I’ve written before about Yugma, which is one of the best free online conferencing applications available. Today, Yugma has announced a new version 4.0 of its meeting application, which adds many new features, including a Viewer that allows people to join a Yugma meeting without downloading the whole application.
Here are some of the other bells and whistles in the new version.
I downloaded version 4.0 and installed it as an upgrade in about two minutes. As you soon as it’s installed, you get a prompt to sign in and start a session. The ease of initiating sessions remains one of the strong points of the application.
In addition to the new Viewer for people who don’t have Yugma installed, version 4.0 brings a Linux Beta version that allows Linux users to host meetings and share desktops. Other free conferencing applications are catering to Linux users, so this is a good move.
Another notable feature in version 4.0 is a Microsoft Outlook plug-in. Many of us Windows users out there have to use Outlook whether we like it or not. With the new plug-in you can either host or join a meeting from within Outlook. This is especially nice if you manage your meeting schedule in Outlook’s calendar and send out meeting notifications from it.
A few of the new features are found only in the paid version of Yugma, Yugma Pro. Only Yugma Pro gets improved annotation tools, for example. This is in keeping with Yugma’s strategy of offering an appealing free version, but more functionality in its paid versions.
Although Yugma does come in paid versions that offer features like meetings for very large numbers of people, most web workers will find everything they need in the free version. One limitation Yugma still has is that the free version only supports 10 people in a meeting. The open source conferencing application Dimdim allows you to have 20 participants for free, and Dimdim also lets you record meetings for no fee.
Still, Yugma is a standout for the instant messaging-like ease it brings to online conferences, and the new Viewer feature that means no download for meeting participants adds to that simplicity. Inviting people to meetings in Yugma has always felt very much like starting an IM conversation from a buddy list, and the Viewer means that you can reach out to people who aren’t on your list and don’t even have Yugma.
You can download the new version for Mac, Windows or the beta for Linux here.
Yugma does allow you to record meetings, but it’s only the web portion of the meeting (not audio) which makes the feature rather useless, paid or not.
Another advantage in the paid version is that you can schedule meetings. It doesn’t really set a meeting time (the meeting can be started at any time, not just when scheduled), rather it sets aside a session ID for you.
Now all Yugma has to do is work out some of its bugs. While it gained in features in the new version, it seems to have slipped back in reliability a bit. That said, getting into the conference is the hardest part. Once everyone is “seated,” the quality of the sharing is excellent.
FYI, keep the comments rolling in – WE ARE HEARING YOU!
Samuel, all I can say in regard to the 20 seats is we have looked at that, and are taking it into consideration.
One of the strong points of Yugma is our security. We use strong but fast 128bit AES SSL between client and server for all communications. DimDim does not yet have an encrypted SSL secured offering, although I believe they have had numerous requests and are working on it.
Judi, Audio/desktop recording will be coming sometime in Q1/Q2 ’09 – we’re working hard on bringing it to life as it’s our top most requested feature.
You mentioned some bugs, care to share them with our support team? We’d love to hear about them!
Thanks to Samuel for the write-up and Jodi for the comments!
Correction – Thanks to Judi for the comment, not Jodi. (My bad!)
As a matter of fact, I sat down and had a little online chat with your tech support this morning. The problem I’ve been having was in starting a scheduled session from the site, and some network issues on the Mac side (I have Yugma installed in both VMWare Fusion and the Mac OS X side of my iMac).
I have to say that your online chat support was EXCELLENT and correctly diagnosed the problem as being due to a recent Java update. The tech support person gave me a link to downgrade Java to an earlier version (since this is on the PC side, up-to-date Java isn’t important to me). It worked, and I’m happy again.
Our organization does regular webinars and as a web worker, I sometimes have to demo something for my co-workers 200 miles away. After trying many solutions, Yugma does seem to be a nice balance of price vs. features for us.
Thanks for the post.
I tried installing Yugma on my MacBook Pro without success. The system is running 10.5.5 with all software updates applied. I get the following error message when the installation is finished:
Is anyone succesfully running on Mac OS X 10.5.5?
What does the second sentence mean?
“I downloaded version 4.0 and installed it as an upgrade in about two minutes. As you soon as it’s installed, you get a prompt to sign in and start a session. The ease of initiating sessions remains one of the strong points of the application.”
Hello Everyone!
Rebecca from Yugma here. Claude, I am sorry you received an error message! Yugma is compatible with Mac OS X 10.5.5 so if any Mac users run into issues with installing please contact us either by starting up a live support chat from our website or by sending an email to support@yugma.com and we will get things straightened out!
Frank:
In order to host a Yugma session you need to have a Yugma account (which can be a free account or a paid account). Once the Yugma installer is done installing, it will automatically launch Yugma, and you will see a login screen where you enter your Yugma user id and password to start a session, or you can click on the tab “JOIN A SESSION” in the same small login window and enter your name, email address and the session id of the session you are trying to attend.
Claude:
We haven’t heard back from you since our last email to you a few days ago. If you are reading this, please contact us again to let us know what your current situation is.
Let me also point out that besides our usual support features (live chat support on our site or email) we now also have a forum where questions can be posted – you can find it at forum.yugma.com
Thanks!
[...] Free Version 4.0 of Yugma Online Conferencing App Is Here (Samuel Dean) [...]
[...] discussed version 4.0 of Yugma on the WebWorkerDaily blog yesterday, and I’ve written about Yugma previously here. Like Microsoft LiveMeeting, Yugma users can [...]