Now in its eighth year, the Wainhouse Research Collaboration Summit has become the premiere industry insider event for the conferencing and collaboration community.
The 2008 event will feature:
- Wainhouse Research analysts speaking on trends and technologies affecting conferencing and unified communications, including audio, video, IM, and social networks.
- MIT Media Lab's Professor Andrew Lippman keynoting on viral communications and digital life
- Enterprise customers speaking on their experiences with new solutions, including telepresence and video.
- Experts in enterprise training and education discussing applications and opportunities for rich media solutions.
- A half-day showcase featuring ~18 technology demos. Here is the agenda.
Click here if you want to see some of last year's presentations (June 5-7, 2007 in SFO).
With gas prices at an all time high, it's no surprise that more people are waking up to the benefits of online meetings and web conferencing. Just look at year of year growth of traffic for top players Webex and GoToMeeting. Now... see below...
Yugma quietly released it's new Enterprise Service feature a few months ago. They released the new web conferencing feature but never actually announced it in a press release, newsletter, or blog post. But they did recently publically release information on their website, and start talking about it on their daily live online demonstrations.
The new feature allows a user (an "administrator" type) to easily and quickly create free Yugma web conferencing accounts for an entire organization in a matter of minutes. This can can done by simply importing an entire organizations user list (csv format) using the new import feature. I'm not aware of any specific system limits to the import feature... so theoretically, you could import/create as many accounts as you would like to create.
While Yugma has not promoted this feature actively, they did recently publish a tutorial for adminsitrators. The tutorial is buried in Yugma's new tutorial page and can be found at http://www.yugma.com/support/tutorials/enterprise.html. The key advantage behind this new feature is that it lets a user to quickly set up free Yugma accounts for their entire team, company, group, etc.. The free accounts are instantly activated with all of the premium features enabled for the first couple of weeks, and then then the accounts automatically revert to the basic online meeting service level for free, forever. The basic version allows users to instantly launch real-time desktop sharing sessions for virtual project team meetings, online presentations, sales training, customer training, contract reviews, budget planning... you name it. According to the tutorial, to create a group of accounts, a user must first create a "group admin account" at http://yugma.com/Enterprise/. After you create the admin account, you then create or import multiple user accounts.
By the way, after the accounts revert to basic accounts, you (the "admin") can upgrade any or all of the accounts to the premium service level by simply contacting Yugma's sales team and purchasing a group subscription.
BTW: One of my personal favorite "free features" is the customizable widget that lets you create a co-brand Yugma button for your website, blog, intranet portal, or email signature. Click here for an example. You can create your own customizable widget at https://www.yugma.com/share/widgets/share_tools.php
I've been testing out Mozy's remote backup service for the last few weeks. Works great! I've been traveling quite a bit lately and wanted to have a way to back up my files without having to worry about remembering to do it. With Mozy, I just set it up, selected the folders to back up, and left it alone. I highly recommend Mozy for those of you on the go. Give it a try at www.mozy.com. You can back up 2G for free, works on Mac and PC, and upgrade to unlimited backups for a few bucks a month.
Check out this video... Bill Gates' last day at his Microsoft office.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEWMC4usElM
I came across MagicJack a few weeks ago. Looked really interesting. You buy a small gadget for $40 bucks, and pay $20 bucks in year 2 and after, and you can make all the domestic phone calls you want. It is supposed to be dead-simple to setup; plug-n-play. It's an interesting marketing trick to say that all of your calls are "free." Fact is that you are subscribing to a service. So the calls are not free. But, wow, they are cheap.
First thing I thought about was what the impact would be to Skype. Now MagicJack seems to be making some real news. Not sure if they can make money at $20 a year... and not sure of the service quality. Will be interesting to see how they do, and who will acquire them. Using MagicJack? Let me know how it is working for you.
I became aware of Qik at the eComm conference earlier this year. It's a website that lets you instantly webcast video from your Nokia phone. Instantly. No need to connect your camera to a computer and play with apps for 30 to 60 minutes to upload. With Qik, you shoot your video and seconds later the raw footage is on the web. Think about the applications for that. Live instant consumer journalism, video streaming, and blogging -- from around the world. Think of the broad and revolutionary implications of that!
Here is an example of Mike Arrington and the TechCrunch team shooting videos at today's Apple event in SFO (WWDC Event coverage at TechCrunch)
As reported late last week at Skype Journal, Skype now supports CallerID in North America. I signed into my Skype account and change my profile to activate sending of my CallerID. Works! This is a lot better than displaying a non-identifying number like "0000123456." This feature will be very important to users evaluating Skype for their business use.
Jeff Brenman put this presentation together for Yugma. Jeff has a keen sense for clear simple expression. He did a great job capturing the shift that is happening in the web conferencing space, and the unique advantages that Yugma provides to users. Fact is that people need tools that are super easy to use, can be used on the fly... in an impromptu fashion. Flip though his deck at Slideshare (slideshare.net)...
You can find his other works at his website www.apolloideas.com
I just spoke with Dick Schiferli at Pamela Systems, makers of PamFax. PamFax is a Skype Extra Premium plugin application that allows you to fax easily, directly from your computer, using your Skype Credit. They've done a great job over the last couple of years to continuously enhance the service to respond to end-user feedback, and to make the service easier to use and more reliable. They are now officially "Skype Certified" and are promoted as a "Skype for Business" application. Jim Courtney at Skype Journal provided a thorough review and reported on their latest developments. Highly recommended reading. The thing to keep in mind about Pamela Systems is that they are great at building apps... but not just for Skype... they also have expertise on building apps for Salesforce (AppExchange), Facebook, MSN, Ebay, and others. They are a great resource to those looking to quickly expand their application to these other platforms.
