Desktop video conferencing for remote presentations and file collaboration.
Dimdim’s a lightweight, flash-based collaborative solution that’s available for anyone with a web browser. It’s relatively low-cost and is aimed at small businesses, charities and freelancers. The main advantages are as follows: Wizard-style intro means you can easily start collaborating by sharing your screen, opening a whiteboard or giving a presentation Start your meeting by setting up the name, and choose scheduling options. Lots of options here, especially considering this is web-based. Web meeting in a web browser; video box can be moved around and here we’re using a whiteboard. You’ll also notice there’s a US phone number you can call if you want to use phone instead of built-in microphone. Here we’re sharing a PDF document and annotating with the annotation features. Again, this is all inside the web browser so no client was required for the person I invited to the conference. There’s also the option to record your meeting.
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Microsoft Live Meeting Despite being cheaper than its rivals, Live Meeting provides all of the features, and boasts brilliant integration with other Microsoft products. Cicso Webex As the market leader it’s no surprise that Cisco have continued to grow this brilliant product. Webex is surely one of the most intuitive pieces of collaboration software available. Citrix GoToMeeting Featuring support for Mac and PC, GoToMeeting’s unique selling point is ease of use. It’s probably the simplest system we’ve reviewed on this site. Cicso Webex As the market leader it’s no surprise that Cisco have continued to grow this brilliant product. Webex is surely one of the most intuitive pieces of collaboration software available.Comparison Table
£29.99/month
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£34.99/month
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£34.99/month
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£34.99/month
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Video Conferencing used to be the preserve of senior executives and politicians. The internet has changed that – now, video conferencing can be conducted via any computer with a broadband internet connection. Live Meeting is video conferencing software from Microsoft that lets you hold virtual meetings with colleagues, clients and suppliers. Better than just a phone call, Live Meeting lets you add streaming video to your conversation, and share/collaborate on documents and spreadsheets. Core Features: Share your screen, presentation or document. Have you ever tried to work on a document with one of your colleagues who was in another office? Usually, it’s a constant stream of back-and-forth emailing, which gets very confusing very quickly. Live Meeting at its heart is a collaboration tool. It lets you share files and programs with others so that you can edit simultaneously. It’ll even save your work in a central site called the Conference Centre. Even better; you can quickly open the relevant virtual meeting room which has the file still open ready for you to work on again. Add Video and Sound Communicate more easily with a webcam and microphone – Live Meeting lets the other party see and hear you in real time. Automatically switch between speakers. If there’s more than two people in the meeting, Live Meeting will automatically show the person who’s presenting or speaking. We can provide a webcam for you! Try Live Meeting Pro for one month for £9.99 and we’ll throw in a free webcam. Think Big : Interact with up to 1250 participants Host a web-based video conference with Live Meeting and you can invite up to 1250 participants. Host product demonstrations, question and answer sessions or a weekly sales meeting with your field sales reps. The sky’s the limit with webinars! There’s lots more you can do with a webinar, please see this post for more information. Record and Store If you’ve invited people to your meeting who couldn’t make it, why not make the meeting available for them to download and watch later? Live Meeting makes this very easy: with Live Meeting pro you can save the recording to the online conference centre automatically – no need to host the recording yourself. The recording will be saved along with any accompanying files such as shared notes, powerpoint slides or whiteboard drawings. Choose how much information should be recorded – opt not to include the webcam for a smaller file. You can also record in ‘interactive mode’ which gives anyone viewing the recording extra features. Tie-in Live Meeting to your real-life conferencing event If you’re running a conference and you’d like to open the debating hall up to a wider public, or give access to colleagues who couldn’t make it, you can use Live Meeting to show your conference online. On a smaller scale, combine Live Meeting with your office meeting, and allow homeworkers to collaborate with you. For more about the benefits for home-workers, please see this post.
There’s often times when a quick meeting between a client and a supplier would have saved a whole lot of bother. Live Meeting lets you discuss and collaborate easily, as well as saving the documents, comments and doodlings of your clients – all in one place. Popular scenarios: Do your customers buy data / information in any form? If you’re an architect, accountant, graphic designer, lawyer, SEO, management consultant or any other profession whose primary goal is to sell information to a customer, then you’ll love Live Meeting. Easily set up regular meetings with your customer, and create a dedicated ‘virtual conferencing room’ just for that customer. Every time you decide to hold a meeting, the private conference room is opened. Inside, all the documents and files you’ve been working on can be saved and viewed by your customer. Upload new files, or make changes together. With Live Meeting, the documents are accessible at any time, wherever you happen to be. If she spots a problem or wants to make a change, you can allow program sharing to work on something together. Save the new version, and keep all your documents in one place. There’s no limit to the number of meetings you can open, and unlike old fashioned video conferencing, there’s no hourly charges – just a low-cost monthly fee. Your client does not need to be a license holder to participate. Are you a designer? We’ve got an idea for you. Present your proofs to your customer without asking them to come into your office, or having to email them. Upload your designs, and invite your client to a Live Meeting – she doesn’t need to have a license or even the software to join in. Present your designs in real time, and ask for feedback. Your client can comment, draw on the whiteboard and make notes. The whole process is saved on the Conference Centre, so you can easily go back to the meeting and review anything you might have missed. Every time you open the meeting room, your whiteboard, notes and documents will all be there waiting for you. Upload your recent work, and stay organised by having all the drawings saved in one place. And if you’re billing the time for your meeting, don’t worry! Live Meeting automatically saves the dates and times of each meeting automatically. Job sharing? Colleague can’t make the meeting? One enormous benefit of a Live Meeting is the ability for it to be recorded. Save a copy of the meeting on your computer, or on the Conferencing Centre. Allow your colleages who couldn’t make it to view what went on, or invite home-workers to participate in the meeting as well. If you’re sharing a job with someone else, then having a recorded Live Meeting to go back to is a fantastic way of catching up with what’s been going on. Better yet, all the shared notes are saved in one place, along with documents and the whiteboard. Talk about efficient! What about your new product or service? Launching a new product? Forget about leaflets. Use the power of Live Meeting to show off your new product, and ask them to interact with you by asking questions and making suggestions. Actually engaging your audience this way makes your new product much more likely to sell. How it works : invite the customers you think will be interested to attend your Live Meeting. Upload a powerpoint presentation, and talk your customers through it. Demonstrate the features and benefits, and get them to ask questions via the text-based Q&A panel. At the end of your presentation, answer any questions or give the floor to anyone attending who can add to the discussion. Your customers will go away with a much clearer idea of what you’re offering, and you will have gained valuable feedback. All for less than the cost of printing 100 leaflets!
As business travel budgets are cut, more of us need to prioritise and decide which meetings are worth going to. How many of us have been to meetings where people are flown in from other countries (at considerable expense), for seemingly little benefit? With Live Meeting, that all changes. Instead of spending thousands of pounds bringing people together in the same physical room, you can use the software to allow any number of colleagues to connect to a meeting. Invite international counterparts, suppliers, clients or customers to your meetings to discuss ideas, products or to gain feedback. The possibilities are endless! If your business is looking to reduce its carbon footprint and business travel bill, it could do a lot worse than to start using Live Meeting. We off a 30 day free trial that’s fully supported. Fill in the form on the right to get started.
Live Meeting works by creating virtual meeting rooms, which allow you to discuss ideas with people, as well as share documents and collaborate on files. Crucially, anyone with a relatively fast internet connection and a browser can join in – only one license is required. This makes Live Meeting much more cost effective than other similar solutions.