Web Worker Daily

I just received an email message about the demise of Projecho, little more than three months after first hearing about the easy conferencing application during its big PR push.

What do you do when an application you’ve adopted and incorporated into your work process suddenly goes under? Nancy recently wrote about why she doesn’t trust the cloud for her work, but when you run a virtual company or are part of a virtual team, it isn’t realistic to keep all of your work on a local computer. Even if you aren’t a virtual worker, there are still apps that die quick deaths every day — their demise can leave you out in the cold. Read the rest of this entry »

Dimdim is an easy-to-use, competitively priced open-source web conferencing app that we’ve covered previously here on WebWorkerDaily. Today, Dimdim announced the launch of Dimdim Webinar Edition, which allows for larger web conferences with up to 1,000 attendees.

Dimdim Webinar is very easy to use for attendees, as unlike other web conferencing products, you don’t need to sign up or install any software or plugins to join a conference. Hosts also don’t need to install any software, and they get access to an impressive array of features including screen-sharing, web site co-browsing, webcam video, text chat, audio and whiteboard tools. You can customize the look and feel of the webinar to match your corporate branding. Hosts can record webinars and get access to an analytics package for tracking who attended and how they interacted during the event. The app feels quite quick in use; joining an event is fast, and switching between presentations is snappy.  Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »