Open source web conferencing company Dimdim is looking to attack the conferencing market in the same way Asterisk "attacked" the PBX space. Although the concept of open source is not new this sort of product just shows how virtually every corner of the software market has to deal with the issue of competing with free or very cheap software supported by a community of developers who work for the "fun of it".
One way to compete with such challenges is to focus more on consulting and systems integration. Another is to focus on building your development community up as a way to add value to your core offerings.
These are things Avaya has done masterfully and it remains to be seen how companies in the conferencing space will deal with the increased pressure from open source conferencing providers such as Dimdim.
[TMCnet]
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Thanks for the post, Rich. We're working hard to be the alternative to everyone who has found Webex too complicated/expense AND everyone who has never been about to host their own web meetings before. We're all about being easy, open and affordable. And for meetings of 20 people or less when I say affordable, I mean FREE. With Dimdim, now the world can meet freely.
I agree that if an email MUST be HTML, then it also MUST be standards compliant and accessible, and also include a plain text version. However, I'm also of the opinion that HTML emails are highly overrated depending on your audience.
What makes dimdim different to spreed? I am using spreed (http://www.spreed.com), a European web meeting service which is available free of cost since the year 2005. In which functions and features are dimdim service offerings different from spreed? spreed web meetings run great on my Mac including OS X screen sharing. In addition to web meeting features such as sharing, collaboration and N-way audio/video communication spreed has desktop remote control, click-to-meet (I find this a useful feature), built-in telephone worldwide conferencing, a polling feature, remote control and supports live video streaming. What features does dimdim support which spreed does not?
Quick and easy online meetings are the go. This is what we aim for with Mikogo, a free web conferencing tool that you can use to share your desktop with multiple people via the Web.
Desktop sharing is vital for online meetings, as it allows you to share any screen content from your computer as you need it and on the fly.
Yes for the organizer of the meeting, an installation is required. But you could use the Mikogo portable version and just start meetings from your USB stick. No installation required for participants at any time.
http://www.mikogo.com/
Personally, I use Showdocument for online teaching and web conferencing. I'm not saying these programs aren't good,
But I think a web-based application is always better, since there's nothing to download or install.
try it at http://www.showdocument.com . -andy