Screensharing comes to Skype
(Credit: Skype)Skyper users, it seemed, either loved or hated the revamped Skype 4.0 for Windows. With Skype 4.1 beta (download), unveiled Wednesday, Skype hopes to earn a little more love by reinstating some beloved extras and adding one big new feature: screen sharing.
Skype's screensharing feature is a clever addition to the VoIP communications application. In our tests it was engaging, especially when paired with Skype's voice calling and chatting capabilities. The fair screen quality and few seconds of lag time won't bother most casual users, but at this point we wouldn't recommend Skype's new feature for replacing a dedicated screensharing application or service for frequent collaborators. Skype's screensharing is view-only; it is not a remote access tool like CrossLoop, which is geared for providing technical assistance. For demonstration purposes, however, Skype's screensharing is just one more way to connect with faraway contacts.
Screensharing begins by clicking the "share" drop-down on a contact screen and choosing "Share your screen." Skype then gives you the choice to record the full screen or a region. Pressing the button to initiate the screen share also launches an audio call. You can later resize by clicking and dragging the thick red borders. During a session, a button toggles you between full and partial screen modes. Because screensharing essentially broadcasts a video recording of your screen to your contact, you can't place a video call and share the screen at the same time--you'll choose one or the other.
You can share all or some of your screen.
(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)It's also worth noting that Skype's screensharing feature, like many others, is unidirectional, view-only, and by invitation, which gives the host control over beginning and ending each session. With one-way viewing, your guest sees only the screen that's bounded by the recorder's borders. Because it's unidirectional, Skypers won't see each others' screens simultaneously.
Skype's screensharing addition begins to offer an inexpensive alternative for international business communications, though right now it works between two users--one host and one guest--at a time. You can switch roles easily and often. We're guessing that the screensharing capability will be expanded in the future to group calls, so a host can share their screen with multiple recipients. (It will be interesting to see if Skype will then follow that enterprise breadcrumb to compete with well-known collaboration and Web meeting software in the future--but right now this is all conjecture.)
Other changes
Skype 4.1 beta also reintroduces birthday reminder alerts and contacts-sharing, which were two features left out of Skype during its upgrade from version 3.8 to 4.0. Birthday reminders are automatic notices you receive on a contact's birthday if they've added this information to their profile. The send-a-contact feature can be found in the Conversation navigation menu under the "Send" option.
Two other notable reinclusions are the ability to import contacts from Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL, and LinkedIn in addition to Skype 4.0's support for Yahoo and Microsoft Outlook products; and a screen reader accessibility tool to help visually impaired people use Skype.
All these additions make Skype's latest a substantial beta update. But since it's in beta, there may be bugs and some stability issues--we experienced a couple crashes ourselves during testing. Frequent Skype users will want to experiment with 4.1 beta. So will those who have lamented the absence of birthday reminders, even if you don't intend to use the screensharing feature.
Liverpool-based screen sharing and collaboration app Yuuguu this week put out an important update that solves one of the service's biggest hurdles--the need for software. The new model requires only the host to have the special Yuuguu software on his or her machine while the other 29 users can watch and interact using nothing more than Adobe Flash.
The news comes just a week and a half after the launch of a Linux version of the product, which runs just like it does on Windows and Mac machines. In either case the system sets up a special chat room and free conference call line where users can hop into a meeting using a special PIN code.
One thing to note is that regardless of whether or not the host's attendees have the software installed, screen sharing is still one-way. Update: two-way screen sharing does indeed now work, although both users will need to have the software installed to make it happen. For other services that allow smooth hand-offs check out Microsoft SharedView, or Yugma. For a software-free solution that does this same thing, check out the freshly-updated Vyew, which I wrote about on Tuesday.
Yuuguu still requires software for a meeting host, but the other participants will simply see the host's screen and this chat room in their browser.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
This week Vyew released version 3 of its browser-based collaboration tool. Freshly added are really useful things for online meetings like a push-to-talk VoIP system and Webcam support to take some of the chatter away from text and the corresponding telephone-based conference call. More importantly, there's now an API, meaning others can develop special applications that run within the service, expanding what Vyew's own developers are able to create.
One of those new applications is a built-in poll creator, where you can set up something for a vote and have others in the meeting choose which of the options they want. For something like a 10-person meeting this is a far better solution than clogging up the conference call or chat box with extra clamor.
If you're in a meeting you can interact with the presenter without words using the new status menu.
(Credit: CNET Networks)There's also a new status menu where you can interrupt a meeting without actually interrupting it with a virtual "slow down" or applause message that will pop up for the presenter to see. You can use the same status message to tell other people you're temporarily away.
The smartest addition of version 3 is actually one of the most subtle. Users can now leave little text or voice notes on documents that sit both on the document and on the side. You can toggle which view you'd like to see, but either way it performs like some of the asynchronous collaboration tools we've seen like ConceptShare and ProofHQ. Others can then come back to the hosted documents and both see and leave their own feedback.
The company is pitching this as an alternative to sending attachments around the office, or to a client, and to a certain degree it's great for that, although missing is the option to view a timeline of revisions, which is where similar tools shine.
I still think Vyew is one of the simplest screen-sharing tools out there. The fact that it only requires you to have Java installed on your machine to make that happen is a much smarter way to go about compatibility than requiring a special proprietary plug-in or download. Vyew's Todd Lane goes over some of the new features in a YouTube video, which I've embedded after the break. You can also go make your own room and play around with them by clicking here.
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One of the companies showing off their wares at today's Macworld Expo was Glance, a service that's been around since 2002 but only recently started edging into the Mac scene starting at last year's Expo. Glance serves up screen-sharing tools for consumers and private companies. Its claim to fame is its 100-at-a-time screen sharing service, which can be used for large conference sessions or digital seminars.
Today the company is launching its remote-control feature for Macs, which, like some other screen-sharing services including Yugma and WebEx, allows a participant to get control of another user's mouse and keyboard. The booth had four computers set up to a Glance session, and I watched as control was passed back and forth between the machines, which were a mix of Mac and Windows.
The company is marketing the new service as a way to help out on tech-support issues, although I was told that clients will also be able to use it to remotely access their own machine as long as they've got the conference link handy.
The consumer version of Glance comes in at $50 a month. More business-oriented clients can go for the corporate tier, which rings up at $119 a month and adds features like administrative controls and a purchase-by-the-session model that lets you only pay for the connections you need.
Paying users of WebEx's remote desktop service now have the added bonus of Mac support. The service has been upgraded to be cross-platform in time for next week's Macworld Expo and throws in a couple other goodies like a remote Webcam viewer (so you can spy on your home computer from the office and visa versa), and a guest pass system that lets you send someone a one-time coupon to use your computer from wherever they are.
It's kind of surprising it's taken WebEx this long to get a Mac version of its remote client service together, but with Mac's marketshare climbing past 7 percent last month (according to Net Applications), it's clear bigger companies are starting to pay attention to the pleas of Mac users. As a start, WebEx released an iPhone-compatible version of the PCNow service in late August of last year that included mobile file access, and integration with Skype and Outlook. Similar services like LogMeIn and the Java-based RealVNC have been offering cross-platform services for quite some time now, although competitor Citrix seems content to rest on its laurels with a still PC-only version of its GoToMyPC service.
WebEx's PCNow retains its starting rate at about $13 a month for one computer, which goes all the way to $60 for 10 machines. There's also a 30-day free trial if you want to give it a spin. Personally I think casual users who only need a remote desktop service to grab the occasional file, or get a lengthly download started are probably better off with LogMeIn Free, which Rafe and I both use on our home machines with great success.
(Credit:
Microsoft Corporation)
Microsoft is hard at work on a new consumer-targeted screen-sharing and collaboration tool, code-named Tahiti. Microsoft's landing page describes it as an "easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups of friends or coworkers; anytime, anywhere."
Each group member is assigned a mouse pointer and an editing color when working the group works together on Office documents. There's also a feature called 'handouts,' which is a storage space for documents or files you want to share with the group. The tool has no integrated voice or chat features, but Microsoft will likely add Windows Live Messenger support to future builds.
This is a step in the right direction for Microsoft, although it's a little confusing as the company already has three separate group collaboration applications: Net Meeting, Windows Meeting Space, and Groove Virtual Office. (We'll admit that Groove, priced at $200, isn't exactly casual and consumer-friendly).
There's also some competition brewing in this space on the Web side of things, as we saw at the Under the Radar conference last week. Competitors like Yugma (previous coverage), offer nearly all these features (in some cases more), and have Mac support, too.
There's no news on how much Tahiti will cost, or when it will be released.
[via ZDNet]
Adobe has launched Acrobat Connect (formerly known as Breeze); a very slick, Flash-based, screen sharing and videoconferencing tool. We've had a few experimental meetings using the product here in the Webware labs and came away impressed. And if anything deserves to be impressive, it's a Web app that costs as much as this one does: $40 a month.
Expensive, but perhaps worth it.
(Credit: CNET Networks)It's really good, though, and you can sign up for a 15-day trial to give it a spin. Unlike Webex and GoToMeeting, Connect does all its magic in Flash. (Connect also doesn't demand your credit card number before it gives you access to the demo, as these two apps do.) Once you set up an account, you have a permanent link (such as connect.acrobat.com/rafe) that's always live and is easy to remember and send to other attendees. When visitors want to join, the meeting organizer gets a popup alert and can allow or bar a user from entering a conference.
Acrobat Connect is one of those rare apps that does what you want even when you don't expect it to. For example, I have a dual-screen desktop. Connect intelligently asked which screen I wanted to share. You can also select a specific application to share, so you won't mistakenly broadcast your Outlook screen when you're trying to show off a PowerPoint.
The service displays video from users' Webcams. In our test, video was smooth and added to the meeting experience. There's a chat window, too. Audio is routed through a phone-based conferencing system; the system displays the number and pass code to users when they join a session.
Conferences can have as many as 15 people in their audience, and the organizer can hand control over to an audience member. However, unlike Yugma, an audience member may not then begin sharing his or her own screen.
There are many screen-sharing products available now, some of them free, such as Vyew. Acrobat Connect is a beautiful product that works very nicely, but it's overpriced.
Collaboration and shopping are two things that often go very wrong during the holidays. With families spread across the country, joint gifting gets that much harder. For example, this morning, my brother sent me a concerned e-mail about what to get our parents for the holidays. Historically, this is an event that almost always ends in a frantic rush with too much money spent on a gift that ends up sitting in a closet the minute we leave the house. Buddy Shopping is a new collaborative tool that combines screen sharing and instant messaging with a dash of social networking. Buddy Shopping isn't the first service of its kind, as ThisNext and StyleHive have already created a way for people to share shopping items they're interested in. Buddy Shopping takes it to the next level by letting you share live Web browsing with another shopper, so each of you see what the other person is looking at in real-time. The service is technically free but there are small (yet very distracting) video ads with audio that pop up on the left side every minute or so. The built-in IM client lets you shop and talk with the other person in complete silence--good for shopping at work, if you work in a cubicle.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Buddy Shopping has user-created communities that make it easier to befriend others who shop for similar items. One weak point is that there's no live master list of people who are using the service, which makes hopping on without a planned rendezvous a solo affair. The good news is that you don't need communities to figure out what to shop for, as the site has a preloaded set of online stores by genre, and you can bookmark your own sites in a custom folder.
Another area where Buddy Shopping falls short is its ease of use. For a system designed to make buying simpler, it requires users to delve through several info panes to get what they want. In most cases, visiting Web sites becomes an arduous process when you're using less than half the space you're used to because Buddy Shopping shows your browser at the top of the screen and your buddy's beneath it. And as long as they're offering collaborative shopping, why not offer a service like HomeSlyce or Buxfer that let users share the cost of purchase?
Is Buddy Shopping better than sending URLs by e-mail? In most cases (like mine) a simple 5-minute telephone conversation sorted out the joint-gift issue, which is a lot easier than having both parties download, install, and register a 20MB, Windows-only application. We do not recommend BuddyShopping.
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