Just because I have nothing to say is no reason why you shouldn't listen.

That must be the motto of the telephone addicts who seem to delight in disturbing our days -- or nights -- with no particular subject to discuss.

The telephone has taken on a priority that it does not deserve. Interrupting a conversation or transaction with someone in your presence to chat with a disembodied voice is silly, poor business procedure, and just plain rude. Yet we all do it.

Doing the same things via the Internet is no improvement. Hence my abstinence from chat rooms and utilities, and preference for e-mail, which at least allows for the opportunity to organize one's thoughts, rather than spewing spontaneous piffle. But there are legitimate uses for voice over the Internet, and it can be a handy and cost-saving tool.

Everybody talks about Internet telephony but nobody does anything -- practical -- about it.

Well, that's not quite so. If you have two phone lines, AT&T's Chat 'N Talk will make a domestic telephone call directly from a chat room, to whomever you're yakking with -- for 15 cents per minute. VocalTec and others offer Internet calls to regular telephones without paying regular long distance rates, but you may or may not save any money.

Until voice technology and facilities are closer to perfection, let's focus on more practical, and preferably free, realities.

Yahoo's Pager is free at http://pager.yahoo.com/pager, and works with Windows 9x/NT. (Yahoo lists Java versions for Macintosh and Unix, but the information about them is conflicting.)

With a sound card and microphone Pager makes a voice connection via the Internet to anyone in the world who has Pager installed, for free. It works much like the typing chat programs, such as ICQ: just add your contact's Pager username to your Friends list, right click it, and select "Start a voice chat."

If he is online an invitation will pop up on his screen, which he may accept or decline -- a nice touch. Actually, you can tell when he's logged into Pager because a door-knocking sound plays to alert you. Once he accepts, his name joins yours in a dialog box that has a "press to talk" button, sort of like the old ham radio operation. There are two visual cues, however, to show who is speaking, so that you don't have to say "over": the speaker's name turns red, and there is a green bar that moves in sync with his voice.

Voice quality, once adjusted, is better than "real" telephones. But there is the inevitable delay while the voice packets wend their way through the Internet's murky magnitude. Sentences, even individual words, sometimes break into pieces, depending on the Internet's congestion while you're speaking. Oddly, the "press to talk" feature, while a bit klunky, masks the delay somewhat, compared to continuous speech.

Pager is fun, and plenty good enough to be useful for reaching out and touching friends or family in other states or countries, essentially for free. If you enjoy talking to (or annoying!) strangers you can search Yahoo's database of folks who share your interests.

Even people who don't usually like this sort of thing may find it just the sort of thing they like.

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