Skype is down right now, but there's a great free website for voice/video chatting. It requires no downloads and has no ads or spam; it also keeps you completely anonymous.
It's called Gruveo.com and I've used it several times with my students when Skype was slow or freezing. You just go there, enter some random keyphrase that you and the other person decide on, and boom. That's it.
Thumbs up or comment so that others can see this!
@Art No idea what the problem at the other end was. It all happened so quickly! Thank you for the link. I will check it and see. I will also try Gruveo in different ways so I get to know it better in both its strengths and its downsides. As I mentioned before, it would be the ideal tool for voice chats between italki users.
@Ric Thank you for sharing your experience. I am positive that for the occasional chat on italki, most users would prefer voice calls to video calls. It would be a pity if it was precisely the voice feature the weakest one of a tool that seems, otherwise, ideal for this site.
@Ric Can you please drop me a line at art at gruveo.com? We'd like to ask some questions about your configuration and/or ask for some screenshots.
@Marta totalmente de acuerdo con usted
@Art I've only recently realized that Voice Chat doesn't work because up til this week I've used Video Chat. I don't think it's a mic problem because Video Chat works for me. Hope Gruveo comes out with a fix for Voice Chat soon, because like Marta said for many people an audio call with no video is perfect or maybe even preferred.
@Marta I'm sorry about the sound issues you have experienced. Gruveo does not require any special computer skills and everything should work out of the box. That said, there could be issues with a particular configuration on one of the users' devices.
I realize it could be impossible to find out now, but did your student see a message saying that their microphone may not be working? If they didn't, the issue could be on your end. We have a section in our FAQ dedicated to sound issues like those, here is the link:
https://www.gruveo.com/faq/#mic-warning
@Art I also had problems with a student on Monday. He could hear me but I could not hear him. The connection was impressive. Even without him knowing what it all was about, we were connected instantly but then, the sound problem let us down! Are there yet a few tricks to be mastered?
In theory, Gruveo seems like the perfect tool to connect users on italki for a voice chat: fast, easy, works on the fly, no engagement (list of contacts), and a few other convenient features. But is it in fact as easy and effective as it is in theory? Is it just a matter of practice with the tool or are more advanced computer skills needed to make it work?
It would be great to have a voice chat tool like Gruveo available for getting in contact instantly on a site like this. However, the useful tool here is the voice chat (alongside a text messaging box), not the video chat, so it should be really easy to make the sound work (independently of the camera), otherwise, all the prospective usefulness of a tool like Gruveo would vanish for many of italki users.
