Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 29 June 2008 20:02
Opinion and Analysis
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Being in the web conferencing business, Citrix are naturally upbeat that the service will continue being popular, especially in the costly energy environment we all now live in, and quote IDC stats showing that web conferencing has doubled over the last five years.
GoToWebinar is an online seminar tool that allows up to 1000 attendees, is based on the same technology, will be outfitted with VoIP technology and on the organiser dashboard lets organisers see an “attentiveness” meter.
This tracks how many people have the conference window open instead of another window in focus, which could indicate you’re losing people’s attention as they read email or do something else, with this information being made available to the meeting organiser in real time.
The GoToWebinar technology also lets organisers record the webinar, mute and unmute individuals, and have attendees switch between VoIP and PSTN mid meeting if needed.
GoToWebinar also allows real time polls and questions so you can make a webinar an interactive event.
Citrix also tout their ability to be bandwidth adaptive on the fly, catering to different amounts of bandwidth that individual members computers are reporting to the underlying Citrix technology.
This means that people on a slower connection get fewer pixels than those on a cable connection – but it does keep everyone up to speed.
As you’d expect, Citrix say the solution is secure, using 128-bit end to end encryption, and the solution works on both PCs and Macs, especially as Macs become more popular in homes and businesses.
The new versions will appear in the next few days, and while the pricing is still in US dollars, an Australian entity has been set up for the corporate side to give local companies Australian dollar pricing and billing.
In other Citrix news the
GoToAssist Express online tech support solution has been a great success, giving similar capabilities to LogMeIn Rescue, and while it has been in the beta period usage has been completely free.
I’ve used the product now on numerous occasions to do online tech support for family and friends, and it’s been a smooth and fast experience, with the program soon to be released as a shipping version.
There are other solutions but GoToAssist allows you to simply direct people to a website (www.fastsupport.com), whereupon you give them a 9 digit code, supplied by the GoToAssist software on your own computer, and within two or three minutes maximum you are connected to their computer and helping them with their problems.
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