonerLite (version 1.43)

The two limitations right now is that we do not allow SIP client registration for inbound calling, nor does this service do pc-2-pc calling, this can be done via the Open AIM APIs with the Windows or Linux SDK.

Now available for all AIM users is a new feature entitled AIM Call Out. We have made it easier than ever to make phone calls to phone numbers all over the world; 200 countries in fact. Instead of paying a monthly fee, AIM Call Out allows you to pay as you go. Rates vary from country to country, and you need AIM 6.5 to use AIM Call Out. Of course calling either audio or video from one AIM client to another AIM client (PC-to-PC) is still free. We even have partnered up with a couple of headset manufactures to provide high quality audio output devices. I actually have been using it on my trip here in Tel Aviv and think the quality and ease to use is great.

Speaking of Israel here is a picture I took today watching the sunset on the beach.