I got a note from Robert Harnischmacher, the managing director of Publicare Marketing Communications in Germany, and publisher of Online Meeting Tools Review. This is a free website that reviews and ranks web conferencing products (concentrating on applications for peer-level meetings rather than large web events).
Robert told me about some recent changes to the site that should make life a little easier for users wanting to evaluate products.
1) No More Charges. You can now run a full "Pro" version of their automated comparison report without paying a fee. Instead, they ask permission to forward your contact information to one of the vendors you select in the report. I assume they collect some sort of per-lead payment from the vendors, but that's a perfectly reasonable arrangement. The generated PDF document is formatted very well and has a lot of useful information for making at-a-glance comparisons.
2) Platform Support Simplification. They have removed the previous concentration on "fat client" vs. "browser-based" and made it clearer whether the product relies on Flash, Java, HTML5, or other underlying technologies. They also did away with evaluating specific devices such as iPhone vs. iPad and now concentrate on operating system support for mobile -- typically iOS or Android.
I like both of these changes and I still think it's a great tool for helping to narrow down your list of candidates if you are looking for a web meeting solution.
