8 posts tagged “video conferencing”

TokBox launched about two years ago and got good coverage on TechCrunch. It has turned out to be a great free (and hassle-free) video conferencing tool. I'm on the phone with clients and candidates all day... hey, it's a people business! It helps a lot when you can see who you are speaking with. So, I'm using it from time to time.

It used to be that you had to have the special video conferencing gear (or now the "Telepresence" gear from folks like Cisco, Polycom, Tandberg and others). The quality of the new HD systems is phenomenal. But for a small business such as ours, I don't need HD.

With TokBox, all you really need is two webcam equipped PC's. I'm also a big fan of Skype... but not everyone is a Skype user. That's what makes TokBox so handy. I can just give people my personalized ToxBox url  (which is www.tokbox.com/TheTreviGroup) when I want to get into a video conference with them and that's it. No installs, no hassles (TokBox is all Flash based), no cost.

And for the social networkers out there... TokBox integrates nicely with all of the key sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Voip-news_logo

VoIP-NEWS' Jim Higdon published a list of the five best Extras for Skype .

1. Yugma Skype
2. Zimbra Inc./Skype Mashup
3. Skype on PSP (PlayStation Portable)
4. Skylook
5. Apple TV Skype Plug-In
   

Regarding Yugma, he had this to say:

Yugma Skype: Desktop collaboration — pioneered by WebEx Communications — has long been a goal of the broadband age. This type of technology attempts to seamlessly re-create the conference room on users’ desktops, complete with IM (instant messaging), voice, video, a whiteboard, file sharing and more. Several such Skype add-ons have appeared recently, including Convenos and IBM Lotus Sametime Unyte. But these applications were only for the boardroom squares using PCs. No Mac or Linux machines at the meeting, thank you. Thankfully, Yugma Inc. realized that when you cut out the quirky Mac users from the design department and the quirky Linux users from the IT department, suddenly the squares from sales and accounting don’t have much to talk about. So, the company rolled out its Yugma Skype Edition application — the first truly operating-system-agnostic collaboration tool available as a Skype Extra. Oh, and the add-on is Skype Certified, too. You can read more about Yugma Skype Edition in this article.

Read the entire article.

Related articles:

• Jim Courtney at Skype Journal: The best 5 Skype Extras
  
• Andy Abramson's VoIP Watch : Top 5 Skype Add ins
  

For those of you who use Skype , I highly encourage you check out Yugma for Skype. It has all the great features, plus gives you the ability to invite people directly from Skype contact list. I use Skype all the time, and I find Yugma for Skype to be extremely helpful.

We just updated the Yugma website so that once you sign in (and click "remember me") you stay logged in. And when you are logged into the Yugma website, when ever you click Start or Join a session, you’ll now go straight into a Yugma session without being prompted again for your Username and Password. Additionally, when you are signed in to the website, Yugma will automatically display your summary of your upcoming Yugma sessions.

Yugma - when signed in

Thanks to all of the members of the Yugma community for your great suggestions. We're making Yugma easier to use every day. By the way, we've got many big and little improvements on the way. Keep sending us your suggestions (at forum[at]yugma.com), and stay tuned.

One last thing: please remember to tell your friends and co-workers about Yugma. You'll automatically be entered to win this month's "Tell a Friend" sweepstakes for the 80GB iPod.

As announced on April 13, 2007, a meeting has been scheduled with invitations to key stakeholders across the Linux community as well as to Microsoft to discuss the "Show Us The Code" debate. The meeting is design to be a virtual “sit down” on the date of the 5/1/07 deadline. The purpose of the meeting is to have both groups join the live session and present their sides.

Microsoft has repeatedly claimed that Linux violates many of Microsoft's patents. In a public letter to Steven Ballmer, the Show Us The Code movement issued a request for clarification about which patents Microsoft was referring to. Linux community members furthermore requested that individuals “Publicly pledge your support for Microsoft showing the public the code within Linux that violates their intellectual property by May 1st, 2007.“ Through another open letter and invitation to key players and observers, we arranged a forum for each side to address the other. Will Microsoft continue to press their case and ignore the challenge? Or will the issue quietly fizzle out? Let's see what happens on May 1st. 

Meeting information follows:

Date/Time: May 1, 2007 at 12:00 Noon Pacific Time
Place: www.yugma.com (click Join Session button)
Teleconference Bridge: +1-218-486-3889
Yugma Session ID: 109-433-046

Agenda:
- Microsoft clarify which patents are being violated
- Key stakeholders from the Linux community can respond

Attendees can attend using either Windows, Mac or Linux computers. Yugma will record the session and make it available to both parties afterwards for their own distribution.

See you at the meeting!

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.

At Yugma, we think web collaboration is for everyone, not just people in big companies. That’s why we created the world’s only completely free, cross-platform collaboration solution. It allows anyone, anywhere to work together.

Now, we’re taking that same vision to the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on April 15-18, 2007. We believe good ideas deserve to be shared, regardless of the resources of their creators.

That’s why we’ve created Stage 2.

 

Stage_2_image

Think of Stage 2 as a forum for ideas and thinking that otherwise might go unseen.

During the conference, Yugma will use our booth to become a virtual stage for companies and individuals who wouldn’t otherwise have a presence.

If you have content to share (best practices, innovative idea, new invention, product or service), send us the details in the form found at http://www.yugma.com/stage2/. All submissions need to be received by Friday, April 6, 2007, 11 p.m. CST to be considered. Go to http://www.yugma.com/stage2/ to see the submission form.