3 Stars – It Rocks!
2 Stars – Not So Bad!
1 Star – Hope they didn’t quit their day job!

GoToMeeting

www.gotomeeting.com

Freelance Weekly Rating: 3 Stars

About: Citrix Online is a fast-growing division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), based in Santa Barbara, California, with satellite offices and data centers around the world. GoToMeeting is a Web conferencing tool that allows you to meet online rather than in a conference room. It’s the easiest and most cost-effective way to organize and attend online meetings. Patented technology enables co-workers, customers and prospects to view any application running on your PC in real time. With the flexibility to meet in person or online, you’ll be able to do more and travel less.

Set Up: 1^st: Start or schedule a meeting from the “GoToMeeting” PC system tray or Mac dock. Choose between VoIP and phone conferencing or allow both options for audio.

2^nd: Invite up to 15 people via email or phone. Attendees don’t need to sign up to join your meeting, they just click an email link or enter the meeting ID online.

3^rd: Click “Show My Screen” to start secure screen sharing. Give presentations, demo software, collaborate on projects, or provide training right from your desktop.

Navigation: Easy Meeting Entry: You and your attendees can join meetings in seconds, without having to set up complicated video feeds or Webcams. Attendees don’t even have to register for an account.

Simple Features: Easily share keyboard and mouse control or switch presenters. Share just a certain program or your whole screen. Even record your meetings.

Integrated Audio: Phone conferencing numbers are included in email invitations and on the Control Panel, and VoIP begins instantly when you start the session.

Sharing: With GoToMeeting, it’s easy to conduct on-the-fly or scheduled presentations with a prospective customer, perform live demonstrations in real time, collaborate on documents with your colleagues and provide training to customers and employees

Pricing: Buy a Plan Now Monthly Cost/ Total Annual Cost Monthly Plan (No long-term commitment) $49.00/ $588.00 or Annual Plan (Save 20%) $39.00/ $468.00 Best Value

• One flat fee lets you host unlimited online meetings with up to 15 attendees per meeting.

• No need to purchase licenses for meeting attendees: all attendees meet for free.

• Save money with free phone conferencing, VoIP or both.

• Have 10 or 10,000 meetings a year for one low price.

Customer Service: Online Help, 24/7 Global Customer Support, Live Training

Recommendation: I highly recommend GoToMeeting for the ease of navigation and many features it offers.

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Zoho Meeting

http://meeting.zoho.com

Freelance Weekly Rating: 2 Stars

About: Zoho.com is a division of ZOHO Corporation (formerly AdventNet Inc.), a privately-held and profitable company. With headquarters in Pleasanton, CA and offices in Austin, New Jersey, London, Tokyo and Beijing, ZOHO Corp. serves the technology needs of more than 40,000 customers worldwide. Zoho.com is a comprehensive suite of award-winning on-line business applications. Customers use Zoho to run their business processes, manage their information and be more productive while at the office or on the go, without having to worry about expensive or outdated hardware or software.

Set Up: To get started, register and create a Zoho account then login to Zoho Meeting from your home PC and Create a Meeting. Give it a name – like ‘My Home PC’, change the ‘Control Transfer’ option to ‘Auto’ at the bottom and create the meeting. Once the meeting is created, start the meeting. It’ll prompt you to install an Active-X control. Once installed, you’ll notice a ‘Meeting Started Successfully’ dialog near the Zoho Meeting toolbar. The toolbar can be minimized to the tray. This completes the one-time setup process.

Navigation: Zoho Meeting may not be as “fine-tuned” or feature-specific as paid services like GoToMeeting, but it gets the job done, and no one can argue with free. Among the positive traits of this product I want to mention there are certainly the simplicity of the set up process and the invitation management, which are always straightforward and efficient. Another strong point is the very good quality of the screen sharing performance, which is one of the best I have seen so far in similar tools. The possibility to embed the web conferencing room into any website is also a valuable feature that is not available in other free web conferencing systems. However, some significant negative traits emerge from this test: the lack of annotation tools and the impossibility to change the presenter during the meeting are certainly noticeable.

Sharing: Zoho Meeting empowers you to meet online and collaborate with your remote audience. With the Online Meeting functionality, you can organize sales and marketing presentations, host product demos, and conduct online training for your customers. In addition, you can host web meetings and share presentations to larger audience remotely. Zoho Meeting provides you an easy, secure and cost-effective way to organize and attend online meetings.

Host secured web meetings and share desktop online with your remote customers. Share presentations, ideas and collaborate efficiently with your customers, clients, or co-workers online. Conduct cost-effective group online meetings with the members being in different locations of the world. With real-time meetings, you can collaborate and share ideas efficiently, which allows you to be as persuasive as you would be in person. Provide collaborative work environment.

Pricing: Two Plans: 1^st: Free One on One Meeting, 2^nd: Looking to Provide Online Support, 5 Participants starting @ $12.00 a month.

Customer Service: Customer support telephone number, online Zoho Meeting user manual, online demo videos, interact with our user community, blogs

Recommendation: If you’re looking for something a little less costly without sacrificing all of the features I recommend this product.

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SharedView

http://connect.microsoft.com

Freelance Weekly Rating: 1 Star

About: Microsoft SharedView is part of the new generation of help desk and support tools from Microsoft and it allows users with a LIVE account to request collaboration from anyone at any time. It can be launched as a stand-alone application or inside many Microsoft applications like Office (Word, Excel, etc.) or LIVE Messenger. Once it has been launched and the user has logged in, it’s possible to work together.

Set Up: Installation is a breeze.  Download the MSI installer from the link from either here (SharedView website big red button) or here (via Microsoft Downloads).  No post-install system-reboot needed. Attendees who are sent the email invitation get both an html link to the session along with the link, session name and password to join.  If their system doesn’t have SharedView pre-loaded the web-page launched when logging into the session will prompt the user to download/install the software. (Starting a Session – Joining)

Navigation: Common MS Layout, Feel and Look.

Sharing: Launch the application and an inconspicuous SharedView action bar appears at the top of your display. Click the “orb” and you can create a new session (Starting a Session – Signing in). Follow the steps to log in with your Windows Live ID credentials (free signup if you don’t have one) and you create your session info.  You can then copy/paste or insert the info into an email to send to invitees. SharedView supports up to 15 attendees in a single session (Starting a Session – Beginning). You can also temporarily hand off control to a participant so they can edit a document on your system directly.  Moving your mouse restores control back to you instantly. Nice. (Taking Control). The session host is presented a “will you allow” message as each invitee checks in. (Managing and Monitoring Participation). There are some other options like allowing each participant’s own cursor to appear on everyone’s screen views with the name. Temporary highlighting is also included.  It’s really cool. (Pointing and Highlighting). It also has a basic “chat” feature to send messages that appear on everyone’s window (Using Chat).

Connect with up to 15 people in different locations and get your point across by showing them what’s on your screen. Work together in real time. Share, review, and update documents with multiple people in real time. Use when and where you want SharedView is easy to use, from anywhere, at a moment’s notice. It doesn’t support audio/video (as in web-cams for attendee shared communication). But if you can set up a phone/conference call, this is an amazing product for small workgroups, offices, and home-users.  It could also be used to perform remote-connection support in a pinch… But, Windows Live Messenger can fill this gap by calling computer to computer or just by calling the other party via telephone.

Pricing: Free

Customer Service: FAQ, Your Participation Help: Get more information about participating in and joining connections and programs. Connection Directory Help: Get help understanding more about connections and programs on the Connection Directory. Microsoft Connect General Help: Find out other common ideas about the Microsoft Connect Web site. Windows Live ID Sign- In Help: Get help regarding your Windows Live ID credentials, passwords, and signing in.

Recommendation: This software features the basics and has a limit on number of participants. I recommend using one of the other products to avoid any restrictions.