Free online meeting tool Mikogo launches for Mac

March 11, 2009 | Camille Ricketts | Comments | |

Mikogo, maker of the online meeting tool of same name, announced today the release of a free, public version that works across platforms, now including Mac. The software lets up to 10 meeting participants share a screen over the web during a presentation.

A group of colleagues can virtually huddle around one screen to edit a project collaboratively from their separate desks, or a single user can conduct a product demonstration as the rest of the group watches. All changes made on the shared screen take place in real time, making presentations easy to follow. The new software for Mac operates exactly the same as its Windows counterpart, allowing users to swap between presenters, send out email notifications of meetings, and dial into Mikogo’s own voice-conferencing system simultaneously. When someone on a Windows Machine views a presentation or edits a document shared from a Mac computer, the Mikogo web conference window looks like a mini Mac Desktop.

Mikogo is clearly not alone in the increasingly crowded web conferencing space. Cisco’s WebEx and Citrix’s GoToMeeting are the biggest players in the space. But there are also a lot of smaller players like cost-effective TimeBridge, Genomni’s sleek Oneeko, and free service Dimdim. With WebEx and GoToMeeting costing up to $49 a month for individual use, Mikogo distinguishes itself somewhat on the basis of price. When it comes to its free rivals, the road gets rockier. DimDim has offered a cross-platform service for a while now. And while Mikogo prides itself on its clean, simple interface — Dimdim’s open-source application doesn’t look half bad and offers all of the same features. TimeBridge’s new web conferencing service may also pose a threat. Not only is it pretty, but it only costs $8.95 a month and already has a solid base of customers built in from the company’s other products.

Mikogo’s parent company, BeamYourScreen, offers a range of collaboration products for online meetings, presentations and customer support. It has a roster of 1,500 corporate customers and exists in 40 countries worldwide. Mikogo is based in Germany.

Next Story: “I’m a Mac” versus “I’m a PC” as told by your iPod shuffle
Previous Story: Nintendo crosses 100 million DS game handhelds sold

Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , , , ,

Photo of Camille Ricketts

About the Author, Camille Ricketts

Camille is the lead writer for GreenBeat. She came to VentureBeat from Google where she worked on its traditional platforms team, particularly in TV. Before that, she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York and London. Follow her on Twitter at @camillericketts, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

With GreenBeat 2009, VentureBeat's all-star conference on all things Smart Grid, coming up in November, Camille will be expanding coverage of this exciting space. Stay up to date by following @greenbeat2009 on Twitter or by becoming a fan of the event on Facebook here.

  • Hi Camille,

    Thank you for posting our news about the new Mikogo Mac software. Great to hear back from VentureBeat on the launch of our new software.
    We are working on further releases of Mikogo for Macs which will add more features to the software.

    Thanks to the team at VentureBeat.

    Regards,

    Andrew Donnelly
    The Mikogo Team
  • Joshanderson
    Those are very good tools, however, in many cases those platforms are used just to allow the team to review the same document together in real-time and "be on the same page".
    The recently launched free site http://www.showdocument.com does exactly that, quickly show documents to friends and colleagues.
    It allows web meeting and co-browsing on any document, user uploads a document and invites friends to view it with him live
    All the participants in the session see each others' drawing, highlights, etc.

    Josh