Slick, Free Virtual Meetings–For Windows, the Mac or Linux
September 24th, 2007 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 21 Comments
Meetings–they never seem to stop, do they? If you grow weary of meetings and the travel that often goes along with them, or if you just want to investigate one of the coolest, free ways to collaborate with other people, give Yugma a try. It’s a free application, hosted on the web and Java-based, and it’s aimed at Windows, Mac and Linux users.
Like many of the other virtual meeting products, there are paid versions of Yugma in addition to the free version. However, many web workers will find that they have all they need in the free version. With the free version, you can invite up to 10 participants into a virtual meeting with you, share your desktops back and forth, whiteboard and annotate files, and when you set up a session, a free teleconferencing session and number are generated for you. Another very cool feature of Yugma is that you can embed it into your web site.
Registering for the application takes less than a minute, and you can be in your first Yugma session within two minutes. You’ll see that a session begins with prompts asking you to specify who the presenter is. If you’re the presenter, others can see the actions you take on screen as they meet with you. It’s very easy to specify one of the other participants as presenter.
The whiteboarding and annotation tools in Yugma are rich and easy to use. Also, if you’re a Skype user, definitely try Yugma’s Skype Edition. It makes it very easy to select meeting participants from your existing Skype Contact List. And, keep in mind that Yugma’s ability to share desktops makes it ideal for web workgroups who might want to have a techie person in the group diagnose and analyze any system or application problems in real time.
So what do the paid versions of Yugma give you that the free version doesn’t have? If you want to do virtual meetings with very large numbers of participants the paid versions accommodate those. Yugma’s Premium Edition lets you invite up to 500 online participants into a meeting, and you can record sessions that you can upload for archival purposes to Yugma. The Premium Edition starts at $9.95, but I’m more than happy with the free service, and I bet you will be too. Even many users of WebEx–used to paying fairly big fees for premium meeting and collaboration services–will probably find what they need in Yugma.
Do you have any virtual meeting or collaboration tips?
21 Comments Post your own comment
Yugma - Free Teleconferencing and Desktop sharing up to 10 pax. at Justin Lee’s JBlog 3.0 says: September 24th, 2007 7:47pm
[...] useful. Been looking for one of these since my webex, goto and raindance days in L2 Solutions. (Recommended by Web Worker Daily) No [...]
aniMOte says: September 25th, 2007 1:45am
Looks good… gonna try it out. Thanks!
Anonymous says: September 25th, 2007 12:31pm
Free cross-platform virtual meetings with Yugma
Of all the sites flowing through the tubes of the internet, one of my very favorite is Web Worker Daily. While many of us might not consider ourselves web workers because our jobs don’t have us working on the web, merely in it, I think that near…
Business Hacks mobile edition says: September 26th, 2007 12:01pm
[...] The free version of Yugma lets you invite up to 10 attendees. Yugma Premium, which starts at $9.95 per month, bumps up the number of allowed attendees and adds features like shared file space, session recording/playback, and scheduled sessions. (The free version lets you demo these features for 15 days.) This could be just the ticket if you need an easy way to collaborate with far-flung co-workers or communicate effectively with clients. [via Web Worker Daily] [...]
JTPRATT's Blogging Mistakes says: September 27th, 2007 11:23am
This is a great find! Thanks for this! I have been in the position to need to meet with someone virtually and kept considering the “GoToMeeting” thingie you hear about on the radio. I had no idea that a free option existed!
Jason says: October 2nd, 2007 7:19pm
I tried, I’m sold. I’m in!!! Yugma rocks!
Free Collaboration and Online Meetings–for Windows or the Mac « Web Worker Daily says: October 18th, 2007 4:00pm
[...] the like. If you’re interested in this type of collaboration application, I also highly recommend Yugma. Yugma is also free, and lets you hold instant online meetings (complete with conference call [...]
Blog of Blogs » Blog Archive » Online Meetings–for Windows or the Mac says: October 19th, 2007 10:32am
[...] the like. If you’re interested in this type of collaboration application, I also highly recommend Yugma. Yugma is also free, and lets you hold instant online meetings (complete with conference call [...]
Brian says: October 31st, 2007 10:13am
We’ve been using Yugma at my office now for a couple of weeks. Its definitely a good alternative to GoToMeeting. Most of us have our own free accounts for impromptu meetings with small groups. We are planning on purchasing a few premium accounts to facilitate are larger meetings.
Mia says: October 31st, 2007 2:44pm
We’ve been using it for a while too, works great! They also have a skype version that we use with our int’l meetings. Definitely a good find.
Web Conferencing Roundup: 9 Tools for Online Meetings « Web Worker Daily says: November 15th, 2007 5:38pm
[...] Yugma (WWD review) [...]
Alex says: November 16th, 2007 4:24am
Yeah!!! I just heard about the new Yugma Viewer feature. Its really awesome. check it out at yugma.com/viewer . it makes Yugma amazingly easy and simple.
Web Worker Daily » Archive Six Offbeat Ways to Share Files Online–Free « says: November 28th, 2007 4:02pm
[...] My free tool of choice for Windows, Mac, and Linux users for that is Yugma. It’s actually a full-blown online meeting application but it makes it super easy to transfer control of various desktops around a virtual meeting and [...]
Jamie says: November 29th, 2007 6:24am
after finding this article in my search for such product, i tried yugma a few days ago. easy install, free trial for the first 15 days, a viewer for those who don’t want to install, scheduling, annotation tools, what more could anyone need? it’s the perfect solution and EASY ON THE BUDGET!
Nisarg says: January 13th, 2008 5:26am
Great write up!!
I was looking for something like this, for a while, did try a few of them, and Yugma seems to a pretty rich tool.
However, it seems it does not support desktop sharing on linux yet? I am using Ubuntu 7.10
Regards
Dave Nilmra says: January 14th, 2008 5:46am
In addition to yugma we have stated using using anther free app called Yakkle within our support team and with a few customers. Yakkle also provides an integrated app for multi-user IM, VoIP, and desktop sharing. It seems to provide a much less jittery desktop sharing experience over high latency connections.
Todd Lane says: January 18th, 2008 12:41pm
Vyew is another presentation and collaboration platform to consider. Participants can present, create and collaborate on content together in real time or separately at their convenience (workspaces are always on). Vyew requires no software installation and it’s free. http://www.vyew.com
Dean says: February 5th, 2008 7:44pm
Hey… check this out. Yugma just got Skype Certified… on both their Windows and Mac versions. Just tried it. Awesome. Highly recommend. Got a good review at Skype Journal http://skypejournal.com/blog/2008/02/yugma_skype_becomes_skype_cert.html
Eric says: April 3rd, 2008 9:36pm
I found this Youtube video about Yugma’s vision. It’s actually very interesting. I like!
see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe9qU3H3LJk
Web Worker Daily » Archive Yugma: Free Online Conferencing Tool Gets an Upgrade « says: April 4th, 2008 4:00pm
[...] No Comments Yugma is one of my favorite free, web-hosted applications. I’ve written about it before here and now it’s out in a new version 3 that offers some useful enhancements. The rollout [...]
Robin Baker says: April 10th, 2008 7:59am
A terrific web-hosted service that is ideal for businesses is offered by my company, Glance Networks. While it’s not free, it’s very affordable, and has the advantage of excellent customer service and a remarkably simple interface. It’s perfect for the non-techie AND technie. I’d suggest a look at http://glance.net.