No, this isn't about a boy band. It's a new web conferencing technology from SpiderWeb Communications. I just talked to SpiderWeb's president, Dave Segal, and got a demo of their software.
SpiderWeb started out as an iLinc reseller, but has decided to branch out and grab a slice of that giant web conferencing pie themselves. Their current website is more geared towards the old iLinc offerings, but Dave tells me the new website design should be up and running within the next few weeks (which I will automatically extend to "some time this year" - as I am an old cynical hand at the web development game). Dave, I hope you get rid of that annoying digitalized talking head on each page!
The OnSYNC technology is completely browser based, with no downloads or client-side software to install. It relies on Macromedia Flash technology, specifically FlashPaper. That makes it compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux systems that support Flash in their browsers. You shouldn't have a problem with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or any of the other big names.
I thought the interface was reminiscent of the Macromedia Breeze idea of having many individually movable, closable, resizable panes that handle different functions. One of the big features of OnSYNC is its integrated support for two-way live audio and video over your computer. So each participant can have a webcam display and computer microphone to do full duplex communications (think Skype). The synchronization and frame rate of audio and video in our little 2-person demonstration was very good.
I would say that the current implementation is fine for interactive departmental meetings and other fully collaborative conferencing, but isn't ready to fulfill the demands of outbound webinars. The software has no integrated event registration and many of the features tend to be "all or nothing." For instance, you can turn on display of attendee names for everyone or turn it off for everyone, but you can't leave them visible for a presenter and invisible to audience participants. Same thing goes for the Chat window. Either everyone can talk to everyone else, or nobody can talk to anybody via Chat.
To use PowerPoint slides, you need to purchase the Adobe FlashPaper product to convert your slides to Flash images on your desktop. These are then uploaded to a central server space. SpiderWeb plans to include server-based conversion in an upcoming release so that people won't have to buy and install another product just to show their slides. PowerPoint slide transitions and animations are not retained when showing them online. There is an annotation overlay that lets you highlight slides with boxes and arrows and such.
Dave couldn't yet show me polling as a feature. He claims the engineers have finished the unit functionality, but haven't bundled it into the product yet. Soon... Soon...
SpiderWeb sells license rights to the software on a per-server basis. So you can pay a single fee and have as many sessions or users as your server can handle, with no additional per person/per minute charges. Dave says that when using webcam video, a typical server can manage several hundred participants and without video, that goes up to a thousand or more.
I think this is likely to be a direct competitor to GoToMeeting from Citrix. Given their growth and success, and recent surveys showing explosive growth in the collaborative web conferencing space, that looks like a good place to be.
We'll check in from time to time to see how SpiderWeb and OnSYNC develop.
Technorati Tags: Macromedia, OnSYNC, Flash, web conference, web conferencing, webcast, webinar
