Steve Diamond asked:


How much do you spend on travel expense (transportation, meals, lodging, etc.) for conferences, meetings, sales presentations, and training? How much of that expense would you like to save?

With recent advances in PC and Internet technology, even small businesses can save large portions of their travel expenses. And those savings can start today.

If doing business involves frequent meetings with small groups of co-workers, customers, prospects, or vendors, and if travel expenses are often part of the picture, then it’s time for you to learn how you can cancel those expensive hotel reservations, tear up the plane tickets, and keep the car in the garage.

Here’s how: online conferencing. Yes, it’s here, it’s practical, it’s secure, and it’s very inexpensive.

When you think of technology for meeting at a distance, you may be picturing special rooms equipped with tens of thousands of dollars worth of specialized teleconferencing equipment. That was the 20th-century solution. Some large corporations still use it. But the smaller, more nimble businesses of the 21st century choose online conferencing. It’s easy and it requires no special equipment other than the PC, Internet connection, and web browser you already have.

The new generation of online meeting tools let you meet whenever you want with anyone you wish. You can host a meeting or join one that someone else has organized. You can start an instant meeting or schedule one for a future date and time. You can even create the schedule and send the invitations directly from Microsoft Outlook.

How will you benefit? Here are just a few ways.
Shorten the sales cycle and close more deals by scheduling instant demonstrations and presentations for qualified prospects. Respond quickly to changing conditions by scheduling immediate strategic planning meetings with co-workers. Train your customers when they’re ready instead of making them wait until you can travel to their location.

So how does it work? Simply put, you can share any window on your computer’s desktop so that all others in the meeting can see what you see. (According to a Yankee Group study, this usage accounts for 89% of all online conferences.) You can also chat via keyboard and speak over a telephone conference bridge.

What can you do with this online conferencing technology?
You can give a PowerPoint presentation to co-workers or prospects. You can demonstrate a software product. You can train customers to use a program. You can collaborate with co-workers on editing a document.

The uses are only limited by your imagination.

Prices from the key players in this space cover quite a broad range:
Microsoft Live Meeting ($375/month) Webex Meeting Center ($375/month) Macromedia Breeze ($375/month) Raindance Meeting Edition ($275/month) Citrix GoToMeeting ($49/month)

Recently CNET published an independent evaluation of these services, and the results may surprise you. The lowest priced product, Citrix GoToMeeting, scored higher than Macromedia Breeze, equal to Microsoft Live Meeting, and only a little below Raindance.

In other words, with GoToMeeting for $49 a month you can get unlimited usage of a highly rated online conferencing product that’s easy to use, highly secure, and can save you thousands of dollars. What are you waiting for?

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Christopher Castillo asked:


What is Go To Meeting?

Go To Meeting is one of the newest tools available for online meetings. There has been an increase in the usage of such tools for both large and small business interests. Many companies are changing the way they approach teleconferencing and the traditional business meeting. Many now prefer a web conference where they can see each other as well. Go To Meeting is a product that allows one to set up and hold meetings, conduct business training and provide presentations with various media over the internet. It presents a practical, and fairly inexpensive, medium to communicate for business purposes.

What exactly can Go To Meeting do for a business?

Go To Meeting is beneficial for a businesses because it is an impressive new technology and saves on business travel expenses for individuals as well as for group travel. The program can help out a business as far as task completion time for vendors or customers and it can also shorten the actual sales cycle. This also eliminates the need for a customer or salesperson to travel a far distance and still get a more personal feel to the meeting. People can meet with multiple business partners at different locations all at once at the same meeting center.

What are some benefits of Go To Meeting over competing products?

The Citrix Go To Meeting system is lower in price compared to its top competitors. Go To Meeting costs $49 per month, whereas systems from competitors such as Microsoft, Macromedia and Webex cost $375 per month. Any of these systems can save a great deal of money and time for a business because they will cut back on travel time and expenses.

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Demosthenes Damon asked:


What can meeting software can do for your Enterprise? When calling a meeting in your office and some of your staff are miles away or down the street you’re no longer a small time operation. You now need enterprise software to support goal setting, policies and product demos. Your business has met the threshold of enterprise level and needs additional support. WebEx can help you meet this new level of expectations and requirements.

Security is a big concern when sharing information across any geographic range. Your clients and colleges will be sharing information across the internet, you want your information safe. WebEx brings a new level of security standards to the online meeting software space. The MediaTone Network a proprietary network operated by WebEx ensures your data’s security. Your data is not stored, only transmitted during the meeting. The network works both inside your corporate network or across the internet. Hold private secure meetings in your own building or across the country.

MediaTone Network was custom designed by WebEx for security and reliability. Not only is your meeting information not handled by any third party providers but it’s also super easy to use.

Can you say scalable? Remember the last software you bought that cost twice as much as they said it would and required an extra server two months later? WebEx will expand or downsize with ease. No new investments, WebEx’s web platform makes it super scalable. Whether you just opened a second office or your 50th WebEx is able to meet the needs of your grow or shrinking business plans. Cutting cost in today’s economy and holding your meetings online can save your business thousands of dollars. (See my article on travel costs.) Pulling a team together no matter where they are located will keep your business nimble and robust. Hold multiple meetings instead of just one, be able to quickly regroup and deploy conversations with ease. Share applications and even share your desktop with others. Allowing customers and colleges to see what you’re seeing allows everyone to stay engaged and on the same page.

I’ve reviewed some of the most poplar online meeting software businesses are using today. Take a minute to see why WebEx stands out among the rest. You’ll also find links to their free trial and more on how you can save your business money using online meeting software.

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Brian I Park asked:


Part of online dating is meeting other people. You will need to invest the time necessary in finding others and really getting to know them. You will need to meet them. But, this can be one of the most worrisome of all aspects of online dating.

All of the same things that applies to standard dating relates to online dating when it comes to meeting others. Nevertheless, it is a very different situation indeed. There are many important things that you need to take into consideration first off though. No, not what you will wear, but your safety.

Safety

When it comes to online dating meetings, safety has to be one of the largest things on your mind. There is no doubt that there are bad guys out there and although there are people working hard to prevent the wrong person from getting into the community, it can happen anyway. We should note that it is not the normal or by any means common though.

Therefore, here are a few very important rules that you need to keep in mind when it comes to online dating meetings.

• Meet in a public area. You should meet in an area that has other people in it. This way, you can easily stay safe with the public’s watchful eye. Avoid temptations to leave these types of areas on the first date.

• Meet them someplace rather than allowing them to pick you up. This way, you have your own method of transportation for safety reasons.

• Make sure that you feel comfortable with them. If you do not like that they are touching you, tell them so. If this is a problem, leave.

• Tell someone where you are going and what your plans are.

• Stay in well lit areas that feel comfortable to you. You should know the area at least somewhat.

Keeping yourself safe is very important and is a very necessary step in the process of online dating. But, these things are not going to get you out of the situation with a safe person that you really do not like. We have a great tip for you to get out of a situation like this at any time.

First off, you will want to make sure to have a friend that you are comfortable with. Tell them where you are going and what you will be up to. When an online dating date does not go well, you need a way out and they are the person to help you.

Set a time for them to call you. This should be a couple of hours into the date. If when they call you, you are looking for a way out, then you can tell the date that something has happened and you need to leave. You should not need to answer any questions here, though.

If all is going well, you can easily cut the conversation short and let them go. It’s a great way to get out of a bad situation.

Meeting someone from an online dating community is not something that is easy to do, but it does allow for you to take the relationship to the next level. But, remember, you have yet another first impression to make here. Take the time necessary to make it a good one for continued success!

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Joseph Ducat asked:


Web conferencing is a technology that offers many features and functions useful to many large companies and small business owners alike. If you are concerned about the price, no need to worry, there are Web conferencing solutions available for any budget. You can hire a web conferencing service provider, or install web conferencing software on the company server. Of course, you need to know what features you can expect to be implemented in a web conferencing application, so you can choose the commercial product or service that is best for your budget. Knowing the capabilities of a web conferencing application will allow you to get more out of it.

One very useful function of Web conferencing is screen sharing. This allows one person to make the view of a single computer screen available to everyone else who is participating in the conference. So if you like, you can run a PowerPoint slideshow or presentation on your computer and it will be seen by everybody else. In other words, it is just like giving a presentation to a room of people, except that you are doing it online and your attendees are somewhere else sitting in front of their own computers.

Another common function found in Web conferencing is a virtual whiteboard. This works much like a regular whiteboard as used at meetings in the real world. People can take turns inputting words or even drawings on the whiteboard.

Then there is application sharing. This is one of the most popular functions of Web conferencing platforms. In fact, nearly 90% of all over Web conferencing users have made use of application sharing. It allows people to let someone else access program functions on their computer during the Web conference.

Co-browsing offers the ability to surf the Internet as a group, and is very useful for going through a company or client website.

Web conferencing applications also offer instant messaging or voice Internet call capabilities. These allow you to hold numerous types of events online instead of having to host them in real world facilities. Such events would include interviews, press conferences, training seminars, panel discussions, Q&A sessions, client consultations, and sales presentations, among others. Instant messaging software lets the participants type in their discussions. Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP software allows people to make voice calls to each other using broadband Internet instead of traditional phone networks. You can set up a voice conference using VoIP, which is much cheaper than an equivalent long-distance conference call. That would help you trim some of your business expenses.

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