Yakkle is a collaboration tool that lets you communicate with friends or colleagues over the web. While there are plenty of free tools that let you chat, make VoIP calls, or send files over the internet, few of those tools pack a screen sharing application. And while there are plenty of commercial collaboration tools like WebEx or GoToMeeting, Yakkle has them all beat in one area: it's free.

For most day to day tasks, Yakkle doesn't offer much that you can't get from Skype, AIM, MSN Messenger, or Google Talk. But the screen sharing application can come in handy if you want to show someone files or running programs on your desktop. For example, if you want to talk someone through a PowerPoint presentation, you can just power up Yakkle, share your desktop and chat at the same time.

While Yakkle works fairly well for sending files, instant messages, or voice chat, it's can be a bit sluggish when it comes to screen sharing if you have a slow computer. We took it for a test spin by setting up a connection between a Toshiba PC with a 1.7MHz dual core processor and an Eee PC with a 900MHz celeron processor. When we used the Eee PC to remotely access the Toshiba, all was well. but when we used the Toshiba to access the underpowered Eee PC, our tiny little laptop pretty much screeched to a halt.

You can register for a Yakkle account for free, but you don't necessarily need one to use the application. You can also login using a Jabber or Gmail user name and ID.

Yakkle is Windows XP and Vista only for now, and requires Java to run.

[Thanks Eric!]