Marratech
Earlier today, I had my first experience using proper web conferencing software. In the past, I used to phone in to lab meetings, but that had various drawbacks and limitations, and I was much more impressed with the solution we used today.
Marratech makes teleconferencing software, and they offer a somewhat restricted free client. The client is unable to handle more than 5 concurrent connections (not an issue for my use), and restricted to only using public 'rooms' on their servers, which could potentially be an issue but so far the people I know who use this haven't had any issues with strangers intruding. Here's what the service offers:
Voice connection
This is much like Skype, with noticeably more background hiss but also one advantage: I find that using Skype with speakers creates a very irritating echo, which is absent on Marratech. For most phone calls this doesn't matter—I prefer to be on headphones anyway and have never liked speakerphones—but when it comes to connecting to lab meetings I would want to be on speaker because I'd be talking to a group of people at once.
Video
I don't have a webcam and am not terribly interested in getting one, but some of colleagues' laptops have them built-in, so we could see how it works. The picture is of OK quality, but motion like the normal way people gesture when they talk gets blurred beyond recognition. What I really appreciate about the video function, however, is the possibility of just pointing the camera at a blackboard so that I can see what someone is drawing out and referring to as they speak. For that, I'm pretty sure the video is good enough.
Application sharing
This is a handy feature that I'd never seen before: the client software can connect to other applications on the user's desktop, and share them [at least their output - I'm not sure about input] with the other users in the conference. The advantage over simply sending documents via email is that everyone sees the same thing, so a user [definitely the owner of the application being shared - I'm not sure about the other users] can control where in the document we all are.
Shared whiteboard
For one-to-one communication, this one is the killer, and a service that just had this would be enough (I can always use Skype simultaneously for a voice connection, or something terribly old-fashioned like the POTS). The people in a conference can share a space in which anyone can draw or type notes. This is the best electronic equivalent I've seen to a physical shared drawing space (be it a whiteboard, flipchart or just some paper on a desk), and until someone does me a favour by inventing teleportation, I think it will be very useful. It's still not quite as easy as having a physical thing to draw on, but on the other hand it allows me to type text, which given the unclarity of my handwriting is probably a good thing.
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