Web based virtual world meeting initiation and administration, extensive control panel for the meeting presenter and cost savings associated with virtual meetings make Piivot Tatkaal one of the most advanced tools available today.
Amphisocial launched an on-demand 3D virtual
world meeting environment this week with the objective of providing
a powerful, immersive collaboration alternative to the web based
meeting tools like Webex, GoToMeeting etc.. It uses realXtend and
Sun
Wonderland virtual world platforms based on an algorithm that
determines the best suited platform depending on the application
options customer wants to use within the meeting.
Much like users can initiate a regular web meetings in
Webex-like applications, it is now possible to easily initiate and
set up a 3D virtual meeting using a web form to input all the
necessary data. Amphisocial has also put some effort to make the
web pages easier to navigate since Maxping's previous coverage of
the company:Google apps and virtual reality integrated into a
beer distribution game.
The pricing for a meeting is (depending on who pays your bill :)
not too much. To arrange a meeting for an hour for up to ten
participants costs 15$. If you compare this to a normal business
meeting where participants fly from other parts of the country, it
suddenly starts to look quite an appealing alternative - at least
one to try out especially for customers who are looking for an
immersive alternative to the said web collaboration tools..
However It also provides a value proposition to customers in
terms of variabilizing their costs when compared to a dedicated
monthly subscription model or an on-premise model. The price of a
dedicated always-on simulator package for realXtend is currently
around 70$ per month (see http://simhost.com), which may become cheaper
only if you are going to have a lot of meetings. The other drawback
in such a dedicated model is that you need to build the meeting
application on top of that, including avatars for the participants.
PIIVOT Tatkaal relieves customers of any such overheads and makes
that part easy as you have everything pre-built or created on
the fly depending on options submitted by the user at the time of
initiating the meeting world. Meeting facilitators can invite
more participants without ever worrying about creation of the
avatars or how to show your powerpoint, conducting a poll and
automatically collecting the poll results, just to name a few cool
features.
The billing is done via Google checkout, which makes the
customer feel safe - at least works for me.
Here's a good overview slideshow of how the product looks like.
When the user enters the world, it has an office surrounding
with breakout rooms, video rooms and conference rooms. At present,
video room 1 is equipped with slide sharing and opinion polls,
which means that it is well suited for remote meetings and
training. Once the duration of meeting expires, all files shared
during the meeting will be emailed to the meeting facilitator.
Here's how to take a tour of the meeting
tool
Go to Amphisocial's web page and press the start
button. This gets you to a web page with a countdown timer, which
shows the time to the beginning of the meeting. The meeting world
is being constructed behind the scenes automatically using Amazon
EC2 server cloud. The waiting time is just enough to grab a cup of
coffee and install the realXtend viewer.
After the wait, I can add more attendees to the meeting by
entering their names and emails, plus I get to choose how they look
in the meeting (ie. to select their avatars). After finishing with
that, I got an email with a login information to the meeting
itself.
In the meeting area, there are a lot of rooms I can choose from.
I went to "Video Room #1" from the lobby and uploaded a powerpoint
presentation. I could have made a poll for the audience if I
wanted. You can see controls below the screen at the following
screenshot:
It looks like it will take some time both for presenters and the
audience to get used to the environment. For that reason Maxping
recommends that you have at least one training meeting before
actual business use of PIIVOT Tatkaal. Using this link, Amphisocial provides a form on
their website for users who wish to get a free trial or discounts
of Tatkaal. If not, you can always install the realXtend server
(Taiga) to your own computer and practice all the virtual world
skills locally before moving on to serious use of the
technology.
Maxping will have a real meeting using PIIVOT Tatkaal and
report on the findings soon. Stay tuned!
And now some encouragement for those who are hesitating on using
virtual worlds:
The woman made a good point that everyone should use "First
Life" for the meetings, because it is sooo much more efficient and
it is the way business is made. Today. How about tomorrow?
snowcrashme
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