DimDim just released their 4.0 version that has more features and is more compatible with Mac computers (including desktop sharing). The free version includes hosting and scheduling meetings for up to 20 participants and 3 participants plus the host can have active mics at the same time.
They also have an open source version for developers… so, if you’d like to run your own DimDim locally, there you go…
I recently had the joy of participating of the Learning Innovation Network conference initiated by the Human Capital Institute which had its first gathering hosted by Sun Microsystems in Santa Clara, CA.
A few week ago, Jeanne Meister invited me to speak again, this time during a Webcast the HCI was promoting. It was, again, an amazing experience and in this dynamic world it has immediately generated networking opportunities with some new contacts. If you knew me personally you’d know I’m all about people, networking, socializing. Typical netgener. One of my points with the whole information dump was that I believe that the research around netgeners might be true as far as habits, ways of thinking, wys of receiving/processing/sharing information being different now than a few decades ago, and people born around the 1980′s have had better chance for exposure to this mass media technology and an ever-growing amount of information, it is more of a matter of ATTITUDE and opportunity to be around all the information (technlogy) and having a positive mindset about it than it is a matter of age.
Here is a link to Joy Kosta’s (our host) blog summarizing the webcast.
Here is Jeanne Meister’s blog.
Much like the good ol’ “easter eggs” that you find in software like Word Processing, games, etc. Now Adobe has hidden a game on their Adobe Max Conference website. It seems to be just a little “mysterious” incentive for those who explore the website, maybe some marketing move to make visitors want to share it with their friends… well, whatever the intent, I havve o confess I have already shared it with some people… 
Big news: Adobe is giving something away! Might be just while in beta, they don;t really state the latter on their website. But they do say it is FREE.
The first free Adobe product I just discovered is Acrobat Buzzword, an online collaborative text editor or word processor (think Google Docs). While way ahead of the competition in the visual aspect of it with a stunning look and feel (Adobe standards) very intuitive and attractive interface that uses many “transition” effects from screen to screen. It is way behind other products of the kind in the functionality aspect. Some basic options are still missing on Adobe Acrobat Buzzword like being able to organize documents into different folders. Also, the formatting menu doesn’t offer many paragraph edit options and the fonts to choose from aren’t many. While intuitive, like I mentioned before, the user interface doesn’t follow the standards Google Docs and Zoho Office have tried to follow: creating an interface that is as similar to desktop office suites as possible to take advantage of users’ experience in the latter.
Another tool that is available for free right now is Adobe ConnectNow a fully functioning online Web meeting or Web conferencing tool that requires no plugin install and works very smoothly (again, Adobe Standards). Very aesthetically pleasing interface. ConnectNow works seamlessly with Buzzword so you can launch meetings from within a Buzzword document and collaborate on it with meeting participants. For this product Adobe added features present separately in many other web conferencing services into one product:
These products are excellent opportunities for collaborative authoring, especially for online classes and telecommuters. Again these are products with Adobe’s standards but are free of charge.
So in reply to Ed Teng’s comment in my post with invites to A.Viary online production tools (if I understand him correctly) I will post some links and comments to webconferencing tools that might be useful for instructional purposes.
ePresence -> Free and open source tool. Has to be installed on your local server. Technical support is offered by the Open Source Consortium. Their webconferencing and webcasting applications are excellent and feature-rich. It is possible to record both webcasting (broadcasting an event, for instance) and make it available on your website. It is possible to record webconferencing (people interacting with a virtual whiteboard in a virtual room) and make it available as well.
DimDim -> Another open source initiative. You can host online meeting without installing any extra program, just go to their website, create a free account and you are up and running. DimDim allows you to schedule and invite anyone without requiring them to install any plugins. Maximum of 20 users in the free ad-supported version of the online web meeting program, but they offer room for up to 100 people for $495/year and an enterprise edition. You can also install locally and free of charge the DimDim Enterprise edition free of charge (it requires more technical know-how).
Elluminate -> Webconferencing tool with many features. Even though the “looks” are more old-fashioned, this program is very stable and well-accepted in the academic arena. They have good academic packages.
Yugma -> Feature-rich webconferencing tool that has a free version. Yugma offers other versions of their packages that allow you to invite more participants at a time. A plugin is required for participant to view the meeting room. An interesting differentiator for Yugma is that they offer a Skype plugin that works seamless with the famous VOIP client.
Vyew -> Web-based tool that has many important features in their free version. No plugins to download and plans that offer more flexibility and storage are also offered.
