Web Conferencing Blog

The name says it all: with join.me you can attend meetings on your iPad, that’s it. Which is no real surprise since our comprehensive test of web conferencing apps for mobile devices revealed that currently not more is possible or even sensible for touch devices.

When you attend a join.me online meeting with your iPad you get very clean interface and transfer of the presenters desktop or presentations is smooth. As attendee you have only one option of interacting with others and that is via the chat functionality.

join.me chat functionality on iPad

So basically, join.me fulfills the requirements of a touch device for web conferencing. To view the other vendors’ mobile apps check out our test results here.

There is a lot happening on the online meeting market, which is now noticeable in our ranking! There is quite some commotion among the top 5. With Netviewer removed and vacating rank 2, Adobe has launched a new version and itself to rank 2.

The keyword that summarizes Adobe Connect 8 best is complexity. Adobe masters this by providing a large amount of features which can be easily arranged on the user interface, which itself can be adapted for every meeting.

Other improvements are the handling of meetings directly from the desktop client (needs to be installed) and the enhancement of the invitation functionality. The invitation process can now easily be integrated into Outlook or Lotus Notes.

Before using the online meeting solution the meeting host needs to make a trade-off decision between two basic options:
1) Install a couple of plugins and handle everything from the desktop;
2) Handle meetings with the online portal, which is a bit more complicated.

Altogether Adobe Connect 8 offers many positive new features and has become a true allrounder that can be used in any web conferencing scenario. Read all the details on the solution here.

We usually don’t expect too much of a web conferencing solution when we run our initial tests, since most tools don’t live up to our standards. So finding a gem such as ClickMeeting is quite an exception.

The intuitive user interface and the overall user friendliness are a big plus. But ClickMeeting offers more than only good looks. Sharing content with attendees couldn’t be much easier, as this screenshot demonstrates:

ClickMeeting presentation options

ClickMeeting didn’t make it into the top 5, though, and that for a reason. You cannot switch mouse or keyboard control, so your options of truly collaborating are limited.

But still the whole package is very convincing, and ClickMeeting – previously not featured in our ranking – immediately jumps to number eight. Read our detailed evaluation of the tool here.

We mentioned a while back that Citrix was about to acquire Netviewer. Well, the plan was now put into action – and nobody was told. So what exactly happened?

Since today netviewer.com only features the Citrix products GoToMeeting and GoToAssist. That was to be expected eventually, but what is really surprising is the fact that we as test users didn’t receive communication of any kind on the transition. The least you could expect is a one-liner giving you a heads up.

Citrix and Netviewer officials gave us a statement today on how existing customers can continue to use the services. All current Netviewer customers can continue to utilize the online meeting solution without restrictions until their contract ends (2 years max).

The bottom line? The flow of information could have been a bit smoother. And since Netviewer is no longer available to new customers we have removed it from our ranking of online meeting solutions, where it was featured as number 2.

Skype announced on March 1 that it will be entering a partnership with Citrix. The two big players are planning to integrate Citrix’ web conferencing technology into Skype.

At a first glance, Skype will profit from this move tremendously. The current Skype solution is good all-right, but not when it comes to web conferencing functionalities. We tested Skype at the end of last year and the results were pretty clear: Keeping in touch via video chat works well enough, but to do some serious online collaboration you are better off with other tools.

Now it seems as if this issue is to be history soon, since Skype will be making use of the well established Citrix technology. It will be interesting to see what the “Skype-version” of web conferencing will actually look like in the end, but it is very well possible that the tool will then also have a greater appeal for business users.

Integrating video functionality into web conferences is the new hot topic in online collaboration and many vendors are promoting their new video HD functionalities. Those of you that are tingling with excitement brace yourselves: here’s the reality check.

Let’s start with the basics of online collaboration. The paradigm here is that you want to share your virtual workspace, the center of your activities with others: your desktop – and yes, some might only want to share documents via their browser, which is fine, too. Now, along comes HD video, allowing you to share documents while listening to each other and actually seeing each other in high-res. Well ain’t that just a peach? No its not.

Having up to six participants displayed next to the desktop you want to see can be quite a distraction. And honestly, if someone is introducing a new product via web conference does it really matter what the presenter looks like? Shouldn’t the focus be on the presentation?

The most likely usage scenario for video conferencing is within teams whose members are situated at multiple locations. Skype and iChat enable video conferencing in such a scenario already today and it does make sense for web conferencing providers to include the video functionality for these cases. Next to such internal meetings of globally spread teams video conferencing can also make sense in a one-to-many scenario, i.e. one person presents to an audience and appears in a small window on the viewers’ screens. But then again that could just end up being a distraction.

From a technical perspective delivering HD video conferencing is possible thanks to the widespread accessibility of broadband. BUT: just as with audio conferencing there is one major setback. Not everybody has a decent webcam, or any webcam at all. So just as with VoIP some users might be excluded simply because the peripheral equipment needed is not in place.

The main driver of video conferencing is the quality of video and we predict that usage will increase, although mainly in familiar surroundings with your colleagues and not with your customer you are trying to impress with your presentation. And lets face it, this does have another huge advantage: If you slept on your hair funny right before your big presentation nobody will know…

Audio is an integral part of web conferencing. There are two ways of providing audio service: either a vendor offers an integrated VoIP solution or they offer POTS (plain old telephone service) aka. landlines.

The quality of VoIP is generally very good and exceeds that of a standard phone conference by far. And integration of VoIP should actually be no biggie for the vendors since they simply need to add the audio to the web conferencing functionality already in place. Yet, mostly phone conferences are used for web conferencing. How is that?

Well, even though with broadband easily accessible to deliver the VoIP, many users of online collaboration tools are missing one integral part of the solution: A decent USB headset or computer mike. And many users also feel it is easier to pick up the phone and dial into a phone conference in parallel to the online meeting. Big vendors clearly have an advantage here since they have the resources to provide an infrastructure of geographically dispersed audio bridges to even enable this functionality.

There is a trend in web conferencing, however, that shows an increase of VoIP usage. The increase is slow, but it is noticeable. Mobile devices play a role here because e.g. on an iPad you need VoIP since users will hardly be sitting next to their office phone when participating with an iPad or smart phone.

What will happen in the near future is the following: while VoIP clearly is the future, vendors will provide both POTS audio service and VoIP. And they will have to, because offering only one will equal a huge loss in revenue simply because too many users will be shut out. To get users to adapt to VoIP quicker, vendors should maybe consider bundled offers of web conferencing services plus the necessary peripherals such as USB headset and webcam.

And yes, if you have a fairly new computer it is likely to have an included mike that delivers a decent sound quality as well as a webcam. But this is not the case for a vast majority of office computers. And until that changes, adaptation to VoIP will remain a slow process.

With the acquisition of Dimdim and the termination of services by March 15, Salesforce.com pushes users to make a quick decision about which tool to select as a replacement for future web conferences.

When looking for a substitution you have to ask yourself which features of an online meeting solution are most important to you. We compared Dimdim to all its competitors we listed in our ranking taking into account the following three criteria users might look for:

- range of functionalities,
- similar user interface,
- browser based vs. desktop based.

Especially the last criterion is interesting in this case. Dimdim allowed you to access your meeting through your browser and upload data into a virtual room to share it with others. But sharing your entire desktop was also possible and only required the download and installation of an additional app.

So if you prefer the browser-based approach, the tools that are the closest to what Dimdim offered are Adobe Connect 8, Fuze Meeting, or spreed.com. If you prefer the desktop-based model, which we personally do, we suggest you have a look at the top 5 tools in our comparison.

Of course, users will not be able to get an identical tool and take over where they left off. So why not use this as an opportunity to perhaps select a completely different service.

And we’re not necessarily talking about higher cost as a given, although quality does have its price and free solutions seem to be struggling on the market as Dimdim and Yugma have impressively demonstrated. All pros and cons of the different online collaboration solutions available are included on our site.

Many vendors provide free versions of their web conferencing solutions. Often the functionality is only slightly less than that of a paid account and sufficient for a large number of users.

This model seems to be no longer working as recent developments on the online collaboration market have shown. Yugma, as we already pointed out in an earlier post, provides the bit that is left of its services from India. And Dimdim can hardly have been profitable if Salesforce.com’s first action after the acquisition is to stop the service for all free and paying customers.

Providing web conferencing services means large investments in infrastructure, and if too many of your users can live with the functionalities of the free versions, you really need to have a large number of paying customers to cover the deficit.

While Salesforce.com just inhaled deeply and swallowed Dimdim in the process, the planned acquisition of Netviewer by Citrix is a whole other story.

Citrix Online with its products GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, and GoToTraining, has an enormous share in the worldwide web conferencing market, as the company proudly declares on its website. Netviewer on the other hand leads the German-speaking market when it comes to online collaboration.

In its press release Citrix is very candid about its goals, the major one being to accelerate growth in Europe. It will be very interesting to see what will come from this joining of forces. GoToMeeting and Netviewer Meet, currently number 1 and 2 in our ranking of web conferencing solutions, have been providing outstanding online meeting solutions for a long time and if the joined service keeps “simpler is better” as its motto, web conferencing users are in for a positive surprise.