I rely heavily on Skype for my work. Interviews, editorial meetings, leaving messages — I’ve used Skype for all of it. I really got used to Skype when I was living in Dublin. I was able to get both of my parents comfortable with it before I left and could easily chat with them without running up their phone bills.

But Skype has become a far more important part of my work than just that. Right now, I’m working on projects that involve people in twenty different states and a dozen different countries. The phone bill I could run up calling all of those folks truly scares me!

Skype released a new version this week — Skype 2.8 beta. It’s got all the bells and whistles of Skype Classic, like video conferencing and the ability to make calls outside of the Skype system. But it’s got some new features that are really worth while. The biggest one is screen sharing: the ability to show clients exactly what you’re doing on your screen without having to load up another conferencing program.

The new version of Skype makes it easy to do demos, share presentations or even instruct new users on how to use software. There are other new features as well, but that’s the biggie (for a full review, check out Disruptive Telephony’s write up). Currently 2.8 is only available for Mac, but I expect there will be a version for Windows soon enough.