Grassroots activists found FreeConferenceCall.com in the 2004 U.S. election. As long as everyone pays for their own long distance call, it's free of service charges. They're now inviting Skypers to use the service. Their pitch: use SkypeOut to call in and cut your long distance charges to SkypeOut's $1.20 an hour.

Why not conference using Skype alone? Two reasons: scale and access. This service supports up to 96 callers at a time. It also supports Skypeless callers.

What capabilities would make a difference?

• The SkypeAPI makes it possible to program an app that lets me invite buddies to a non-Skype conference.
  
• FreeConferenceCall should be able to take Skype phone calls directly into a conference.
  
• Scale text chat to hundreds. When more than four people actively participate in a chat, readers can't keep up. The diversity of opinion within the flow makes it hard to follow threads. So design must address the cognitive challenges: information overload; thread clustering, navigation, contribution; peripheral vision and alerting; leveraging social and procedural contexts; turn taking, voting, and moderation.
  
• Augment with white boarding and desktop sharing. These features let parties to a call show presentations or demonstrate real-time screen captures. Some implementations even permit multiple users to share the same app. My dream would be a collaborative realtime wiki for a call, along the lines of SubEthaEdit