Dimdim: Great Idea - Bad Implementation
- Posted by Ron Williams on September 7th, 2008
For those using software for business purposes especially those who telecommute, many have used either webex or GoToMeeting, both of which provide a meeting environment to view a presenters screen as well as a chat function. Dimdim is a competitor to both of the above industry giants mentioned previously.
I'll approach the user experience from a participant standpoint first. Setup for the software is simple, by clicking a few links and entering a meeting room, a participant is entered into a flash based meeting room. Users are prompted whether they would like to allow the flash app to access their microphone and webcam. Participants are then able to use a wide array of features, most useful is the feature to view the presenters desktop. Here is where Dimdim falls short, when participants attempt to view a full-screen version of the presenters screen, they are shown a horribly scaled down version of the screen, in addition, when using the non-scaled version, a large amount of scroll is created possibly preventing users from viewing the entire presentation or on-screen walk through. In addition, the screen capture quality is far from superior. For example, when using a 15Mb/2Mb FiOS connection for the presenter and a 5Mb/1.5Mb DSL connection for the participant, the screen quality was slow and worse than that of netmeeting.
As a presenter, setting up a meeting is simple, after logging in, a presenter simply presses host a meeting. In Internet Explorer, you're required to install an ActiveX control, however in Firefox, you're need to install a plugin and restart your browser. After that, it's quite simple to continue the meeting, selecting share desktop as well as giving others meeting control.
Some major oversights have occurred in Dimdim however. An important feature to include is the keyboard and mouse control takeover. When troubleshooting on a clients machine, it is useful to take control of the inputs rather than saying "move your mouse up" to either have them move it to the top of the screen, or have them move it 1mm. In addition, Dimdim must scale its network resources to handle the traffic and allow quality screen display as well as cleanup the interface to allow better viewing of the presenters screen.
It should be noted that Dimdim is off to a very good start, with tweaking it could easily be as good if not better than commercial alternatives. Dimdim has been released under GPL for off-site. Dimdim is using a market similar to 37signals where you try before you buy, but better because you can use it in an intranet environment since you can host your own server with Dimdim's software. I must also mention, if Dimdim is able to iron out the bugs, I will be the first to subscribe considering the $99 per year is much lower than the cost of its competitors.
- Posted by Ron Williams on September 7th, 2008
For those using software for business purposes especially those who telecommute, many have used either webex or GoToMeeting, both of which provide a meeting environment to view a presenters screen as well as a chat function. Dimdim is a competitor to both of the above industry giants mentioned previously.
I'll approach the user experience from a participant standpoint first. Setup for the software is simple, by clicking a few links and entering a meeting room, a participant is entered into a flash based meeting room. Users are prompted whether they would like to allow the flash app to access their microphone and webcam. Participants are then able to use a wide array of features, most useful is the feature to view the presenters desktop. Here is where Dimdim falls short, when participants attempt to view a full-screen version of the presenters screen, they are shown a horribly scaled down version of the screen, in addition, when using the non-scaled version, a large amount of scroll is created possibly preventing users from viewing the entire presentation or on-screen walk through. In addition, the screen capture quality is far from superior. For example, when using a 15Mb/2Mb FiOS connection for the presenter and a 5Mb/1.5Mb DSL connection for the participant, the screen quality was slow and worse than that of netmeeting.
As a presenter, setting up a meeting is simple, after logging in, a presenter simply presses host a meeting. In Internet Explorer, you're required to install an ActiveX control, however in Firefox, you're need to install a plugin and restart your browser. After that, it's quite simple to continue the meeting, selecting share desktop as well as giving others meeting control.
Some major oversights have occurred in Dimdim however. An important feature to include is the keyboard and mouse control takeover. When troubleshooting on a clients machine, it is useful to take control of the inputs rather than saying "move your mouse up" to either have them move it to the top of the screen, or have them move it 1mm. In addition, Dimdim must scale its network resources to handle the traffic and allow quality screen display as well as cleanup the interface to allow better viewing of the presenters screen.
It should be noted that Dimdim is off to a very good start, with tweaking it could easily be as good if not better than commercial alternatives. Dimdim has been released under GPL for off-site. Dimdim is using a market similar to 37signals where you try before you buy, but better because you can use it in an intranet environment since you can host your own server with Dimdim's software. I must also mention, if Dimdim is able to iron out the bugs, I will be the first to subscribe considering the $99 per year is much lower than the cost of its competitors.
