Sorry, I’ve not finished part two of the cloud series but life has gotten away from me and the last thing I’ve wanted to do when I get home is write.

That being said I could help but enjoy a web conferencing tool that I recently “discovered”. DIMDIM is a great little free online tool that I found while searching for an Eluminate Alternative. I started with the open source VM appliance, but it is crap.

I should state that for the record, it isn’t really open source in any meaningful way. The community has been neglected and there has been no forward progress for almost a year.

However, their free online service is great if you are in a position of needing to conduct small, 20 or less attendees, web conferences. It is super easy to upload your PPT slides and/or PDFs. There is a great little interactive whiteboard and the ability to share your screen. There is a web share, but it doesn’t seem to work with any of the authenticated websites that I need for my trainings.

Unfortunately, the recording ability doesn’t seem to apply to the whiteboard or PowerPoint (this seems very odd) so it is pretty much useless (Edit: It actually records PPT slides and screencasts fairly well). To be honest I’m not sure if that is a result of using the free version or just a product limitation.

Below are a couple of screenshots.