Wolverine, Portland-based design consultancy firm, today launched Black Tonic, a web-based app that helps presenters deliver a presentation to their viewers — live and in real time.

There’s no shortage of web-based applications for authoring and publishing presentations (Google Docs, Slideshare) or screen-sharing (Yuuguu) in real time, but Wolverine has chosen to orient its Black Tonic app around a handful of basic principles that differentiate it from existing services:

• Instant “experience sharing,” synchronizing browsers for all those watching a presentation.
• Placing control in the hands of the presenter alone.
• Stripping back the interface to give prominence to the slides’ content, rather than the app itself.

After signing up, presenters’ accounts are provisioned with a custom subdomain, and they can begin to upload their slides as a series of GIF, JPEG or PNG images. Once uploaded, presenters can invite viewers to their presentation simply by issuing them with the unique URL automatically generated by the application; for example, http://webworkerdaily.blacktonic.com/izu2ar9.

The synchronized presentation sessions — powered by the company’s innovative XS technology — work great and require minimal explanation to viewers; they just click and watch. However, despite my fondness for simplicity in application and service design, the stripped-back, minimalist features of Black Tonic’s suggest a great, albeit unfinished service.

Critically, Black Tonic is missing a mechanism to directly import Keynote or Powerpoint slides, or even batch upload slide images; this raises the barrier to entry for new users. Though the XS-powered synchronization works very well, presentations need an additional medium to provide context — such as a conference call or real-time chat. Providing built-in features to set up, for example, a Skype conference call, though reducing simplicity, would provide value to users and even a route to future revenues.

Less crucially, it’s unclear if the generated URLs are permalinks. If so, should a downloadable collection of slides be available alongside privacy controls? And why not also shorten those URLs by default for further flexibility — http://bt.nc/zu2ar9, for example.

Black Tonic shows great promise and it’s worth experimenting with. I suspect that the creators — David Price and Phillipe Blanc — will be adding features rapidly as they learn how users are responding, so do register and give your feedback!

Tried Back Tonic? Let us know what you think of it below.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

“Report: The Real-Time Enterprise“

Google Apps continues to grow in usefulness over time, especially as you can customize and extend the original platform. You can add a slew of new apps and gadgets to the default selection that appears on your dashboard. The first place to look is in the ever-growing Google Solutions Marketplace which, like Apple’s iTunes App Store, is a directory of professional apps and services.

Besides the Solutions Marketplace, there are other ways to extend Google Apps. For example, you can add just about any app from the Google App Engine, which includes its own development platform. Also worth mentioning is the fact that you can also addi apps and gadgets from Google Labs. There are only three you can add to Google Apps at this time, but they are excellent ones: Google Moderator, Google Code and Google Shortlinks. There’s no doubt that there will be plenty more to come.

Here are some of the best free add-ons that I’ve found for the  Google Apps platform.

Google Contacts App for Google Apps. Google has a standalone Contacts app (currently in beta) for the Google Apps platform. Using this app, every member of an organization hosted on Google Apps can share a centralized address book. You can add it to your dashboard by clicking the “Add more services” link.

Zoho Project App for Google Apps. Just because Google Apps doesn’t have a built-in project app doesn’t mean you can’t use one . You can add Zoho Project, which provides a free basic plan for one project.

Zoho CRM allows you to add a Salesforce-like CRM app to your dashboard. The free version lets up to three people from your organization share customer and sales information.

Tungle works well with Gmail and Google Calendar and makes scheduling meetings much easier by allowing people from different companies to see available times (see our previous review here).

Google Contact Importer lets you import contacts from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. It’s free for a single user, or there’s a premium version for multiple users or everyone on the entire Google Apps domain.

Yuuguu is a free screen sharing and web conferencing service that works with GTalk and Gmail (WWD review here). There are plans to release a paid corporate edition down the road but for now it’s totally free.

Gantt Charts for Google Apps adds the ability to create Gantt charts to your Google Spreadsheets.

Google Short Links is a URL shortening service for Google Apps and allows you to use much shorter more descriptive names for URLs.

Google Docs Backup does just that, backs up all of the documents stored in your Google Docs area within Google Apps. It’s free for a single mailbox user. There’s also a plan available that will back up Docs for all for all users on a domain.

PDFescape provides a free online PDF reader, editor, form filler and form designer.

What add-ons have you customized your Google Apps with?

I had two friends complain that they received Facebook invitations from me today. I don’t remember sending those people invitations, and I never invite anyone to a social network without talking to them first.

My friends forwarded the invitations to me. They were dated yesterday, and the headers indicated that the messages were from Facebook servers. There have been recent reports of phishing scams aimed at Facebook users, though, so I changed my Facebook password, even though I don’t have any evidence that my account has been compromised.

But then I started thinking about all of the places that could potentially have access to my address book. My “master” address list is in the Mac Address Book app, but it’s synced to my web-based Google Apps contact list, and to the Thunderbird address book on my PC laptop. It’s also synced to my Palm Treo smartphone.

I’m pretty careful about passwords, and I respect the privacy of the folks in my address book. But I’m always trying new services, and it seems like everyone wants their site to have a social component. So the list of places that might have access to my address book is appallingly long.

• Adium
• AirSet
• AOL/AIM/Netscape
• Biznik
• Blogger
• Chi.mp
• Delver
• Digsby
• Dropbox
• Dropcard
• eBuddy
• eWallet
• Facebook
• Flickr
• FriendFeed
• Ginx
• Gist
• GizaPage
• Gizmo5
• Glide
• Gmail
• Goodreads
• Googaby
• Google Apps
• identi.ca
• LastPass
• LibraryThing
• LinkedIn
• Live.com/MSN
• LiveJournal
• Mikogo
• Mozy
• Mundu
• MySpace
• net4mac
• Ning
• OperaMail
• Skype
• SocialMinder
• Soocial
• Sprint
• ThinkFree
• Time & Chaos
• Trillian
• Twitter
• TypePad
• Ulteo
• ViaTalk
• VoxOx
• Xmarks
• Yahoo
• Yuuguu
• Zoho

Now, most of these places have clear privacy policies, and I’m sure none of them would knowingly leak their users’ data. But let’s face it, security breaches are common these days, from national governments to banks to credit card companies. So with a list that long, how can I figure out where the breach might be?

Social networks need to provide tools that let individual users track how our data is being used. Gmail, for example, has an “Activity on this account” page (accessible from the bottom of the main screen) that shows when and how the account was accessed, and from which IP address. Facebook and other social networks need to make similar information available.

In the meantime, some elementary steps will keep your data, and your contacts’ data, more secure.

• Use anti-virus, anti-malware and firewall software.
• Make hard-copy and off-site backups.
• Change your system, network, email and web site passwords frequently, and make them difficult. (Use the “generate password” function included in most password storage programs.)
• Keep track of social web sites to which you have given access to your address book data. Be extra vigilant about changing passwords for these sites, and if you aren’t using them anymore, delete your accounts.
• Check which applications have access to your social networking accounts, like Facebook and LinkedIn. Delete any applications that you aren’t using.

Has are you keeping your address book secure?

Image by stock.xchng user xaila.

Screensharing application Yuuguu is an old favorite of WebWorkerDaily. Today, the company launched support for Skype users, bringing its screensharing expertise to one of the largest communication platforms in the world. We caught up with CEO Anish Kapoor to learn a little about the features announced today and the company’s future plans.

Imran: Could you outline the new features announced in the latest edition of Yuuguu?

Anish: This new edition was all about making it really easy for Skype users to instantly screenshare and collaborate in real time with anyone, on any major IM network, not just Skype.

So our unified instant messaging platform has now been extended to include Skype. This means a Skype user can now chat with colleagues on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk and ICQ, all from one client. You can chat one-on-one, or in groups — even across different IM networks.

On top of that, we allow Skype users to instantly screenshare and collaborate in real time with any of those contacts on any IM network. All it takes is one click, and you can have one or more of your contacts join you in viewing your screen in real time, and even share control of your keyboard and mouse to work together. The really cool thing here is that your contacts have nothing to download or install!

We also added the capability for Skype users to easily host web conferences. So if you want to arrange a session to talk your clients through a pitch or give a training webinar, you can now do that with just one click as well.

Imran: Can you tell us a little about the motivation you had for creating Yuuguu and why it’s a valuable tool for web workers?

Anish: We built Yuuguu to solve our own problem. As a company, we all wanted to work from home, rather than all sit in an office. What we found was that it was very difficult to recreate the ad-hoc interactions that happen naturally when you’re all sitting together — things like tapping your neighbor on the shoulder and asking for help, then huddling around your screen to work something out together. It was this that we set out to recreate over the web. Our vision is to make working together remotely as easy as working side-by-side.

Imran: There are a lot of screensharing products available. What’s unique about Yuuguu?

Anish: The key thing is our focus on instant, ad-hoc interactions between people who are remote from each other. We focus a lot on presence, instant messaging, and on allowing our users to leverage their existing contacts lists for real-time collaboration, without those contacts having to download or install anything. Other services focus more on pre-planned webinar-type sessions, which is a completely different problem to the one that we focus on.

Imran: Other than using your existing buddy lists, is Yuuguu also a replacement for regular IM clients?

Anish: Definitely — we developed the technology around our IM platform to make it easier to use in business environments. So while it is as easy to use as a consumer IM service, Yuuguu is an enterprise-grade IM platform. We are big believers in the importance of unified IM as a way to allow collaboration between teams and across organizations.

Imran: Can you tell us more about the future direction of the product and perhaps even the company?

Anish: You can probably guess from what I’ve been saying that we will be extending the IM and real-time communication services we interact with. We also think that the extension of collaboration onto mobile devices is going to be big, so there are some very cool things we are doing there as well…Watch this space!

Have you tried Yuuguu’s new Skype support? Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

Screensharing applications are one of the essential weapons in the web workers’ arsenal and a popular topic here on WebWorkerDaily; in the past we’ve covered services such as Yuuguu and Oneeko.

The latest to join the fray is Mikogo, a cross-platform (Windows & OS X) screensharing solution that’s just launched a new Mac edition with a “remote support” feature, which takes the product from a straightforward web conferencing application to a broader service, offering live support and desktop sharing for remote clients and customers.

As well as conferencing and remote support, Mikogo suggest that screensharing is useful for product demonstrations, webcasts and teaching applications. The technology allows for 10 participants in a session, more than enough for all of these scenarios.

Other features include:

• The ability to remotely take control of a user’s mouse and keyboard
• Presentation control can be transferred between participants
• Participants can use customized pointers to draw attention to on-screen elements.
• A PSTN-based voice-conferencing service (like Yuuguu, Mikogo is free to use, but is seeking to monetize through other channels, such as telephony).
• 256-bit encryption between all parties.

The trial edition of the service appears to work well — even between Windows and OS X installations — but, like Yuuguu, the interaction design and user experience could do with some polish. I’m surprised that the simplicity of screensharing demonstrated by the likes of Apple’s iChat isn’t more widely emulated. Mikogo isn’t difficult to use, but it could certainly be clearer and easier with some smart design work.

What screensharing apps do you use and why?

Neil Kay-Jones — of screensharing vendor Yuuguu — has put together a useful overview of recent shifts in UK employment law regarding flexible working arrangements. These changes allow working parents the right to request more flexible working arrangements and could swell the ranks of web workers.

Businesses have been concerned at the potential impact of these changes and, as such, Neil’s guide focuses on five tips to help employers prepare for a potential influx of flexible working applications from employees.

1. Understand the process of application The entire process of review and negotiation can take up to 14 weeks. Employers need to be prepared with transparent processes to tackle each case consistently.
2. Take time to understand your staff and the roles they play Preempt applications by identifying potential candidates early.
3. Trust your staff There’s a mismatch between what web workers think they can achieve and the trust employers place in them to work effectively in remote conditions. Kay-Jones suggests that presence and IM-based tools can act as useful technological measures to help create “remote trust.”
4. Understand the effects on your business Efficiency, morale, reduced absenteeism, retention, loyalty and competitiveness are all potential upsides to proactively encouraging flexible working patterns.
5. Security It’s harder to maintain the security of your data with remote workers. It’s important to take steps to ensure that your business-critical data is secure..

It’s interesting to see that remote working is practically codified in this legislation. The British government sees increased flexibility in working as a means to address social issues. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this thinking extended to environmental issues, too.

What do you think of these changes to UK law?

So you’ve been downsized. Or you’ve bailed before being booted because you saw the writing on the wall. Or maybe you skipped the steady paycheck for a go at being a freelancer. Whatever the reason you’re out there on your own now, we’ve compiled a list of apps you’ll need to run your web-working business.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, just a sampling of the apps and solutions that we’ve blogged about in the past.

Here’s what the new web worker needs to get the job done well:

Backoffice

1. Invoice management

I can’t run my business without my Freshbooks, but there are many options out there for freelancers to manage invoices and track income and expenses. Some other options we’ve reviewed include:

• Freshbooks, Zoho, Blinksale, Cashboard
• Bootstrap
• Involer (Mac only)
• Invotrak
• Billings 3 (Mac only)
• CurdBee

You can also track expenses with these apps:

• Paybackable (online)
• Expens’d (online)

2. Time tracking

While Freshbooks does have time tracking, I must confess I’m remiss with tracking my time with a tracker (and yes, even with my cute Freshbooks time tracking widget for Mac OSX). I’ve been a little better lately at guesstimating my time and logging it into my project management system (see No. 7 below), but need to get better at it to understand the profitability of my work projects. Some time tracking solutions we’ve blogged about in the past include:

• 88Miles, MyHours, Sidejobtrack, MeeTimer (roundup)
• TimeXchange
• Xpenser
• Harvest

3. CRM

I have to admit I’m the first to ignore anything that has an acronym. But if you spell it out — Customer Relationship Management — you can see that this is an essential part of building your web working business. I’ve always maintained customer contacts and relationships in an ad-hoc sort of way; now I wish I had started out on the right foot instead of having to backtrack and re-engineer my patchwork system into something more streamlined. Here are some CRM options that are affordable when you’re just starting out. Take a look at our past reviews for:

• Tactile CRM
• Highrise
• SugarCRM, ConcourseSuite 5.0, SplendidCRM (roundup, open source)
• Bizroof
• Zoho CRM (this review actually covers their enterprise-level app; check out their non-enterprise solution)

Some useful apps to complement your CRM efforts include:

• CloudContacts
• DropCard, Rmbrme, BeamMe, ShareCard, SnapDat (roundup)
• Daylite Touch (Mac, iPhone)

4. RSS Reader

A good RSS reader is vital to stay on top of the news, blogs and articles that you need to read to stay on top of your game as a web worker. I am currently using Google Reader and occasionally play with Snackr. Here are some WebWorkerDaily posts offering tips for managing your RSS feeds:

• Fine-Tune Your RSS Subscriptions
• More efficient RSS reading
• Should you kill your RSS reader?

Here are some RSS feed readers, news filtering tools and related solutions we’ve reviewed to drink from the information firehose:

• Filtrbox (and my initial review)
• Yahoo Pipes
• FeedMyInbox
• Snackr
• AideRSS
• IMFeeds

And here are some apps to save something you want to read for later:

ReadItLater, Instapaper, LaterLoop

Communications

5. Email management

Note: I’m a Gmail kinda gal. Won’t touch Outlook. However, my fellow bloggers have reviewed some Outlook add-ons and other email management solutions to wrangle your email communications into submission.

Starting with a good email organization system and the right supplementary tools to manage your email communications is important. As your web work picks up and you juggle multiple projects, you’ll be grateful you set something up early that you are in the habit of using and that keeps your communications in order and easily accessible as needed. Here are some email tips, add-ons and apps we’ve discussed:

• Xobni (for Outlook)
• Title Tweaks (for Gmail)
• Multiple Inboxes (for Gmail)

and stay tuned for my new post about PostBox.

6. Calls, Conferencing and Instant Messaging

When it comes to video conferencing, I’m toggling between two solutions. Each one works well for me; which one I choose often depends on the other user. Skype was my free long distance call solution for aeons, but now I often turn to Google Talk with video as a quick and easy solution, because it is totally integrated into my Gmail and I don’t have to launch Skype. In fact, I only launch Skype now when I have a scheduled call, rather than running it in the background. Since my Gmail is always open, it is a perfect way for my team members to reach me quickly – usually by IM first and then by video if further discussion is needed.

Here are some voice conferencing and video and voice chat solutions we’ve reviewed:

• Calliflower
• FreeConference
• Gmail Voice & Video Chat
• Gizmo 5
• TokBox Video Chat

And check out Four iPhone VoiP services worth ringing up.

Here are some Web conferencing apps worth exploring:

• Fuze
• YuuGuu
• Skype and Yugma
• GotoMeeting vs. Yugma
• DimDim
• PalBee
• Oneeko (Windows)

Here’s a helpful web conferencing roundup covering nine tools.

Work Process

7. Project management

For a long time, I was singing the praises of Basecamp, but recently my web working company has outgrown it. I’m no longer flying solo, with a few virtual team members on a couple of projects. I now have a business partner and nine independent contractors working on multiple projects, so we’ve graduated to 5pm. Before deciding on 5pm, we looked at a number of project management solutions, many of which I’ve reviewed in the past. Before you rush over and get an account with the project management system that works for me, check out my post Project Management, Collaboration and How Our Brains Work.

Then take a look at some of these reviews:

• LiquidPlanner
• Clarizen
• Wrike
• 5pm
• Joint Contact
• Staction

And here are some thoughts about alternatives to Basecamp.

8. Calendars and Schedules

I’m currently using doodle for scheduling but my calendaring system is a bit more complicated. Basically, I enter most of my schedule onto my Google Calendar, which is then synced to my iCal on my Mac, which syncs to my iPhone. But I also have my 30Boxes calendar in the mix, although it is beginning to seem redundant as I’ve gotten more used to Google Calendar. Regardless of the app you use, keeping track of your appointments and arranging schedules to sync with others is a major challenge, so having some good tools right away can be very handy.

Here’s a great roundup we did on simple electronic to-do lists, schedulers and reminders, and some ideas for Web-enabling your schedule.

Some calendaring solutions we’ve reviewed in the past include:

• Google Calendar vs. 30Boxes
• Jiffle
• FuseCal

And some scheduling solutions:

• WhenIsGood
• TimeBridge
• TimeDriver (“enterprise-level scheduling”)
• Tungle (Microsoft Exchange add-on)

9. Cloud-based collaboration/doc sharing

These days, I can’t live without my cloud-based workspaces. I’m a Google Docs addict now, and after my business partner’s computer crashed this week, I think she may be a new convert. While some project management tools have collaborative white boards or workspaces, I still haven’t found a solution straightforward and functional as Google Docs.

That said, there are many other document sharing and collaborative space solutions we’ve reviewed in the past including:

• DocVerse (for MS Office docs)
• Collanos Workplace
• iWork.com
• GroupSwim
• ClearSpace
• Colaab
• Backboard
• DocStoc

And here’s an interesting take on collaboration among dispersed teams, with input from Socialtext’s Ross Mayfield.

10. File storage/backup/sync

I haven’t played around a lot with online file storage or backup and syncing. I’ve been using Apple Time Machine and Time Capsule to take care of my backup needs. In terms of big file storage or sharing, I’ve used YouSendIt to email anything larger than 1MB, but most of my web work doesn’t involved incredibly large files, and when it does, I tend to fall use an FTP site instead.

Here are some online solutions for file storage and backup:

• Box.net
• Mozy
• Egnyte
• DropBox
• GoodSync

As you can see, there are many solutions to our daily web working challenges. Picking the right solutions for your new web working business sometimes means trying out several – particular if they are free or offer a free trial – to see which ones really work well for the way you like to work. Keep in mind that it’s important to have a scalable system so that, as you grow, you can upgrade easily without having to learn a new, more robust system.

What are some of the must-have applications you’ve found invaluable in your web work?

Free online meeting applications, such as Yugma, which I wrote about yesterday, have gotten very powerful in recent years, but they still don’t do all the cool things they could do. Few of them offer any sophisticated way to deal with video, especially high-definition video, and the devices you can use them on tend to be limited. These last two shortcomings are why a review of CallWave’s Fuze that I saw on PC World’s site caught my eye.

After trying Fuze, even though it’s not free and I’ve been slightly more impressed with the features in paid services such as WebEx’s, I think many web workers will want to try it.

With telecommuting on the rise, and everyone looking to save on travel costs, the environment is ripe for growing collaboration in online meeting applications. Dimdim, Yugma, Yuuguu and other free applications are all outstanding, but Fuze offers some very slick features that usually cost a fair amount of money in paid conferencing applications such as WebEx’s.

Fuze is entirely browser-based, which is a convenience. This means that neither you nor people you invite to meetings have to download and install anything. You can invite people into your Fuze meetings, or you can use a process called “Fetch” to ping an attendee online, and all that’s required to join a meeting is a link to your secure session.

The overarching strength of the application is that it allows you upload rich media content along with the standard types of documents and presentations found in online meetings. This can include high-end video, and you use the content uploader seen below to share the content with others.

In a Fuze meeting, attendees can freeze video and annotate it, and do many other collaborative, interactive things.  Attendees can also accumulate a list of action points as a meeting progresses. Moreover, iPhone users and Blackberry users can participate in meetings (according to PC World, a Windows Mobile solution is coming as well).

There is now a WebEx client for the iPhone, and WebEx is better at handling video than some of the free conferencing applications, but Fuze is cheaper. It’s $29.95 a month, with a free trial available, and single-meeting pricing coming. WebEx is significantly more expensive, although it does have a convenient 33 cents per minute option.

You can view a demo of Fuze at the service’s site. I signed up for it without a credit card and, after an e-mail with my login information, was up and using it. Especially if you share rich media with others, the small monthly fee may be worth it.

The other day I wrote about TeamViewer, which is a very quick-to-use and simple solution for online desktop sharing, including sharing desktops between PCs and Macs, although fees are imposed for commercial use. ScreenStream which bills itself as “screen broadcasting software” is another completely free solution in this space that some web workers may want to consider. In order to show remote users what’s going on on your desktop with ScreenStream, you need to be running Windows, but users on Mac and Linux systems can instantly view your desktop via a browser.

Here is how it works.

ScreenStream is a very quick download. NCH Software, the company that makes it, says it offers the application free in the hopes that users will try some of their other collaboration software options. When installing ScreenStream, you get a promt from the installation wizard about which products you’re interested in, but you can just not check any boxes to move past the prompt.

Once installed, ScreenStream gives you a dashboard like the one seen above. Unlike full-blown online meeting and remote access solutions, this one is mainly for the person who wants to show someone remotely how a process works, or walk quickly through a presentation. Also unlike many of the free online meeting applications, there is no limit on the number of viewers you can invite. By contrast, Yugma, a popular online meeting application, limits you to 10 participants in its free version.

There is optional audio streaming with ScreenStream, so participants don’t have to be on the phone to listen to you as they view your desktop. If you want to share your desktop with a large group of people who are going to be on various platforms, it’s a very quick, simple solution without any fees. For more features in this type of application, Dimdim, Yugma, Yuuguu and other free applications are what I would reach for, but they don’t let you reach huge numbers of people in their free versions.

It’s been a busy few weeks for the team at online meeting service Yuuguu, with the announcement of Linux and Flash clients as well as support for Google Talk users.

Earlier today the company rounded out its ‘Yuuguu Inside’ strategy by extending its integration of Google Talk buddies to users from AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo’s instant messaging networks, bringing cross-platform and cross-network support to the company’s ‘Yuuniverse’.

With a reach extending into hundreds of millions now, its easier than ever for users of the service to invite participants to a Yuuguu session, though it remains to be seen if removing previous barriers actually makes a difference in adoption of screensharing over face-to-face meetings.

Regardless, Yuuguu remains a useful free tool for web workers and one that now extends a little further.

UPDATE: Yuuguu CEO Anish Kapoor assures me that a bug in the acceptance of .Mac-based AIM screennames will shortly be resolved.

Yuuguu is a favorite amongst Web Worker Daily’s writers, with new features being added continuously to the popular screen-sharing service, largely driven by the real needs of its users.

Around a month ago the company added Linux and Flash clients, but I suggested that this perhaps needed to be enhanced with Yugma-style plugins for existing social networks.

Fortunately, Yuuguu’s been thinking ahead and at this week’s The Future of Web Apps in London, announced that Gmail and Google Talk users will be able to invoke Yuuguu screensharing sessions with existing contacts, rather than those within the Yuuguu client. Coupled with the earlier launch of a Flash-based viewer, this helps to broaden the usefulness of the service as its reach extends beyond previous technical barriers.

Google Talk is available from within a bunch of Google’s services, including Gmail, Google Apps For Your Domain and iGoogle, potentially drawing in many more users to Yuuguu, but also signalling that other IM networks, such as Yahoo, AIM, Skype and MSN might be part of the company’s plans.

Following the quick-start guide, existing users will need to update their Yuuguu client to take advantage of Google Talk integration and will need to enter their Google account details into the client’s preferences.

Once configured, your Google Talk buddies will appear alongside Yuuguu buddies in the client and you can simply click on any combination to invoke a screen-sharing session. Other participants are each messaged a URL which starts Yuuguu’s Flash client in each user’s browser (as illustrated above). It’s a simple and elegant process that appears to work well.

Find out more at the company’s Google Talk information page.

Interestingly, Yuuguu is now stating that it’s beta phase is complete, gaining over 100,000 users and is planning premium versions for release in 2009.

Web Worker Daily has previously covered ongoing developments around screen-sharing tool Yuuguu (apparently the Japanese term for fusion!), but Aliza’s post on PalBee and a bunch of new Yuuguu features in recent days makes for a good opportunity to revisit the Liverpool-based startup’s take on screen-sharing, collaboration and web conferencing.

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?

I was reading through the blog for one of my favorite screen sharing applications, Yuuguu, and came across some interesting points about growing interest in screen sharing. A look at Google Trends shows that searches for “screen sharing” have risen hugely in the past year. Also, India tops the list of countries showing interest in that search term. I’m not surprised that screen sharing is on the rise, and Yuuguu and Yugma are my favorite free applications in this space.

Yuuguu has made steady strides to add to its feature set since I last wrote about it. The free edition now lets up to 30 people concurrently share screens and chat. Yuuguu can also let you share screens with Windows users if you’re on a Mac, and vice-versa.

Yuuguu gives you the option to have it running in the background all day, and you can choose to display your availability or lack of it to your friends or workgroup right on the control console for the application. Your list of people you collaborate with works very much like an instant messaging application. You can select “Do Not Disturb” from a dropdown menu if you don’t want others to ping you.

My favorite screen sharing product remains Yugma, though, and it really goes far beyond screen sharing. Windows, Mac and Linux users can use it for full-blown online meetings, and it integrates with Skype so you can add conversation to your meetings.

If you haven’t gotten into this way of collaborating online, try these applications out. They’re free, and they’re getting more attention all around the world.

What’s your favorite screen sharing or online meeting tool?

Do you currently pay for an online meeting solution such as WebEx? If so, the number of free competitors is growing rapidly, and many of them have most of the features of the higher end online meeting products. My latest favorite is Yuuguu which is available in a free beta version for Windows users, and there is a beta for Mac users.

Yuuguu is ideal for a group of web workers who collaborate all day with each other and want to be able to share each other’s desktops or meet online. It’s also very easy to use if you want a free way to remotely control a PC or Mac when you’re traveling.

The application gives you the option to have it running in the background all day, and you can choose to display your availability or lack of it to your friends or workgroup right on the control console for the application. You just choose “Do Not Disturb” from a dropdown menu if you don’t want to be pinged, or Available if it’s okay for someone in your group to message you, start an online meeting with you, or invite you to share your desktops. The basic console looks like an instant messaging client, and the people you choose to collaborate with look like your Buddy List.

If you choose to collaborate with someone else in your group, you can opt to just instant message with them, or you can share each other’s desktops (good for showing a remote person how an application or task works), or you can share files. You can also initiate voice conferencing, although there are small costs for that. Like most similar collaboration products you can choose to give control of your own desktop over to the remote person, and vice-versa. It’s also seamless to collaborate back-and-forth between Windows and Mac systems. As you go through the program’s features, there are simple tutorials.

Yuuguu is currently a beta application, but it works very dependably. Also note that if you want to collaborate with someone who doesn’t have the Yuuguu client, you can do so–up to a point. The application has a web share option that lets you share your desktop with anyone who has a browser. The catch is that they can’t share their desktop back unless they have the client. But these sessions are still useful for showing a demonstration, etc.

In case you become a regular user of the application, there is a Yuuguu blog with tips on how to get the most out of it, updates, and the like. If you’re interested in this type of collaboration application, I also highly recommend Yugma. Yugma is also free, and lets you hold instant online meetings (complete with conference call bridge lines), share desktops and do whiteboarding.

Do you have any tips on good collaboration applications?