Video conferencing certainly has come along way. I recently found out about these three products - all free and with cross platform options - to rival my Mac’s iChatAV application.
Adobe ConnectNow (code name “Brio” - hey, is it really a code name if a putz like me could find out what it was?) - I had to install a plug in to use it, which made me wonder how my invitees would feel - personally I hate installing third party plug ins that I will most likely never use again.
This one let’s you display your desktop to whomever you invite to the meeting and if you give them permission, a meeting participant can take control of your desktop. Features include an IM chat, conference call telephone number, and a whiteboard where you an create notes as a group. The display window is made of widgets that you can resize and drag around to your hearts desire.
I think this would be good for distance learning, where you are trying to train people on a specific application. I’m not sure that I would use it to collaborate on a document, but maybe if we were working together on something visually larger like a powerpoint presentation or a design composition.
The biggest drawback was the lag time between typing/resizing and the screen catching up to me - and that’s with my MIT connection.
I should say that Adobe ConnectNow does alot more than I’m mentioning here, like document sharing and online pdf conversion. I’m just mostly interested in its video conferencing options, but you should check it out for the whole experience…
Yugma - Yugma is more targeted towards businesses from the look of their site. You have to download and install before you can use it, but the installation was painless and getting an account was easy too - not to many required fields to fill in.
Like ConnectNow, Yugma also lets you share your desktop. You can jointly take notes on their whiteboard, record your session/conference, and upload files to a shared space. It gives your meeting a phone number for folks who don’t have their computer handy and it also integrates with Skype, so you can just use one application to access the features of both. There’s a few videos demos on YouTube about it if you don’t want to download and install it yourself.
ooVoo - This guys seem to be the “hippest” of the three. Am I supposed to believe these shiney happy actors people actually use this application? Like Yugma, using this service also requires downloading their application but getting an account and installing it on my mac was easy.
This app doesn’t focus so much on “getting work done” as much as it does “having fun with video.” In terms of features it has video and phone conferencing, session video recording, text chat and file sharing (no desktop sharing or whiteboards). The user interface is pretty slick, it has this “sidebar view” that lets you stack your attendee’s icons on the side of your display so you can easily get to your desktop. You can even import your contacts from a variety of email applications.
Other than the lag time of downloading/installing/setting up my new account, this is probably my favorite of the three.
Plus I feel tons hipper now. Wow, marketing really does work!
