DimDim - YumYum Sunday, October 07, 2007

I have to take back my mocking words about DimDim, the Open Source web conferencing company. Having just received my invite to the beta, I was blown away with the breadth of facilities tucked inside this stylish yet FREE web conference service.

It's felt like I'd encountered the next evolutionary cycle of web conference tools - the offspring of vyew and zoho meeting. It's got some great features including
As a Presenter only a browser plugin is needed while Attendees do not need to install anything, as they can watch via flash, which puts Yugma at a disadvantage as it requires an install. Similarly, Yuuguu is not as functionally rich at this time. Whilst vyew does offer most of the above features with the notable exception of video/audio, I always found the desktop sharing to be flaky.

It certainly looks good enough to give DimDim a try as my primary web conference tool, with zoho as a back-up.

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Dim Dim - Dumb Dumb Monday, September 24, 2007

I don't know if this new web conferencing service works well for reasons that will be evident immeditely, so this is not a comment on the application, but the home page of DimDim, who are launching at DemoFall, has a prominent button saying "invite me", which does absolutely nothing as yet.

This may be a timing issue and perhaps they aren't accepting requests as yet but would it have hurt to accept requests early if I was willing to surrender my email address?

You can see more info about their service here

UPDATE : The home page has been updated and so now you can submit your email address address to join the beta.

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Yugma - Great webconferencing but for the install! Saturday, September 22, 2007

I'm a regular user of web conferencing services but unlike the majority of people who tend to use them for internal meetings inside a corporation, most of my meetings will involve people from other companies.


This creates a tremendous challenge since most services demand that the participants install an application on their desktop. Less of an issue inside a small firm, but a nightmare in most corporations, where desktops tend to be locked-down for very sensible reasons.

As with other applications, I'm always on the lookout for better alternatives. So, I was really disappointed when I tried out Yugma to find it required an install on the PC of each participant. The application very looks slick and encompasses most of the features you'd find in high-end, well known and expensive services.


They have provided for conference calling services but it is not mandatory to use them, indeed it specifically acknowledges skype as an telephony option.


If this is adopted by corporates for internal use, then the obstacle to installation goes away. More significantly, the pricing model looks a steal at $900 dollars for sessions involving up to 500 participants. I suspect that one licence might well suffice for a corporate if one person is assigned to be the primary contact point and operator, albeit that clearly is not what Yugma hopes for.


There is a free version that allows up to 10 attendees to be in a meeting, albeit each participant has to register and there are other limitations.

But just like buses, a similar service is Yuuguu which even sounds similar. It too requires a desktop install but this one is presently FREE regardless of number of attendees at a meeting. Sam Seithi wrote about them here.


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Live video conferencing service that's free Sunday, June 17, 2007

Heycosmo is a new service that launched yesterday that supports up to ten live, web-cam participants and another fifty people can enjoy from a more passive manner, listening, watching or chatting during the broadcast session.

It offers a much broader set of facilities to users, enabling them to broadcast content in a multimedia platform that can display videos, photos, games and even has a blogging facility. However, I suspect the most popular facility will be the "Texas Hold'em card game tables" where you can play poker live with your chums remotely, or indeed with anyone online.

But I reckon that you could easily use this to hold video conferences, or even seminars with a panel and an audience. I've not yet had chance to try out the conferencing in anger, but looking round the site, it seems possible. If I get it working, I will report back.

Sadly it doesn't work in Firefox (only IE)

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Zoho Meeting is excellent Wednesday, May 16, 2007

I confess to being a big Zoho fan - the combined quality and range of their online offerings is probably unequalled.

Their online office applications are excellent and already offer an ability to automatically synch files with local Microsoft office documents. Hence I can work on a doc in MS Word on my laptop but have it auto syncing to an online copy as a background job via a local copy in near real-time. Thereafter I can open the document up in a browser from any PC once I have logged into my account.

So onto their latest release which is Zoho Meeting, which is a web conference facility that allows you to broadcast your screen to invitees to your online meeting as well as share control. I was kindly granted access to the private beta of service.

The application works via an add-in in Firefox but requires no install on the part of attendees to your meeting, who simply can use flash to view, albeit their is also an Active X viewer to choose from. The interface is stylish and compact, not to mention intuitive.

Today, whilst chatting to someone on Skype, I decided it would be helpful to walk them through a website application. I was able to quickly launch Zoho Meeting, ping them an email invite containing a link and within 2 minutes from initiating the entire process, my counterpart was able to view my onscreen activities without having to worry about installs on their machine.

Presently, you can't restrict what the attendees can see on your screen, so you should de-activate instant messaging service to avoid embarrassing IM messages popping up mid meeting. Likewise, close any unnecessary tabs in your browser. The application includes Zoho Chat which means you can swap messages in text with your invitees, but doesn't include VOIP or video. Consequently, you may want to run a skype call or other VOIP service alongside in order to allow you to talk (you could even run a landline teleconference!)

As I understand it, Zoho Meeting isn't presently targeted at supporting huge numbers of attendees to an online meeting. Nonetheless, most people rarely (if ever) need to link in 20+ people into their desktop screen view to do a demo or the like. Consequently, I think that this will be an invaluable addition to many workplaces, not to mention a winner with web workers.

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