The new feature is built into the latest version of the GoToMeeting software, and doesn’t require any fancy equipment — any webcam and microphone will do, although headsets will most likely be needed to keep room noise down, or users can choose to dial into an audio bridge. Each stream can be displayed at a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, for a total maximum resolution of 1920 x 960 pixels.

I attended a demo with four attendees, and found it to be easy to use, and the quality to be very good. If you’ve used GoToMeeting before, you know that the software (available for Windows or Mac) is  quick to download, and doesn’t generally require any fiddling with settings. Audio was perfect, and video quality was quite acceptable for standard “talking head” meetings. The folks at GoToMeeting told me that they decided to limit the service to six simultaneous users in order to maintain video quality — plus, with more users, the video thumbnails for each person would be pretty hard to see.

The program automatically displays a split screen divided into the appropriate number of boxes need to show each participant, and a screen sharing space when desired. GoToMeeting has added some useful touches, like a subtle white outline that shows who’s talking at any given moment, and the ability to resize the viewable area to maximize the shared desktop if desired.

The new service occupies a niche between Skype and some of the higher-end video conferencing options that require sophisticated hardware. For organizations and individuals that won’t use the service often enough to justify GoToMeeting’s cost, similar technology will be available later in the year through Skype, since Citrix will be powering Skype’s upcoming web conferencing service.

HDFaces is available to existing GoToMeeting customers and trial users at no additional cost over the service’s standard pricing, which begins at $49/month or $468/year. A 30-day free online trial is available at the service’s website.

Do you use GoToMeeting? Will the addition of video capabilities make the service more attractive?

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CrunchConnect’s web conferencing and screen-sharing system has some useful features, including:

• Dedicated web addresses and phone conference numbers (users can also have the service call them directly)
• Option for participants to sign in via LinkedIn, so others can see their profiles; the system also displays participants’ Twitter profiles
• A “waiting room,” where participants can communicate before an event begins
• Ability for hosts to upload presentations in advance
• Ability to record meetings
• Analytics tools, to track what parts of presentations are viewed and for how long.

CrunchConnect was developed with sales in mind, so it has some SlideRocket-like features, such as being able to update presentations even after they’ve been shared. A “company” function will shortly be added, for creating libraries of slides that can be shared and updated centrally. CrunchConnect doesn’t have the sophisticated online editing functions of SlideRocket, though; you’ll need to create your presentations offline and upload them. The service supports PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx) formats, as well as JPG, PNG, and GIF images. PDF support will be added soon.

I experimented a little with CrunchConnect as a presenter and as a meeting participant, and so far, I’ve found the web-based system works pretty smoothly. It doesn’t require any software to be downloaded, which is helpful. There’s not much documentation yet, although I haven’t really felt the need for it.

CrunchConnect is currently in private beta, but the developer has provided 500 WebWorkerDaily readers with access. You can sign up here. The service is free for now; after the beta period has ended, users will be able to choose from free and paid plans.

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TeamViewer can be set up in different ways. If you want to share your screen for presentations or training, you can install the software on your machine, and then share your ID with your audience, who can view your desktop in a web browser. The software is not intended to support large numbers of viewers, so it would not be suitable for webinars.

TeamViewer can also be used for troubleshooting remote computers, similar to CrossLoop, LogMeIn Rescue, or the “remote assistance” functions built into Windows and Mac OS X. In this configuration, you ask the client to download and run the TeamViewer QuickSupport module (it doesn’t need to be installed). The client gives you the ID and password that the QuickSupport module creates, which you can enter into your copy of the software or use the web version.

The TeamViewer software, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, can also be used to connect remotely to unattended computers. It’s also possible to connect on the go via iOS and Android apps.

One nice feature of TeamViewer is that (as with LogMeIn and similar products) it can create connections behind firewalls, meaning that it doesn’t take the sort of setup that VNC does. A chat and file transfer system is included.

All in all, TeamViewer is a well-developed product that can be used for many needs faced by those of us with remote workforces. I confess, though, that I got a bit of sticker shock from TeamViewer’s pricing structure, which starts at $729 for one workstation. But since TeamViewer is priced as a one-time payment with no monthly subscription fees, it may be a good buy for some organizations. Note that TeamViewer is free for non-commercial use, and also offers free trials.

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Once installed, Adobe Connect meeting hosts can access chat rooms (“text conferences”) hosted on an XMPP server by launching the extension in the “Share” pod during the meeting, then connecting to the server and choosing a  conference room to join.

It means Connect hosts can now meet with users of many other XMPP-compatible chat clients, such as Jabber, iChat, Miranda-IM and Adium. Once a chat room is joined, the meeting participants can simply view the chat as guests without logging in (guest viewing can be disabled by the host), or participants can each log into the XMPP server with their own credentials to participate. Chat can continue seamlessly with other meeting activities such as video, audio and screen sharing.

Being able to access chat rooms with users of other software may sound like it’s no big deal  — after all, most Connect users will already have an XMPP chat client installed on their machines, or could always download one — but this extension should enhance Connect’s potential as a collaborative tool, as it can now integrate with a much wider ecosystem of apps. Additionally, meetings can now start out as simple chats rather than full-blown web conferences, and can then quickly be escalated to a full conference, if required.

The free XMPP Multi-User Chat extension can be downloaded here; documentation is included.

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The web conferencing market has changed considerably since our 2007 WWD roundup, but here are a few options that we’ve covered in the past.

• Fuze Meeting. This service is entirely browser-based, and offers many features, although it doesn’t have a free option.
• Skype. Simon reminded us that this is a good alternative for small meetings, and it has both video and screen-sharing capabilities.
• Yugma. This app includes some sophisticated features, but still offers a free version.
• Yuuguu. Doriano liked this IM-based service because it doesn’t require those you’re sharing screens with to download or install anything.

Here are some of the other solutions available. Prices, features and usability vary greatly.

• Adobe Web Conferencing
• Live Meeting
• GoToMeeting
• WebEx
• Zoho Meeting

What will you use to replace Dimdim?

Image courtesy Flickr user vivevans

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Connect’s UI was probably due for an overhaul. The product has actually been around for quite a while now — it was originally called Macromedia Breeze, which was introduced in 2003. Over the years, new features have been added to it, which led to a UI that, while not exactly difficult to use, perhaps wasn’t laid out in the most logical fashion. The new UI is greatly streamlined and groups related features, meaning that it should be quicker to carry out common tasks, and should make it easier for new users to get to grips with the app.

There have also been enhancements to Connect’s existing built-in collaboration tools, such as the the notes, Q&A and whiteboard “pods,” which should make them simpler to use, while also adding useful new functionality.

Another feature that should make Connect 8 easier to use is the new AIR-based desktop client, Adobe Connect Desktop. It enables users to manage their meetings from their desktop, as well as providing a tool to search for recorded meetings that can be watched online or offline (useful for catching up on webinars while in the air, for example).

As well as the improvements to the UI, Connect also has some useful new features. The new two-way Universal Voice (VoIP) system means that attendees can now choose to use either a telephone or their computer’s microphone and speakers to communicate. It also allows presenters to bridge the audio from any audio conferencing provider into an Adobe Connect room; handy if attendees are based in locations where dialing into the conference would be expensive.

Connect’s video capabilities have been enhanced, too; it now supports video with a resolution of up to 640 x 480. It it can also interface with existing SIP/H.264 corporate telepresence systems; the presenter can now choose to bring a live audio/video broadcast stream from an existing telepresence system directly into a meeting room.

Adobe Connect 8 is available from late November as a hosted, on premise or managed solution; there’s no upgrade cost to existing customers.

Let us know what you think of Adobe Connect 8 in the comments.

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The enhanced screensharing tools mean a presenter can now opt to share the whole screen, a region of the screen or just a single application window. Sharing just an application window (completely ignoring everything else on the user’s screen) should be particularly useful for product demos where the presenter doesn’t want attendees to be distracted by anything else on the screen.

Here’s a video of Dimdim’s Steve Chazin showing off the latest version of the myScreen plugin:

Previously, Dimdim allowed only two cameras in video chat in paid accounts; that’s now been upped to four. The application interface allows for one large video window and three smaller ones, and the presenter can select which video feed is displayed in the largest window. Video chat can now also be run in full-screen mode. (Note: Free accounts still only have access to one camera.)

Additionally, Dimdim 6.0 has added free secure file hosting to enable presenters and attendees to share files both during and after conferences (2 Gb for paid accounts, 20 Mb for free accounts), and the ability to create polls on the fly.

The company showed me a demo of the new version of the software last week, and I have to say it looked very slick and easy to use for both presenters and attendees, although there were still a few bugs in the in-development parts of the software.

Dimdim offers a range of competitively priced plans, from Dimdim Free (basic features, up to 10 attendees, free) up to Dimdim Business (advanced features, up to 100 attendees and optionally scalable to 1,000 participants, $33 per user per month).

Let us know what you think of the new features in Dimdim 6.0 in the comments.
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I recently wrapped up my first project with a client where we used Google Wave for document collaboration and wrote about the lessons I learned along the way. In this post I am going to look forward to some of the tasks that I see Wave being used for.

• Document Collaboration. This is probably the first “out of the box” solution for Google Wave that many organizations can think of. In my experience, there were some rough edges in my collaboration efforts using the app that will need to be ironed, out but we did complete our project successfully.
• Team Chats. While there a number of IM, corporate microblogging and web chat solutions available, Google Wave can help consolidate such online conversations to a single medium.
• Writing Feedback. While Darrell has a drastically different opinion than I do about Google Wave, he points out that it is an excellent tool for getting writing feedback because it offers a continuous dialogue via waves and blips.
• Web Conferencing. With a few tweaks, you can easily turn Google Wave into an impromptu web conferencing platform. The Ribbit Conference Gadget is the first extension out of the gate for adding web conferencing to the platform. As Wave gains enterprise adoption, you can expect to see more developers releasing web conferencing extensions for Google Wave.
• Event & Trip Planning. A wave can serve as a ready repository for event and trip planning information with you and other participants contributing blips with information about the event or trip. The Yes/No/Maybe extension can help you want to gather votes and opinions on event and trip decisions.
• Corporate Style Guide. As a technical writer, using a wave as a document style guide presents a lot of opportunities. It has been my experience that far too many organizations still rely on style guides that are hard to reference. Google Wave makes the document searchable and easy to update.
• Policies & Procedures. Google Wave also has potential as a publishing platform for an organization’s policies and procedures documents, because they put them online, searchable and accessible to users.
• Status Reporting. If you start a wave just for status reports, team members can contribute blips listing their status on the project, keeping everyone updated.

How are you using Google Wave?

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In my view, we all need a web conferencing platform with a light footprint that enables us to hop in and out of web conferences with ease, without having to fire up a complex client to initiate the session. Acrobat Connect Pro could certainly find a home in browser tab where it could be waiting, ready for you to jump into a new web conference.

Acrobat Connect Pro 7.5 includes the following new features:

Integrated Audio. Flexible audio integration is a must have in a web conferencing platform. Take a look at your own project team; it’s doubtful that every team member is using the same phone system. Acrobat Connect Pro’s integrated audio (which was recently covered by Simon) adds an important communications layer to this web conferencing platform, and means that it can support VoIP, landline and mobile telephones as well as a range of traditional teleconferencing systems. If needed, you can even have conference attendees in the web conference using their PC’s mic and speakers.

Native PDF Support. If you and your team use Adobe Acrobat PDFs as a standard working format then you should know that this version includes PDF support, with improved workflow and Adobe Acrobat integration. PDFs offer a secure publishing format especially if you, your team, and clients are having issues with document corruption, incompatibility and other problems that can sometimes ensue with passing Microsoft Office documents around via email.

Additionally, there are refinements to Acrobat Connect Pro’s secure desktop sharing and interface with whitelisting and more granular security controls, which could open up the prospect of secure desktop sharing to organizations that may have been wary of it in the past.

Acrobat Connect Pro Goes Mobile

This latest version of Acrobat Connect Pro is also promising an iPhone client to enable iPhone users to attend web conferences on the go. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to test this feature out as yet.

This latest release of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro is definitely worth a look if you’re seeking a flexible web conferencing system for your project team.

Have you used Acrobat Connect Pro for web conferencing? Share your experience below.

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Sococo Team Space from Sococo is a new Windows-only entry into the web conferencing space and takes a more graphical approach to web conferencing (not necessarily a bad thing). In fact, the Sococo client uses an interesting office building analogy:

From the Sococo Team Space user interface, you have access to the following:

• Audio Preferences, which lets you control your voice, other people’s voices, and alerts.

• Screen sharing, enabling conference participants to share their screens while a web conference is in session. The collaboration opportunities with this feature include sharing documents while you edit your own document and viewing multiple documents side-by-side.
• Send invites to other conference participants. With this I give my standard advice when it comes to web conferencing platforms with a downloadable client, and that is have all conference participants download the client well before the conference and not when the conference is about to start.

• Communications tools including “hallway” conversations (using that office building analogy again) and the ability to click into an office or conference room to join other participants.

While I generally prefer web conferencing platforms that are cross-platform and have a smaller footprint, Sococo Team Space could be useful for web conferencing with novice web users thanks to its familiar office building analogy. However, more experienced users may find the user interface and its analogies to an office building to be a bit much.

You can get started with Sococo Team Space for free.

What do you think of Sococco Team Space’s office building analogy model? Is it useful, or does it just get in the way?

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Citrix’s GoToMeeting, part of the Citrix Online collaborative suite, is one such service. It also meets one of my other prime requirements — the client is easily installable by users of all levels. One thing that will spoil a web conference before it’s even started is when participants have a hard time installing the local client so they can’t join the conference. This issue can happen to even the most experienced web worker, not just the technology neophyte.

I am sticking with the Mac client for this post, but Citrix also provides a similar user experience and features in the Windows version. Neither client is a permanent install.

Web Workers and Web Conferencing
Today’s web conferencing tools have to be more than just a venue for team meetings — they need to be full collaboration tools to help web workers and their project teams communicate seamlessly.

Citrix GoToMeeting Features

Citrix GoToMeeting for the Mac supports up to 15 conference participants, and includes the following features:

• Screen Sharing. Screen sharing is useful for online demonstrations, collaboration on documents and spreadsheets, and online training. As travel budgets remain tight, screen sharing and some creativity can help geographically dispersed project teams stay in sync on projects.
• Meeting Recording and Playback. Taking meeting minutes is an archaic, mundane, and bureaucratic task, and GoToMeeting includes meeting recording and playback which keeps an audio and screen recording of the entire online meeting. This is a better record, because it spares the misunderstandings and gaps that can sometimes creep into note taking. It is also more efficient for an online team to move to meeting recording because participants can better focus on the meeting. UPDATE: the Mac version of GoToMeeting doesn’t support meeting recording — it’s only available on the Windows version.
• VoIP and Telephone Support. Web conference attendees can dial into the conference via a VoIP or landline phone. Currently, GoToMeeting offers free VoIP and phone conferencing. You also have an option to use your computer’s mic and speakers for conducting audio communications.

Launching meetings takes place within a few clicks, making GoToMeeting an ideal choice for teams that need a web conferencing platform that users of varying levels will have no problem using.

GoToMeeting is available for purchase from GoToMeeting.com. (A free trial is available.) The site includes the latest licensing and pricing information.

Which web conferencing tool do you use?

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Adobe also has announced that it is working on various native mobile apps for Connect Pro, with an app for iPhone and iPod due to be released first.

Does Universal Voice make Connect Pro more attractive for your company?

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This could place even organizations with well developed telecommuting programs in a challenging position, because a major virus outbreak may mean that their remote worker needs exceed their current capacity.

On the flip side, there are organizations that are far from telecommuting-friendly, which face even more challenges because they aren’t set up for remote working. In order to keep their business running in such a crisis they are going to need to buy or build an infrastructure to meet a new model of working.

At WebWorkerDaily, we get a chance to review some of the best office productivity, social media, online collaboration, project management, and Web 2.0 tools that in a worst case scenario — like a pandemic outbreak — can help an organization maintain some semblance of operations and communications, even though its employees and contractors are working from home during the crisis.

Perhaps your organization already has a well-honed telecommuting policy, however it is prudent to look for chinks in your telecommuting plans before the worst case scenario happens. Here is a look at some tools and services you can use to keep business operations running.

Office Suites
While Microsoft Office is probably your corporate standard, an extreme scenario like a pandemic outbreak could place your newly minted web workers on their home PCs or on a limited number of organization owned notebook PCs — there might not be enough Office licenses to cope with this scenario. This means you may need to consider web office solutions to make up the shortfall. Good choices include:

• Google Apps is a good choice for augmenting your corporate standard Office suite, even though it is not as feature-rich. There are fee-based and free versions available.

• Zoho Business is another ready solution, with a wider variety of applications that Google Apps.

• Simon and I recently covered the impending rollout of  Office Web Apps. While it isn’t available yet, the model it promises is ideal for a scenario like this, because it can offer users remote access to their important Microsoft Office files with a familiar interface.

Web office suites can help you keep your work accessible online, which is especially handy if all your workers don’t have remote access to your corporate network.

Social Media
Whether or not your organization has embraced social media behind the firewall, suddenly becoming a home-based organization means that employees are largely cut off from each other. Social networking tools can help them stay in touch with each other and the organization as a whole.

Some corporate-grade social media tools that might fit the bill include:

• Socialtext, a corporate social networking and collaboration tool that we’ve covered previously.
• Yammer, a Twitter clone, is another option for injecting social media into your organizational communications (see our previous coverage).

Each solution has fee-based and free versions.

Project Management

Putting your project management tools online is a prudent move, even before a crisis — but it could become a necessity in light of maintaining corporate operations in the midst of an H1N1 outbreak. However, Microsoft Project maintains its crown as the most popular — albeit mostly desktop-bound — corporate project management solution. Here are some good online project management tools:

• Basecamp is a the most well-known of all of the online PM tools  — we’ve written about it many times previously.
• Zoho Projects is an economical and innovative project management solution that Doriano previously covered for WWD.
• Charles reviewed Team Effect which garnered some mixed comments but is worthy a trial.
• PBWorks (formerly PBWiki) is another online project management option and according to Simon’s review it is definitely worth considering

Each of these solutions have fee-based and free versions.

Instant Messaging
Keeping your team in touch with each other even if they are all stuck at home is vital. If your organization isn’t already using instant messaging, then you need to consider it as part of your contingency plan.

Some instant messaging solutions you should consider include:

• Open source clients like Pidgin and Adium which let you encrypt chat sessions over commercial IM networks including AIM, GTalk, Windows Live, and Yahoo.
• Microsoft Office Communications Server also offers web-based access to its IM client. If your organization is running it, take steps to ensure your staff has access to it from home.

Web Conferencing & Collaboration
Today’s web conferencing and collaboration tools are ideal for keeping your team working together even though they’re not all working from the same office. Here are some options for web conferencing:

• Acrobat.com includes ConnectNow. Thursday covered Acrobat.com coming out of beta. It has free and fee-based versions and includes online collaboration features.
• Dimdim, which we’ve covered before, is an excellent low-cost teleconferencing tool
• Simon covered the beta launch of Team Apart, a free online collaboration tool that offers white board, video conferencing, and file sharing. Depending on the progress of the beta, it might be worth considering.

Crises and Web Working
Whether you are building out or just augmenting your communications infrastructure in light of the H1N1 threat, I recommend checking out these  applications now and not on the eve of a crisis. You should also make sure that employees know how to use these applications and how to access them well in advance of having to actually implement your crisis plan..

How is your organization preparing to continue operations during an H1N1 virus outbreak?

Image by mzacha from stock.xchng.

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Dimdim Webinar is very easy to use for attendees, as unlike other web conferencing products, you don’t need to sign up or install any software or plugins to join a conference. Hosts also don’t need to install any software, and they get access to an impressive array of features including screen-sharing, web site co-browsing, webcam video, text chat, audio and whiteboard tools. You can customize the look and feel of the webinar to match your corporate branding. Hosts can record webinars and get access to an analytics package for tracking who attended and how they interacted during the event. The app feels quite quick in use; joining an event is fast, and switching between presentations is snappy. 

A useful feature is the Webinar Widget, which you can embed on your site (or elsewhere, like your Facebook Page, for example), promoting the event and letting attendees register. The widget automatically changes over time — while the event is in progress, attendees can join through the widget. After the webinar has finished, you can configure the widget to promote a transcript and/or recording of the event.

Didim Webinar is competitively priced at $828 per year, or $75 per month, and is free to try for 30 days. After the 30-day trial, if you don’t wish to sign up to Webinar Edition, you can continue to use Dimdim Free, which is limited to 20 attendees but otherwise has full functionality.

Have you tried Dimdim? How do you think it compares with WebEx and GoToMeeeting?

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The TimeBridge scheduler lets you set up a meeting or conference call by prompting you to pick some ideal date and time options, then sends them to the participants to vote on their best dates and times. It then provides you with a mechanism to accept a mutually agreeable time slot and confirm the meeting with everyone. Now, built right into the scheduler, is a button to “make it a Web conference” or “add a free conference call”.

The web-based conferencing system rivals WebEx and GoToMeeting. It is entirely Flash-based, so it requires zero download, and it seems to be pretty reliable and stable. Its capabilities include:

• share screen — for viewing someone else’s desktop. Perfect for demos.
• share documents — for viewing PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets and more.
• white board — for collaborative composition. The white board feature also lays over documents for real-time, collaborative annotations.
• co-browse — for the ability to share a web browser view, where any party can click on active links.

Another useful feature is TimeBridge Groups, with which you can group together different configurations of people such as your design group, your executive team and client teams. This feature makes it easier to schedule meetings with pre-designated groupings of people.

So what does the new web conferencing feature cost? The company’s CEO and founder, Yori Nelken, says that TimeBridge can price their new conferencing service competitively because they have no customer acquisition costs. They already have an enormous customer base for their free scheduler, so upgrades are an easy sell. What might cost $50 per month from a competitor is being offered by TimeBridge for $8.95 per month. Of course, when I heard that price, my eyes lit up.

How Web Workers Can Use It

I face several challenge as I’m growing my social media marketing company with web workers in five different locations in the U.S. and a new addition in the UK, including:

• training new hires on the proprietary ways we execute social media marketing tactics
• having virtual meetings with the entire team that can include demos and brainstorming
  
• showing clients in other parts of the world the social media assets we’ve created for them
• demoing samples of our work to potential clients remotely

TimeBridge’s price is attractive for a lean, mean virtual company in startup mode. And it seems like it could provide an immediate functionality and efficiency that is lacking from many virtual teams. I think it is brilliant to build out a suite of “virtual meeting” tools for the new way we’re doing work.

So What’s Missing?

Something that I think would enhance the TimeBridge toolset is the service from TimeDriver that I’ve been using to allow other people to select available time slots on my schedule to set in-person meetings for my time at South by Southwest Interactive. I mentioned this to the folks at TimeBridge, and they acknowledged — somewhat dismissively — that this is something for the future.

If TimeBridge is being touted as a “personal scheduler” with virtual meeting space capabilities, I think the missing piece of the puzzle is just that — personal scheduling. Since part of my web work includes virtual demos and, occasionally, in-person meetups, being able to give people access to open time slots on my calendar and letting them select and book the meetings themselves would be a killer app.

What are you using to schedule meetings? What apps do you use for web conferencing and free conference calls? Are your solutions integrated, and does that matter?

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At the Office 2.0 conference, earlier this month, CEO Anish Kapoor launched Linux editions of their software, directly providing supported clients for SUSE, Ubuntu & Fedora. Though the company has a modest user base, providing support to Linux can only help to enhance it’s utility as a collaboration bridge between Linux, Windows and the Mac community, to whom Yuuguu launched it’s product at Macworld earlier this year.

Though, this level of cross-platform support is undoubtedly useful, particularly when initiating web conferencing sessions between users in various technology environments, it looks like the real goal Yuuguu had in mind was to move to a more universally supported web-based client, announced at Web2Expo in New York earlier today.

Though a conference host does need to install either Linux, OSX or Windows client, other participants simply require a Flash-enabled browser, the unique URL for the conference session and a PIN code, issued by the host.

Of course, this means that participants don’t even need to join the service in order to join a conferencing session – unless they in turn wish to broadcast and share their own screens – helping to broaden the reach of the service.

Though the service works just as well in all four of it key environments, I can’t help but think that a Yuuguu plugin for existing social networks and communications applications might make for an interesting future development. With Yuuguu sessions now addressable as URLs, it’s not difficult to imagine Yuuguu links popping up in Facebook applications, Google Calendar requests and perhaps even PR releases for software launches…maybe Yuuguu themselves?

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