Vinodh Pushparaj asked:




Online collaboration has begun to evolve from just being the Wow factor to something core that every business has to invest and have a plan for. Internet has changed the way we work and live, it has made virtual offices and work from homes possible. Web conferencing is one big tool that increases the productivity of the employees and the company as such. There are multiple products in this web collaboration segment out there from companies starting with Cisco, Microsoft to PresentPlus.com. These online conferencing products enable live meetings to happen in a virtual conference room. This is a Sci-Fi dream just a few decades ago, now it is a reality in high resolution video beamed across continents. The advent of high speed Internet and fantastic QoS (Quality of Service) implementations in the backbone networks has enabled these highly productive multimedia conferences. Typical conferences has always included a dull one way non-interactive lecture style over the phone meetings, remember Charlie’s Angels. Now it has evolved into something highly feature rich and highly productive.

Web conferences “NOW” enable online sharing of your presentation material and additional documentation that is needed for the meeting. Additionally it provides the collaboration aspects like shared white boards and live synchronized presentations. The other main core components are the audio, video and text collaboration. The traditional PBX audio has been replaced with the reach VOIP audio features and video has evolved from dull one ways to active speaker- grid solutions. Video has evolved so well that now you can have custom views for each person in the conference, each person can choose the endpoints or cameras they want to watch in addition to the capabilities like automatically getting the video from the active speaker in the conference. One of the much used features is the integrated text chats with emoticons. What a fantastic feature this is, along with the public chat modules the users get to have their own private chats. While you are in the online meeting you can chat with your co-worker on specific questions and get something cleared without interrupting the overall meeting. This is one thing that is uniquely possible in online conferences which is really an annoyance in real face to face meetings. How many times have you really wanted the mute button for the private conversation between 2 guys in a group meeting in parallel to the main speaker? This text capability has found really some interesting and useful twists like real time polling and online question submissions. Think about it, you can keep sending the questions you want to be answered in the final Q/A as and when it strikes you. These are typically added to a queue which can feed as the source for the Q/A session that typically follows the preso or meeting. This is very useful in lecture style meetings. Enough said about the features and let’s take a quick look at the business side of things.

Web conferencing products allow the businesses to setup virtual global office ready to meet with business prospects and clients at any time anywhere. When I say anywhere I mean contact any one through these online collaboration products having a rich experience like the face to face meeting without the costly Flight and Hotel expenses. These also present a great opportunity to telecommute without distancing yourself from your colleagues. More so often it happens that folks who telecommute are forgotten by most colleagues, these video and other real time capabilities gets these telecommuters closer to the rest of the team. One of the killer uses is webcasting which is organizing live events and broadcasting these events to employees and customers who are not able to attend the event. This is added with the capability to record these meetings with unlimited playbacks. Without much investment in terms of capital equipment you can get them as online services on a need basis from some of the good companies. One such company with many web conferencing offerings is presented to you below.

Floyd

Nathalie Fiset asked:




These past few years, we have seen the emergence of a new technology called Voice Over Internet Protocol or VOIP. This marvelous development allows people to transmit their voices through the internet, transforming their headsets and computers into telephones. You might think that this is redundant, considering that most internet connections today use something akin to a phone line. However, you haven’t heard about the benefits of web phone conferencing yet.

People today make use of different web phone meeting services in order to make sure that they are able to communicate properly and effectively without having to pay the costs of a long-distance telephone call. As you may probably know, the biggest problem that people have with using a phone to hold a teleconference is that the costs tend to vary with distance. With the development of VOIP, however, you only need to pay a fraction of the price for the connectivity.

There is one problem with this technology, however, and it lies on the fact that we are talking about a relatively new development here. People who are expecting to find the same type of quality and clarity in using online phone conferencing may end up disappointed. This is because there are still some bugs that need to be worked out in order to allow people to have the same experience as using a phone.

There are, however, some factors that make people favor internet phone meetings using VOIP over conventional teleconferences. These factors, added to the savings, make web phone conferences quite irresistible to customers. Let’s take for example that this technology allows people to use the connection for other types of communications while they are on the phone.

On a normal teleconference, people can hardly multi-task. The limited technology only allows them so much leg room in order to do their jobs. With the internet teleconference, people are able to do various things such as document editing, slide show presentations and even sending video messages. This is because the entirety of the resources of the internet is not used to project voice alone. This means that you can save a lot of time and effort using internet phone meeting technology.

There is, however, another limitation to be considered. You have to remember that there are a lot of people who depend on eye contact in order to transmit their message and give it emphasis. When you go with internet phone conferencing, it can only give you an illusion of having eye contact. Why is this? Well, with online phone conferences, people are given the idea that they will be able to communicate using web cams.

Although the usage of cameras can be a very significant improvement over merely depending on speech for communication, a lot of people are turned off because the experience is not quite what they expected. When they make use of video and web phone conferencing, they might expect an experience that’s very much like talking in person and therefore, lack the necessary preparations to help them emphasize messages without use of their eyes.

When you make use of internet phone meeting services, you might end up not being able to prepare properly for a meeting simply because you have been convinced by different science fiction movies to expect too much from such. If you, however, wish to make your conversations more meaningful, then it would be better if you looked into the screen when listening and look into the camera when you are talking. This may seem inconvenient but it’s also very effective.

VOIP is seen as quite advantageous by people in the sense that this piece of technology allows them to coordinate meetings better. With your conventional teleconference session, people have to identify themselves by voice and had to take turns talking in order to be clearly understood. However, with the emergence of phone web conferencing, people can now talk quickly and have their opinions noted without identifying themselves by name. This saves a lot of time. Of course, it still helps if people took turns speaking.

Phone web conferencing is quickly becoming a staple part of business today. It follows in the footsteps of other accessories which proved their worth to be necessities. This makes one wonder what people will think of next.

Jesse