On the other hand, a simple combination of two great inexpensive online services, provides would be live presenters, not only with with the ability to do all of the above, but also to add live two-way audio (attendees can ask questions back) with a superb voice quality even across dial-up lines.
My special recipe is made up of:
2 filled cups of Voxwire Meeting Room one handful of ReplayHQ
The Voxwire Voice MeetingRoom provides you with the ability to voice-power any live presentation delivered through the Internet and it allows you to have those people in that conference room:
a) to hear you with much better quality than on the phone,
b) to save quite a bit of money in long distance calling (if you are several thousands km away) Voxwire charges you less than $ 30/month for an unlimited number of live audio presentations with as many as 5, 10 or more listening points.
The Voxwire Voice MeetingRoom is offered in several configurations and its costs starts at $29.95/month for ten simultaneous users.
ReplayHQ is a wonderful service that allows you to upload your ready-made presentation and to add voice to it through a phone call. Not only ReplayHQ makes it very easy for North Americans customers to add narration to their presentations by talking live on the phone while selecting the slide to record on their screen, but it also converts the presentation in a very effective streaming format, which can be accessed by any computer or browser and which can be replayed at any time after the live event.
To find out more about ReplayHQ go to:
http://www.replayHQ.com
Some unique features offered by ReplayHQ are:
- Supports groups up to 500 concurrent users
- Flash-based Design Eliminates the need for downloads on the
client or leader system;
- NO problems with firewall and Java issues common to other
web conferencing solutions;
- Support for PC, Macintosh, Linux/Unix,
- Support for dial-up users
- Brandable
- Document Sharing
Makes downloads, including Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF
formats, available to clients, broadening the available content
- Polling Questions
Quiz or assess client feedback by asking true/false, multiple
choice, or short-answer questions.
- Page Annotations adds highlights to slides on the fly to liven
up events
- Application Showing
Pushes screen shot of desktop applications to clients
By combining ReplayHQ and Voxwire you would get:
1) The ability to deliver live PowerPoint presentations on the
Internet with maximum display quality and best performance
(responsiveness).
2) The presentation can be seen by people having any kind of
browser, not just Internet Explorer.
3) The ability to talk live during the presentation with voice
quality better than on the telephone.
4) The option receive text chat messages during the presentation
and send files to anyone of the attendees.
5) Live voice questions directly from participants.
6) The ability to deliver the presentation, slide by slide,
while talking live and having people see exactly what you see,
even when connected on dial-up lines.
7) The presentation with your recorded audio remains available
for anyone, at a later time, to access and view online.
Why is my solution better than having anyone of the two services alone?
ReplayHQ does not offer the option to deliver a live presentation. You record it and there it is ready for delivery.
Voxwire adds that possibility through its uniquely powerful live voice presentation technology as well as through the integration of a Web browser through which you can show the presentation uploaded to ReplayHQ.
Wouldn't it be just the same if I uploaded my PowerPoint presentation to my server myself?
Sure, if you have a server you can access, and if you can upload a PowerPoint presentation converted into HTML to it, then you can navigate that presentation from any browser just as if it was a Web site.
Problems with this approach are the ineffective method by which the presentation is converted by PowerPoint into HTML and its subsequent inability to have always an effectively navigable presentation.
PowerPoint presentations converted into HTML are a nightmare. I can personally testify it. Issues of properly working internal links inside the slides, appearance of different browsers, ability to effectively sync-up, background issues due to
addition of a black background all around the presentation (though solvable) make this path to live delivery a true nightmare.
ReplayHQ takes altogether away all technicalities including issues of conversion, FTP uploading, compatibility with other browsers, reliability of links, and the ability to provide a highly performing streaming format for display which is much
better, in many circumstances, than the results obtained directly with PowerPoint.
On top of all this, with ReplayHQ you can also record your voice on each slide, creating extra value by having a full, accessible audiovisual record of your presentation for others to see.
Let me add that all other Web conferencing solutions offering a facility to deliver live PowerPoint presentations either convert your presentation into low quality JPEG files that you can then call up from your web conferencing tool, or utilize an application sharing facility (a technology-based approach to show what is running on your computer to others) to show the PowerPoint presentation running on your computer.
Both of these approaches have great limitations in that the first one tends to lower the quality of your slides to make them download faster on each one computer, while the second is shamefully bandwidth-hungry and it does not perform too well on dial-up connections due to the amount of data that each screen image to be sent contains.
My recipe blending Voxwire and ReplayHQ has no bandwidth issues whatsoever and can be employed with full grade audio with people connected at 28.8 Kbps!
I am only waiting for ReplayHQ to have an international toll-free number or to integrate Voxwire Voice MeetingRoom in its recording facilities, so that anyone from any part of the world can immediately take advantage of this great service.
Voxwire - http://www.voxwire.com/
ReplayHQ - http://www.replayHQ.com/
Highly recommended!
