Dick Schiferli introduced a product called Pamela for Skype. Although it was launched close to 2-years ago on February 16, 2005, I never heard of it until now. Pamela is localized in 30 languages and there has been 260,000+ downloads to date.

Pamela is your Skype virtual assistant, in other words, an answering machine for Skype. If someone rings you through Skype and you’re not around, Pamela will pick up and ask the person to leave a message.

From a podcasting standpoint, you could use Pamela as a comment line. People call your Skype id, Pamela records it, then Pamela will save it to your computer or automatically publish the recording directly to your blog.

Some drawbacks?

• It’s a Windows only tool. There’s isn’t a Pamela version for Mac users.
• No multiple feed support. So, if you’re using one blog to host multiple podcast feeds, Pamela won’t know how to publish recordings to your blog using multiple feeds. Pamela is a 1:1 tool.

Despite these 2 drawbacks, I’m going to give Pamela a try. Everyone who attended the International Podcasting Expo gets a complimentary Professional license of Pamela (valued at $24.95), so I have no excuse not to discover all that Pamela has to offer.