Remote Access Tips
When it comes to Remote Access, we've been there, done that, now serving 103 tips in 21 categories ranging from Biotech Remote Access to Web Conferencing.
Affordable Hosted Web Conferencing
Want to improve your online collaboration but don't have a fancy IT staff to help host the conferencing internally? Then you need an externally hosted web conferencing solution.
Chances are, if your IT staff is small then you're probably a small to medium sized business, and therefore might not have the money to blow on top-of-the-line, bells and whistles web conferencing services.
AT Conferencing provides more affordable web conferencing and phone conferencing hosting through the web at about half the price of other industry leaders. Participants don't need any special software and can log in from any web browser to participate. If you need or want to put together an online meeting in a hurry and on the cheap, this is the easiest and best way to do so.
Turn Your Computer Into a Video Phone
Video conferencing is no longer simply for fancy corporations with over-budgeted board rooms. With broadband internet connectivity and a cheap computer video camera anyone in the world can now communicate online. No special video conferencing services or internet video conferencing software is needed. Microsoft offers NetMeeting for free, and many other organizations offer other means to video conference over the net, including WebEx and SightSpeed. For under $100 you can setup your computer to be a video phone to keep in touch with family and friend. Just as email has replaced snail mail, video conferencing is starting to replace telephones, so grab a camera and reach out and see someone!
Use More Online Collaborative Techniques
Trying to find a way to keep your expanding organization feeling close-knit? In the age of the Internet, the best way to keep everyone working together is through various means of online collaboration. Just about all organizations have come to rely heavily on email, and some even utilize internal instance messaging services such as Sametime, but there are many other very effective ways to keep your team closely linked, such as web conferencing, having an online meeting, or even by sponsoring webinars for employee training. If you're having an increasingly hard time keeping up with what different employees and groups are up to and are unsatisfied with simply sending out organization-wide memos, then looking to expand the ways you're using online collaboration can greatly increase your company's internal communication and therefore its overall competitive edge.
Host Your Own Web Conference
Looking for a quick, easy to use web conferencing solution that allows you to host your own web conference or online meeting?
There are a number of self-hosting web conferencing products out there, but WiredRed offers one of the easiest to use and advanced solutions. Its product allows your own computer to host an online conference involving video, sound, text, and basic desktop sharing.
If you're expecting a large audience, however, it might be best to outsource the hosting of the conference to WiredRed itself for more bandwidth.
Online Collaboration and Skype
If you want to enable your employees and clients to throw together a quick online meeting anytime, then you should check out Skype.
Skype offers free VoIP—voice over IP—services from anywhere in the world with a broadband connection and, for a fee, can even be linked to an actual phone line, allowing people from around the world to make an internet phone call to your mobile and costing neither party any expensive long distance charges.
What's more, multiple parties can be invited to and dial into the phone conference, and those who are sitting in front of computers can illustrate their point in chat windows by typing or pasting in relevant information to the conversation.
IT groups from around the world are discovering that Skype greatly enhances their online collaboration, so it's well worth checking out, especially with its $0 price tag.
Use Video Conferencing for Presentations
Finding that big conference calls aren't providing the communicative power needed to express your complex ideas? If the purpose of a conference call or internet chat is primarily to give a one-way presentation, such as a seminar, then you may want to consider a video conference instead. Video conferencing over the internet has become cheap and very easy. Computer video cameras and microphones can be picked up at any computer store, and internet video conferencing software such as Microsoft's NetMeeting is free. You can broadcast your presentation to any sized audience, providing that everyone has a broadband internet connection. A visual presentation and explanation of your material can be a much more effective way to communicate than over a phone, so next time you have to explain yourself to a group give it a whirl and see how much more effective you can be.
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| Patricia Walters-Fischer |
