I decided it's high time I take my Java certifications. Seriously. Sure I could study by myself, but I figured that a group study session would make me even more determined to actually study. Plus I could gather more information from the experiences of others rather than just come across them during my self-review. There's just one thing: the rainy season has started over my patch of the world. The idea of braving the rain to travel all the way to another city to be able to attend a study group wasn't what I had in mind at all. And I'm sure a lot of people would say the same. I'm also sure that a lot would be disappointed at not being able to attend such sessions.
The solution was obvious: Set up a cyber-study group. Most of those who will be attending would surely have some sort of broadband connection either in the office or at home. The first part of this plan is to figure out what would be the best web conference app to use.
Twitter has always been a wonderful place to get recommendations for a nice web conference application to use. My initial requirements were simple:
- it has to be free
- it has to be cross-platform
- it has to be fast
But things changed a bit with the offer of a free one-year license from one provider just to be able to let me see if I could make use of their application. So while most of what I'll be talking about is free, a few will require you to pay up a small fee.
That said, I'll be testing five different applications in the next few days. Each application will have their own post on this blog with their pros and cons. Finally, after all the applications have been tested I'll be talking about how to bring all these applications together for a truly satisfying web conference experience.
Comments
I do agree with your other
I do agree with your other comment that nothing free is really free that's for sure.
Free always has some trade-offs
Free web conferencing - are you serious? If you want free then use Skype, but be aware that such P2P applications leave your computer wide open to hackers and viruses, not to mention the video quality is laughable. Connect more than 2 people and you will experience disconnections for sure.
Secondly, try having 10-20 users in a conference and watch such free apps crash on you time and time again. Now that's not a productive meeting. You wouldn't put up with that on the phone would you?
Nothing free is really free. If you want robust, secure, easy to use with no downloads, no malware, complete audio, webcam video, document sharing, text IM, and even HD video, then you need to look at www.hexa2.com True telepresence that's not hundreds of thousands of $'s but starts at a mere $10 a month for a 4 people meeting. What's $10 a month for a truly secure and robust product in a virtual room just as if you were all there!
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