Collaboration Products

Today I feel compelled to write about a fairly new product I've been working with lately. Macromedia released a product called Breeze a little over a month ago. I took advantage of their trial and really liked what I saw. In the past, I have used other products (such as WebEx) and Breeze totally blew away the competition. Perhaps the most amazing thing was the ability to do remote desktop sharing without having to install a client on either machine. I was pretty blown away that once I gave permission to share a document, the other person in my mini conference was able to start editing away. I haven't fully tested the capability, but it was exciting to open a session on demand, invite another attendee, and be remotely controlling content without an install, firewall issues (since everything is flash), or a difficult interface for a non-savvy user to find a way to share content.

The other attractive piece is third parties can repackage Breeze with other functions. This is the case with Convoq, but I found their product not as useful as Breeze. The one really nice feature in Convoq that is not available [yet] in Breeze is the instant messanger integration. I did find it buggy at times, but it lowered the time it took me to begin a session. I would guess that either Breeze will add similar functionality or another third party will create a product more taylored to my expectations.

Overall, you must check out the product if you do any remote discussions (sales, internal, or broadcast style). Nice job Macromedia!