Open source web meeting and collaboration vendor dimdim is out with version 5 of their platform today. The key new enhancements are webinar widgets and improved screen sharing (screen casting).
The webinar widgets are an interesting idea. The basic idea is that the webinar widgets are a promotion and registration vehicle to drive traffic to an online event. Usually when you want to go to webinar you see a link on a page and then save it to your own calendar somewhere. With a widget the idea is that the info can easily be shared, it’s easier to get registered and the widget provides a live status of when the meeting is on. It will also provide a link to a transcript (if avail) after the meeting. Sure sounds like a time (and maybe life) saver to me.
DimDim has an open source download if you want to try and run it on your own — but the real push is their online service which is a WebEx competitor. The difference is that it’s all based on open source and conferences of 20 or fewer users can be run for free.
The 5.0 release comes just a few short months after the 4.5 release.
