Conferencing on the fly

Last week I was able to catch two webinars on presentations over the web.

First I caught the Breeze as eLearning tool. As an eLearing tool I thought it was pretty good. As a presentation tool it looked very compelling. I'm not sure if Macromedia offers hosting (I'm sure they must) or just buy their server software, but over all I think Breeze looks powerful.

I was also able to also participate in a 30 min Convoq demostration of ASAP. This product I think I like a little more than Breeze. Maybe its the way it connects through my IM client (big names only) or the ease of starting a meeting, but I like it.

ASAP isn't perfect, though, it's a hosted service so when you want to share a presentation you have to first convert it from PPT to their flash-based format through a handy button in PowerPoint, then upload it. But you can't pre-upload in advance of a meeting. It's upload now, use now. Also if you start screen-sharing, you lose the presentation and have to re-upload it. Granted it doesn't take much time over DSL, but it isn't instanteous either. Tim, my account rep tells me that these problems will be taken care of in the next revision coming out August or September.

Convoq was kind enough to supply my team with enough demo licenses and time to fully evaluate the product. I've already had several ad-hoc meetings with folks on XP, Win98, and OS X. No problems. Audio and video streaming too. I also had a great chat with Tim this afternoon using the built in VoIP and video. It was nice and clear and we could both hear and understand each other fine.

I'm looking forward to giving ASAP a real-life test drive with client soon.