Here’s a look at what Rondee offers today. There’s one notable change from 2008: Users do have to sign up to use the service, but it is a quick and easy process. Just enter your email and wait for the confirmation email to access just the on-demand service (you can enter more information to get a full-featured account).

On Demand

For impromptu calls or calls that are scheduled through your company’s calendar, you can notify call participants directly and provide them with the Rondee call-in number. You can register multiple unique PIN codes and choose number combinations that are easy for you to remember. In addition, you can create and “assign” different PINs with unique attributes including whether or not you want the call to automatically record, if you want call statistics sent to you after the call and the sound effects you want to signify when people enter or exit the call (chime, chime and name announced, or no sound). So you can use different PINs for your virtual team, vendor calls or recording a podcast. You can even add a listen-only PIN code to a call to give to participants for a teleseminar style call.

After your call, you can go to your PIN dashboard to access call data and if you opted for recordings, the audio MP3 file that you can listen to and download.

Scheduled

Rondee can also schedule calls, emailing participants directly with the call-in information. As part of this feature, Rondee offers attendance tracking and agenda archiving, so the system can keep tabs for you on who was really on that call. You can set up recurring calls for weekly team calls or a regularly scheduled training session. You can also enable recording, allow participants to invite others to the call and decide whether or not to get call stats emailed to you.

Participants get an email invitation with a link to a landing page on the Rondee site. On that page they can also see the call details, a call agenda they can edit, a drop down menu where they can confirm their participation, and a place to add comments.

Premium

The premium service offers two key benefits beyond the free service. Rather than the free Rondee’s California phone numbers for the call, premium users get a toll-free number. Rondee charges 5 cents per minute. Premium users also get text transcripts of their calls, which are 97 percent accurate and are delivered within two or three days. Rondee charges $1 per minute for transcription, with a minimum charge of $20.

If you’re looking for a straightforward and easy free conference call solution with both the on-demand and scheduling features, Rondee is still in the running as a viable and useful solution.

How are you handling your conference calls? Pros and cons?

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I recently reviewed Rondee, the easy-as-pie phone conferencing site, but just heard about a new conferencing site worth mentioning to expand your options for free conference calls.

Calliflower provides services to cover the entire process of conference calls – from setting them up to holding them to the followup and continued dialogue after the call is over. Calliflower is all about “building conversations” and sharing media, and they do it through a relatively clean dashboard so all of the elements of your call are on one screen.

Calliflower actually began as a FaceBook application adding free audio conferencing capabilities to people’s FaceBook accounts. As the app grew in popularity, the demand for the services apart from FaceBook became increasingly apparent to the company’s founders. They expanded their solution for not just conference calls but kept an eye toward being a solution for holding teleseminars and teleclasses as well.

To showcase their site’s capabilities, the company is offering their Calliflower Communiques, regular tele-conversations between a host (life enhancement speaker and writer Allan Hunkin) and authors and celebrities ranging from Alan Alda to William Shatner presented as teleseminars.

Here are some of the aspects of Calliflower worth noting:

1. Pin-free access to calls. After registering a call participant’s phone number becomes their personal pin. Easy to remember. Those who don’t want to register can access calls with a pin sent to them when the call is set up.

2. Controls at your fingertips. You can mute and unmute participants; acknowledge raised hands (a little hand icon that participants can use to signal they have something to say); lower hands; and other moderator functions. Everything is visible on a handy dashboard, a single Web -page view of your controls.

3. Multiple ways of accessing calls. Participants can opt to use VoiP (Truphone) or even a “call my phone” service (Sitofono) which is especially popular in Europe were mobile phone calls are free when received but incur a fee when made.

4. Enhancing call with a chat wall. You can carry out a simultaneous text chat as well as drop in links to MP3 files, flicker URLs to embed photos, share slides, and other multimedia resources to supplement the call and allow others to follow along.

5. “Seeing” the callers. You can see the names, pictures and caller status of everyone participating in the call – all on the dashboard. You can also see if their mike is open or closed or if their hand is raised.

6. Accessible call archives. You can archive the call agenda, any handouts, links and files to be accessed anytime after a call has been completed. This can also include an MP3 recording of the call.

Calliflower is looking to “reinvent business conversations” and provide new ways for people to interact within a conference call. Looks like they are on their way.

Some other conferencing call sites and services we’ve covered recently include FreeConference.com, SightSpeed (video conferencing), and Yugma.

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