PlaceWare Revs Up Web Conferencing

For many Fortune 500 corporations, online multimedia conferencing has become a standard medium for conducting briefings, meetings, and seminars. But one of the strengths of the technology is that the same tools are available to smaller companies.

Enhancements to PlaceWare's Conference Center 2000 and new services such as PlaceWare Forum help companies that can't afford large dedicated events staffs to manage, promote, and evaluate the success of online events. Its MyPlaceWare Pro is designed for small businesses that may have customers and suppliers spread over a wide area.

PlaceWare uses the Internet to carry slides, files, and other presentation material while the speaker and audience--or various conference participants--use any of a number of conference-calling technologies to link their voices.

Pick Up the Phone

In most online multimedia conferencing, hearing participants clearly can be an exercise in frustration, as gaps, pauses, and distortions overwhelm the human voice. Streaming media still has problems carrying "telephone quality" voice alongside images, text, motion graphics, and other rich media that can make up a presentation. (See "Teleconferencing Made Easy" and "Presentations in a Browser.")

PlaceWare has neatly sidestepped this limitation by falling back on a proven technology for voice communication: If you want to be part of a conference on PlaceWare, you click on your browser and pick up your telephone.

No More Flights to Cleveland

PlaceWare has recently updated Conference Center 2000 to include streaming media players, instant polling reports within conferences or seminars, and software that can integrate with Microsoft's Outlook and Internet Explorer. The integrated features are particularly important for companies using PlaceWare as an internal meeting tool, replacing flights and teleconferencing for long-distance collaboration.

PlaceWare has three primary service offerings that differ in their capacities and intended use. Conference Center 2000 is designed for companies to use for seminars and conferences that encompass those within and outside the company. Pricing is $400 per seat per year, with the number of seats based on the highest number of concurrent users in the year. Meeting Center 2000 is intended as a meeting tool within the organization, and its pricing is based on "offices" that can support up to ten concurrent users. Pricing begins at $5000 per year for three offices, up to $30,000 for 20 offices.

MyPlaceWare Pro comes with less event support than Conference Center and Meeting Center, but can be charged to a credit card on a monthly basis. A five-seat license is $100 monthly, while ten seats will add 200 frequent flyer miles to your credit card each month.

Users can try the service with MyPlaceWare Trial, which allows up to five users and leaves the setup to you. It's free, and if you've never been part of an online conference, it can be eye-opening to see just how information can flow--especially when you can actually hear and understand every word the other participants are saying.