The last I spoke with my friend Chris Martin I had made an accidental pocket dial via Skype on a 3 Skypephone while I was in London and he was in his suburban Chicago office.

Increasingly, Martin told me has been turning to Skype to run his public relations business. I wanted to learn more and hoped to catch up with sooner or later.

It turned out to be sooner and just serendiptitously as a pocket dial.

I signed in to attend the Chicago New Media conference at the Museum of Contemporary Art .

Minutes later, Martin had signed in and happened to see my name. I already had disappeared into the auditorium.

At lunchtime, I was meeting with an friend at the Water Tower and noticed that Martin had sent me an e-mail, asking that I text him. When I got back to the MCA, I texted him that I was in the lobby and he came out found me. Aren't communications amazing?

So he gave me the scoop on how Skype changed his business.

"Skype allows me to communicate over the phone--the core of my business--more inexpensively than I did with AT&T," he said. "I got rid of my business phone."

Now he spends less than $40 a year for long distance, compared with the $1,200 AT&T charged him.

But there's more to this story than saving the money.

Martin says that Skype enables him to do three things he couldn't do before:

--Make easy, inexpensive conference calls with clients.

--Keep an orderly, up-to-date contact list right at hand. "I couldn't do that with my landline," he said.

--Easily record interviews with medical doctors, podiatrists and nurses, which provides quotes and information for his press releases. He uses Call Graph , which produces recordings in the mp3 format. Like other recording programs, it also provides a log of time spent on calls, a handy feature for consultants who track time.

Martin next hopes to produce podcasts from his interviews and may explore Video calls and chat.

Martin says Skype rocked his world.

How has Skype rocked yours? Why not share your story in the comments?