AOL/AIM users can now user their AIM Call Out account for all their long-distance calls with PhoneGnome.

PhoneGnome provides an easy way to use your AOL/AIM account for long-distance and international calls placed from your PhoneGnome-enabled home or office phone, seamlessly. You don’t need a computer to place calls, nor do you need to change anything about how you use the phone - you just pick up and dial a number, the same as you always have, and if PhoneGnome can’t place the call for free, it will use your AIM Call Out account. It couldn’t be easier!

To activate your AIM Call Out account on PhoneGnome, simply go to your My PhoneGnome account page and add a new ITSP under Features / Low Cost Internet Calling / Edit / [Add Internet Calling Service] / Manual SIP Settings and on that page use settings as shown below:

That’s all you need to do to use your AIM Call Out service for all your long-distance and international calls, directly on your existing home or office phone - no computer, software, or separate “bat phone” needed.

PhoneGnome now enables you to send SMS to any mobile phone in the world: this is a very convenient feature and it is inexpensive too. Sending an SMS to USA costs 8.2c, to Canada costs 7.6c, to UK is 11.5c, Japan 7.6c, India 7.6c, Italy 7.6c (currency is US dollars).

To send SMS, click the SMS tab and type the recipient’s number in the proper field. The recipient doesn’t need to be a PhoneGnome user.

You can also send SMS by clicking the SMS action icon shown under actions for the contact on your contacts page. The SMS action icon is shown for any contact that is designated as a Mobile number.

In order to send SMS you need to have a PhoneGnome account and enough Calling Credit.

Check out PhoneGnome SMS rates to all destinations.

Om Malik kindly references our $99 PhoneGnome box in a recent article, in which he says PhoneGnome serves the “end goal of making voice calls cheaper/free.”

It’s certainly true that for a portion of our customers, the end goal is cheaper calls; but that is not the only reason people buy and use PhoneGnome. We can break down our customers into three broad categories and only one of those categories of customer is focused primarily on the above end goal of making voice calls cheaper/free.

This first customer group takes advantage of free calling between members and low cost calling to everyone else to reduce their communications costs. This is their primary objective in using PhoneGnome.

A second customer type uses PhoneGnome service primarily for features related to inbound calls, especially voicemail-to-email, but also other features like find-me (aka Sim-ring), Visual Voicemail, Call Recording, and so on.

The third group of customers are primarily interested in the remote access capabilities enabled by PhoneGnome. This includes placing calls on your home phone plan from your PC or mobile phone, or answering calls to your home phone number on your PC. It also includes using your home phone from any remote location, even without a PC using MobileGnome, or using a friends landline service from your phone with directed calling, and so on.

All these customers benefit from “making voice callers cheaper” with PhoneGnome, but that is not necessarily their primary benefit and it is clearly not the only reason people use PhoneGnome service, especially among PhoneGnome box owners.

We think you’ll find the PhoneGnome website, blog, store, and support site all load and operate much quicker now.

We hope you enjoy the new improved performance of the sites.

We have added 20 new U.S. cities to our available “Personal Numbers”. If you have a PhoneGnome account, sign in at My PhoneGnome, click Features and then Personal Numbers to buy a number.

Pricing for these numbers starts at $3.45/month and goes down to $2.30/month if you buy for one year. Additional volume discounts are available.

Below is the list of U.S. cities available. If you do not find the city you want in our list, you can choose “other” and specify the area code you are looking for. Then checkout. We will try and get you that area code. If we can’t, we will promptly refund your money.