Yugma

Frank Fazzino

http://www.yugma.com

Yugma is a form of desktop collaboration software that allows you to that allows other people to see a real time copy of the whatever you are viewing on your desktop. You can view any application and is functional for any computer. The best part of this is that multiple viewers can also share keyboard and mouse functions on that desktop from their own. This can be used for multiple people to work on projects at the same time. This also can be used for technicians to give technical support to help others with problems on their computers. This software is equipped with several features such as whiteboard that can be used to have a conference online even if the employees are not in the same room. It has visual tools allow you add to drawings or graphics by drawing lines, shapes, or just freehand to emphasize parts of the graphic. with these Yugma sessions is the ability to record and save any presentations or documents. these documents can be saved on the web and can be viewed by other employees or clients at anytime.
The advantages of using Yugma is that applications can accessed and edited at anytime by many users. To make an account is free and supposedly easy to use without needing any training. It is also accessible through Windows, Mac and Linux. The disadvantages is that you need to pay for professional services for your business based on how many people that are joining Yugma. It's pricing gives also limits up to 500 people. The disadvantages aren't that inconvenient because the services include both training and technical support for those people.
For a business, I would give this a rating 4.5 out of 5. It is ideal for multiple people to work on and give presentations at the same time in a quick and efficient way. It is also great to way to have meetings when the whole staff can not be present but with this may come the negative effects of using whiteboard rather than face to face but it is better than not having communication at all.

Kaltura

http://www.kaltura.com/

Kaltura is an online site used to help create group collaborated videos that users can contribute material using wiki technology. You have the ability to use videos that are already uploaded to sites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr. The final video then can be embedded in web pages anywhere on the internet that support such functions. Kaltura allows for group collaboration such as bands and artists to interact with their fans and have them help create music videos or an online collage of fan material. With Kaltura, senior high school classes can create end of the year videos that all students can contribute to with photos and videos that they may have and members of the student body can monitor the progress of it and can show it during graduation. Families can create videos of family parties and vacations that others can contribute with pictures and movies that they may have and post them where others can view them. Nonprofit organizations can create a video to help spread their cause and can allow anyone to add content to it and help get involved. Small organizations can create online ads to help spread the word of their company and ask for any member of the organization to add any input they may have into the video. They also can create new hire videos for new members of the organizations and how-to videos that anyone in the organization can create and add to and then post them in a common area for new members to view and learn how the organization works. In a classroom, teachers have the ability to create a collaborative video with their students that all can participate in and the teachers can monitor the progress. I give this technology a 5 because it is a great for group collaboration and organizational communication. It has the ability to get everyone involved and all members have an option to have their input in it just like a wiki page, and its ability to allow people to work on it from home or from their office.

Introduction to New Communication Technologies

This blog is a collaborative project by students at the University of Albany's communication department. The students in the course, New Communication Technologies in Organizational Life, will be identifying and evaluating new communication technologies that can be used by organizations to improve organizational communication. Each posting will include identification (with a link) to the communication, a brief description, a discussion of its advantages and disadvantages, recommended uses within an organization, and rating on its usefulness.