Webware

There's a new WebEx competitor hitting the market: CallWave's Fuze. Its advantages: No download required on either the viewing or the presenting side. It works with video and allows markup of video frames. And it has some nice call-handling features.

I used the tool briefly and although I found some bugs and performance issues in this early version, I like the design and found it simple to use. You can upload documents to share (images, text files, PowerPoint presentations, even videos), and once you're sharing them, use simple drawing tools to mark them up and illustrate points. On the shared video player, you can sketch over the top of a paused video, and the sketches stay attached to the particular frame; you can see which frames have markups by little icons on the player's progress bar.

Fuze also runs on some smartphones, like the Blackberry Bold, and includes support for video. I haven't had a chance to check that out but it's an important feature--you'll be able to participate in a Web meeting while you're sitting an airport waiting area with your laptop put away. On other phones, like the iPhone, you can monitor the chat room but not see the shared screens.

I like the feature in the program to call people into a conference bridge, instead of the usual procedure, which is to e-mail them a phone number and access code. It will save a lot of time in online meetings if you can pull in your participants.

On the downside, you can't (yet) use Fuze for screen or application sharing, since that would require a software install on the sender's side. The company is working on that, although the people I talked to there want to push the "no download required" pitch as long as they can, which explains the delay.

Fuze is a Flash app, and reminds me a bit of Adobe's own Acrobat Connect, with which it competes (it's a very good product, too). There are several other products in the space, too, including Vyew, which was recently updated, and the open-source DimDim.

Fuze is priced at $29.95 a month (much less with yearly commitment). That's a bit high, and I expect competition (and the growing popularity of free products) will steadily push the prices down on remote presentation apps. I'm glad about that. I can't stand WebEx.

Image sharing and markup, no download required.

Bonus: What's CallWave doing in this market?
Prior to releasing this product, CallWave made and sold an "Internet answering machine," that did speech-to-text summaries of your voicemail. The company is backing away from that product. CallWave CEO Jeffrey Cavins told me that while there was good uptake from techies, the service was too hard to configure for general consumers. If cellular carriers had gotten onboard to offer it to their subscribers, the product would still be supported. But they didn't.

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.

Since I first wrote about it in September, I've been eagerly awaiting the free, open-source Dimdim, a direct competitor to the arrogant old commercial applications Webex and GoToMeeting, as well as upstarts such as Vyew and Webhuddle. I finally got a demo of this important new application, which goes into public beta this week. We have exclusive invitations to the closed beta right now if you want to jump in ahead of everyone...read to the end of the story for access.

When Josh and I first fired up the product last week, we both walked away confused. It looked as if it did a lot, but simple things slowed us down. I could send him a stream from my Webcam, for example, but he couldn't send me his. The PowerPoint presentation-sharing feature showed a smaller-than-expected image on Josh's machine. And where the heck was the End Conference button? There are user interface bits of Dimdim everywhere, such as the dashboard of an over-optioned Citroen.

Mostly the interface is scattered all over the place, so this little wizard is a big help.

However, over the weekend--while not in so much of a rush--I had some time to explore the product a bit more and it impressed me with its capabilities and the technology. I found the End button, too.

Setting up a meeting in Dimdim is very easy. You can kick off a meeting immediately or schedule it for later (including recurring meetings). I didn't find a way to load up a future meeting with resources (PowerPoints, PDFs, and Web URLs) though. It's easy enough to bring these items into a meeting once it's in progress, but doing the preparation ahead of time would make things look better to the participants.

The product lets you conduct online slide shows using PowerPoints and PDFs. You can annotate as you go and let users mark up, too. You can also work on a shared, multipage whiteboard. Or you can share your screen, which is useful for demos.

There are a lot of ways to interact with your viewers. You can send them Webcam video and audio (or make it a two-way conference if you like), chat with all attendees, or send private instant messages to individuals. I didn't see polling, quiz, or hand-raise features, though. I also expected an integrated way to set up a conference bridge over the phone, but didn't find that option.

One big benefit of this product is that viewers of a presentation do not have to download or install any applications, plug-ins, ActiveX controls, or Java giblets. That is sure to please viewers like me who don't like junking up their system just so they can get pitched.

The conference host can control what people see as well as what they can say. (click to enlarge)

However, at the moment the user interface itself is rather slow to respond to inputs. Also, the company neither guarantees speed nor high-quality audio or video transmission on this free service. If you pay for the professional version ($99 a year per presenter) or the enterprise edition (which you can install on your own servers), you can control the quality of service and get support from Dimdim. I do worry that free users will not be inclined to throw money at the product if they don't have a great experience to begin with.

So the product review summary is this: Dimdim is a very strong Web conferencing tool with a price you can't beat. It's definitely good enough to make one reconsider renewing a Webex contract.

But wait, there's more. As I said at the top of this story, Dimdim is open source. That means that it could become not just a Web meeting application, but a platform for real-time communications. For example, CEO DD Ganguly said, the Dimdim developer community is working on modules to add widgets to the service, support Open Social, improve chat, add presence, integrate better with e-mail, support documents (Google Docs?), and work on mobile devices. The open and free nature of the product means that other developers could patch their ideas into it in ways you'd never see happening on Webex. That's the potential, anyway. We'll see if the product gets enough traction to attract a vibrant developer community.

I recommend trying Dimdim. To get on before the application goes into open beta on April 10, visit here. There are only 1,000 invites set aside for Webware readers, so don't dawdle.

I spent some of this weekend using SlideRocket, a new service that's aiming to replace your presentation software with its flashy (actually Flexy) Web-based tools. Is it a real PowerPoint or Apple Keynote killer in its current iteration? Not yet, but I think it's off to a great start.

The service has all the flash and fervor of some other Adobe Flex-based apps we've seen like BuzzWord, Scrapblog, and Picnik. The transitions and stock slide templates are enough to distract you from how potentially boring your presenter is and thought has been put into making things look good from the get-go, no matter your design prowess. In many ways, the final results are indistinguishable from Apple's well-known presentation software Keynote, which has been a part of the company's iWork suite for Macs for the last three years.

Let's start by talking about what makes SlideRocket different from presentation software you might be used to. For one thing it's very Web-friendly. As I mentioned last week in our coverage of the company's demo at the Under the Radar conference (coverage), it's been designed to integrate media and information services you're already using. Big names on the list include Yahoo maps, Flickr, and Google Docs; I foresee others being added in the future--as long as the service has a data API.

Need an image for that presentation? Grab one that has the right CC license right off of Flickr (click to enlarge.)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Linking up to each of these services is handled with some grace, although I found performance to take a hit when adding several Flickr photos to a single slide since the service will check in with Flickr each time you load up the slide. It can be set to do the same thing for Google Documents, but this is actually a good thing in case the source data changes. I've been told local copies of the files will be able to be stored on SlideRocket's servers in the future to speed things up.

Speaking of local storage, SlideRocket has the beginnings of a very smart way to handle shared media. Similar to Keynote, all your files are put together in one place and can be sorted via keywords simply by name. The more time you spend categorizing it, the faster you'll be able to parse it, but the built-in search is instantaneous--which is very helpful. Users get up to 3GB of storage to share photos, music, and videos. These asset libraries are shared in the business editions.

So, how does it stack up against other Web-based presentation tools? ... Read more

Webex's core product MeetMeNow was quietly updated last night with some new features. New on the list is support for Webcams (both PC and Mac), which will automatically be detected and let the conference host know who's got video-conferencing capabilities. They've also condensed all video into one area of the interface, where the host can choose which cameras get broadcasted to others in the meeting. It's a quirky system, and not nearly as advanced as some of the collaborative services that offer up multiple user Webcams at the same time like Octopz (review), or even chat service ooVoo (review) to a degree, but it's fully capable of serving up video with audio to everyone in your meeting, which the company hopes will give them an edge over some of their competitors.

As host you can control everyone's video feeds through a drop-down menu.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Surprisingly, video chat is not a mainstay for many of these SMB business conferencing services. While Adobe's Acrobat Connect service offers multi-user video conferencing as part of the package, Citrix's GoToMeeting, Yugma, and Vyew do not. The one thing that really sticks out with Webex's implementation of video is that as a host you can't preview someone's Webcam before switching them live for everyone to see. It's a business-friendly feature that could help avoid awkward nose-picking incidents, but is sorely missing. We also found that in order to share your cam with everyone else, and begin transmitting, the host first needs to pick you out from the drop-down menu of folks with Webcams (which incidentally is separate from the general user list) that queues up that oh-so-familiar Adobe Flash Webcam security message--a process that would be nice to be initiated by attendee and not the host.

With the update, Microsoft Office users are also getting new quick-launch buttons to start conferences from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that show up in the add-ins section. While this is just a quick launcher, it doesn't tie down the conference to just that app, or even set it to automatically share the application.

After giving this a spin a few times, I'll echo what Rafe has said in numerous posts about Webex being less friendly to users than desired. Both of us run dual monitors in the office, and for some reason the service just can't handle it. Trying to move it over simply makes the conference manger disappear. Furthermore, separating the user chat and the video feeds (which it does) is splitting the focus of people in your meeting and forcing them to switch back and forth while trying to keep up with whatever you're sharing on the screen. While there's a "pop-out" option for the video module, why complicate the basics and clutter up people's screens with one more floating window?

Start Webex meetings from right inside MS Office apps with the new plug-in.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

What this product needs is a nice and simple UI overhaul. The core technologies are still there, and screen sharing works great and as advertised. Adding video is definitely a nice start, but as mentioned above, putting everything into one communication tab and tightening up the host controls a little more would really make things shine.

With the new features the service remains $49 a month, with annual subscribers paying $39 instead. To give it a spin, the service offers a 14-day trial that only requires your e-mail address. You can sign up for it here.

Bored of Google Presentations already? If you're looking for something with a little more pizazz, there's Prezentit, a Web-based presentation maker. Like Google, Vyew, and others, Prezentit lets you build, and work on a presentation with several collaborators at once, all in your browser. You can send out the finished product as a URL, or even download it in the form of an HTML file that will run on any computer with a browser installed. These are handy features, but how does it stack up on features? The answer, unfortunately, is not well.

As far as presentation makers go, Prezentit is pretty bare-bones. You can only add text and images, and there are no slide templates like you'll find on PowerPoint. To add content, you can upload image files from your hard drive, which get stored in a free storage locker that holds up to 250MB. There's also a gallery of background art, although you're limited to less than 20 sample shots. Unfortunately, there's also no way to upload a PowerPoint file and have it convert to the editor, which is where these services can be incredibly useful, especially for creating a highly searchable index.

So what sets Prezentit apart from the pack? Despite its lack of features, its interface is wonderfully easy to use. If you're familiar with Microsoft Office 2007's "Ribbon" UI, the idea isn't too far off. There's also a slew of genuinely good-looking transitions, many of which are smooth, and low on the cheese factor (read: there are no glitter graphics or explosions.) While there's no built-in chat client, there are hosting pages for each presentation that double as a place to let others add their two cents about what could be better. The service is also adding an "explore" section soon for publicly shared presentations.

I wouldn't recommend using Prezentit over some of the other Web-based presentations out there simply due to a dearth of features I think are pretty essential to a good presentation app, but the service is young, and there's definitely room for growth. We've got more screenshots after the break.

Put together simple, good-looking presentations with PreZentit. You can even upload your own images, although file sizes are capped off at 1MB a pop.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Looking for a quick way to pass along ideas with a few other folks? Check out Scriblink, a new site for whiteboarding and conference calling. Setup is dead simple--just load the page and give the service your name to get going. There's a half-page workspace to sketch and write down ideas, a full color pallet to differentiate each user, and an undo button that will let you get rid of every addition you've made. There's also built-in multi-user chat on the right-hand side. If you feel like talking, the service can set up a free conference line (using FreeConferenceCall.com) to dial in to, although this is in no way integrated into the shared workspace.

In case you feel like saving your work, just give it your e-mail address, and the site will give you a permalink to access it whenever you feel like it--although Scriblink doesn't have to hold on to your workspace forever. It promises two months minimum, but if it's important, you'd be wise to save a copy locally or e-mail to yourself.

Scriblink does have a few limitations. You can only have up to five people in a workspace at once, and the actual differentiation of who added what is limited to the color pallet, which means if users change their color and you weren't paying attention, you won't know who made the edit. I'd also like to see the service let you save your workplace as a JPEG or PDF file for easy archiving. If you're a small business looking for a more robust and scalable collaboration application, I'd recommend Octopz (review), Vyew (review) or Yugma (review).

Draw and chat on the same page with Scriblink--a free whiteboard collaboration application.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Octopz (pronounced 'Octopus') is a Web-based, online collaboration tool for small groups. It's one of the many companies presenting at next week's Web 2.0 Expo here in San Francisco, and is making its public launch on Monday.

Octopz runs in its own browser window and uses Adobe Flash to mix a whiteboard space with live text, voice, and video chat. The workspace has an area to upload and share files with other group members. Each uploaded file gets its own folder, which houses any edits made by group members. For example, if you're making notes on a digital photograph, other members can create a copy of that photo and add their own notes. Each version is neatly stacked underneath the original. All group edits are saved and stored, and can be shared and edited later for asynchronous collaboration.

Things get a little tricky with Octopz's multiuser controls. Anyone can grab control of the workspace at any time, which in testing led to some minor power struggles. There's also not a way to keep track of which group member made which edits, either with a history or differentiating colors per each user. Despite these issues, Octopz handled a four-person conference from three different geographical locations smoothly.

Where Octopz excels is its simplicity. It's incredibly easy to pick up and use. It reminds me a lot of Acrobat Connect, a product Adobe launched in January, although sans screen sharing.

Octopz comes in at $99 per month per license, which is twice the cost of the standard version of Adobe Connect. However unlike Acrobat Connect, Octopz lets businesses create an unlimited amount of rooms and users, something you don't even get with Adobe's professional level of Acrobat Connect service.

See also: Vyew, Conceptshare, and Webex for Web-based collaborative tools.

Update: Fixed pricing clarification regarding comparison to Acrobat Connect. Also, Octopz was picked as one of our Top 5 favorites from the Web 2.0 Expo earlier this month.

You can add stickies to the canvas, and mark up the page with a drawing tool.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

For more screenshots of Octopz in action, keep reading.

... Read more