ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

To paraphrase a 03-May-06 article in Web Conferencing Tools News & Reviews, “Skypecast – a new way to do Web Conferences”:

Skype has been a great tool to do small Web Conferences of 5-10 people. Recently it got better with the introduction of a new moderated Skypecast Web Conferencing service. Any Skype user can now do a free live Web conferences with up to 100 persons through their client software.

All you have to do is login into the Skypecast service with your Skype ID, describe what the event is about and schedule it on the site. You can also send out invitations or announce the event on another website or a forum. Members of the community then register and participate in the live Web Conference. As a Web Conference moderator, you can pass “virtual microphone” to participants, mute, eject or encourage conversations.

CHECKED OUT Skypecasting this afternoon and learnt a few new things today.

Skypecasting is still basically text and audio conferencing, with rudimentary moderation features (as described above). However, to obtain an almost full-fledged webconferencing solution, we can easily use it with free or low-cost tools such as:

• Pamela (thanks, Gordon) or Skylook for quick voice recording: In addition, Skylook enables the user to “make Skype calls and start Skype text chats directly from Outlook 2000/XP/2003 (not Express!) contacts and emails. It shows contacts who are online in the Outlook toolbar and provides options to review contact details and review previous communications with the contact. It also records all voice calls and text chats to a special Outlook folder, allowing them to be organized and managed like email. Voice calls are recorded to MP3 attachments to these items.”
• Glance or GoToMeeting for easy screensharing — to show PowerPoint slides, use a website to share conference papers, run a poll, etc.: In Robin Good’s words, “[With Glance,] activating a new conference in which you can show whatever is going on in your screen to as many people as you like takes only two clicks… GoToMeeting is a simple tool focused on doing screen sharing and remote control in an extremely effective way. Its screen-sharing abilities are compounded by a high quality screen-sharing engine capable of adjusting automatically to different bandwidth connections while always delivering a 24-bit full color image of the screen being broadcast (many screen sharing solutions default to 256-colors).”

(See also more details on other webconferencing tools in Kollabora.)