Free Conference Calling Blog

We’ve recently released some fixes to the ability to schedule a call which recurs every day, weekday, week or month. This may mean that some people who scheduled recurring calls in the past will suddenly receive new invitations in their email. If those invitations are not wanted, the organizer can simply cancel the call.

We’ve received questions about how recurring calls work.  Here’s a more detailed explanation:

• When a user specifies that a Rondee will be recurring, we store that information away, but we do not create a bunch of invitations in the future. Each recurring Rondee has only one “live” invitation at any given time.
• When the conference concludes, we determine when the next scheduled version of the recurring call should take place. We then schedule another Rondee at that date.

This means that users can stop a recurring call simply by unchecking the “Make this a recurring Rondee” checkbox.

The following post is by Dr. John Rachow. John serves on the national board of Physicians for Social Responsibility (hence his use of Rondee for conference calling) and recently investigated options for converting Rondee audio files.

“I tried The FreeAudioConverter at the brothersoft site. Despite the description of the program it does not seem to support .gsm. Further during installation, I am told that the product will not work full featured unless I install their (purportedly free) security suite software, System Guard. It got more complicated and invasive after that. I unloaded it all.

I had tried FXBear Audio File Converter (I had purchased it earlier in the week). It does not successfully convert gsm files as it claims to do. Since I purchased the software ($38) I have queried their support people. The FXBear interface is certainly simple and it did look like a good solution.

Last night I searched further and found NCH Swift Sounds (Australian based company http://www.nchsoftware.com) and installed their free Switcher audio file converter. With this product, I stopped looking. The link is:

Rondee audio file converter application

Installation is super fast and simple It is a compact program (553 KB) with a sophisticated looking but easy to use interface. It works fine, converting the Rondee .gsm file to other formats quickly, including .mp3

They also have a free audio file editor, WavePad. that that allows editing a wide variety of native audio file formats including .gsm. WavePad allows you to save the file in any of a wide variety of formats (allowing you to set all the sampling and bandwidth parameters unique to each format in the process). Editing options include applying a variety of effects (noise reduction, equalizer, volume, band pass, echo, flange, and others) In effect, Wave Pad also can be used as a file converter as well as an editor. Switcher only does one thing, convert formats and has a more very simple interface.

NCH has versions for both Window and Mac. They have a Linux version for WavePad and the Linux version for Switcher is coming.”

A few of you have noticed that we just went live with a new set of features for Rondee-Now. For those of you not familiar with Rondee-Now, it allows you to get your own unique virtual meeting space by claiming your own Rondee ID (e.g. “Adam”). If the ID has not already been taken, it’s yours. When you want to talk with other people, just send them a text message, IM, or email asking them to dial 619-2-RONDEE (619-276-6333) and then enter your Rondee ID. This free conference calling capability is available 24/7

It used to be the case that to claim your own ID, you would need to call 619-2-RONDEE (619-276-6333) and enter your desired ID on the telephone keypad.

Now you can check online with our handy interface and immediately find out if the ID you want is available.

Yes, assuming the organizer of the Rondee has allowed this.  But remember, your PIN only works for you, so if you want to invite someone else, be sure to visit Rondee (just click on the link in the email you received) rather than forwarding that email.

Lots of our users want to know we chose the name Ronde….

Rondee is our take on the word “rendez-vous” which means (1) a meeting arranged for a specified time and place, (2) a popular meeting place for people. As a verb, rendez-vous means to meet at a specified time and place. Rondee is all the above!

Over the weekend we had a user ask us about how the muting function works on Rondee. This is a topic that comes up quite a bit. Each participant on a Rondee conference call can mute or un-mute themselves. You press pound 1 to mute and then pound 1 to unmute. If you forget this option, you can always press pound to hear all options.

We’ve fixed some glitches in our audio recording system. Users should now be able to access the audio recorded from all past free conference calls using the system. If you’re still unable to access some audio that you think should be there, please let us know.