Last year my organization purchased an online collaboration tool called Marratech. We used this tool for online meetings, collaboration, online demos, and technical support. Shortly after we purchased Marratech, it was acquired by Google. Marratech has not been developing the tool for a few months and needless to say it stopped working correcting on Mac OS X 10.5.5.
Marratech has since entered into a partnership with a company called Elluminate, “the market leader in education-based collaboration with over 3 million users in 185 countries.” Elluminate looks similar to Marratech, but has much more functionality and is very e-learning friendly. We are evaluating Elluminate in house this week.
Aside from using Elluminate for work purposes, they offer a “Three for Free” web conferencing solution. Three for Free gives you real-time collaboration with up to three participants using interactive features such as:
Two-way audio- Interactive whiteboard
- Direct messaging
- Application sharing
- File transfer
- Synchronized web tour
- Live webcam
- Breakout rooms
The free vRoom allows for 3 concurrent people. It is cross-platform and easy. I plan to use it for family and friends for technical support. I love iChat, but not everyone has a Mac that I can take advantage of iChat screen sharing. Elluminate looks like a great alternative and a great free application.
