Viack Web Conferencing Capability
You've heard about Internet phones, right? There's everything from Skype, which allows you to talk to someone halfway around the world using your PC for free, to services such as AT&T CallVantage, which uses your broadband but allows you to use your regular phone handset and gives you a telephone number anyone can call. Well, there's another way to talk. Are you old enough to remember Picturephone? (I'm dating myself.) It's a service that AT&T tried to offer back in the 1950s, but technical issues got in the way.
No more! Web conferencing with audio and video is here! Several vendors offer this service. One is Viack, a 100-person company with offices in Redmond, Washington (sound familiar?), Phoenix, and Washington, D.C. Their service, at $95/month per concurrent conference user (list price--they can negotiate discounts depending on how much business you offer them) offers audio, video (using your webcam), shared whiteboards, screen sharing, and some limited collaborative capabilities.
I tried Viack (www.viack.com) a few days back, under the careful eyes of Michael Marmolejo and Kris Cobb from Viack. The download is simple--a 12.5 MB client that shouldn't take too long if you have broadband, which you need anyway in order to use the service. Make note: their software, VIA3, only works with Internet Explorer, so don't make that icon go away after you install Firefox!
You'll need at least 256 KBps down and 128 KBps up for the service to work, although I think I'd recommend more. I have twice that here in Ridgway, and found the service quality excellent.
Once you sign in, you can see which of your buddies are on line. The first level of service is instant messaging (think like AOL Instant Messaging, except without the ads). Next, you can click on one of your buddies (they must also be signed up for the service), and propose an audio/visual meeting. Once the meeting is set up, you see video of each of the participants on the left side of your screen. I was favorably impressed by the video, which uses H264 compression, the latest available. The video would lock up occasionally, probably due to my limited bandwidth line, but when the video moved it was sharp and clear.
You see all the participants at once--Mike, Kris and I all appeared together. It's nice to see yourself and make sure you look interested in the proceedings! The rest of the screen is devoted to screen sharing, called LiveView. The conference moderator can share applications, such as PowerPoint, and everyone can see it. One downside--during a Liveview session, the video for the person sharing the application will lock up. This is a "feature." It's too bad, because I'd like to see the presenter's body language.
There's also a whiteboard, which anyone can draw on. There is also a limited capability for collaborative work (anyone can participate) if you have Windows or PowerPoint. Note: You need Windows 2000 or later--it wouldn't work with my old Windows 97. Mike and Kris also tell me that the PowerPoint collaboration is "limited," but since my PowerPoint is also old, I didn't find out just what that meant. However, I've found in previous web conferencing work that if several people watched while I typed, they could tell me what to do (and they did!).
I was very interested in the audio delay. Mike and I started off on the plain old telephone, while he walked me through setting up the software. Once we had it running, I could hear him both on the telephone and on the computer. There's about a half-second delay over the computer. While this doesn't seem bad, make note that when people get hot and heavy in a conference setting, they're going to want to interrupt each other, and the delay can get in the way. I find this is true even with an Internet telephone, with about a quarter-second delay. So, beware--your participants will need to learn some phone courtesy to keep from stepping on each other. Other than the delay, I was very impressed by the audio quality--no dropouts and good fidelity. I used the headset that came with my Dragon Naturally Speaking software. You'll probably want to use a headset too.
Viack touts their security. They've put considerable effort into making sure that no one else can butt in on your meetings. This has a downside: if you forget your password, they can't recover it for you. Keep that in mind.
I should explain the $95/month/concurrent user part. That means if you're a small business with, say, 100 employees, and you sign up for the service, Viack will track the number of people using the system. If your usage peak out at 20 people using AV conferences at one time, you're charged for 20 x $95. The instant messaging part is free, so all 100 employees can use that at once without jacking up the price. As far as I could tell, the Viack instant messaging is not interoperable with any other provider's IM services, such as AOL.
Another downside: The software is downright sticky. Every time I boot up my computer, it insists I sign in. And, it puts an icon in the system tray. That might be nice if you use it constantly, but it is rather intrusive, in my opinion.
Bottom line: High quality audio/video/web conferencing with a simple price structure with good security. There are some features lacking, such as the ability to use your cursor freely on another person's computer, which would help in truly collaborative application work. It would also be nice if it worked with Firefox. It's rather pricey, but again, take your business case to Kris and see what she can do for you.
