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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posted by John Wilson @ 8:42 PM Permanent Link ,

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Give me a browser to run multiple web apps simultaneously Monday, January 08, 2007

I have much sympathy with Charlie O'Donnell when he expresses some frustration when trying to run multiple web apps simultaneously in his browser only to find his machine crawling to a halt because of the huge memory consumption/leakage that results.

Despite being a devotee of web apps, one has to acknowledge the reality that the "thin client" seems to hog a considerable amount of system resources. My Sony laptop only has 512mb of RAM, which used to feel like a lot - now I often seem to spend time waiting for the machine to catch up, staring at a thrashing hard disk light on the machine as it does something or other.

Is it poor web app design or browser failings?

I've drifted onto Firefox 2.0 not through any particular religious belief but simply because when you have many tabs open and the browser invariably crashes, it's helpful to have it restore to where you were.

Whatever it is, if you are building a web app it's not unreasonable to ask that you tune your app to consume the least amount of resources - it's fairly likely your app won't be running in isolation. Likewise, could all the brainpower thrown at Firefox possibly make it suitable for "an uninstalled life". Probably not much point asking Microsoft to do this with IE as it will cripple their Office revenues!

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posted by John Wilson @ 9:58 AM Permanent Link ,

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