9 posts tagged “elearning”

A couple of weeks ago, Yugma released its enhanced recording and broadcast feature. In short, the new premium feature lets you

• Record what ever you are doing on your computer
  
• Save your recordings on your computer
• Upload your recordings to Yugma so you can broadcast them to the world

The cool thing is that you can record anything you do on your computer, using any application! On Windows, Mac, and Linux! Yes, you very own easy desktop recorder! Think user created content...

Here is a sample recording. It highlights how you can use the new Shared File Space feature in Yugma.

Think of the possibilities: Elearning, software demo's and how-to's, recorded whiteboard or annotation sessions, self paced presentations. And if that's not enough, this is just the beginning of a really cool set of new features we are working on and beta testing this summer and fall before releasing.  We're even working on Yugma's beauty as well as its brains.  We'll spiff up the look and controls to make it look cooler (e.g., distinctive new control panel, youtube -like media player controls, blinking recording button, export utilities, etc.).

The Linux version of the Yugma free web conferencing service is available at the beta test site http://test.yugma.com/about/index.php (then click the DOWNLOAD button). It supports Red Hat Enterprise 4.0, Mandriva, Open SUSE, Fedora, Debian, Centos, and Ubuntu.

You are welcomed to test it out. Please let us know what you experience in this version (send comments to support[at]yugma[dot]com). The only caveat about the beta version on the test platform is that the servers and bandwidth is not the same level as available in our production service. Therefore, if you see slower performance, it’s due to the nature of the test platform.

We are planning to move the Linux compatible version (beta) of Yugma to the production site over the weekend.

Attention all Yugma members: We've just upgraded our Free Teleconference Service. The new release allows all users to use a wide range of new and advanced features such as

• mute/unmute individual or all attendees
  

  Yugma Free Teleconferencing Service
• increase/decrease volume
• lock/unlock conference call
• hear the number of participants on the call
• a list of the touch-tone commands can be found at https://www.yugma.com/about/confrencecall.php
  

Yugma's Teleconferencing Service is free of charge to all Yugma members, regardless of whether you are signed up for the Yugma FREE service or Yugma Premium service. It can be reached at telephone number  by using traditional telephones and new VoIP services. (Only standard long distance rate applies, as billed by your telephone company.)

Special Note: Yugma members can now also use the Free Teleconference Service on a standalone basis (without running a Yugma web session at the same time). This can be done by dialing the Teleconference Service telephone number and then simply entering any unique 9 digit number when you are prompted by the system for your Yugma Session ID. When doing this, always avoid repeat numbers (e.g., 555 555 555) or sequential numbers (e.g., 123 456 789), as they are not secure.

In the last three months, since our official launch of Yugma, people around the world have found an infinite number of applications for it. Yugma's on fire! Over 50 thousand users in over 75 countries have used Yugma. Since Yugma is super easy, universal, and cost effective (e.g., free-forever basic version, and premium version is 75% less than WebEx and Gotomeeting), people are using Yugma for everything from business, education, and in their online communities. Everyone is finding Yugma and the new Yugma widget to be must-have utility apps.

Here is just a sample of the exciting things people are saying:

1. “Live Collaboration Nirvana = Skype + Yugma”
   
2. "Weird name, but Yugma ROCKS for web conferencing! - Yugma Review"
   
3. “Yugma For Your Desktop” 
   
4. “Software Spotlight: Yugma.com”:   http://www.applegazette.com/index.php (search yugma)

We at Yugma send a big "thank you" to the entire Yugma community for spreading the word about Yugma.

Yugma has joined with other companies like Google and Level 3 to sponsor the upcoming Freedom to Connect Conference (F2C) scheduled for March 5-6, 2007 in Washington, D.C. F2C is a meeting of people engaged with Internet connectivity and all that it enables. This year, the theme of F2C is how universal connectivity and the plunging capital requirements of information production are changing our fundamental economic and social assumptions. David Isenberg produces the event and has pulled together an great roster of industry leaders and policy making.

I spoke with David a couple of weeks ago. He mentioned how "Yochai Benkler help set the theme for this year's event with his powerful hypothesis that lowering the capital requirements of information production

1. reduces the value of proprietary strategies and makes public, shared information more important,

2. encourages a wider range of motivations to produce, thus demoting supply-and-demand from prime motivator to one-of-many, and

3. allows large-scale, cooperative information production efforts that were not possible before, from open-source software, to search engines and encyclopedias, to massively multi-player online games."

Benkler's hypothesis really resonated with me. When more people can connect and collaborate, more cost effectively and with greater ease, very interesting and innovative things happen. For example, I heard from a lawyer last week who was using Yugma to review and review complex contracts in real-time with his global clients. He said "10 emails over 10 days" was reduced to "10 minutes." Amazing. 

Since our launch in December, we’ve worked non stop on continuously enhancing and improving Yugma (www.yugma.com). We’ve now officially dropped the Beta tag from our logo. A key focus in all of our development work has been making Yugma the easiest, fastest, and most cost effective way for people around the world to collaborate on line. This past weekend, we rolled out an MS Outlook Toolbar and an advanced proxy handler (for those of you on larger corporate networks) -- all geared at making web collaboration as easy as possible. That way you can focus on sharing your ideas with others regardless of locations, platforms, applications, browsers, and budgets.

Yugmalogo-black

But the work continues literally around the clock. In the coming days you will see some very exciting and very powerful new features. And most importantly, they will be really easy to use. I don't want to pre-announce anything... So please stay tuned!