Web Worker Daily

As a web worker who routinely switches back and forth from Windows to Mac, I look for web conferencing services that are Mac-friendly, because we no longer work in a strictly Windows world.

Citrix’s GoToMeeting, part of the Citrix Online collaborative suite, is one such service. It also meets one of my other prime requirements — the client is easily installable by users of all levels. One thing that will spoil a web conference before it’s even started is when participants have a hard time installing the local client so they can’t join the conference. This issue can happen to even the most experienced web worker, not just the technology neophyte. Read the rest of this entry »

As more and more companies and teams are going strictly virtual, there are a whole new set of issues to consider and challenges to address. Using my own virtual social media marketing team as an example, I’ve identified a number of needs that require some kind of technology solution, but at the moment, we are “patchwork quilting” our tech infrastructure to accommodate all of our needs.

Here are some needs virtual teams face daily:

Here is a diagram of what we’re currently using as our solutions and which issues and needs each solution addresses. The software we currently use is in orange. Yellow designates the software we are considering.

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Scheduling service TimeBridge (previously reviewed on WWD) announced today that they’ve come out with a personal conferencing service that is fully integrated into their scheduling application. The company seems to be working on rounding out a more complete set of scheduling and communications tools particularly handy for distributed teams of web workers.

The TimeBridge scheduler lets you set up a meeting or conference call by prompting you to pick some ideal date and time options, then sends them to the participants to vote on their best dates and times. It then provides you with a mechanism to accept a mutually agreeable time slot and confirm the meeting with everyone. Now, built right into the scheduler, is a button to “make it a Web conference” or “add a free conference call”.

The web-based conferencing system rivals WebEx and GoToMeeting. It is entirely Flash-based, so it requires zero download, and it seems to be pretty reliable and stable. Its capabilities include: Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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