It's become apparent that ALSA or whatever just doesn't have the cajones when it comes to boosting mic gain so I was wondering does anyone know of any mic boosting programs that I could run alongside skype so that people could actually hear me talking without me getting intimate with my mic.

I don't get it. Why is this complicated?

It sounds like a large percentage of the problems are based around not being able to be heard so clearly there is a problem with ALSA or Skype. Can NOBODY sort this out? I don't do programming but I'd make a guess that something so simple as a mic boosting program wouldn't be incredibly complicated.

And yes, I do already have the mic boost option enabled in the Mixer, but it appears to be as impotent as an 80 year old man.