You might have noticed a shiny new personal conference call widget in my blog sidebar. If not, have a look now. It’s the 03TALK one and I think @markdalby has done a really great job.

It’s free and available via WordPress plugins. It’s also highly customisable – allowing you to change all the colours to match your WordPress theme and configure your personal offline status message. OK, all of that’s very nice, but…

WHAT DOES IT DO?

03TALK is the UK’s first mobile-friendly conference call service. You can read more about why it’s “mobile-friendly” here.

What the WordPress widget does is allocate a dedicated and permanent Conference Room Number and Access PIN to you. You can use these as frequently as you like and the facility is available instantly. You can advertise your number when you’re “in call” at the click of a button (the little grey avatar in the bottom right hand corner) and place a custom offline message on your blog if you’re offline.

CLEVER, BUT WHY WOULD I WANT ONE?

The applications of the service are pretty limitless really – it’s much more than a standard multi-party conferencing service. You may want to use it to arrange a two-way voice call with somebody whom you know, but not well enough for either party to share their telephone number.

I’ve already used the service to arrange a call with a couple of musicians and a producer to talk over a track we’re collaborating on.