YuuGuu: A Great, Free, Web-sharing Program »
By Brian Bridges on Aug 26, 2008 in CLRN, Web 2.0 | 0 Comments
While I’ve often participated in WebEx conferences in the past, Web 2.0 tools have evolved greatly the past few years to include a number of free, open-source applications that perform the same functions. Last week, I searched through Google, looking for the perfect candidate for our CLRN Management Team meeting which took place yesterday.
At CLRN, we’ve spent the past year updating the back-end of our database, the part seen by CLRN reviewers and management team. While our users won’t see the benefits, or the changes, the new system is significantly different that we planned a web conference to demonstrate it to our review sites, roughly 20 team members. They program we chose, Yuuguu, proved to be a handy, easy to use, and scalable tool that we’re continuing to use for our work. I thoroughly recommend it.
YuuGuu requires that you download and install a desktop application for the primary presenter. I was impressed that YuuGuu completed applications for both Mac and Win platforms, since we’re cross-platform here at CLRN. Once you’ve installed the application and have created your account, sharing is incredibly simple. Opening YuuGuu, you’ll see an AOL/Yahoo type interface that allows you to set-up and save contacts for one-to-one sharing. After you click Web Share, though, you’re shown the PIN number that you can share with those who will connect to your conference. Conference attendees connect to: http://share.yuuguu.com and enter the PIN number to connect to you. Once in, they’ll see your screen including any applications you’re running and they’ll be able to communicate through a chat screen.
For CLRN’s work, we used our conferencing system, which all 20 participants are accustomed to using for our monthly phone calls. With YuuGuu and our conferencing system, there was no difference between YuuGuu and WebEx.
I was concerned whether we’d have problems with lag time, given the number of people who were connected. However, regardless whether we connected two or 20, rarely did more than one second pass before all users were seeing the same screen. Again, we’re quite impressed and we’ll be back for more.
