Slick, Free Virtual Meetings–For Windows, the Mac or Linux
Meetings–they never seem to stop, do they? If you grow weary of meetings and the travel that often goes along with them, or if you just want to investigate one of the coolest, free ways to collaborate with other people, give Yugma a try. It’s a free application, hosted on the web and Java-based, and it’s aimed at Windows, Mac and Linux users.
Like many of the other virtual meeting products, there are paid versions of Yugma in addition to the free version. However, many web workers will find that they have all they need in the free version. With the free version, you can invite up to 10 participants into a virtual meeting with you, share your desktops back and forth, whiteboard and annotate files, and when you set up a session, a free teleconferencing session and number are generated for you. Another very cool feature of Yugma is that you can embed it into your web site.
Registering for the application takes less than a minute, and you can be in your first Yugma session within two minutes. You’ll see that a session begins with prompts asking you to specify who the presenter is. If you’re the presenter, others can see the actions you take on screen as they meet with you. It’s very easy to specify one of the other participants as presenter.
The whiteboarding and annotation tools in Yugma are rich and easy to use. Also, if you’re a Skype user, definitely try Yugma’s Skype Edition. It makes it very easy to select meeting participants from your existing Skype Contact List. And, keep in mind that Yugma’s ability to share desktops makes it ideal for web workgroups who might want to have a techie person in the group diagnose and analyze any system or application problems in real time.
So what do the paid versions of Yugma give you that the free version doesn’t have? If you want to do virtual meetings with very large numbers of participants the paid versions accommodate those. Yugma’s Premium Edition lets you invite up to 500 online participants into a meeting, and you can record sessions that you can upload for archival purposes to Yugma. The Premium Edition starts at $9.95, but I’m more than happy with the free service, and I bet you will be too. Even many users of WebEx–used to paying fairly big fees for premium meeting and collaboration services–will probably find what they need in Yugma.
Do you have any virtual meeting or collaboration tips?
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Looks good… gonna try it out. Thanks!
This is a great find! Thanks for this! I have been in the position to need to meet with someone virtually and kept considering the “GoToMeeting” thingie you hear about on the radio. I had no idea that a free option existed!
I tried, I’m sold. I’m in!!! Yugma rocks!
We’ve been using Yugma at my office now for a couple of weeks. Its definitely a good alternative to GoToMeeting. Most of us have our own free accounts for impromptu meetings with small groups. We are planning on purchasing a few premium accounts to facilitate are larger meetings.
We’ve been using it for a while too, works great! They also have a skype version that we use with our int’l meetings. Definitely a good find.
Yeah!!! I just heard about the new Yugma Viewer feature. Its really awesome. check it out at yugma.com/viewer . it makes Yugma amazingly easy and simple.
after finding this article in my search for such product, i tried yugma a few days ago. easy install, free trial for the first 15 days, a viewer for those who don’t want to install, scheduling, annotation tools, what more could anyone need? it’s the perfect solution and EASY ON THE BUDGET!
Great write up!!
I was looking for something like this, for a while, did try a few of them, and Yugma seems to a pretty rich tool.
However, it seems it does not support desktop sharing on linux yet? I am using Ubuntu 7.10
Regards
In addition to yugma we have stated using using anther free app called Yakkle within our support team and with a few customers. Yakkle also provides an integrated app for multi-user IM, VoIP, and desktop sharing. It seems to provide a much less jittery desktop sharing experience over high latency connections.
Vyew is another presentation and collaboration platform to consider. Participants can present, create and collaborate on content together in real time or separately at their convenience (workspaces are always on). Vyew requires no software installation and it’s free. http://www.vyew.com