Collaborate in the cloud with others
Dimdim (DEMOfall 07) announced today it is opening its free service to the public. The Dimdim offering allows anyone to create and host a Web meeting, and share their desktop, show documents and slides, collaborate via whiteboard, as well as talk via Internet audio through any Web browser (no additional downloads required by attendees).
The company plans a professional ($99 per room per year) and enterprise ($18,000 per year for a dedicated, on-site server), with additional features such as customization, scalability and two-way video features.
DD Ganguly, CEO and co-founder of Dimdim, says he "absolutely" stands by his DEMOfall 07 on-stage statement, "WebEx is history." "People have had enough of paying crazy prices for web meeting solutions that have not innovated in over a decade, never work and are a technical headache," Ganguly says. "Our public launch puts an end to this pain."
The company announced more than 375,000 members in 165 countries have used the service since it launched the private beta in September 2007. Going beyond simple meetings, users have utilized Dimdim in new and creative ways, including:
- * A Florida "language scholar" is teaching English via Dimdim to Mexican immigrants before they arrive in the U.S.
- * A California-based entrepreneur is delivering animated presentations to clients to eliminate time and money spent on travel.
- * A Texas-based church group uses the service to hold online seminars about Christian homemaking in the living rooms of their members.
- * An Australian-based veterinary medicine group uses the service weekly to keep members up to date on the latest veterinary techniques.
Ganguly says that moving forward, the service would have no problem integrating into social networking platforms, such as Facebook and MySpace, where users of those networks could add a widget to create a real-time collaboration space within their profiles. Right now, users can just post invites on their profiles, and then when the meeting time arrives attendees would be brought to the Dimdim site. But Ganguly says he can see the day where all of the collaboration could be done within the social network (or blog page) framework.
