go to meeting.com

[Mister Bushice]

Anyone ever use it?

Are there free versions out there, or better ones?

[ElTaco]

It all depends on what you are trying to do. There are many websites/services/software out there that can do the same thing on some level. If you just want to do one on one 'meetings/presentation' you can usually use any one of many IM programs. Some of them will even allow you to share apps for demonstrations or just share a presentation. With Skype and a good Broadband program, you can even do voice, video and presentations. AIM and other IM programs do similar things. Another choice is Microsoft's Office Communicator, which can do video, whiteboard, shared apps, and voice conferencing.

Of course when companies do collaboration, they usually use a voice/phone bridge service and again you could, if you want a free one, build your own. You can use the Asterisk Open source PBX system. Again to do this well, you need a decent internet connection. There are of course pay for turn key solutions if you want it for a business and even VOIP companies that will supply phone #s and voip lines for Asterisk servers.

Microsoft has Office Groove as a collaboration tool that is part of office 2007. They also have the SharePoint server, which is a Wiki like software for online collaboration. Finally they offer 'Office Live meeting' for online live collaboration software.

As far as the web goes, webex.com is another pay solution. A partially free service is: http://www.freeconference.com/. Also http://www.conferenceplus.com has some trial/free services.

Also wikipedia has a list of collaboration software, most of it free: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... e_software

At my previous job I did my own research on this. Unfortunately there isn't a lot out there that can rival pay for services like webex or similar large sites. Your best bet may be to keep it simple and either send a presentation ahead of the 'meeting' and have an over the phone meeting and sign up for one of these services in case you need a larger business meeting once in a while.

[PSUFAN]

I've used gotomeeting quite a lot in the past couple of months. One of the vendors we work with here connects to a PC here, and then a network guy opens up a VNC window, and he goes in and makes changes to a DB and to the configuration files. We here don't have to do anything but install an applet. Good program; I'm sure that there are other good options.

[Mister Bushice]

Hey, thanks for all the info. I'm in talks with another company for a merger, and we're looking into all the options since we're too far away from each other to meet regularly. I've never had the need for a gotomeeting type program before, but I believe they want 50 bucks a month, and I don't see us using it more than a few times at first then maybe once a month after that.

[PSUFAN]

I would say that if you had technicians who have to make modifications to things that can be accessed on local networks, then you will save a lot of money using a virtual program of this type. That's a lot cheaper than sending someone on site.

[BSmack]

Hey, thanks for all the info. I'm in talks with another company for a merger, and we're looking into all the options since we're too far away from each other to meet regularly. I've never had the need for a gotomeeting type program before, but I believe they want 50 bucks a month, and I don't see us using it more than a few times at first then maybe once a month after that.

Even if you only use it once a month, as long as it saves just one plane fare and hotel bill, you're money ahead.

[Mister Bushice]

True, that's why I'm looking around. Never having used it before, I always go for free first, then look to pay for it if I have to. :)