There has been a lot of push over the past many years to get more Linux onto more desktops. That’s fine, as long as the pushers keep in mind that an Operating System is, fundamentally, a means and not an end. Similarly, desktop environments are neither the journey nor the destination—they are, at most, the steering wheel and the dashboard.
OK… not really. But I wanted to share with you all a new web conferencing tool that I discovered. Patrick and I tested it the other day and we were relatively impressed. It is an Open Source solution which any geek can get behind. It’s called Dimdim.
This service, like many web conferencing services allows you to share your desktop with others. Dimdim also also allows you to share PPT and PDF’s right within the web conference which is nice. You can use the annotation tools to mark-up the ppt or PDF that you are reviewing as well which comes in handy. You can use the Whiteboard within dimdim to collaboratively share ideas or to highlight things as well.
Dimdim also has VOIP built into the service as well along with video. The video service is not included in the free version but the voice is. You can have up to 4 people I believe all with voice at the same time in the dimdim web conference. The things I liked the best were the ease of use and the nice GUI. A lot of these web conferencing tools today are powerful but don’t allow the user to manage them well and don’t give the user or the participants anything good to look at. And… it’s cross platform. There is no plugin to install when using this tool because it uses Flash to power itself. Pretty cool.
Go check them out if you are currently looking for a web conferencing tool. They have a couple different flavors of their service, one of which is of course free. And if you really want to geek out, since it’s open source you can take the entire application, download it and install it on your own server to use. Pretty cool stuff.
Bruce Parens is up for a seat on the OSI (Open Source Initiative) board. You can read more about them at http://opensource.org/, but the short version is that they help educate and advocate the benefits of Open Source. They also act as a standards body to maintain the Open Source Definition — basically the traits that make up what Open Source is.
Please read up on the subject, then go sign the petition so that he may be elected to the OSI board.
Thank you!