Do you know what DimDim is? Are you familiar with web conferencing software? One of my duties in my profession is to analyze different types of software including web conferencing. We have been using webex for almost five years now but the cost for personal use is prohibitive. I also just spent over a year pilot testing LiveMeeting 2007 for my firm which has close to 1,800 users and the decision was made to stay with webex since Live Meeting had a license structure in which organizer licenses (allowing users to not just attend meetings but organize meetings as well) were priced much higher.
So, how would a web conferencing program such as DimDim benefit a genealogist? First, you should understand web conferencing and what it can do and how the concept of "virtual meetings" is changing especially in a world gone green.
Web conferencing allows you to attend a meeting from your computer. Many have either built in audio where you connect a microphone and/or headset and can speak with others as if you were on a conference call. Others use a third-party teleconferencing service where you dial a toll-free number and speak over the phone while someone makes a presentation on screen.
The better web conferencing programs allow you to hand presenter rights over to another attendee; allow you to "take control" of an attendee's desktop which would be helpful when troubleshooting a software problem; allow you to display video or animated slide presentations; allow you to connect a web camerea; allow you to have attendees submit questions; allow you to poll all users on an issue; allow you to work on a document collaboratively; and more.
I've been using DimDim for my personal web conferencing needs since it is FREE. That is the price I love the most. And now DimDim has come out with version 4.0 which even offers FREE TELECONFERENCING! While there are limitations (you are limited to a certain number of attendees, number of meetings, etc.) for the casual user who perhaps wants make a presentation to other genealogists, DimDim fits the bill.
Check out DimDim when you get a chance. Couldn't just see the Genea-Bloggers using something like this for Scanfest?
6 comments:
This is good information, Thomas. Using something like DimDim may allow our local genealogy group to include out of town members at meetings. Thanks!
Great info Thomas. But haven't we got enough to distract us at ScanFest without adding this too??? LOL!
Wow, good stuff! I've never heard of DimDim, but I already signed up. We use GotoMeeting at work, but you just can't beat free :-)
Hi Thomas,
I'd like to quickly inform you of Mikogo, the free online meeting tool.
With Mikogo you can host free online meetings, invite up to 10 participants from anywhere around the globe, and share your screen with them in real time and true color quality. Mikogo makes it so easy with just a couple of mouse clicks to share any screen content across the net, including websites, word docs, pdfs, presentations, etc...
Features include switch presenter, remote keyboard and mouse control, application selection, 256bit AES encryption, file transfer, and more...
With the Skype Extra, you can talk and share your screen for free for complete free web conferencing.
Mikogo is 100% free for all users with all included features.
Please consider reviewing Mikogo. We would be very interested to read your opinion on how it can benefit your work.
In the case of any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Regards,
Andrew
The Mikogo Team
Hi Thomas
please also consider TeamViewer although it is not primarily meant for web conferencing you can use it for this purpose in smaller groups. It allows desktop sharing and remote control of remote PCs and even Macs.
Here is the download link:
http://www.teamviewer.com/download/TeamViewer_Setup.exe
Hi There.. Happened to come across your post randomly.. I'm in the marketing division of a media company and we use this portal called BrightTALK to have webcasts with other firms...
We did checkout quite a lot of other stuff like DimDim, GoToMeeting, etc, etc but for communicating over webcasts, we found BrightTALK to be the cleanest, easiest and yeah, the base version is free too...
Check it out dude... http://www.brighttalk.com...
Adios
Post a Comment