CONFERENCING SOFTWARE

COLAYER http://about.colayer.com/PAGE_context Some main problem with emails are: Fragmentation Spam In-Consistancy Especially for team leaders and managers, communication is the central part of their work. Written communication becomes more important in future through the trends of: Globalization The knowledge Ecomnomy This will lead to the following advantages: Contextualization – No Fragmentation of information! – Time to read a newspaper vs time to read the same amount of ‘newsletters'? No Spam – From Push only to push to places, pull from places Full Consistency All information is stored once – No copies I'm still check it out. At this point it seems to be a multi-point chat room.

MICROSOFT LIVE MEETING

Please take a look at these demo videos before you make up your mind. Then please read my evaluation and then send me a comment or post it on TWC under Virtual Cafe thread.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/livemeeting/default.aspx?ofcresset=1

Demo: Part 1: http://office.microsoft.com/home/video.aspx?assetid=ES102403191033&width=884&height=540&startindex=0&CTT=11&Origin=HA102403231033

Part 2: http://office.microsoft.com/home/video.aspx?assetid=ES102403201033&width=884&height=540&startindex=0&CTT=11&Origin=HA102403231033

Part 3: http://office.microsoft.com/home/video.aspx?assetid=ES102403211033&width=884&height=540&startindex=0&CTT=11&Origin=HA102403231033

Additional demos: http://www.microsoft.com/uc/products/livehosted.mspx

The Advanced Training Tools, http://www.microsoft.com/uc/movie/Training_300k.asx, provide for breakout sessions which will fit our table schemea and allows for uploading of text materials. It has a testing component which could be turned into a quick survey about the Cafe just held.

Fees: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/livemeeting/HA102030111033.aspx#1

Evaluation: MS Live Meeting seems to have all of the features we would need for a Virtual Cafe among a large number of participants. We could start out retail at $15 each and then when the lust for multi-party, multi-point communication grows, THC could establish a separate membership level which allows the Virtual Meeting Members to meet anytime they want with unlimited number of participants. The economics would have to be resolved ahead of time: I would favor a small flat, annual fee, such as $25.00 just to join and learn about the conference software (trial, demo) and then pay a per person per meeting fee, such as two to ten dollars an hour, depending on the kind of services being offered. These fees would be paid in advance via debit card, before the meeting starts. This way TWC would cover expenses and earn some net profit for its organizational needs.

GOTOMEETING

See: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/default/help/g2w/pdf/GoToWebinar_User_Guide.pdf?Portal=www2.gotowebinar.comP

I tried to view the demo. They insisted on getting my credit card information just to view of demo. Really a dumb, stupid, arrogant move by Citrix. They hope to scam a few folks who forget to cancel the account until they have been billed for the next month of paid service. No thanks.

Further, the written explanations were confusing and written by a left-brain dominant author for whom pictures were irrelevant. There is no price listing on the website that I could find. I would not recommend GoToMeeting.