Teamspeak is a great application to have around for keeping your hands free of typing while trying to chat with a group of people. All you need is a mic and some speakers, or a headset. This app is mostly used for gaming, but can be used for groups of virtually unlimited amounts of people, as long as you are NOT selling slots on the server. You can also license the software which allows you to do so, but we are pimping the fact that you can use this for talking to large amounts of people as long as you have the right codec set, or bandwidth available. I personally have been using Teamspeak for over 8 years, and it has always satisfied my needs for communication with my gaming friends and other friends online. It is much less commercialized than Ventrilo, and therefore makes my list of favorite files. It is more of an app for the community.

The latest version, Teamspeak 3 has tons of upgrades from Teamspeak 2 including a file server, text-to-speech for join/part, and higher quality codex. It also supports user avatars, and allows for exporting of your account info. This allows you to reinstall the program and keep all your permissions on the server. It seems to have added many of these features to compete with the more popular Ventrilo, but which most gamers don't know is that they can run a Teamspeak server for free as long as they aren't charging their members, or anyone else for access.

From their website, "TeamSpeak is flexible, powerful, scalable software which enables people to speak with one another over the Internet. TeamSpeak consists of both client and server software. The server acts as a host to multiple client connections, capable of handling literally thousands of simultaneous users. This results in an Internet based conferencing solution that works in a variety of applications such as team mates speaking with one another while playing their favorite online game, facilitating inter-office communication among co-workers, or simply for personal communication with friends and family."

TeamSpeak is FREE of charge for non-commercial use and has low cost, flexible licensing options for commercial use. By registering your free server with Teamspeak, you are given more user licenses with your free server.