I’ve been deep into making my technology work this week. One issue was web conferencing and we used Dimdim, which I’ve mentioned before. Dimdim is very simple to use, doesn’t require a plugin, is free for 20 users at a time and is open source. I really liked it but found the audio a bit weak and couldn’t get the video to work (probably a stupid-user issue). I also never figured out how to find a recording of the session (other than the chat text). That said, at least it worked with my Mac, as opposed to HP Virtual Rooms, which I could not even launch. And yes, I know that there are always many variables and perhaps the gerbils on my end were too slow. I also went back and checked out Vyew again, which has improved since I last used it and is still free. It’s a good option for web conferencing but the beta Voice/Webcam didn’t work with my Mac. I guess I’m now a member of visible minority on the Web.
For the online work I was doing this week, my MacBook has a definite advantage. I automatically get dual monitors when I plug in an external monitor. With several windows open – skype, web conferencing and reference documents, the LMS evaluations went quite smoothly; from my end anyway. If I only want to use the external monitor, I just close the lid on my MacBook and keep working. It doesn’t shut down as a Windows machine would.
I also re-learned several lessons about presentations, but that’s for another day.
Harold,
Steve from Dimdim here, and a diehard Mac fan. I would be happy to show you how to get your iSight camera to work (silly Flash issue) as I use my MacBook Pro exclusively with Dimdim. All features work great on Mac! Recordings are equally easy to do on a Mac, in fact, check out the 2nd post on my blog here: http://www.MarketingApple.com to see what a replay looks and feels like. Please contact me for any questions and thanks for using Dimdim!
Steve
P.S. here is a technote on getting the iSight camera to be selected: http://help.dimdim.com/activekb/questions/10/I+started+a+meeting+from+my+MacBook.+Audio+was+fine+-+but+the+video+was+not+captured.
Thanks, Steve, who would be able to figure out that according to Adobe, the iSight is a “USB Video Class Video”? I also see that the Whiteboard cannot be recorded in release 4.0 and I assume that pertains to desktop sharing as well, since all I could find was a chat record.
Actually, we do record everything – including the desktop share – with the exception of the whiteboard right now. More details are available here: http://help.dimdim.com/activekb/questions/140/What+is+recorded+when+I+click+the+record+button%3F
Let me know if you need any assistance, I’d be glad to help. Steve
Thanks, Steve. I’ll check it out and “get me some learnin'”.
Well man, if you like dimdim you should check out http://www.spreed.com. It’s even better with some more features. you can make votings while holding a meeting (they call it spreed Votings^^) and the last time I checked out their phone-conference-service with a customer in Europe – I didn’t even need a computer for it… And it worked perfectly!
It’s great what those German guys are coding…
Try to look at the source code of dimdim, it has only v 2.0. Does the company abandon open source strategy?
Open source projects do not release major version upgrades until they are ready. An OS project is not driven by the marketing department (as proprietary software is) but by the community and the state of the technology. Version 2.0 for an OS project is quite mature.