RUNYOURMEETING.COM

Initially I thought that this package was part of the Office 365 license with an E3 account but when I initiated my first meeting I saw that not only is the application a BETA product but it is also its own subscription add-on to Office365. It is interesting that most of their testimonials are coming from outside the US as well. When you look at the site’s stats proudly showing how many meetings have been processed it is quite apparent that they are just starting.

I do like the format and it is very easy to use. It integrates with your Office 365 account very well and does pretty much what you expect it to. It does a great job of helping you to organize your thoughts and capture the information from the meeting as you use it.

What’s included?

• Unlimited meetings and action items

• Integration with Outlook and Office 365

• Mobile app for iOS

• Customer support

• Advanced security to safeguard your meeting documents

Video Conferencing made easy by Logitech

Logitech has three great solutions for adding Video Conferencing to your Conference Room. Gone are the days for most of needing a $50,000 specially designed room to be able to communication both visually and verbally between two locations. It has really become easy and affordable using one of these three solutions from Logitech.

Starting under $300 for the BCC950 these units can bring Video Conferencing into most any situation using your notebook and either a projector or fixed large screen display. They have built high quality microphones that work great in small groups with noise cancellation and high quality audio clarity. They include High Definition 1080p cameras and work with  Microsoft® Lync™ 2013, Cisco Jabber™, WebEx® compatible* and Skype™ certified. See www.logitech.com/ciscocompatibility for the latest version.

All cameras use ZEISS Optics with Autofocus to give you sharp resolution. Whether the camera is showing your smiling face or held up articles or paperwork all can be shared between sites. The camera has a 78 degree field of view and can be controlled with zoom and rotation up to 180 degrees. The sound is crystal-clear. The built-in, full duplex speakerphone and noise-cancelling microphone allow meeting members to hear and be heard clearly up to 8 feet away from the base. The speakerphone can also be used as a standalone during audio calls.

Download the ConferenceCam data sheet

The ConferenceCam is extremely portable, has a 90 degree field of view with digital pan and tilt and a 4x digital zoom. Logitech states that this unit is optimized for small groups of 4-6 people. They have included Mult-Device connectivity that provides simple setup with either PC’s or Mac’s and provides screen mirroring and audio pairing with mobile devices. The acoustics are tuned for a 12 foot radius. Plug in the USB cable and your PC or Mac will begin it’s plug and play connection. There is no software to load or device drives to load everything works in minutes. The unit has a built in rechargeable battery and can run a video call for up to 3 hours of use or 15 hours if you are just using audio. The battery can be recharged using either the AC adapter or USB connection.

Download the ConferenceCam Connect Data Sheet

If you need a system that will allow a slightly larger coverage area the ConferenceCam CC3000e might fit the bill. This system also uses the ZEISS lens with autofocus and 1080p resolution and sports a 10x lossless zoom. It also has a 90 degree field of view with remote controlled mechanical 260 degree pan and 130 degree tilt. It also includes USB Plug and Play connectivity. Optimized for Microsoft® Lync™ 2013, Cisco Jabber™, WebEx® compatible¹, and Skype™ certified ensures an integrated experience with most business-grade UC platforms. The audio microphone allows a 20-foot  diameter around the base without mic pods. The system also support NFC pairing to enable mobile devices connectivity to the base unit. Set up the conference room with up to a 32-foot range between the camera and the speaker. Use the camera on the table or mount it on the wall with included hardware. The bottom of the camera is designed with a standard tripod thread for added versatility. Download the CC3000e Data Sheet

We have had very good results using Logitech’s video conferencing products and if you find yourself wanting to add this capability into your conference room call us to help your pick and design the perfect setup for you.

So what is Microsoft’s Office 365?

Microsoft's Office 365, the next piece of a broader play by Microsoft to bring its suite of Office server tools and collaboration work flows onto the cloud, is expected to launch sometime next year.

The company is already in the stages of testing it with small businesses and has a list of some 60,000 organizations, which are waiting to get access. In the meantime, Microsoft is continuing to fine-tune the product and expand its testing group--both in scale and the size of the companies that are being allowed in.

CNET reports: CNET was lucky enough to get early access to Office 365, which has been designed to work on a number of Web browsers, including Firefox and Safari--though not yet Chrome, which will work when the product is finalized. Office 365 is also cross-platform, so it works with both Macs and PCs. The good news is that in our brief testing, everything worked as advertised. The bad news is that you can't get it right now, and it's still a long ways off from something that lets you every feature out of the Office ecosystem without installing software.

So what is Office 365? This is a service that takes several server based applications and hosts them for you on the internet. These applications include hosted versions of Exchange (Outlook), SharePoint and Lync (replacement for Microsoft’s Communication Server) without having to host these services on your own network and never having to worry about maintenance updates. The service is going to run between $2 and $27 per user per month depending on your company size and which services your subscribe to.

Office 365 is available on a limited testing basis only and has a waiting list of over 40,000 but Microsoft is adding new subscribers daily as they test their server loads and functions. According to CNET they had absolutely no problem with their initial use of the product and they felt the system response was very good.

There is still a heavy reliance on local Office Applications and part of your subscription can include Microsoft Office for your local machine. Otherwise you have to rely on the consumer site for Office Web Apps for accessing Word, Excel and PowerPoint. If you are using Office on your local computer then one of your options with this subscription will be to save your documents to the Team Site (SharePoint) so you can share your files with others or with yourself from other locations.

You no longer need to have Outlook on your local machine in that the interface to the hosted Exchange Server is the new version of Outlook OWA that looks just like the packaged version. It has stronger links back to the Team Site (SharePoint) so that you can open documents into a pop-up browser window right from Outlook. This is quite useful in cases where your local computer doesn’t have Office installed on it. Outlook takes full advantage of keyboard shortcuts which helps you to quickly maneuver through your email.

Lync has some interesting connection to some of Windows Phone 7 and iPhone connections. This is something that I am going to look forward in testing myself to see if it is really useful or not. It provides other features like instant messaging, audio and video conferencing and voice call service. This version is based out of a web browser so it doesn’t have all of the capabilities of the full blown product but I can’t comment on that as of yet since I haven’t used it.

It is nice to have SharePoint on the system so that you can manage its capabilities on a team basis. Between simple list management, communication and file storage this is a great product to enhance how you do things and control workflow in your office.

All in all I would suggest keeping an eye on how this product progresses and when it becomes readily available might be a great addition to your company’s needs. It certainly will be something to look at to see if the pricing can fit within a budget that you can afford for the extra services that you can take advantage of.

Is Dim Dim ready for Prime Time?

We are always looking for great alternatives to software applications that either cost us less or provide more function and I had hoped that Dim Dim had gotten much faster but, it still appears not to have responsiveness of some of the other virtual meeting software that is on the market today.  When I loaded all the PowerPoint presentation it had to convert the format of the file before it was usable, which is not a problem, but the 10 second or more waiting time between slide changes was a bit more than tolerable. Voice connection between systems had a slight delay that was well within acceptable limits and has good quality and clarity.  No fault found there.  But screen changes were entirely too long.

For small individual groups I still think Citrix's GoToMeeting package is the product that we all compare function to.  I will keep working and searching and we will see what comes up and maybe someday we will have a good alternative that is more reasonably priced then GoToMeeting. Though, if you really use the package it is not that unreasonably priced.

Logitech to acquire LifeSize Communications

LifeSize Communications makes products for PC video communications. In an interesting trend LifeSize announced yesterday that they have agreed to be acquired by Logitech International for $405 million in cash. Logitech plans on LifeSize to continue operating as a separate division under the leadership  Craig Malloy the current CEO of LifeSize Communications.