HiDef Conferencing is an audio conferencing service where participants can call into a voice conference via Skype, designated landline numbers or toll free numbers. Its name derives from its support of HD Voice – a feature inherent to Skype that results in crystal clear voice quality superior to our experience with standard phones or mobile phones.
Through web-based controls hosts can schedule calls, send out invitations and, during the call, manage who is speaking, monitor hand raising and record the conversation. Should the speaker be accessing the call via Skype, all others who are listening via Skype will benefit from the HD Voice feature. Landline and wireless participants are limited to the audio quality of the underlying phone service.
Yesterday HiDef Conferencing, recognizing that businesses will be looking for ways to save on not only communications costs but also travel costs in these economically challenging times, announced that they will not charge subscription fees for the balance of 2008 while new subscribers can trial their service with no monthly subscription charge.
Accessing a call via Skype is free for unlimited minutes while accessing via a country-specific phone numbers will result in any long distance charges to that phone number.
Pat Phelan has made considerable use of HiDef Conferencing and was delighted to receive an email where this offer was extended to their current customers. Tom Evslin became an HD Voice fan when his Vonage service failed him.
Here is an ideal opportunity to see if audio conferencing solutions are viable for your business.
Palbee homepage
In the fight for dominance in the video web conferencing realm, we have WebEx, the granddaddy who struggles to stay one step ahead of the young fighters such as GoToMeeting. But into the ring leaps Palbee, a scrappy upstart based out of Seoul, Korea who can throw a quick and unexpected left hook that could knock the socks off the competition.
Palbee is leaner than the big guys. And it is cheaper. Much cheaper. While still in beta, it is completely free. Sure, it doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of the heavy hitters, however, what it lacks in bulk, it makes up for in simplicity. Palbee sought out to be easier to use, and it succeeds.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been finding more and more of a need for conference calls in my work and suddenly more and more conference calling solutions coming online. I also find that conference calls add something to my work that has been lacking since I’ve become so reliant on email: the warmth of human voices!
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re a user of a high-quality audio program such as Google Talk, Gizmo Project, or Skype, you know the difference these tools produce in audio quality when compared to a normal landline or cell phone call. The sound quality is simply amazing with these tools – callers sound crisp and clear. When explaining to this people, I compare landline sound quality to AM where Skype etc. sounds like a CD.
As useful as high definition audio is for person-to-person calls, it would be great to have this type of option for conference calls as well. Vapps provides this type of service, called high-definition conferencing, to Skype. In the Tools menu of the Windows version of Skype, there’s a Do-More button that launches the Vapps-powered conferencing solution. Within this interface, you can start an instant meeting or schedule one in the future. Meeting attendees are notified either by a Skype IM message or an email. Meetings can consist of up to 500 attendees.
Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
