I have never been a huge fan of push-to-talk services. It doesn't speak to me, to be quite honest. However, a lot of people like the Nextel Direct Connect service-something Sprint hasn't been able to duplicate since acquiring Nextel.

Apparently, Sprint has announced Push to Talk in another 14 markets, increasing the count of markets where their service is available to 46. Meanwhile, the folks at Palringo point out the absurdity of this. Their push-to-talk software is carrier-agnostic. If you've got a Windows PC, a Mac running Leopard, Windows Mobile handset or Symbian S60 3rd Edition FP1 or FP2 handset, you can run the Palringo client.

Palringo gives you more than push-to-talk, you can also IM with folks on the networks pictured here. All for free. Well, except for the data charges, of course.

If you're going to do push-to-talk, carrier-agnostic is the way to go. Unfortunately, this solution isn't handset agnostic, but then again, very little is.