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conferencing posts

Filed under: Internet, VoIP, Social Software, web 2.0

Iotum brings conferencing to Facebook


Iotum, whose tagline is "simply relevant", has made a name for itself in the voice 2.0 industry, combining VoIP technology with their own software wizardry to make life easier for busy telephone users, especially those holstering a Blackberry. Their next frontier is Facebook, the growing-like-a-weed social networking site that has a bent towards business-people and a larger user community than LinkedIn.

Making use of Facebook's API, Iotum created a conference-calling application that will allow Facebook participants to meet online. Iotum designed their conference call instances on Facebook to resemble Facebook events, giving the conferencing apparatus a familiar look and feel. Indeed, conferences can be tied to events so that they occur automatically, or you can do them ad-hoc. Right now, Iotum's Facebook add-on provides North American numbers for conferencing, with international numbers to be added later.

More than just chat tool, Iotum's Facebook voice conferencing lets you see the portraits of each Facebook participant before and during the conference--something, which, once you've done it, seems peculiarly missing from traditional phone-service based conferences. Perhaps best of all, if you're supposed to be a participant in a call, the add-on will even send you a text message so you don't forget. Check out the full details, including screenshots. And here's the application itself.

Filed under: Business, Developer, Internet, Text, Utilities, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Productivity, Web services, Commercial, Freeware, Social Software

Go Yugma yourself, or a colleague

Yugma
I love Yugma. It is extremely painless to setup, use, and it is free to do it. Yugma is a web-conferencing tool that has excellent annotation tools, easy controls, and a simple sign-up process. It took me little more than ten minutes from sign-up to knowing how to use Yugma's tools and launching my first web conference without the trouble that WebEx usually gives me. I haven't tried Yugma yet with a bunch of participants, but I plan to. This is the perfect tool for anyone who is teaching a class, discussing a group project, or even collaborating on a business deal. I can't tell you the many times in the last few months that I wished I had a service like this to illustrate a point visually instead of over the phone. Yugma uses a fast-loading Java interface that looks great, responds without me clicking a million times on it, and operates much like a regular desktop app. The tools it sports include a colored highlighter (changeable colors), a nicely done colored pen, and some other gadgets to help you get your point across. I love how you can have a collaborative presentation as well, by "passing the baton" or "passing the buck" (whatever you prefer) to another colleague so they can present their part of the deal without having to be in the same room with you. This is great for a class project or programming exercise, because others besides the host can take control to explain a point of view or a difficult topic. Many applications are great but charge for their services, and I of course love them too, but in this case, I've got to admit, quick and dirty and free is the cat's meow, or to be more "blogosphereically correct" Yugma is the trifecta of easy and effective online collaboration. Yugma is currently available for Windows and Mac, and will be available soon for Linux.

Filed under: Audio, Business, Internet, Text, Utilities, Video, Productivity, Commercial, VoIP, Social Software

TeamSlide, yet another online presentation application

TeamSlideTeamSlide is like WebEx, DimDim, ZohoShow, and others that let you present your slides online to viewers. TeamSlide is a full-screen slide-showing and viewing application that doesn't really compete with web-sharing applications, because it is just for slideshows. It is browser-based, so it is effectively cross-platform. It uses PHP and AJAX to weave its magical craft for you and your slide-show watching bug-eyed clients. The online demo is available, and there is a hosted service as well as a server-installable version. There is even a PowerPoint add-in download to convert PowerPoint slides to TeamSlide for upload and use. TeamSlide offers a hosted solution for $99/year and also charges $99 for the software (for your server) for 1 presenter (including the free PowerPoint add-in and other extras), $399 for the 5 presenter pack, and $799 for the 10 presenter pack. Service, Support and Upgrade (SSU) packages are available on the site as well to compliment your TeamSlide install. To install on your server, you must have PHP 4.3 or PHP 5. TeamSlide has a free server test script so you can try it out on your server to be sure it will work before buying.

Filed under: Audio, Business, Internet, Web services

LiveOffice's free conferencing service

LiveOffice Free conferencingLifeHacker has a nice article on LiveOffice's free conferencing service. Up to 250 people for up to 6 hours (I really hope no one has ever had a 6 hour call, that is murder) for free. This conferencing service is one that you can use anytime, on demand, not one where you have to set up a call each time, which is nice. It also features many run-time features like mp3 call recording. I am always looking for this type of free communications service, because I do freelance work and this helps to collaborate (as much as I hate conference calls) with customers, partners, and potential clients. I still think conference-calling in general is so early nineties. I like using new tools, like IM perhaps? I suppose someday I will get everyone I know on-board with the "new" trend in messaging, but for now we all have this free service to get us through.

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