If you have ever listened to any of Leo Laporte’s programs, either his many podcasts or his weekend radio show, you have probably heard him talk about GoToMeeting.com.  This service lets users connect to a virtual meeting space and share documents, presentations, virtual whiteboards, video conferencing, and much more.  Its really a great service, but it costs a considerable amount of money to have and use.  I am always looking for alternatives to subscription services.  Well I have found it and it is called: dimdim.

dimdim.com is a service that is very similar to the subscription services.  They try to stay pretty close to the feature set that the others provide and even have some features that are exclusive to dimdim. One cool feature is the free telephone number that is provided to all meetings.  You can give out this number and participants can call in and listen to the webinar without having a computer!

Below is a partial feature list:

• Audio/Video Conferencing
• Screen Capture
• Whiteboard and Annotations
• Powerpoint Sharing
• Public and Private Chat
• Webpage Sharing
• Phone number for people to call in
• Meeting Recording/Embedding

Imagine some of the uses of a free product like this.  A teacher could invite a college professor to give a short demonstration using dimdim.  A teacher in Texas could co-teach a lesson with another teacher in New York.  Absent students could connect at home and watch their teacher that day.  The possibilities are endless!

Dimdim does much more.  It is free for the first 20 participants, and they have a paid version for more participants. An account is free, so go and try it out.  The CEO does a weekly webinar using dimdim to describe its features and show off some of the cool things that it can do.

http://www.dimdim.com

education, meetings, tech Hide