The Webinar Blog

How Does Your Vendor Do With PowerPoint?

The overwhelming majority of webinar presentations are still made with PowerPoint slides. Each web conferencing technology vendor has a different approach to the way in which they support presentation and display of PowerPoint slides within a meeting.

Some vendors support animations embedded on slides. Some support transition effects between slides. Some support embedded audio/video files placed as objects on slides. Some convert slides to a succession of static graphic images, losing all animations and transitions. Some convert the presentation to a different format (a proprietary internal format such as WebEx's UCF or an open standard such as an Adobe Flash file). Some tell you to share PowerPoints by running a screen share of the PowerPoint running on your desktop. And Live Conference PRO is the only vendor I know that opens the PowerPoint application locally on attendees' own desktops to view the presentation.

I thought I would put together a few comments and opinions about the different approaches for your use when considering selection of a vendor:

1) Watch out for vendors who require you to send your file to them for "back room" conversion to a proprietary format. You can't control how long the turnaround time might be and you lose the ability to do last-second changes to a presentation shortly before event time. Think that's a silly consideration? It happens all the time. One of your speakers gets replaced by someone else and you want to change a title slide. You notice a typo in a product name. Etc, etc.

2) Watch out for vendors who handle PowerPoint display by telling you to open a screen share of the PowerPoint running on your desktop. Screen sharing (aka: application sharing, desktop sharing) uses up a lot of bandwidth, suffers when attendees have slow connections, and is subject to packetizing of information (things move in jerky jumps instead of smooth transitions).

3) I like the vendors that maintain a "nonvolatile" meeting room that can hold a presentation file between meetings. You can upload your file ahead of time and then fire up your meeting in a heartbeat, ready to display your slides without having to do a preparatory upload.

4) If you are really "into" animations and slide transitions in your PowerPoints and having them available in online meetings is important to you, test the heck out of your vendor's support. I have a torture test PowerPoint file that contains some of PowerPoint 2003's most complex animation effects, slide transitions, and color effects. I don't know of a vendor who handles every single aspect perfectly (although some come very close).

PS: Watch out for use of gradient fills, pattern fills, and picture fills inside PowerPoint autoshapes. Gradient fills (this is where a color shades from one hue to another across the shape) often get downconverted to a lower resolution during meeting display, making them look like a grainy, sickly rainbow. It totally kills the nice professional effect you were going for.

PPS: Whether you are a vendor or a consumer, I'm happy to share my torture test file for your use. Just email me and ask for it.

5) If your vendor supports only static image slides, you are almost always better off to do the conversion of an animated PowerPoint file to static mode yourself in PowerPoint before uploading or sharing it. That way you know which overlays are going to appear and in what state, rather than being surprised by the vendor's conversion routine and having to adjust afterwards by trial and error.

Finally, always remember that the technology and display of the file is secondary to the content and source presentation. A lousy PowerPoint doesn't get any better when you show it on a webcast!

Technorati Tags: PowerPoint, web conference, web conferencing, web meeting, webcast, webcasting, webinar

The Problem With SaaS

For those of you who don't read a lot of articles on the subject, SaaS is one of the current buzzword darlings of the tech set. It stands for "Software as a Service" and means that instead of buying a piece of software and installing it on your local computer, you rent the use of the application only when you need it. The model usually entails a software/service provider hosting the application on their server and giving you remote access. The plus side is that the host takes care of maintenance, upgrades, computer capacity, and all those headaches. It can be an economical choice for clients who make infrequent use of the software and might not be able to justify a purchase license. I'm simplifying here because defining SaaS isn't the thrust of my entry today. For more details, you might like to start with the Wikipedia entry on SaaS.

Web conferencing has long been a textbook example of a SaaS application. Most of the big name technology providers that the general public is familiar with (WebEx, Microsoft Live Meeting, Raindance, ON24, GoToMeeting, iLinc, etc.) offer a pay for use model that requires no software installation on a client's computers (ignoring thin-client downloads to make the interface work). Customers can pay for the use of the software for a single event or can contract for a period of use.

There are fewer companies offering installable web conferencing software solutions. A few examples include Sonexis, MegaMeeting, and Elluminate.

The sad truth about computers is that they sometimes fail. Whether the application hits a bug, the network crashes, there are communication problems, the hardware goes kaput, or power fails, you are always vulnerable to the potential for service disruption. I hit one of those today.

I was working on a client webinar using WebEx Event Center. I tried to log onto our site and got a cryptic message saying the site was unavailable. Whammo. I got on the line to technical support and waited my turn in queue, along with what must have been quite a few other panicked or angry customers. My support person was surprisingly calm and good natured, given the call volume they must have been processing. He confirmed that there were network problems on their side and said that while he didn't know details of the problem, he was certain it would be all right soon. I had a little time before our event, so I agreed to try again later.

Sure enough, our site came up, but on a backup network. This wasn't completely clean, as one of our scheduled future events had disappeared from our registration page, meaning people couldn't sign up. But at least we could carry on with today's show. Unfortunately, performance was quite a bit below normal standards, with slides and annotations taking inconsistent and sometimes very long time lags to appear on participants' computers.

After the event, strange behavior continued, with an inability to access post-event reports through the WebEx administrator interface. I called technical support again and got agreement that it certainly was strange behavior and we should all hope it would correct itself once the system was back to normal again. Whenever that might be.

Now, I'm not singling out WebEx for any particular acrimonious treatment here. I happened to be using them when this problem occurred. Any provider can have a similar problem. At least WebEx had a backup network plan in place and we were technically able to carry on with our scheduled event. But it's worth noting that there is a frustrating sense of powerlessness while a problem like this is going on. You can't prod anybody for more details, because you don't have access to the people trying to fix the problem as you might if a similar situation occurred with your own business network. You can't get much in the way of progress updates. And you can't put your own backup plan into effect.

If you are making purchase decisions about web conferencing software and you do enough events to make the cost equation a wash, it's worth reviewing your network integrity and ability to respond to an outage situation and compare it to your SaaS vendor's information on the subject. Asking for network uptime and availability reports is a very good idea.

Technorati Tags: SaaS, vendor selection, web conferencing, webcasting, WebEx, webinar

A Less Provincial View of The Web Conferencing Market

I've had conversations recently with several vendors in the webinar/web conferencing space who are based outside of North America. Now I know it's sometimes hard for us Americans to remember that there is an entire global community doing business outside our hallowed territorial boundaries (What's worse... some of them don't even do business in English! What is the world coming to?), but I figured it was worth a quick review of some names I have tripped across lately.

My most recent note was from Paul Newman (no, really!) at In Situ Productions. This is a company based in England, providing videoconferencing and web conferencing services on "both sides of the pond." They have production crews that will travel to your site and set up audio and video broadcasting over the web. In Situ says they handle a global market with partner arrangements in Chicago, Dubai, and Sydney. The website has a beautifully produced demo webinar on the basics of webcasting. It shows how you can combine live video of a "talking head", an interactive survey, embedded recorded video, PowerPoint animations, Flash animations, and link-throughs. Nicely done. I'm also impressed by the actress they have reading the pitch. In addition to being very easy on the eyes, she gives a good example of how to appear on camera for a professional presentation. Slow, infrequent blink rate, eyes focused on the camera lens to build a connection with the viewer, head held in one position to prevent sea-sickness, a smile, measured speaking rate with pauses after each delivered content point. Watch this and take notes.

The web conferencing software that In Situ used for their demo is Podia. Podia is another UK-based webinar software company with an operation in Houston for handling the US market. I haven't used Podia on any of my client engagements, but it looked nice from an archived viewing perspective.

Continuing our travels across Europe, I had a nice little phone conversation with Robert Strobl at Digital Samba the other day. This company is based in Spain and has created their own web conferencing software called OnSync. In America it is sold through SpiderWeb Communications. OnSync is interesting in that it uses some of the same concepts that have made Adobe/Macromedia's Breeze so flexible over here. Fully Flash-based, it offers much better cross-platform compatibility than many others. It also allows the user to reconfigure the console layout, moving and resizing windows for different content and functionality emphasis.

Returning blog readers have seen several posts I have made about telepark and their teamslide product, coming from Germany.

Father afield, I got an email from David Chang at Haedenbridge in South Korea. Haedenbridge has a product called TOMMS FACTORY, which seems to be more of a generalized multipoint data/voice/video webcasting technology than something built specifically to support webinars. But it certainly has the capabilities to handle the technical side.

The US vendors haven't completely ignored the rest of the world either. Not a week goes by that I don't see press releases or news articles about WebEx in India. They have really been playing up business partnerships and sales in that country. The other US vendor that seems to spend the most press time on overseas activities is WiredRed, with its e/pop web conferencing software. WiredRed has offices and affiliates listed on its website in England, France, Norway, Spain, Italy, Bahrain, Singapore, India, and some unspecified Latin America country. That's a pretty wide-ranging network!

Frost and Sullivan is doing a web conference later this week on the state of the web conferencing market. Everything I have read tells me that North America (and specifically the US) has the largest share of the market at this time. I imagine that because we have such wide distances between businesses operating within the same country, because we all speak the same language (Manhattan vs. Baton Rouge notwithstanding), and because most businesses are comfortable with remote communications as a business model, it's easier to sell people on webinars and web conferencing here. But as the few examples above show (and there are plenty of others I didn't cover), one shouldn't get too myopic about America's ownership of the webinar market.

ADDENDUM: Shoot, I forgot to mention Live Conference PRO! Their US senior developer, Tom Eagar, took me through a very nice demo and Q&A session. Thank you, Tom! LC Pro is the web conferencing technology owned by Professional Global Marketing, a company headquartered in Panama. The company has been selling the technology in stealth mode... No proactive advertising and marketing beyond their website. Yet Tom tells me they have 400-500 customers. Live Conferencing PRO uses a unique approach to slide show sharing... If the presenter is showing a PowerPoint slide deck, the software looks for a copy of Microsoft PowerPoint on the attendee's computer, starts it up, and loads the PowerPoint file locally, with the presenter retaining remote control of the slide advancing! I haven't heard of anybody else taking this approach. If the attendee doesn't have PowerPoint, the software falls back to showing the slides converted to static HTML graphic images. The software also allows application sharing (full desktop, named application, or defined rectangular region), polling, rich media (music/video files), document downloading, and web page presentation to audience members.

Technorati Tags: Digital Samba, e/pop, Haedenbridge, In Situ, OnSYNC, Podia, SpiderWeb Communications, Live Conference PRO, teamslide, telepark, web conference, web conferencing, web meeting, webcast, webcasting, WebEx, webinar, WiredRed

You're Only Half The Man I Thought You Were!

Oh, baby... I love this. A thank you to my blogging friend Sue Pelletier at face2face for pointing us to to the new must-have accessory for the males in the audience who insist on using a webcam for their webinars and webcasts. Yes, it's the Businessbib... a one-piece cassock that velcros in the back and instantly gives you the look of a suit, dress shirt and tie. Throw it on over your T-shirt and look confidently into that camera... secure in the knowledge that the audience thinks you're a stone cold business pro even though you know you're not wearing any pants.

You've heard me say this before... I am not a fan of using home webcams for presenting online. If you feel it's critical to show your mug, use a studio with professionals who know how to frame you, shoot you, light you, and mike you. But heck... having a thing like the Businessbib might make me throw all that good advice out the window, just to have more opportunities to use it!

Technorati Tags: Businessbib, webcam, videoconferencing, web conference, web conferencing, webcast, webcasting

I'm A Tweaker

Seth Godin ran a piece on his blog the other day asking "Where are the tweakers?" He was referring to people who could come in and take an existing website, apply their experience from many clients and quickly make small changes that will improve the measure of success for that site. No major reconstructions, no building sites from scratch, no long successions of meetings. Just on-the-ground tactics.

I looked at that and thought, "Hey... I'm a tweaker!" But I tweak webinars.

I know of two other major service vendors in the webcast/webinar space. They are KRM Information Services and Bulldog Solutions. Both good companies, from everything I hear. I have had pleasant conversations with both providers. They like to help (usually large enterprise) clients run an entire webinar campaign. Bulldog has extensive ties to fancy marketing and promotion techniques and technology and can help follow through to track and boost conversions. They'll supply the webinar technology, build custom templates, manage the event from start to finish. All kinds of good stuff. They concentrate on marketing lead generation programs.

KRM concentrates on for-pay events. They again supply the underlying technology, with some excellent facilities for payment processing and advanced registration. They also have extensive telephone conferencing facilities, with on-site studios and sound editing equipment to create high quality recordings of an event that the client can sell as another profit item.

Both companies do the majority (if not all) of their work on an end-to-end event management basis. They charge commensurately for the complete set of services a client receives. Certainly several thousand dollars at least. They like to work with multi-event campaigns. Go look them up if you're in the market. And let me know how they worked out for you... I'm always interested in real world experiences.

Gee, that's a lot of time and words spent on competitors, isn't it, Ken? Not a very good way to get clients to sign up with you! Well, that's the point, you see. I don't consider those companies competitors. For... I'm a tweaker.

Just thinking of getting started with webinars, but not ready to commit a lot of time and money to a full-on campaign? Need some help with the basics, maybe picking the technology vendor that's right for your needs? I can tweak that and then go away.

Already have a contract with a technology vendor and do your own webinars quite happily? Need somebody to tweak your events so they are better attended and so that you get better responses? I can come in and do that.

Do you present the best possible face to the public or to your own employees when you present online? Do you sound professional, engaging, smooth and persuasive? I can work with you on specific online presentation coaching, vocal training, how to run online technical demos through application sharing. Tweak, tweak, tweak. Small improvements, big payoffs. No long campaigns, no taking over your events from end-to-end.

Could you use a third hand to work with you during an event? Manage the recording, introduce the session in a firm professional voice, moderate questions and answers with the attendees? I can come in and do that on a one-off basis. Easy in, easy out. No big bundled service contracts.

One service offering that KRM and Bulldog just aren't set up for (at least when we've talked about this in the past) is help with presentation content. Especially in the high tech space. I have created and presented countless presentations, training sessions, demonstrations, and marketing pitches for commercial software. I can come in and tweak your existing materials and demonstrations into something that is a lot more instructive and compelling for your audience. I'll even create a presentation from scratch and record it for you as an on-demand webinar if you need a tweaker there. I understand the technical side and I know how to present it in a consumer-friendly manner.

Sometimes you want and need serious bumper-to-bumper assistance on big online projects with big budgets. There are companies to help you with that. But sometimes you need someone to come in, work fast, work well, make things better than they were, and then ride off into the sunset. You need a tweaker. I'm your man.

If you're interested, contact me through the Webinar Success Contact Form. No team of pushy inside sales representatives will ambush you. You won't get added to a house list with marketing emails coming your way forever more. You'll get a call or email directly from me. We'll talk. I'll help. You'll be happy.

Technorati Tags: Bulldog Solutions, KRM, tweaking, webcast, webcasting, webinar, Webinar Success

Teamslide Goes Hosted

I've talked about teamslide from German company telepark here and here  (The first time, I explained that the lowercase spelling is their branding choice, not my mistake. So you can put those red pencils away!). Today's email from Munich notified me that teamslide is now available as a hosted service. You pay a subscription fee (pretty low... $35 for 3 months up to $99 bucks for a year) and you can upload your PowerPoint slides to a URL on their server for display to 1-10 viewers.

Prior to this, teamslide required you to purchase the software and use your own server storage space for uploaded presentations. That is still an option and the two product versions coexist. Features on the hosted version look to be the same as reported earlier on the installed version.

I have been hearing from a lot of folks about this low-end segment of the market. The idea is to provide quick, easy, and inexpensive functionality for the most basic kind of interaction... Just the ability to show your PowerPoint slides to a small audience on the other end of a phone call. No learning curve and no installation/download process for your audience. Completely cross-platform. I used to do a lot of these kinds of presentations as a product marketing manager when talking to press and industry analysts. Salespeople also use this kind of presentation ability in certain situations.

My gut tells me that eventually this kind of functionality is going to be expected as a freebie, just like computer-to-computer calling through Skype (which teamslide has an integration with, by the way). Vendors are going to have to figure out a way to make money through associated services or upgrades (or however Skype says they make money... It's always confused me!). But until then, teamslide is a cost effective way to get into the collaborative presentation game. The addition of hosted upload space is an important step in breaking down barriers to adoption for small companies, individuals, and places where capacity is a headache.

Technorati Tags: PowerPoint, presentations, teamslide, telepark

Analyzing Adobe's Acrobat Addition

Ah... the addictive allure of alliteration! Sorry.

Adobe made several announcements today (September 18) about upcoming releases in the Acrobat product family. The key thing that most reporters picked up on about the new release of Acrobat is that it is supposed to load faster. I guess I'm not the only person who gets a bit frustrated while waiting for all those product components to load when I just want to take a quick peek at a PDF document.

But I must confess to being pleasantly surprised at the amount of coverage Adobe got with their announcement of Adobe Acrobat Connect. Acrobat Connect seems to be the rebranded result of integrating Macromedia Breeze into the Adobe product suite. As you probably know, Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005. Since that time, Breeze has been presented to the public as a relatively unchanged independent entity.

But with today's announcement, Breeze gets a name change and also gets split into two separate products. I'm still waiting for some in-depth explanations from my Breeze contacts at Adobe, so for now I'm going to speculate based on my reading of the Adobe website. With any luck we'll have a followup post and more detail later.

It looks like Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional (whew!) is the Breeze package as we know it today. In the words of the Adobe press release, the Professional version includes "support for large meetings, reporting, content management, extensive user and meeting management capabilities, support for interactive multimedia, integrated telephony, and Voice over Internet Protocol. In addition, developers can use the Acrobat Connect Collaboration Builder SDK to create custom interactive applications such as engaging learning games and simulations."

The website comparing the Connect versions shows that the Professional version allows up to 2500 attendees in a meeting, recording, admin features, and customizable layouts (the old Breeze "pods").

The new stripped down version is called Adobe Acrobat Connect. It lets a single named user conduct one meeting at a time with up to 15 people in the meeting room. This seems to be purely a quick 'n easy collaborative meeting environment. There is no support for recording a meeting, changing the layout, reporting, polling, and behind the scenes administration of events.

One of the more interesting commentaries on the announcement (at least as of day one) came from Phil Wainewright, blogging for ZDNet. He points out that the announced price of $39/month per meeting host is less than the corresponding collaborative web meeting products from Citrix or WebEx. My crystal ball says those companies should soon be dropping their flat rate pricing to match.

Phil thinks that because Acrobat is so ubiquitous on computers around the world (all operating systems) this meeting availability will open up web conferencing usage to a previously untapped population segment that never thought about trying online collaboration before. He then goes on to say that the lower price will force vendors to make this form of limited functionality collaborative meeting software a very inexpensive proposition. He ends with a comment that it "will challenge the business models and profitability of the existing vendors."

He may be right, but I think the small group collaboration market is already firmly headed in the direction of a low- to no-price commodity. As Microsoft, IBM, and WebEx (the biggest market share names in the space) keep talking about their visions of unified collaboration, small group web meetings are getting folded in as a basic component ingredient. I think in a few years nobody will buy the equivalent of an Acrobat Connect (non-professional) as a separate license. It will be bundled with presence detection, instant messaging, mobile text messaging, etc.

Adobe's big advantage is the existing reliance on Flash throughout the product set. I had already found Breeze to be one of the best webinar products for presenting to an audience on a variety of operating systems. The Breeze slideshow conversion algorithm is excellent at preserving animations and slide transitions that stymie other products.

The group collaboration space is going to get more confused before it gets clearer. The basics of what the functionality should be and the technical ability to deliver that functionality is now commonplace. Small providers are going to compete with their "good enough" products on a pure price basis and the public is going to quickly come to expect the basic functionality as a right, rather than an elective purchase (students are directed to the history of web browsers).

The big boys are going to roll up their offerings under the larger collaborative communications umbrella. The interesting question for me is how this impacts the more formal "webinar" market. I'm talking about larger events that are formally scheduled, allow enrollment and payment processing, support recording/reporting/user administration. That software will always remain an elective purchase, since the average consumer doesn't need the functionality.

In the best scenario, more companies and individuals become accustomed to attending meetings and receiving information online, which makes them more amenable to and aware of webinars as a corporate communications medium. Webinar software gets used more often and revenues go up throughout the industry (along with the need for service providers like Webinar Success!).

In the worst scenario, companies try to force the low-cost collaboration software to handle the workload for webinars because they see no reason to pay extra for something that seems like a similar application. It doesn't work out well because it wasn't designed for that and both hosts and attendees become discouraged and disdainful of the technology. Webinars fade as a communications medium.

I sure hope it's the former.

Technorati Tags: Acrobat Connect, Adobe, collaboration, collaborative technologies conference, Macromedia, Macromedia Breeze, Phil Wainewright, Unified Collaboration, web conferencing, web meeting, webinar

I'll Have That To Go, Please

We have a new press release from PresenterNet this morning announcing that they have released PresenterNet Mobile Edition, a version of their web conferencing software designed to run on Windows Mobile.

That's nice, and I fully support opening up web conferencing products to run on as many different operating systems as possible. But I do have a couple of questions (or at least personal amusement) about some of the practical aspects as mentioned in the press release.

It states that users can "present from anywhere using only a PC or a Windows Mobile 5.0 enabled phone or PDA." A few sentences later it goes on to suggest that the "mobile user population can present from a coffee shop, an airport lounge and just about anywhere else."

Is this a solution in search of a problem? What exactly are you going to present from a cell phone or PDA? I see myself frantically hunched over a tiny screen, pushing those little chiclet buttons and talking into an earpiece at my local Starbucks while announcements and music from the overhead speaker system stomp over my audio. In truth, I more easily see myself stomping some guy trying to give his presentation from the table next to me in a public location!  But maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy. What do you think... is this a useful option?

By the way, this isn't meant to degrade PresenterNet. They have an interesting technology, including a feature that lets you embed interactive controls in a presentation so attendees can do things like manipulate images, spreadsheets, and such with slider bars and other controls. That's a great way to add audience interaction and as far as I know, PresenterNet's implementation is unique. It's worth taking a look at if you haven't seen this before.

Technorati Tags: PresenterNet, Windows Mobile, web conference, web conferencing, webcasting

From Pasadena... It's Central Desktop Live!

Central Desktop on Tuesday announced a new release of their unified collaboration software, also called Central Desktop. The new component is being referred to as Central Desktop Live and CEO/cofounder Isaac Garcia kindly took me through it in a collaborative online session.

Central Desktop has targeted the small and midsize business market, below the levels that the big enterprise vendors such as WebEx or Microsoft concentrate on. Isaac says that the software is also appropriate for teams working as cohesive units in larger companies. The key idea is to provide a unified collaboration environment that lets users do tasks in real time (synchronously seeing updates and sharing information) while also allowing them to stay coordinated when work is done offline (or asynchronously). The company was founded in May of 2005 and released the Central Desktop product in September of last year.

At its core, Central Desktop is a glorified wiki… It lets multiple users update information in an organized framework so that others can find items easily and see the latest additions, deletions, and changes. There are predefined templates for common work requirements. For instance, the software lets you quickly set up workspaces, activities, and tasks. Members of a group can add files and links and users can subscribe to a group space to get notification of new information through RSS feeds or emails.

Some of the other predefined elements include discussion threads, task lists, milestones, calendars, and invitations. Laying out pages is easy with a WYSIWYG interface that allows you to pick fonts and formatting. That’s all fun stuff, but it’s not the focus of this blog and it’s been around for a year now, so I’m not exactly breaking hot news!

The new Central Desktop Live piece introduces web conferencing for group members so everyone can see a file or a desktop application at the same time. The software integrates with the major Instant Messaging (IM) products, so you can see if members of your group are online using Skype, Jabber, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, ICQ, or MSN Messenger. You can then set up a web meeting from inside the product dashboard and broadcast invitations instantly. The company is playing up the convenience of doing this all inside one workspace environment, rather than opening another application, logging on with another password, sending out email invitations, and waiting to see if the recipients are around to join you.

Central Desktop decided not to reinvent the wheel and create their own web conferencing solution from scratch. Instead, they have OEM’d an embeddable web conferencing component from Rhub Communications, which specializes in this kind of relationship. At the moment, the maximum attendance for a web meeting is 25 people, so it’s not good for large departmental groups and certainly not for public webinars. The company should relax that limitation by next month.

Another planned upgrade for that time period is to support multiple operating systems and web browsers. Currently the product needs Microsoft Windows and prefers Internet Explorer (although Firefox came across as an “it should work” alternative). The web conferencing aspect of things pretty much lets you show slides or your entire desktop. Part of the October release plans include the ability to share a named application rather than your entire desktop, but there are no plans at this point to support a user-defined rectangular region of the screen (my favorite way to do desktop sharing).

Annotation during a web meeting is very simple… You can draw with a virtual pencil. There are no controls for line thickness or color and no shape primitives such as pointers or boxes/circles. One nice aspect of the annotation tool is that it lets you draw over anything showing in a screen share window. That’s still unusual (and very welcome) in the business. Multiple presenters can share control of one person’s slideshow/desktop or you can swap control and display to another member’s screen. That is good flexibility. Security settings allow you to choose SSL protection on your information, but Isaac warns that this can reduce performance in some cases.

During our web meeting, I was able to create a small display glitch by moving my Microsoft Word window over the shared web meeting display window. It sometimes created a thin white horizontal strip where the overlaid menu bar had been. It was a minor repaint problem and easily fixed by doing anything that caused the share window to refresh. I’m sure they’ll be able to patch up this annoyance in short order.

The software is priced on a monthly fee for use of the basic Central Desktop environment (sliding scale depending on the number of users and amount of storage). Adding Central Desktop Live adds another monthly fee based on the number of concurrent meetings and maximum attendance at each.

The company is doing a 30-day free trial promotion, which is longer than usual in the industry. I found the terms a bit confusing, as the registration page says you are able to host unlimited Web Meetings (with up to 10 Attendees). But on the FAQ page, it says that the Free Plan does not include the use of Central Desktop Live! The solution to this seeming contradiction lies in the fact that the FAQ refers to a contract option for using Central Desktop called the “Team Plan – Free”. This is not the same thing as the Free Trial, which has more power and functionality.

I wish Central Desktop a lot of luck with the new web conferencing element. Unified collaboration is obviously the hot trend, with Microsoft, WebEx, and IBM all making major pushes in that space. From what I’ve seen, Central Desktop has a quick learning curve and aggressive pricing, making it a good option for those just getting their feet wet in this space.

It’s not going to compete with the major enterprise webinar packages, but it’s not designed for that… there is no attempt to make formal registration pages with automatic enrollee reminders, integrated billing, or managed Q&A windows. For the ad hoc business communications it was designed for, it should fit the bill nicely.

I was able to think of several ways I could use the software in my own business to keep webinar clients on a traceable and updateable timeline, with responsibilities, milestones, and tasks clearly displayed. We could also share different versions of the webinar slideshow file we planned to use and could have ad hoc discussions and meetings to talk through preparations and plans. I like software that has immediate obvious applications to real world situations.

Technorati Tags: application sharing, Central Desktop, Rhub Communications, Unified Collaboration, Unified Communications, web conferencing, web meeting

Got A Horror Story?

Rob writes in with an amazing tale of a public webinar he attended where the speaker took an office call while in the middle of his presentation, apologized for a conflict in his schedule, and bailed out of the presentation at the halfway mark, leaving his assistant to finish up.

Wow. Just when you think you've heard it all.

I like the webinar I saw featuring an expert on giving effective presentations who used a cheap webcam in his shared office space with papers and books piled messily all over his desk. Partway through his talk, a coworker walked into frame in the background, started doing some work at his desk, and left again. Not a great way to keep audience attention focused on you as the speaker and the points you are trying to make. If you are going to use a webcam, at least make a token effort to present a professional appearance as if you were broadcasting a special event for your audience.

What's the worst or weirdest thing you've come across in a webinar or web conference? This could be fun!

Technorati Tags: web conference, web conferencing, webcast, webcasting, webinar