PowerPoint Online

The One Drum Collaboration Tool

April 5, 2009 – 11:57 pm
A new collaboration tool, currently in private beta, looks to change the way people collaborate and share documents on the web. The One Drum package aims to allow multiple people to work on the same document online, using the tools that they already own, such as Microsoft Office’s suite of applications.

Startup founder, Jasper Westaway believes that collaboration tools such as his are about to boom, not because of the struggling economy, but because of the increasing capabilities of projects like his on the web. These applications allow people to work the way they want to, and not have to work around the application and its limitations.

Typical collaboration methods for working on a single document have the file stored in a repository that track who made changes to the document, but still limit only a single user to make modifications at a time. The One Drum allows everyone to view the same document, regardless of the generation of the application they’re using (i.e. MS Word 97 and Word 03), and everyone can modify the document and links are created to show the modifications that are made. The system also allows authors to chat amongst themselves as they’re co-editing the document.

Future features include full audio and video conferencing between authors to more fully simulate colleagues working on a project together in the same room.

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March 31, 2009 – 7:02 pm
Prezentit is a simple, web-based online presentation editor that allows you to create an online presentation with multiple collaborators together, all through your web browser and without any downloads required. When you are finished with your presentation, you can share it on the web with a unique URL for your specific presentation. You can also download the file and play it locally on any computer through a web browser. Unfortunately, unlike some of the more full-featured web-based online presentation services, Prezentit, can not import real Microsoft PowerPoint files, nor can it save it in that format, so you’re limited to their online format.

Prezentit is strong in the fact that it’s very simple and straight forward to use, however its simplicity is also its downside. The service is pretty bare in features. You can add text and images to your presentation, however there are no templates or other nifty features that you might have become accustomed to using in PowerPoint. Prezentit does allow you to upload images from you computer into your presentation, and stores them on their server allowing up to 250MB of images to be stored.

The UI is very intuitive and Prezentit is a neat service for people that need to collaborate a few ideas and want to have a copy of it that they can share with each other or save for later use. There are however, many other services out there that are more full-featured and that allow you to import and save actual PowerPoint files so that you have a lot more versatility in how you edit and share your presentation. The service is rather new and I expect many features will be added and upgraded as it develops.

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Tandberg and Broadsoft Announce New Partnership

March 21, 2009 – 11:23 pm
Tandberg, a leader in high definition video conferencing and telepresence services, and Broadsoft, a leader in VOIP services, today has announced a partnership in video communication solutions for business. The partnership will allow Broadsoft to offer a unified communication application that uses the strength of BroadSoft’s VOIP services and Tandberg’s telepresence technologies.

In today’s economy, more companies are switching to video communications to reduce travel budgets and increase productivity, by integrating high quality telepresence technology with inexpensive VOIP communications. The new Broadsoft offering will provide business-quality video and audio services to the masses.

Broadsoft Co-founder, Michael Tessler:

Video is increasingly important in the way enterprises do business, and its integration with voice, presence, mobility, Web 2.0 and business applications allows employees to be more productive from any ‘touch point’ — phone, mobile device, video phone, video console or business application. Despite the incredible benefits of advanced video communications, the inherent complexity of deploying an on-premise solution is a major deterrent for many businesses. By providing video solutions ‘in the cloud,’ service providers are in a unique position to fulfill a demand of an underserved market. Businesses, regardless of size, can now benefit from the power and productivity of video-enabled unified communications.

Features of the new collaborative project include: video receptionists, video training, video customer call center, video mail, and video ringback, allowing a custom video greeting for incoming calls.

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Google Voice to Challenge Skype

March 19, 2009 – 7:45 pm
Google, in its ever expanding nature is now taking on Internet telephone services and looks to give major player Skype, a run for its money. Google Voice is a free service that will allow individuals to sync up all of their phone lines to a single number. So for instance if I was using the service, I would be able to give out a single number and when that number was called, my cell phone, home phone and office phone would ring, making it more efficient to find me than calling each of the different numbers individually. Google Voice also manages voice mails and allows users of the system to make free calls within the United States and International calls for a nominal fee via the Internet.

Google Voice is the result of the acquisition of GrandCentral, a start up company that Google acquired about 2 years ago. The system is currently in beta and available only to GrandCentral subscribers. The beta should be available to the public though in the next few weeks.

Skype Journal Editor, Phil Wolff:

I would consider Google to have the potential to change the rules of the game because of their ability to bring all kinds of people into their new tools from their existing tools

The free domestic calling features of the service is what Skype and other IP phone and web conferencing services are, or at least should be concerned about. Google has an uncanny ability to bring in new users of its tools, and with Internet phone services as popular as the are, Google is likely to put a dent into the industry. Skype currently has 400 million registered users and claims to be adding 350,000 new users a day.

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Online Collaboration with Fuze Meeting

March 2, 2009 – 7:51 pm
Fuze is an online collaboration tool that like many other similar services is Flash-based and therefore cross-platform. The services aims to provide a bridge for sharing video content and documents such as online PowerPoint presentations to an unlimited number of clients. The service is integrated with an audio conferencing system, so there is no need to have a separate service for voice.

Presenters can share online PowerPoint and other documents such as photos, high definition video, or just about any other type of media. The files are hosted on the Fuze servers so you can prepare your presentation ahead of time and have high speed, high quality playback. Users can mark up the document, and comment on frames of the video, however unlike other collaboration services, they aren’t actually making changes to the document. Esentially they are just making notes for changes that will be made later.

Fuze is aiming at a wide market and already has an iPhone client for their service. They are also working on a Blackberry client, and likely one for other popular mobile operating systems. Fuze offers a free trial and then is priced at $29/month for a single host, with an unlimited number of clients.

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Saving Money with Online Meetings

February 28, 2009 – 5:53 am
While a lot of sources are reporting that web conferencing and other forms of online meetings are great in the face of a recession, the fact is, online meetings save money and increase productivity regardless of the economic climate.

Using web conferences and online PowerPoint presentations to communicate and present to your customers, partners, resellers and other employees is a much more effective manner of doing business for small and large businesses alike. Employees that have to travel incur not only transportation costs, but lodging, food and other expenses. They also have down time while traveling and are tired when they return. In most cases the same amount of collaboration can take place without the employee even leaving the office and always at a fraction of the cost.

Having an online presence and the ability to meet online can also help businesses connect with new markets, and expand their operations without leaving their office. Globalization is providing new resources and markets, and competition is reducing profit margins. Being able to meet instantly online allows overhead costs to stay low and International connections stay current.

For more information on web conferencing services, visit InstantPresenter.com

Posted in InstantPresenter, Online Meetings | No Comments »

Content Circles Collaboration Services

February 22, 2009 – 5:52 am
Content Circles, a provider of content management and collaboration services, launched its flagship service of the same name. Content Circles will help the way people collaborate and manage information across and between companies.

Content management for large sets of information traditionally has been a complicated process, requiring extensive hardware and IT support to manage the system. Complex enterprise content management software was difficult to operate and required a significant upfront investment. Content Circles has changed this approach to pricing and distribution and provides a powerful software system that is easy to use and priced for scalability.

Pricing for the Content Circles solution starts at $99.95 per user per year. This price point has triggered a grapid growth of sales and usage of the service. The service is also available as a free 30 day trial. The pricing model follows other collaboration solution technologies such as web conferencing and video conferencing services. Providing ECM services with conventional colalboration pricing models will allow smaller businesses to adopt the robust technology.

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Arizona Bill Proposes to Buy Web Conferencing for Entire City

February 12, 2009 – 5:56 am
A new Senate Bill, SB1001 in Arizona would require every state government agency and school to purchase web and video conferencing software and equipment. Like most users of the technology, the state aims to save government travel expenses. While video conferencing and web conferencing have proven itself in many business environments, the bill has it’s opponents.

Government relations director, Karen Peters thinks that the infrastructure costs might be too high to see any realistic savings in the near future.

We are implementing web conferencing for our employees that would use it. We don’t really need to be training our field workers to use Web conference software, but this bill would require us to do that. “

This bill hasn’t yet declared what the total cost of buying video and web conferencing services for every government entity and they also haven’t still chosen a vendor. One of the contenders for the contract however, is iLinc, who also does not yet have an estimate of what the total expense might be.

The state has already invested about $400,000 in video conference technology among 14 agencies, which they’ve calculated has saved them as much as $4 million in travel expenses in 2008. They hope that the new bill will extend that 1:10 ratio of savings across all government agencies in the state.

Posted in Web Conferences, Online Presentation | No Comments »

ACT Conferencing Sees an Increase in Conferencing Sales

February 5, 2009 – 5:54 am
ACT Conferencing of Golden, Colorado has seen a significant increase in sales of its conferencing services amidst the downturn in the US and Global economies. ACT provides web conferencing and audio conferencing services and a host of online collaboration services. The company’s audio conferencing services saw growth between 20% and 40% among their products in 2008. Their web conferencing service experienced an increase of 20% during the same time period.

ACT Senior Director, Gary Iles:

In tough economic times, companies tend to shift priorities so they reassure and support customers and partners. Doing that efficiently and effectively requires tools which extend their reach to anywhere in the world. ACT continues to grow because we attract customers who need user-friendly, integrated web, audio and video conferencing tools, and we deliver the level of service assurance which is required by global entities.

ACT credits its increase in sales to not only the fact that companies are traveling less and communicating more, but also it’s strong channel partners’ success. The company has developed the Partner Collaboration Center, and online portal that allows resellers to manage, create and control accounts, making it simple and lucrative for resellers of the product.

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Free Online Presentation Hosting with ajaxPresents

January 30, 2009 – 6:06 pm
One concern when hosting and sharing and online PowerPoint presentation is that while you’re collaborating with colleagues online, everyone may not have PowerPoint installed on their computer, and if they do they may not all be running the same version. Even if everyone is running compatible software, different people may be working off different versions of the document and merging them all into a single presentation may leave some new edits out.ajaxPresents is an online presentation editor that lets you present, edit and save PowerPoint files as well as Open standard presentation files, all online without having to have the costly software on your computer.

Unlike most online PowerPoint services that convert your PowerPoint into Flash, rendering them uneditable, ajaxPresents uses AJAX, which allows you to modify and re-save your presentation all online without having to re-upload each time you make an edit. You simply send your presentation to the ajaxPresents server, and you’re given an unique URL to share and work with your presentation and even save it back onto your local machine.

While this web-based system is cross-platform, it requires Mozilla Firefox 1.5+ web browsers, meaning Internet explorer and other operating systems are out. While this is a draw back, Firefox is a free download and may be worth it to check out this free service.

Posted in Collaboration, Online Presentation, PowerPoint | No Comments »